An enlarged and beautifully framed cartoon adorns the wall in Sitaram Yechury’s Delhi home. The cartoon that belonged to the 1990s depicts CPI(M)’s four top leaders, all very old, doddering and crouching, limping towards the new millennium. Yechury, the only youngster among them, is seen following his geriatric leaders with a bitter expression.

It is unambiguously a searing sarcasm against Yechury's party, the CPI(M). That it adorned his wall also conveyed an unambiguous message about Yechury’s sense of humor -- and, even more significantly, his capability to laugh at himself, a rare faculty among political leaders, especially Communists.

Yechury, who died recently, was seen as a “young” leader even after he reached his seventies, probably because he had walked into CPI-M leadership directly from the student movement. Yet, he belonged to the school of Gandhian leaders, now almost extinct, known for their knowledge, selflessness, dedication, integrity, and articulation. They willingly gave up their comfortable lives and chose the thorny path of public service, as they believed in giving rather than taking.

Yechury could not have left at a more inopportune moment for the Indian Left and CPI-M. It was like losing the Field Marshal when the army was on their last legs. The Left lost its leader, perhaps the last one who enjoyed respect across the political spectrum, when it was reduced to almost a vanishing point in Indian parliamentary history. But, the loss is for the country's entire democratic and secular forces.

Yechury was one of their most uncompromising leaders when democracy, secularism and the very idea of India faced their gravest threat since independence. Yechury belonged to the pantheon of Communist stalwarts, respected and keenly heard by the nation irrespective of their electoral strength.

The Indian Left has had leaders of greater brilliance, erudition, and articulation, and they have endured superior sacrifices and sufferings compared to Yechury. Yet, it's doubtful if it had anyone so versatile as him who was equally adept on multiple fronts. Proficient in theory and praxis, Yechury was an intellectual, pragmatist, tactician, hard negotiator, and orator. Even when he was mired in bourgeois parliamentarism, which Lenin called a "pig sty", Yechury never compromised on personal integrity or principles. He held no office of power outside his party except for one tenure in the Rajya Sabha.

By refusing him another innings in the Upper House in the name of organisational inanity, CPI-M denied the Parliament and the nation the brilliance and insightfulness of a leader when they were most needed. Unlike most of his comrades, even when he was critical of the “bourgeois media”, Yechury never dismissed it or ran away from it. He was willing to engage with them even when he was on the back foot as he........

© Mathrubhumi English