Sitaram Yechury and non-sectarian leftwing politics | Pritam Singh

One image and an idea that prominently comes to mind when considering paying tribute to Sitaram Yechury are non-sectarian ways of conducting politics. Politics in India, especially in the last few years, has become so polarised that the idea of non-sectarian politics appears odd; precisely because of that, it is alluring as an imagination. His premature death when Indian politics and society needed more than ever to respect divergent views, traditions, and cultures is not only a loss to leftwing politics in India but a massive loss to Indian society. He was the most well-known current leftwing leader and one of the finest from the stream of parliamentary communist politics in India. As I pay homage to him, this tribute blends personal recollections with political contemplations.

Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat, two general secretaries of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the last two decades, were my contemporaries at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I had warm personal relations with both. When I joined JNU in 1972, I contested as an independent against the slate of five by the CPM-affiliated Student Federation of India for election as councillors from the School of Social Sciences. The five who got elected included me and four of the SFI. Despite being in the majority, the four SFI winners chose me as the convenor of the Student Council from the School of Social Sciences, knowing very well that I had a Maoist political background, which had an anti-CPM orientation. In some way, this first political engagement at JNU contributed to building friendly personal relations despite political differences.

Yechury did his MA from JNU’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, the finest economics department in the country founded by the late Prof Krishna Bharadwaj, my MPhil supervisor. Prof Bharadwaj once remarked on the quality of Yechury’s written coursework essays, saying they were so outstanding that even awarding the highest grade was not enough. He started working on a PhD under Prof Bharadwaj’s supervision but could not complete it as he had to go underground and was eventually arrested for a brief period for his opposition to the 1975 Emergency.

Yechury and I were politically in the two opposing tendencies of the left politics in JNU, especially after I became more active later in a Marxist group known as a Trotskyist group. This group attracted the most talented and well-read leftwing students to its fold and was critical of the Stalinist orientation of India’s communist parties (especially CPM). The faculty and students widely respected the group for the intellectual rigour of its political interventions. However, it did not have broad electoral support among the students partly because not being affiliated with any organised political party of the country, it did not have the political infrastructure to support it, and partly because criticism of Stalin and Stalinism was almost absent in the communist traditions in India in comparison with countries of advanced capitalism (such as the UK) where the damage Stalin’s terror in USSR had done to the cause of socialism was widely recognised. 

Sitaram Yechury, as an SFI activist, was part of the Stalinist heritage of the Indian communists. Despite these political and ideological differences, others in our group and I had friendly relations at a personal level with some of those in the SFI. Sitaram Yechury especially stood out as someone amiable and non-sectarian. These friendly relations were also based on the mutual recognition that there was no doubt about the sincerity and dedication to the vision of Karl Marx. In retrospect, those debates on the now disintegrated USSR that divided us then have truly little relevance now except that the strategies of industrialisation proposed by Trotsky and pursued brutally by Stalin can be viewed as ecologically destructive in the light of knowledge we have acquired now on economy-nature relationships.
 
When Sitaram Yechury contested for the president of the JNU Students Union in 1977, I publicly supported Rajan James, one of his opponents. Rajan James, a dedicated and committed socialist, had left the CPI-affiliated All India Students Federation (AISF). Though the CPI has been comparatively less Stalinist, his leaving AISF seemed to be a positive move away from Stalinism that deserved support. Yechury won the election, but he told Rajan James and me he respected our democratic right to oppose him.

He and Karat belonged to the second generation of CPM leaders after the first generation of the nine who founded the CPM in 1964. These nine included EMS Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu, P Sundarayya, A K Gopalan and Harkishan Singh Surjeet. Of these nine, I had met only Surjeet in 1983 as part of his meeting with the Socialist Teachers Forum at Chandigarh’s Panjab University, where I was then teaching at the economics faculty. There were uncomfortable moments at this meeting when I criticised the dominant left’s approach towards Punjab’s politico-economic problems. All the nine leaders referred to in the inner circles of CPM as ’naun ratan’ (nine jewels) were mass leaders in varying degrees, having arisen from peasant or working-class struggles. 

Karat and Yechury came primarily through the student movement. This generational change was not merely a change in the age profile of the leaders but reflected the new era of Indian society and politics, where articulation through the mass media was thought to be more powerful and effective than leading mass struggles. Surjeet, the last of the nine veterans, seemed to attach importance to this paradigm shift in Indian politics and groomed Yechury to be his successor. There was, however, an inherent weakness in this leadership change from mass struggles to mere narratives. Apart from many other politico-economic and socio-cultural changes brought in India by the global rise of neoliberalism, the decline in leadership positions of mass leaders in left politics contributed to the decline of the left in India in the last few years.

Harkishan Singh Surjeet had excelled in his political career, first in Punjab and later at a national level, in reaching out to non-communists to form alliances. The mentoring of Yechury by Surjeet in this alliance-building style of politics had positive outcomes at the national level because Surjeet had played a hugely admirable role in the mobilisation of anti-Hindutva forces, and later, Sitaram Yechury carried on that legacy of Surjeet even in more difficult circumstances than those faced by Surjeet.

However, Surjeet’s mentoring of Yechury on Punjab had negative consequences in Yechury adopting an approach towards Punjab and the Sikhs, which harmed the Left in Punjab. Surjeet had committed a grave error in his long political life by ignoring human rights violations in Punjab during the tenure of Punjab police chief KPS Gill due to his proximity to Gill and wrong judgement of Gill. Yechury, too, ignored this aspect of Gill’s tenure while endorsing him. This wrong approach towards Punjab in extending support to the state’s repressive measures has emasculated the once-powerful communist movement in Punjab. However, to his credit, later, Yechury transcended Surjeet in acknowledging that injustice had been done to Punjab and the Sikhs.

Yechury’s ability to maintain friendly relations even with those he disagreed with was a testament to his character. This quality became one of the enduring aspects of his later life when he rose to become one of the top political leaders in India. There seemed to be a dialectical interplay between the personal and the political. The personal trait of friendliness helped shape his political practice and vision of forming alliances, and recognising the necessity of forming alliances became conducive to strengthening the personal trait of friendliness. This personal trait became integrated into his vision of defending democracy, minority rights and federal devolution of political and economic powers. Yechury played a sterling role in building alliances to defend democracy and democratic institutions in India. As an acknowledged friend and advisor to Rahul Gandhi, Yechury’s role has been historic in turning Rahul Gandhi away from the old and discredited centralist politics of the Congress party towards federal devolution and decentralisation. This may have long-term consequences, if pursued earnestly, in giving a positive direction to the democratic governance of India. This vision carries the potential to contribute to creating a just polity for marginalised sections of society.
 
How the next and third generation of CPM leaders and the leaders of other left formations in India learn from past errors and successes would be critical for the Left’s role in building a democratic and egalitarian India. Four issues on which the Indian left has not sufficiently theorised and developed adequate praxis are caste, religion, human rights, and ecology. Yechury seemed to be aware of the importance of all these four issues, though less clearly on human rights. On caste, he seemed to recognise that in India, it is not only the economic category of class but the social category of caste that is key to socio-economic transformation. On religion, he was far ahead of most left-wing leaders and even academics in India who equate religion with what has come to be known as ’communalism’ in Indian political discourse. He showed awareness of the more profound existential need for religion in human life.

One issue that remains glaringly unaddressed by the left in India is catastrophic global climate change and its impact on developing countries such as India, especially its poor and Dalit population. Yechury showed remarkable knowledge of at least one aspect, namely nuclear energy. He authored brilliant articles criticising not only nuclear bombs but nuclear energy itself.

Central to the reinvention of the left’s strength, which combines these neglected fields, is the framing of a green left vision, an eco-socialist vision, in India. This historic task faces India’s third generation of left leaders, activists, and thinkers. Left politics in most countries is realising that all economic, political, ecological, social, and cultural struggles are not for overthrowing capitalism and immediate socialist reshaping of economy and society. There is the transition process, sometimes quick but most often slow and long drawn out. Understanding the necessity of this transition and evolving politics accordingly, even when the immediate situation seems very threatening, such as a climate emergency and the rise of fascist politics, would be a true tribute to all previous left activists, such as Yechury, who gave their lives to the vision of socialism and democracy. 

Sitaram Yechury’s decision to donate his body for medical research and teaching profoundly demonstrated his convictions. It underscored his belief in the importance of devoting one’s life to the advancement of humanity.

(Author: Pritam Singh is Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford)

[Another version of this article appeared in The Wire]