Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi paid tribute to late CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury on Saturday saying that he was a person “you could trust”. Gandhi said whatever Yechury did, he always did it in the interest of the country.

“He was a person you could trust, he was a person you are sure – 100 per cent sure, that he wasn’t compromised in today’s situation. Whatever he did, he always did it in the interest of the country,” the Congress leader said.

He also said Yechury’s “starting point” was India, his political ideology and convictions came next.

“Maybe my brothers on the Left might not like it, but every time his starting point was India and after that his political ideology and his political convictions,” Gandhi said.

Gandhi also reminisced on the time the two leaders would talk about BJP or the RSS and said that the late leader wouldn’t say that they were doing this and that, just that “this is a danger to the country”.

Terming Sitaram Yechury a friend, Gandhi said that the CPI(M) leader was very flexible in politics. “For me, Sitaram Yechury was a friend, who operated in the political system.”

When people look at politics from outside, it’s not easy to see the dynamics that plays inside, Rahul Gandhi said, adding that politics brings out the worst in people.

“It’s rarely you see the best come out in people through politics. He was flexible, he was on the opposite spectrum of the ideology. He was also close to my mother, they were better friends than he was to me,” he added.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge also paid tribute to Sitaram Yechury and noted his “huge role” in the formation of INDIA bloc.

“Person who believed in parliamentary democracy, person who believed in equality. Sitaram ji used to say Kharge ji is our comrade,” Kharge said.

On September 21, Sitaram Yechury passed away at AIIMS Delhi following a respiratory tract infection.

Yechury joined the CPI(M) in 1975 and was arrested during the emergency for his political activities.

He was elected to the Central Committee of the Party in 1985 at the 12th Congress, and he remained in the Central Committee till now.

Yechury was elected to the Central Secretariat in 1989 and to the Polit Bureau in 1992 at the 14th Congress of the Party. He was elected as the General Secretary of the CPI(M) at the 21st Congress in 2015, a position he continued until now.

Sitaram Yechury was a member of the Rajya Sabha for two terms from 2005 to 2017. He served as the leader of the CPI(M) group and was an effective parliamentarian. He was given the best parliamentarian award in 2017.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary and former Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury passed away in a Delhi hospital on September 12 after battling a severe respiratory infection. He was 72. People from across the political spectrum mourned his passing, recalling his commitment to the working class, the Constitution, and social justice and equality.

Sitaram, or just “Sita” to his friends, cut his teeth in politics early, as a student in Jawaharlal Nehru University, a Left bastion in the 1970s. He was elected president of the JNU Students Union three times between 1977 and 1978, a period he would later describe with characteristic wit and humour as his term was punctuated by interruptions, coinciding with post-Emergency struggles. He was also arrested for a brief while during that period. Later, in the 1980s, he was elected all-India president of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI).

Yechury will be remembered and celebrated for his role as a Member of Parliament and for bringing together diverse political forces in the battle against communalism and authoritarianism, which are among the many facets of his journey as a pragmatic communist.

The political upsurges during his JNU years, which eventually evolved into the struggle against the Emergency, coupled with his study of economics with the late Krishna Bharadwaj and others at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, provided the milieu in which his political perspective developed.

He began a doctorate on Indian agriculture, which he never completed, but a paper based on the early stages of his research appeared in Economic & Political Weekly in 1976.

Early years

A brilliant student, he was born in Chennai (then Madras) into a family that came from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. He was raised and did his schooling in Hyderabad. As a result, he was conversant in both Hindi and English.

He landed in Delhi for higher studies and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from St. Stephen’s College. Yechury had a stellar academic record, having stood first in the all-India examination of the Central Board of Secondary Education.

Also Read | Sitaram Yechury: ‘The BJP should understand that without States, there is no India’

He also played tennis, loved old Hindi film songs, the tunes of which he often whistled, and he was completely colour blind. One of his favourite songs was the Hemant Kumar number “Ae mere pyare watan” from the film Kabuliwala.

He was a junior of fellow ideologue and party member Prakash Karat, and both were early mentors to subsequent generations of student leaders who lived by the motto of “study and struggle” and “education for all”, which was the SFI creed.

Yechury perhaps figured out early on that the most complex ideas could be communicated in the language of the people. He was not one for using complex theories, at least in the public domain, and he knew that the Left movement and Left politics could become popular only by raising people’s issues through class struggles and by demystifying jargon.

His affability was well known, something friends and associates recall fondly. Yechury was popular, but he was not a demagogue; nor did he use bombastic language. His speeches were conversational in style, presenting arguments conveyed in a language that everyone could understand.

CPI(M)‘s ‘rising star’

His political journey from student leader to joining the ranks of the CPI(M) in the mid-1970s often led to descriptions of him as a “rising star” of the party. In the 1980s, he was the editor of the SFI journal, Students’ Struggle, which reached new heights during his tenure. Yechury even enlisted the support of Safdar Hashmi, the renowned playwright and director, in this venture.

It was during this time that the then government’s “Challenge of Education” document appeared, marking the beginnings of a shift in the country’s education policy towards what was then known as the “New Education Policy”, which eventually became the National Policy on Education 1986. Yechury was a leading figure in developing a critique of that policy and organising resistance to it. 

In 1985, 10 years after Yechury joined the CPI(M), he was elected to the Central Committee of the party. The following years were tumultuous ones for any communist: the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the introduction of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, the Tiananmen Square incident, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the eventual collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

The Left, globally and internally, was under severe attack. In the ideological challenges and debates that sprung up from these events, Yechury stayed firm: mistakes may have been made but socialism was the future. He always analysed these developments within a Marxist framework and actively participated in shaping the CPI(M)’s positions on these questions.

In Parliament, Yechury’s speeches often referred to “India, that is Bharat”, to exemplify the country’s syncretic tradition. This emphasis only grew after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance assumed power in 2014 and attacks on minorities became commonplace. He defended his alma mater (JNU) in Parliament when it was unfairly targeted by the regime. He was equally emphatic about the attack on institutions, the subversion of the Constitution, the safeguarding of the rights of Dalits and minorities, and the need to safeguard the autonomy of higher educational institutions. At the same time, he also realised that while both the Congress and the BJP were bourgeois parties, the threat from the latter was greater. There was a growing feeling that the changed conditions perhaps necessitated the forging of tactical alliances without compromising on the fundamentals of ideology.

No disconnect between personality and politics

Despite its greatly reduced influence in Parliament post-2014, the Left parties led by the CPI(M) still commanded considerable moral heft. Forging a secular third front was not enough. There was also a need for an alternative to the economic policies that had widened inequalities unmeasurably since the onset of neoliberal reforms. How this could be wrought despite the class contradictions of political parties was a tightrope walk that Yechury learned to perform with ease.

Also Read | ‘BJP’s defeat imperative to protect democracy’: Sitaram Yechury

It was no secret that several policies and measures undertaken by the first United Progressive Alliance government and the emergence of a Common Minimum Programme had the strong imprint of the Left. This imprint continued in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election in the forging of the INDIA bloc and the concerns its parties raised.

Yechury’s ability to get disparate political parties to communicate with each other and rally them together to create for an anti-BJP front has been written about in various tributes. There was no disconnect between his personality and his politics. His personality was immeasurably shaped by his politics.

His commitment to socialism and to the masses remained unwavering. And that is what he should ideally be remembered for.

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury addresses a foundation stone laying ceremony of the building of Jyoti Basu Centre For Social Studies and Research, at Kolkata, January 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

On this page, readers will find a remarkable collection of interviews with Sitaram Yechury (1952-2024), conducted by Frontline over the span of several decades. These conversations serve as a window into the mind of one of India’s most influential political thinkers and offer a unique perspective on the country’s evolution, especially in the past few decades.

Yechury’s journey from a student leader at Jawaharlal Nehru University to the helm of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) coincided with a crucial period in India’s politics. Throughout these interviews, he tackles the pressing issues that have influenced the nation during these years and beyond: from economic reforms and social justice to foreign policy and the rise of communal forces.

What sets these exchanges apart is the communist veteran’s clarity and conviction. He breaks down complex political theories and economic policies into digestible insights, making them accessible to both seasoned observers and newcomers to Indian politics. His ability to connect historical context with current events offers readers with a deeper understanding of the forces at play in India’s democracy.

Evidently, these interviews cover a vast range of topics: the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990s, the nuclear deal with the United States, the emergence of coalition politics, the growing influence of corporate power, and the challenges to secularism. Yechury’s analysis of these issues goes beyond party lines, offering a nuanced critique that often challenges conventional wisdom.

His warnings about the dangers of unchecked capitalism and the potential for social unrest stemming from inequality have gained new relevance in recent years. More than just a record of one man’s thoughts, this collection serves as a masterclass in Indian politics and political economy. Yechury’s explanations of Marxist theory and its application to Indian conditions provide valuable insights for students, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding the country’s unique political landscape.

More interestingly, throughout these interviews, Yechury emerges not just as a spokesperson for his party, but as a passionate advocate for a more equitable and just India.