TO write about Comrade Sitaram Yechury in the past tense is exceedingly difficult and painful for me. For five decades our political lives have been closely and intricately intertwined while we have together gone through various phases and ups and downs of the Party and the Left movement. Our comradeship began 50 years ago, beginning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1974, continuing in the Students’ Federation of India and later in the Party. We worked in the Party Centre together for well over 37 years, with me having been inducted into the Party Centre work in 1985 and Sitaram two years later.  Our trajectory in the Party has followed almost the same path. Both of us became permanent invitees of the Central Committee in 1984 and were elected to the Central Committee at the 12th  Congress in 1985, then to the Central Secretariat  at the 13th  Congress in 1988 and then to the Polit Bureau at the 14th  Congress in 1992.

An overview of the multifaceted and varied contributions that Sitaram made to the CPI(M), the Left and democratic movement and the progressive cause, in general, will require more time and deliberation to place in its proper perspective. I would like to in this appreciation concentrate on the distinctive contributions that he made to the ideological, programmatic and political positions of the Party.

Much has been said in the mainstream media about Sitaram’s ability to reach out to leaders of the secular opposition parties and his skill in bringing them together on a joint platform. While this is true about the more public face of his activities, I would like to dwell here upon some of his important contributions to the Party and Marxism. What was distinctive about his work at the Party Centre and the Polit Bureau was his role in shaping the Party’s ideological positions based on Marxism-Leninism. 

The CPI(M), from the outset of its foundation, was marked by its fierce adherence to Marxism-Leninism and the struggle against both right and left deviations. The report and resolution which were adopted at the Burdwan Plenum on ideological issues in 1968 were a major landmark in the Indian Communist movement. They charted an independent path, applying Marxism-Leninism to the ideological issues and differences that existed in the international Communist movement at that time. It is this approach that Sitaram carried forward. 

In 1987, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, the general secretary of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev made a speech at the anniversary meeting in Moscow. This speech contained many formulations which were a departure from the prevailing Marxist analysis of social contradictions and the character of the struggle against imperialism. The CPI(M) was the first Party to criticise Gorbachev’s formulations in a resolution adopted by the Central Committee at its meeting held in May 1988. This was followed by another resolution by the Central Committee at its meeting in August 1988, On Recent Developments in the Soviet Union, which warned of the danger posed to the Soviet Union by the internal developments within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the mistakes it was making in the name of perestroika and glasnost.  A third resolution was adopted by the Central Committee in May 1990 wherein the crises faced by the East European countries, which led to the fall of the socialist governments, were placed in the context of the ideological erosion and the distortions in building socialism in these countries. Sitaram played an important role in drafting this resolution which became the foundation for the subsequent comprehensive ideological document.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Party had to take stock of this historic setback to socialism and chart out its post-Soviet Union ideological positions. This was done at the 14th Congress at Madras in 1992. After full-fledged discussions, the Party Congress adopted a resolution On Certain Ideological Issues.  It was Comrade Sitaram, who piloted the resolution in the Congress and summed up the discussions in his reply. For the first time, an ideological document was prepared and, on behalf of the Polit Bureau, was presented by a member of the Central Secretariat – a job which would have been normally done by M Basavapunnaiah. This demonstrated the Party’s recognition of Sitaram as a Marxist theoretician.  Since then, Sitaram became the prime moving force in the Polit Bureau on ideological matters.

Equipped with this ideological armour, the CPI(M) hosted an international seminar of Communist parties to mark the 175th birth anniversary of Karl Marx at Kolkata in May 1993.  The theme of the seminar was ‘Contemporary World Situation and Validity of Marxism’. This was the first international effort to  discuss the validity of Marxism in the background of the setbacks suffered by socialism with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the socialist regimes in the East European countries.  21 Communist parties’ delegates attended the seminar and presented papers.  Sitaram, as head of the international department, drafted the Party’s paper and was the organiser of the seminar.

Later, when the Central Committee decided to update our understanding on ideological issues, the responsibility naturally fell on Sitaram to draft a comprehensive and updated document.  This resolution –  Resolution on Some Ideological Issues – was presented by Sitaram to the 20th Congress of the Party at Kozhikode in 2012 and adopted after a thorough discussion. 

Sitaram made a vital contribution to another important sphere of ideological struggle to the fight against the fascistic Hindutva ideology.  One instance will illustrate the key role played by Sitaram in this struggle. In 1993, Sitaram wrote a critique of a book by M S Golwalkar, the second RSS chief (sarsanghchalak). Golwalkar had written a 77-page book – We or Our Nationhood Defined – which was published in 1939.  This book presents the fascist core of Hindu Rashtra, but copies of the original publication were hard to come by.  Sitaram obtained a copy of the 1939 original edition and made a sharp and incisive critique of the fascistic lineage and ideas, which went into the concept of Hindu Rashtra. This was published in Frontline on March 12, 1993 and later in an expanded form as a Frontline publication. The importance of this booklet was understood by the late     A G Noorani, an authority on the RSS, who was highly appreciative of the booklet and complimented Sitaram for it. It is this far-sightedness and clarity in understanding the ideological underpinnings of Hindutva that motivated Sitaram’s political commitment to defend secularism and counter the Hindutva-communal forces. 

For a Communist party, the Programme is the basic document which sets out its strategic path.  The CPI(M) had adopted its Programme in 1964 at the 7th Congress.  This Programme was the product of a prolonged struggle within the united Communist party as to what should be the strategy for the democratic revolution in post-independent India. However, two major developments – international and domestic – occurred which required the updating of the Programme. The first was the major change in the correlation of class forces internationally with the end of the Soviet Union and the strengthening of imperialist hegemony. The second was the change in the capitalist path of development in India with the onset of neo-liberalism.

The Party set-up a Programme Commission to prepare a draft updated Programme.  Sitaram was a member of this Commission, of which Harkishan Singh Surjeet was the convenor.  Sitaram with his grasp of the workings of international finance capital and neo-liberal capitalism, played a key role in updating the section on the capitalist path of development. The discussions in the Polit Bureau and subsequently in the Central Committee saw Sitaram playing an active role in these discussions. At one stage, Sitaram and I had to make a determined effort to retain in the updated version the formulation of the character of the Indian State contained in the 1964 Programme.

With the rightward shift in Indian politics and the qualitative change brought about by BJP winning the 2014 election and the installation of the Modi government, Sitaram played a leading role in formulating the political-tactical line to confront the new political challenges and the grave threat to the secular-democratic principles of the Indian Constitution.

After the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which confined BJP’s electoral tally to short of a majority, Sitaram Yechury was engaged in formulating a political-tactical line, which could build on this success and would also take into account the continuing threat from the authoritarian-Hindutva forces.

The last decision taken by the Polit Bureau at his initiative was to work out a schedule of conferences and preparations of documents leading to the Party’s 24th Congress  to be held in April next year.

While in hospital, he repeatedly expressed his concern to me on how his illness might impact the Congress preparations. I had to reassure him that all would go smoothly and he would be out of hospital in a few days’ time.  Alas, that was not to be.

It is difficult for me at this juncture to make an objective assessment of the wider contributions of Sitaram Yechury. For us, his comrades in the Party that he dedicated his life to, his deep commitment to Marxism-Leninism and capacity to make a “concrete analysis of the concrete situation” (a favourite Leninist usage of his), his outstanding role in the defence of secularism and democracy and his broader vision for a socialist society, free of exploitation – will continue to inspire us and succeeding generations of Communists and progressives.