Sitaram Yechuri – A Tribute

Sitaram Venkat Yechury, to give him his full name, joined JNU in 1973, he was a school topper and a university topper.

I haven’t met too many university toppers, so won’t really know how university topper types are supposed to behave. One wood assume that they would be the studious types, spending their time in libraries, not mixing readily with other less serious students and would have a rather private and very limited circle of friends.

Sita, as he came to be universally known very soon, did not act or behave like the studious, serious type and did not keep to himself as one would have expected a university topper to do. He was extremely sociable, mixed well, had a large circle of friends and loved sports and cinema. He played Tennis, represented JNU in a few intervarsity tournaments and won a couple of trophies for the University. 

In-fact when we found out that we had a few cricket and tennis enthusiasts among the students, we went to meet our VC to ask him for a cricket field and a tennis court. G. Parathasarthy was the founding VC of JNU and I was a councillor in the union. I was also in-charge of Sports and Cultural activities in the University.

G.P. as he was popularly known, not only met us, he immediately sanctioned a Tennis court and a cricket ground, we were to learn in this meeting that G.P. had played in the Ranji team from Madras (now Tamil Nadu) and had played hockey and Tennis at college level.

We mention these details here, primarily to underscore the fact that it is barely 50 years ago that student representatives could walk into the office of their Vice-Chancellors with their problems and the VCs were open to suggestions. JNU was that kind of university because of the democratic and inclusive ethos of JNU, built by the strong democratic students’ movement that worked together with the teachers and employees’ association and also because the university administration in the formative years of JNU was open to dialogue with the students, teachers and the non-teaching staff, unlike the many spineless political appointees that are destroying and dismantling the educational apparatus all over the country.

Sitaram loved music, especially old film songs and was very knowledgeable about them. Whenever a film song was mentioned, Sita could, without trying too hard, recall the name of the lyricist, the music composer, the name of the film and the playback singer/s.

It was Sitaram’s interest in Cinema that contributed to Student Struggle regularly carrying pieces on progressive cinema. Sitaram and I spent an entire night talking to Grigory Chukhrai, the director of the classic anti-war film, ‘Ballad of a Soldier’ about his cinema and about post revolution cinema in the USSR.

Sitaram’s capacity to be interested in a range of cultural questions and developments and his ability to remember many of these things in relation to individuals came in very handy when he got active in the SFI and especially in the JNU Students Union. He not only knew the name of every student, at least all the hostellers, and JNU was in those days, primarily a residential University, but he also knew how to involve them in different activities that SFI was constantly engaged in.

 Sita also knew the names of most of the security staff, the mess staff and the large number of others that served in the University administration, aside of course from all the senior officers that he had to deal with on a regular basis, because everything that concerned the students of JNU also concerned the JNUSU and he was constantly interacting with a large  cross-section of the University community, and he knew all of them by name.

Knowing all the names and recalling them at the right moment was not merely something cultivated, that most political workers and public figures work at, this was something that came naturally to Sita, because of his genuine interest in people and in their work.

Ravindra Kalia, one of the founders of the Jan Natya Manch, who had met Sita in the 1970s, was to meet him again, after a gap of several decades, at a meeting of the CPI(M) and the moment Sita saw him he asked “Arrey Kalia, where have you been and how are you?” Kalia was beside himself with wonderment and said to NK Sharma, another founder of Jan Natya Manch, “He remembered me after so many years!”

Sita had a sharp memory and it showed when he was addressing a meeting, speaking in a seminar or intervening in a debate in parliament, he could quote relevant data and statistics to reinforce his arguments and they flowed effortlessly, he rarely, if ever, carried notes with him. 

One reason for Sita’s popularity among the student community, decades after leaving the university and student activism, was perhaps the way he had impacted student politics all over the country in the immediate post emergency situation.

One iconic image from that time is Sitaram leading a JNUSU delegation, standing in front of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, reading out to her a charge-sheet that accused her of being complicit in all the atrocities inflicted on JNU under her chancellorship and therefore being unfit to be the chancellor of JNU.

This image was published all over the country and even those who had not heard of SFI, of JNU, its student activism and of Sitaram, suddenly sat up and took notice.  Sita was elected president of JNUSU thrice, one of these times he had lost a vote of no confidence in a general body and the entire council resigned. SFI decided to field the entire panel once again and they won once again.

The manner in which he won back the confidence of the general body that had voted him out less than a few weeks earlier, goes to show how persuasive he could be when arguing in support of a position and also of the fact that his audience trusted him as someone who was honest and had the courage of his convictions. Sita was to very soon become an easily recognisable face all-over the country and this has to be a rare achievement for a student leader.

Sita spoke with clarity, he did not use heavy jargon, he did not try to impress his audience with his scholarship. He was able to communicate complex ideas in a simple and easily understood manner and that was perhaps the reason that people were never in awe of him. They approached him as one of their own and that is how Sita met them, never like a leader but like an equal and this left a lasting impression on whoever he met.

No matter how busy he was, he was never in a hurry, he was a very good listener and remembered what he had heard in the classroom, in a meeting or a rally and that is why he remembered names, details, places and who said what and when.

Over and above all this he had great felicity with languages, he could converse with ease in Telugu-his mother tongue, English, Hindi and Bangla. He also had a nodding acquaintance with Tamil and a few other languages. It has been said that once Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Comrade Jyoti Basu, Comrade Basavapunaiah and Sitaram were having dinner together, Sitaram was talking to Com. Jyoti Basu in Bangla, to Com Basavapunaiah in Telugu and Com. Surjeet in Hindi. Com Jyoti Basu quipped, be careful of this man, he is talking to the three of us in three different languages, only he knows what he is telling each one of us. Everyone had a good laugh.

The fact that he gave everyone a patient hearing, at times caused him to be late for meetings, but he also had a disarming smile and your anger at his being late evaporated the moment he smiled and said ‘sorry yaar, koi aa gaya tha, mein phans gaya’ (sorry, someone came and I could not get away).

His approachability and accessibility, his easy manner, the absence of the aura of leadership, his capacity to lend his ear and to listen sympathetically all this contributed to his popularity, even among those who were political opponents.

Of all the tributes that have been paid to him and all the articles that newspapers and periodicals have so far carried have talked about his friendly and open manner, his accessibility and his ability to bring everyone together on a common platform to work together for a common cause.

Several commentators have underlined the central role, Sitaram played in knitting together the India Alliance. The only true tribute to the memory of Sitaram will be to ensure that this broad platform forged to defeat the forces of fascism continues to stay together.

The Student Federation of India, an organisation that launched Sitaram into the political arena and an organisation that he later led so effectively can justifiably be proud of having been an important part of his life. 

– Sohail Hashmi, Founding member of SFI in Delhi, formerly secretary of SFI JNU, Secretary Delhi State SFI, member of SFI, CEC and later SFI Secretariat.