From JNU days to Left stalwart, a friend-journalist recollects Yechury's rise, warmth

This piece was written hours before Sitaram Yechurry's demise, where the writer, a senior journalist, goes down memory lane, recollecting their decades-old friendship. Also, why does he have much more work left in the current political scenario.

Comrade Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the CPI(M), still boyish and baby-faced at 72, much as he was when we first met as students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is fighting for breath at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, but I have enough hope that his presence and influence will continue to help shape the agenda of the Left, and strengthen the forces of humanism in the country.

It would be a national good if that agenda is aligned with the variegated structure and multicultural nature of the country while factoring in class and caste. This indeed is the challenge before it.

Left’s misreading of the nation’s politics

For much of the time since Independence, the Left as a whole has misread the nation’s politics. It was unable to fathom the potential threat of the majoritarian Right. Even Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination failed to alert it. The rise of Narendra Modi and the events of the past 10 years in the country’s social and economic life have at last brought home to many where the sources of incipient fascism lie.

Some of Sita’s predecessors, although they had come through people’s struggles, were straitjacketed in their ideological and political upbringing and lacked the vision to recognise the nature of the challenge in India. They were mired exclusively in their version of class analysis guided by their understanding of what classes moved the levers of the Indian state — or worse, they relied on rote learning of texts pertaining to revolutionary situations in other societies from which they could recite chapter and verse.

Why Yechury is better placed than predecessors

Thankfully, some others in the CPI(M), notably HS Surjeet, Jyoti Basu, and even the redoubtable and scintillatingly intellectual EMS Namboodiripad in his declining years (when I had the chance privilege of having informal conversations with him) showed they had a finer political appreciation of the society they served than they could publicly expound. This was on account of the positions they held. They were stalwart figures and the historical moment had not arrived for them to take their party in the direction they personally saw fit. BT Ranadive’s name may also be added to the list although to all appearances he was the crusty Stalinist!

Sita is better placed in that respect. He has the intellectual poise, the social sensitivity, and political temperament to help shape and give direction to the giant efforts needed in the political realm, in step with other regenerative forces, to overcome the forces of the far Right and the majoritarian Right, which appear to be fused in one at the present juncture.

In the half century that has passed since we met, Com. Yechury has held his ground in a party like his when it held the commanding hand in two states. He also seemed aware, going beyond the tunnel vision of state-level politics, that the battle of ideas was certainly on in respect of national politics — and a wider view of India than was fashionable in his own party hitherto was the rising need of the present. With the rise of the far Right, a new moment was beckoning.

A personal battle

Sita has also met India’s very toxic current politics with tactical finesse and some calibration of the strategic vision of his party since the 1964 split in the communist movement in the country. Alas, the communist leader has not dealt with the menace of tobacco smoking with the same finesse and vigour.

One of his lungs is ceasing to cooperate of late, I hear. I am hoping it will fight back slowly. The other lung has developed a stubborn infection. In medical terms, the situation is being described as serious but stable. In this context, we can gain strength from the example of Prof. Moonis Raza, a guru and later vice-chancellor of Delhi University.

Moonis Saheb was a leading figure of JNU life when we were students. He had lost one lung to the tobacco menace and it had to be excised. But he carried on bravely with the other. When he occasionally pleaded with his research students for a cigarette without letting anyone know, he would get an affectionate scolding. I am sure Com Yechury will receive similar treatment.

Accessible, friendly, with appeal among youth

I recently called an old friend of Sita’s and mine who has adhered to Sita’s broad party politics, and requested an informal appraisal of this public figure. He didn’t take long to respond. In his view, Com Yechury is a most accessible political leader, a friendly figure who enjoys considerable appeal among the youth, unlike any communist leader he has known.

A rough comparison was also made to Surjeet’s approach to politics. Com. Surjeet, then general secretary of the CPI (M), had made an exceptional contribution in bringing together unlikely poles in the uncertainty of politics that had prevailed in the aftermath of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It was in that phase that the name of Jyoti Basu, the well-respected communist leader, had been proposed for prime minister but was rejected by his own party to the shock of many.

This common friend of ours believes Sita has played a greater part in the forging of the INDIA bloc than is generally understood. These are traits of a consensus maker among politicians and parties that come from different experiences — national and regional — but can together serve a common cause in the foreseeable future. Com Yechury has much to do when he steps out of hospital.

Here is another piece you may read: The Leftist who was always on the right