The unrepentant Marxist: This hero of the Left was one of the last great communists of his country

Sitaram Yechury was a rare leader: a pragmatic and an intellectual who linked revolutionary vision to parliamentary politics

India’s dominant communist party lost its leading light, Sitaram Yechury, 72, when after a brief respiratory illness he passed away in New Delhi on September 12. 

The leader of opposition, Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress party, described Yechury as “a protector of the idea of India with a deep understanding of our country.” As general secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Yechury was the rare pragmatic Indian communist. 

Though Yechury never held a government post, his political biography was action-packed. He took on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when she imposed the authoritarian ‘Emergency’ on the nation; he vetoed the proposal for popular West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu becoming prime minister (Basu later called it an “historic blunder”); and he and his party withdrew support from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was concluding a nuclear deal with the Left’s bête noire, the United States of America. 

Formative Years

Yechury was born in Southern India’s Madras (now Chennai) in August 1952 into a Telugu-speaking family. His father, Sarveshwar Somayajula Yechury, was an engineer who moved around as part of the state transport corporation in the southern state Andhra Pradesh; his mother Kalpakam had a government job. 

Yechury’s primary education was in Hyderabad, state of Andhra Pradesh, but changed schools often whenever his father had to move. He was an all-India school topper in 1970. He later changed his name from Sitarama Rao, to drop the surname that indicated he was a Brahmin, at the top of India’s caste hierarchy.

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The Telangana movement, an armed revolt of peasants under the leadership of the Communist Party of India, was the reason his family left Hyderabad in 1968, after his first year of college.

In Delhi, Yechury attended the President’s Estate School and later, defying his family, studied economics at the prestigious St. Stephen’s College. He studied at the Delhi School of Economics before joining Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), once a hotbed of left-wing student politics.

There, Yechury took charge of the CPI-M’s students’ wing, the Students Federation of India, and then took on the larger-than-life Indira Gandhi. Gandhi had imposed an ‘Emergency’ from June 1975 to March 1977, in which democracy and civil liberties were suspended. Yechury opposed it and was arrested. 

After Gandhi lost the 1977 parliamentary elections, she remained the chancellor of JNU. Yechury led a march to her residence and read out a list of grievances against her, demanding her resignation as chancellor – even as Gandhi stood beside him. An iconic picture was shared on social media after his death.

From Archives:
Sitaram Yechury, then President of JNUSU reading out the resolution demanding resignation of Indira Gandhi as Chancellor of JNU.

Lal Salam Comrade ✊????. Travel well. pic.twitter.com/9hAKQfAMpU

— Arvind Gunasekar (@arvindgunasekar) September 12, 2024

Yechury joined the CPI-M in 1975. He was elected to the central committee in 1985, to the central secretariat in 1989, and to the Polit Bureau in 1992. He reached the top echelon when elected as general secretary in 2015. He played a crucial role in formulating the CPI-M’s political positions from time to time. Delhi was his base throughout his political career. 

The Pragmatic Intellectual

Being both pragmatic and intellectual is rare in Indian communism. Intellectual communists are expected to write long articles and books, and deliver oratories to the party cadre. Pragmatic leaders are meant to have their ears to the ground. Yechury was both. 

However, an ‘historic blunder’ of the Indian Left is attributed to Yechury and his comrades. More than three-fourths of the CPI-M’s central committee voted against an invitation, from the United Front coalition of left and left-of-center parties, to Jyoti Basu in 1996 to become India’s first Marxist prime minister. Basu and the then general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet were in favor of the CPI-M taking the top job. 

Yechury learned his lesson and sought to avoid future blunders. He was the bridge in coalition politics as a bulwark against the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He held sway in the political nerve center of New Delhi, which was his political base throughout his career, even as his party’s influence diminished. 

Yechury was a living example of the communists’ oft-stated belief that the Left’s relevance was not in its number but in its ideological strength. He pushed ideological boundaries and reached out to rival parties to oppose the BJP. 

For instance, he was a friend to politicians from the Hindi heartland, who represented the socialist peasant movement, Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad. He did so without deviating from his ultra-secular, liberal democratic, and firm Marxist-Leninist views.

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi remembered his fierce determination to protect India’s diversity and his powerful championing of secularism. “We had worked closely together during 2004-08 and the friendship that had been established then continued till his very end,” she said in a statement. 

US Nuclear Deal with Left’s Deal-breaker

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Indian communists are thought of as dour. But Yechury’s constant smiles complemented his interpersonal skills and voice of sanity. This helped bring political rivals, from the Congress party to those regional parties born out of anti-Congressism, onto a common platform. He was articulate and avoided loudness or gesticulation to captivate his audience. His public meetings attracted the party cadre in huge numbers. 

Yechury was at the forefront of coalition-building from the mid-1990s. Under his leadership, the CPI-M experimented with alliances with the then hated Congress party in some regions. Yechury collaborated with Congress leader P Chidambaram in drafting a common minimum program for the running of the United Front coalition government in 1996 and later played a pivotal role in 2004 in steering the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government from 2004 to 2009. The CPI-M gave the UPA “outside support.”

That support was taken away when the Left opposed the UPA government’s Indo-US civilian nuclear deal in July 2008. Nonetheless, then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and US counterpart Condoleezza Rice signed the agreement in October 2008. Yechury’s contemporary and CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat was critical of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s announcement of the deal abroad as he could have informed the Left parties in India.

Years later, in 2015, Yechury said that the Left parties should have not withdrawn support. “Instead, they should have withdrawn support on issues like price rise as the people could not be mobilized on the nuclear deal issue in the 2009 general elections,” he said in an interview.

He, however, asserted that the party’s decision to oppose the deal was correct. “It was also the timing [of withdrawing support] for which we also self-criticized. But we have no regrets,” Yechury said.

Building INDIA

Yechury had a good relationship with Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul. Congress party leader Jairam Ramesh remarked that Yechury was a ‘two-in-one’ general secretary – of the CPI-M and of the Congress as well – and that sometimes his influence in Congress was more than in the CPI-M. 

Their association with the mother-son duo last year facilitated a pre-poll alliance of two dozen parties to oppose the decade-old government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was called the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). 

“He played a pivotal role in UPA-1 and more recently contributed enormously to the emergence of the INDIA group in the run to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” Sonia Gandhi said in her statement. 

During the 2024 election he traveled across the country to campaign, focusing on the Left’s two strongholds: Kerala, where it was in power, and West Bengal, where it was in power for 34 years. He spoke seven languages and was quick to correct interpreters during his public speeches if he sensed an error. 

He was pivotal in setting up a non-BJP government in Karnataka, whose state capital is Bangalore, also known as India’s IT hub, in 2018. He was a political adviser across political divides. 

As a prolific writer, author and editor, during the past three decades he took pains to differentiate Hinduism, India’s majority religion, from Hindutva, a political ideology based on religion.

He was often the first to speak against the ruling BJP government’s policies. He wrote to India’s chief election commissioner in May regarding repeated violations of the model code of conduct by Modi and other BJP leaders. He swiftly shared his views on social media and was active just a couple of weeks before he was hospitalized. 

Adieu to Comrade, Ideologue, Friend

Yechury traveled to various socialist (at the time) countries by accompanying the late EMS Namboodiripad, who headed India’s first communist state government in Kerala in 1957. Naturally then, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov expressed grief over Yechury’s death.  “I am so much saddened and distressed by the untimely demise of Com. Sitaram Yechury, CPI (M) General Secretary. He was an old personal friend and a committed supporter of Russian-Indian friendship,” Alipov tweeted.

Yechury was a member of the Upper House of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), representing West Bengal, from 2005 to 2017. He was vociferous against fascist tendency to tar protesting students as anti-nationals; he dared to speak against the tide.

Prime Minister Modi remembered that Yechury made a mark as an effective Parliamentarian, a leading light of the Left, and known for his ability to connect across the spectrum. 

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said Yechury’s death was “a great loss for liberal forces,” and that he was “the collective conscience keeper of progressives.” Jairam Ramesh, whose association with Yechury spanned over three decades, termed him an unrepentant Marxist with a pragmatic streak and a towering political personality. 

The CPI-M party cadre was stunned by the void his death has created.

“Given his amiable temperament, he had a wide circle of friends across the political spectrum and in all walks of life,” the CPI-M’s polit bureau said in a statement. “He was respected by all for his political integrity and commitment. The untimely demise of Sitaram Yechury at this crucial juncture in our national politics is a big blow to the CPI-M and a grievous loss for the Left, democratic and secular forces.”  

Yogendra Yadav, a psephologist-turned-politician summed him up best, in a post on X. “With the passing away of Comrade Sitaram Yechury,” he tweeted, “India has lost a bridge that connected revolutionary vision to parliamentary politics, political theory to political practice, and the agenda of national politics to the last person. An architect of the theory and practice of the ‘popular front’ he was a vital link that helped bring together all the democratic and secular forces in a collective struggle against the onslaught on our constitutional republic. An iconic student leader, an accomplished parliamentarian, a great orator, and a true friend to many across the political divide, Comrade Yechury’s political acumen and humane qualities will be missed not just by the Left but by all those who stand for the idea of India.”