Sitaram Yechuri, a Great Politician of India

 Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechuri passed away on 12/09/2024 at the age of 72 years and one month. He was one of the notable politicians of our country. He was always humble and polite with his opponents, respecting their feelings.

Here is a wonderful tribute to him from the Times Top 10 Newsletter that I received today. I admired the content and wanted to share it with you all. So, copy-pasting the text.

"Homage

• Sitaram Yechury, who died on September 12, was politically a committed communist but in political praxis — to use a term much favoured by Marxist pundits — he preferred pragmatism over dogma.
• 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.

Stands out

• He was among the few CPM leaders who didn’t ideologically over-analyse whether the party should ally with Congress 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.

Man of all times

• 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 the 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”.
• Engaging in debates was his style, and witty one-liners were his rhetorical signature.

Who he was

• 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..."

I am providing one more link to an article in the Times of India dated 12/09/2024 here