Sitaram Yechury
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A profile
The Times of India, April 20, 2015
Akshaya Mukul
1969 Telangana agitation brought Sitaram to Delhi
Yechury belongs to coastal Andhra Pradesh but has been a votary of united Andhra and was anointed general secretary in his home state.
Son of an engineer father and government officer mother, Yechury , known for his networking skills and friends across parties, was the first president of Students Federation of India who was not from Bengal or Kerala. The Telangana agitation of 1969 brought him to Delhi where he completed his school education and stayed on. Academically bright his record in economics in JNU was unbroken for many years Yechury went to St Stephens College in Delhi University . But it was in JNU that Yechury cut his teeth in politics, first in SFI and then CPM. During Emergency , he went underground and was arrested but after it was lifted, he became JNU students' Union president thrice between 1977 and 1978.
His rise in CPM was swift.He came to the central committee in 1985 and to the politburo in 1992. One of the first tasks entrusted to him in CC was to look after the party's international relations. A protégé of Sundarraya and Surjeet, Yechury was also close to party ideologue Makineni Basavapunnaiah. Groomed as the party's public face, Yechury played a key role during the United Front government and UPA-1 regime.
One quality that has stood Yechury in good stead and contributed to his affable persona is his ability to retain friendships even with excomrades who are generally frowned upon by the party and shunned socially . His many JNU friends who were in SFI with him and subsequently moved away ideologically are still good friends with him. Another quality is his felicity with languages, be it Bangla, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and even a smattering of Malayalam.
Well-versed with Hindu mythology and world history , Yechury has often used this knowledge to his advantage in the Parliament, especially in putting BJP on the mat. Into his second term in Rajya Sabha, Yechury has become the party's main asset in Parliament whose voice is taken seriously . Only recently , he was the prime mover of seeking a division on amendments to the presidential address that was won by the united opposition.
Eclectic in his reading habits, Yechury can enthrall with his range -be it a book like `Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea' or `Musicophilia' or plain murder mystery . His daughter Akhila Yechury is a historian and teaches in Edinburgh University . Married to journalist Seema Chisti, he also has two sons.
1
Sep 13, 2024: The Times of India
Yechury, CPM general secretary when he passed away, rose through the ranks, starting as a student activist in JNU. A 1977 photo of him reading a students’ resolution to Indira Gandhi, demanding she quit as JNU chancellor, has gained iconic status, partly since Mrs Gandhi did resign. Decades later, Yechury was to closely interact with Sonia Gandhi, as one of the pivotal CPM politicians during UPA-1. That the communist party decided to help Congress form a coalition govt after the 2004 general elections, was thanks in no small measure to Yechury’s pragmatism. His thesis that alliance with Congress, for years called the principal class enemy by CPM hardliners, was necessary to take on BJP, has proved durable. CPM is part of the INDIA bloc.
Yechury, born in Chennai to a Telugu Brahmin family, was, in his words, the family’s “first communist”. He was also probably the most articulate of all CPM leaders, a quality that made him the best-known communist in Delhi’s political and media circles.
Sitaram Yechury (72), whose communist beliefs sat comfortably with affability and political practicality, breathed his last on Thursday at AIIMS. The hospital said Yechury was admitted with pneumonia. His family donated his body to the hospital for research and training. TNN
2
Saugata Roy, Sep 13, 2024: The Times of India
Sitaram Yechury was party politically a committed communist but in political praxis — to use a term much favoured by Marxist pundits — he favoured pragmatism over dogma. And like many pragmatic politicians of his generation, he was courteous and amiable, qualities that didn’t depend on which side of the aisle his interlocutor belonged to.
He was among the few CPM leaders who didn’t ideologically over-analyse whether the party should ally with Congress, earlier identified as communists’ chief adversary, to take on BJP when the latter became a governing party under Vajpayee’s leadership.
During the 2024 campaign, he insisted Modi-led BJP should be taken on in state-by-state contests, via alliances. An analysis partly borne out by results. Interestingly, CPM’s ideological purists still don’t formally acknowledge the party’s alliance with Congress, never mind that CPM is a part of INDIA bloc. That Yechury, as a student politician, had forced Indira Gandhi to step down as JNU chancellor made his later pragmatism all the more noticeable. That he stayed away from Naxalites in 1970s, because that offshoot of Marxist politics declared loyalty to China’s communists, was another indication of his practical political sense. As he said in 2014, when Modi took office for the first time: “Conditions have changed, so our analysis and alignment accordingly will change”.
If some assessments of his pragmatism compare him to the other practical communist, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, an astute alliance builder, it should be noted that the difference in the success rate of the two is explained largely by CPM having been in a politically more commanding position during Surjeet’s heydays.
Yechury’s easygoing nature wasn't a later day political makeover. Even as a student activist he wasn't known for being overbearing or loudly declaratory. Engaging in debates was his style, and witty one-liners were his rhetorical signature. Many politicians, including communists, are given to ranting. Yechury never was. The other standout feature was unlike many fellow Marxists, he avoided jargon. Again, unlike doctrinaire Marxists, he was always interested in not just class but also social groups and religion. He understood the latter were valuable in understanding Indian society. Telugu was his mother tongue. In the party forum and in meetings, he preferred English because he felt that political formulation came more easily to him in that language. But he gave public speeches in Hindi. During his two-term stint in the Rajya Sabha from Bengal, he tried to speak in Bengali during his conversations with Bengali journalists.
Born to a Telugu Brahmin family, Yechury had refused to wear the sacred thread and chant slokas. He said he was the first communist in his family. But he didn’t discount philosophical debates embedded in the ancient religious texts. An open-mindedness that later helped him debate the Hindu Right. Those who knew him well said one of Yechury’s defining qualities as a politician was that he was more interested in finding commonalities than divergences between parties and groups. These attributes served him well in Parliament, where his articulation stood out as the general quality of parliamentary interventions worsened. When he ended his Rajya Sabha term in 2017, Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav’s tribute stood out. But he wasn’t the only MP who felt the House would miss Yechury.
Of course, as the Left’s electoral footprint shrank, so did the national political importance of CPM leaders, including Yechury. The high point was between 2004 and 2008 — from the time UPA-1 was formed till when CPM withdrew support to Manmohan Singh’s govt over the Indo-US nuclear deal. It’s rare for Indian politicians, including communists, to introspect publicly. But Yechury proved an exception when, after UPA-2 took office, he admitted that his party hadn’t been able to explain its stand on the nuclear deal to voters, who gave a Congressled coalition a healthy victory. He was perhaps the only politburo member to do so.
Losing Bengal to TMC dealt a blow to CPM and its leaders they haven't recovered from. Yechury, along with other CPM leaders, rarely made national headlines.
But his international communist connections did make him very relevant when in 2009, UPA govt took his help to contact Nepal's Maoist leader Prachanda, who later became PM.
Yechury’s last public message came the day he was shifted from the ICU to a general bed at AIIMS, Delhi. The recorded message was his tribute to another communist stalwart, former chief minister of Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who passed away recently.
Yechury was dealing with a deeply personal tragedy when he fell ill. He lost his son Ashish to Covid in 2021. He was never quite the same after that, those close to him said. The father in him was bereft. But it speaks to his abilities as a politician that the pragmatic communist in him soldiered on.
A factfile
Aug 12, 1952 | Born in Chennai
1974 | Joins Students’ Federation of India (SFI) — CPM’s students’ wing — while studying at JNU
1975 | Joins CPM
1977-78 | Elected JNUSU president thrice; leads protests against Indira Gandhi in 1977, demanding she step down as JNU chancellor. She did resign consequently
1985 | Elected to CPM central committee
1992 | Elected to CPM politburo
2005-17 | Serves as RS member
2015 | Elected CPM general secretary, a post he held till his death
A bridge between India and Nepal
Baburam Bhattarai, Sep 12, 2024: The Indian Express
I am stunned by the news of the sudden demise of Comrade Sitaram Yechury. My contact and association with him goes back to the early 1980s. He was a former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students’ union but his keen interest in politics at home and in the neighbourhood drew us closer. I was pursuing my PhD in JNU and, along with my friends, would routinely listen to his views.
Comrade Yechury played an active role in creating an atmosphere favouring the democratic movement in Nepal in 1990, and in getting CPI(M)’s then general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet to play a positive role.
Meeting him after February 1996 — when we launched the ‘people’s war’ in Nepal — was not possible since we were underground, but we did maintain contact.
D P Tripathi, who was perhaps Yechury’s predecessor as JNU students’ union president, played a leading role in forming a solidarity group in India to extend support to the ‘people’s war’. The group also played a role in putting pressure on the Nepal government to go for a negotiated settlement. Comrade Yechury was positive towards this initiative.
We met again after a long gap once we joined the peace process in Nepal in 2003. I remember having a long discussion with Comrade Prakash Karat, then CP)(M) general secretary, and Yechury at AKG Bhawan, the party’s office in New Delhi.
Apart from playing a constructive role in Nepal’s peace process and democratic movement, Comrade Yechury contributed to promoting Nepal-India ties. In fact, he acted like a bridge, strengthening the relationship.
I have quit the communist Party as I realised that Left and democratic forces must work together for socialism — I found him closer to that approach.
