Sitaram Yechuri: A Requiem, Not an Obit
Read a heartfelt and reflective piece on the late Sitaram Yechuri, former general secretary of the CPI(M), by his political rival and friend. This narrative revisits shared memories from the days of student agitation at JNU, ideological battles, and personal encounters, offering an intimate glimpse into the complex relationship between two influential leftist leaders.
“If you stand outside the CPIM Headquarters in Delhi on any morning, you shall find two friends getting down from the same office car. One of them, wearing specs, which was Prakash Karat would turn right from the gate of the building, AK Gopalam Bhavan in Mandir Marg, New Delhi, and the other – without specs – Sitaram Yechuri would turn right for their respective office rooms.
These were roughly the content of the beginning of an article by my once-trainee reporter Vijay Simha, who wrote this rather succinct article in 2005 for my magazine.
I remember on the demise of my old friend and bitter political rival, Sitaram Yechuri, the late general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) this was a rather prophetic article by Vijay. And now that I think of that article, I do remember so many anecdotes about Sita and me.
This is not an obit. For obits are meant to bury our responsibilities towards the dear departed ones. This is a requiem!
It was the height of the students’ agitation in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi. 1981. It went on for 46 days before the late Indira Gandhi, then India’s Prime Minister, decided to keep the campus under a shutdown order. Till then, we had believed universities were sacrosanct, where the cops could not enter. But that changed in 1981.
The armed police entered in force. The hostels – the salons of intellectual activities in India then – were shut down. The cooks were granted paid leaves. And all the famous book shops at Ganga Complex, and tea stalls that supported that intellectual salons with teas and snacks all night long, were ordered to be shut, so that recalcitrant students who might refuse to leave the campus, would be per hunger-forced to leave.
Some students fled to the homes of their local guardians. A few hundred student agitators were arrested and some of them were put in Tihar Jail, among India’s highest security jails.
Among them were eight of my colleagues of the People’s Students’ Union, a fully Naxalite students’ union (Liberation Group run by Vinod Mishra); the rest of the hundred or so were all from the CPI-M affiliated Students’ Federation of India (SFI).
And as siblings always do, the SFI and the PSU, born from the same parenthood of the one-time Communist Party of India, PSU – of which I was the general secretary, and the SFI, of which Sitaram Yechuri was the general secretary, were bitter rivals.
***
I was very good, as a far-left organiser and a motivator, especially on theoretical and ideological grounds. Sita was a very good agitator and a master at diatribe.
So there was this all-students’ organisation meet held in JNU, just before the shutdown ordered by Indira Gandhi.
My party bosses said, that I would party have to speak at the gathering. I did not want to, as I knew that I was much more at ease with my pen that my mouth. But my party high command insisted that I speak.
I failed miserably as a speaker. Not in that gathering of protesting students, I heard Sita speak after me. And what a speech it was. I still remember, Sitaram Yechuri!
***
There came a time when the courts ordered the release of those arrested and jailed students on bail.
But since the CPIM was a cosmetic “proletarian party” of middleclass and comfortable coffee-table Marxists, they did not have the true labour outreach the we had.
I heard then, when the court hearing was going on, a few hundred members of my party comrades lined up to file bonds to get the arrested students released.
I told Sita, “Why don’t you allow me to have my comrades take bail assurances for the arrested SFI students arrested?”
Sita said something to the extent that CPIM does not accept help from other Marxists! I slapped him. Inside the court compound, but one of my party colleagues stopped me.
***
I last met Sita as a part of some gathering organised by the BBC for announcing some of its own new programme.
It was being held at a plush Five Star hotel in New Delhi’s Cannaught Place, New Delhi. Booze and snacks were flowing. Sita did not have any of that. He attended the launch, then went down to the foyer of the hotel. His car resting in the parking basement of the hotel was summoned and arrived in due time a few minutes later.
As I said goodbye to him, he said, “Goodbye to you Sujit, see you soon.”
***
That was the difference between the two men who each morning alighted from a shared vehicle, one going to the Right to his office, Prakash Karat, the oafish ideologically constipated theorist, and my friend Sita.
I shall not get into any ideological debate between the right and the left… rather, the right and the wrong within the broken spine of the leftist movement.
But this is the time I need to express my sorrow to a co-fighter in those days of the JNU struggle, when you surpassed me in gathering the students of JNU in a pitched ideological battle between the right, the left and the right and wrong of the left.
Come home Sita, and we can have… may be the best of teas of this bourgeoise world?
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