Yechury, the leading light of Left, no more

Veteran Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury passed away on Thursday at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, following a prolonged respiratory illness.

The 72-year-old CPM general secretary, who bid an early farewell, is survived by wife and senior journalist Seema Chisti, son Daanish and daughter Akhila, who teaches history at the University of Edinburgh. Sitaram’s second son Ashish died of Covid in 2021.

Tributes poured in from all quarters for the senior Communist leader, who resisted the allurement of a jet-set academic career to serve the nation.

After cutting his teeth on student politics at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Yechury was a member of the CPM Politburo for 34 years, instrumental in changing the vision of his party across several periods of political transition. In 2015, he rose to the position of party general secretary, the most powerful position in the party, succeeding Prakash Karat.

Yechury’s most iconic image — where he is seen reading out demands to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as JNU Students’ Union chief — was today shared on X by Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh, who bid farewell to the late leader with the words “Goodbye tovarish (Russian for comrade)”.

“Immediately following the announcement of the results of the March 1977 Lok Sabha elections, a delegation led by the JNU Students Union president Sitaram Yechury called on Indira Gandhi, demanding her resignation as JNU Chancellor. She did so a few days later,” Jairam said on X describing Yechury as a “very fine human being, a multilingual bibliophile, an unrepentant Marxist with a pragmatic streak, a pillar of the CPM, and a superb parliamentarian with a wonderful wit and sense of humour.”

As fate would have it, two of the most touching tributes to Yechury came from the Gandhis today. Former Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi remembered Sitaram’s contributions to the success of the Congress-led UPA coalition of which the Left was a part from 2004 to 2008. “We worked closely together during 2004-08 to begin with and the friendship that had been established then continued till his very end,” Sonia said, hailing Yechury’s “pivotal role in UPA-I and, more recently, during the emergence of the INDIA group in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.”

Rahul Gandhi, known for his proximity to Yechury, said he would miss the long discussions the two would have. Unlike predecessor Karat, from whom he took over as the CPM general secretary, Yechury was at ease working in coalitions.

This way he was akin to his mentor, the late Harkishan Singh Surjeet. Just as Surjeet was a key player in the coalition era during the National Front government of VP Singh in 1989 and the United Front government of 1996-97, both supported from outside by the CPM, Yechury helped keep the UPA together from 2004 to 2008 until the Left Front exited the alliance over the Indo-US nuclear deal. In Parliament, Yechury had two stints in the Rajya Sabha.

Despite the Congress offering help, the CPM did not renominate Yechury for a third term in 2020. The party cited the RS cap of two terms to justify its call although it was widely known that the Karat-led Kerala faction of the CPM did not want to nominate him. In the CPM stalwart’s departure, politicians cut across party lines to hail a life well spent. The CPM Politburo announced that Yechury’s body would be kept at the party headquarters on September 14 from 11 am to 3 pm for public homage.