Sitaram Yechury (72)
When I came to Delhi in 1973, I often visited Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where we had some friends, particularly on Sunday afternoons. The attraction was the non-vegetarian food in the students’ canteen, and our friends would buy coupons for us.
We stayed in Sector 5, Ramakrishna Puram, and would walk all the way home from JNU. The student community included a large number of Malayalis. Prakash Karat was the University Union President. If I remember correctly, he was elected for a second term.
Karat was very popular. I heard a story that he came from a poor family and would send a portion of his scholarship money to his parents in Kerala. I once had the opportunity to hear him speak in English, and I respected anyone who could speak English fluently in those days.
Sitaram Yechury came to the forefront in JNU politics a little later. Like Karat, he was brilliant in his studies. He topped the CBSE examinations and joined St. Stephen’s College, often called the "Alexandria of the East." He completed his BA in Economics there and did his post-graduation at JNU. He could have easily entered the Civil Services or excelled in academics, but instead, he immersed himself in student politics, abandoning his Ph.D. work. He chose to oppose the Emergency and court arrest rather than complete his thesis.
In time, he became the first non-Bengali, non-Keralite to become the President of the Students' Federation of India. He was a Telugu man, born and brought up in Madras (now Chennai). His first marriage was not a success, though he had two children from that relationship. One of them is now an academic in a foreign university.
I first met him at a meeting of the Kolkata Group, founded by Prof. Amartya Sen and managed by his Ph.D. student, Dr. Shiv Kumar. The Group met once a year for three days at the Taj Bengal, with the bill being covered by UNESCO.
At that time, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, led by Dr. Manmohan Singh, was in power, and the Kolkata Group discussed the employment guarantee scheme. I remember Yechury proudly stating that if the Left parties asked the Prime Minister to stand, he would not sit down without their signal.
During UPA-I, the Left controlled much of the government, with Yechury serving as its spokesperson. He attended the Group meeting with his wife, Seema Chisti, and their young son, whom I interacted with briefly. When I later heard that he lost his son to Covid, I could feel his pain, remembering how his son used to feel bored in the hotel room.
One evening, I sat next to Yechury at dinner. Wine was being served, and naturally, the conversation turned to wine. I was startled by his extensive knowledge of wines. He explained why Indian wines were not as good as certain other varieties. Please don’t misunderstand me—I’m not exposing a Communist leader known for his simple living and high thinking. Yechury was a lifelong student, and no subject was taboo for him, including wine.
He used to write a column in the ‘Hindustan Times’, which I read regularly. Of course, his viewpoint was leftist, but his writing appealed even to the extreme right because he could present his views in an accessible, compelling way. Seema Chisti, his wife, was for a while my colleague at the ‘Indian Express’, though we worked in different sections.
It was often said about Karat and Yechury that they were leaders who never contested or won a popular election, except at JNU. The Rajya Sabha was meant for such politicians, and Yechury was elected to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal. He made a mark as a parliamentarian, with his speeches being heard with rapt attention by members across political lines.
If Yechury had his way, the Left might have accepted the Indo-US nuclear deal, on which Dr. Manmohan Singh invested considerable time and energy. Dr. Singh was ready to incorporate the Left's views while negotiating with the US. However, Karat took a dogmatic stand, which eventually led to the Left's downfall. The government continued without the Left's support, and in the subsequent election, UPA returned to power on its own.
This marked the end of the Left's heyday. The party began its decline in West Bengal and Tripura, its strongholds. Yechury could not secure a third term in the Rajya Sabha. In Kerala, the party mattered little to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who returned to power largely because of Muslim support, motivated by fear of the RSS and the belief that the late Oommen Chandy could not stand up to them.
Yechury had not been in good health. He had a strong presence on Facebook, where he had nearly 2.5 lakh followers. His last post was a video paying tribute to former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, recorded from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he passed away early today at the age of 72. His body was donated to the hospital for study by medical students. In his death, the country has lost a clean politician. All I can say is, "Lal Salaam, Comrade Sitaram Yechury."
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Caricature by Cartoonist A Satheesh