A Tribute to Sitaram Yechury – Hundred Flowers Doomed!

A Critical Reflection on the Legacy of Sitaram Yechury and the CPM

Yechuri competes with BJP & Cong! 

The rise of Sitaram Yechury within the Communist Party of India (Marxist) represents both the internal contradictions and the gradual decline of the Indian Left. Coming from a relatively petty-bourgeois background with no significant engagement in revolutionary struggles before his student days, Yechury entered national politics through the portals of JNU, eventually becoming JNUSU President under the SFI banner (Deman 2015a). Guided by the influence of Prakash Karat and later Harkishan Singh Surjit, he climbed the party hierarchy with calculated precision—becoming a Central Committee member and, finally, General Secretary. Yet, unlike many of his predecessors who endured imprisonment, police brutality, and grassroots struggles, Yechury’s political journey was remarkably insulated from the physical sacrifices that once defined Left leadership (Deman 2015b).

This shift in leadership style stands in stark contrast to earlier stalwarts of the movement such as Major Jaipal Singh, a freedom fighter who, along with Harkishan Singh Surjit, served on the Central Committee during the party’s formative years. Leaders of that generation combined theoretical clarity with a lifetime of sacrifice and direct confrontation with the state (Deman 2015b).

The CPM’s fateful decision to support the Congress-led UPA government in 2004 marked a turning point. Despite Congress’ unabashed commitment to neoliberal economic policies, its deepening military exercises with the United States, and closer ties with Israel, the CPM chose to lend its support under the justification of keeping the BJP at bay. The results were catastrophic. From 42 parliamentary seats in 2004, the CPM fell to 16 in 2009 and just 9 in 2014 (Election Commission of India 2004–2014). Far from strengthening the Left, this alliance eroded its ideological distinctiveness, alienated its grassroots cadres, and associated it with the very neoliberal policies it claimed to oppose (Deman 2015b).

Yechury’s political line further reflected a retreat from Marxist-Leninist fundamentals. Critical analysis—a method first elaborated by Immanuel Kant and later adopted by thinkers like Han Suyin, the Chinese doctor and writer who defended the Cultural Revolution—demands a concrete study of concrete conditions while remaining rooted in fundamental principles (Suyin 1967). Yet, Yechury’s leadership increasingly embraced liberal rhetoric—secularism, anti-fascism, and democratic rights—without grounding it in class struggle or revolutionary praxis. His speeches rarely invoked terms like “class struggle” or referenced historic campaigns such as “Operation Burga,” instead sounding more like those of a liberal opposition leader than a Marxist revolutionary (Deman 2015a).

It is worth recalling that 14 March 1883 marked one of the saddest days for the international working-class movement: Karl Marx passed away (Engels 1989). In reflecting on Marx’s death, Frederick Engels dismissed bourgeois democracy as an “incurable mental condition with which some people are born,” a caustic observation that underscores the chasm between revolutionary politics and the liberal democratic illusions that increasingly color the CPM’s discourse today (Deman 2015b).

Perhaps most striking was Yechury’s decision to pay tribute to Deng Xiaoping—the architect of China’s market-oriented reforms—while failing to even mention Chairman Mao Zedong, the great revolutionary who led the Chinese people to power through Marxist-Leninist struggle. His praise for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a figure emblematic of bourgeois liberalism, further underlined a departure from the core tenets of Marxist analysis (Deman 2015a).

Mao’s own contribution to dialectical materialism stands in stark opposition to such opportunism. Mao emphasized the supremacy of the masses over the Party, insisting that if the Communist Party—understood as the conscious vanguard of the working class—deviates from Marxist-Leninist principles, it is the duty of the masses, both party members and non-members, to organize and overthrow the errant leadership. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution embodied this principle (King 1977). Far from being a Trotskyist notion of “permanent revolution,” Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a practical application of the transition of revolution, a mass mobilization designed to purge revisionist elements like Liu Shaoqi and to reaffirm the primacy of the people in the socialist project (Mohanty 1975).

In this light, Yechury’s silence on Mao and his open admiration for Deng and Roosevelt are not mere omissions; they are symptomatic of a worldview increasingly shaped by compromise and accommodation rather than revolutionary vigilance (Deman 2015b).

In the end, history may remember Sitaram Yechury not as a builder of movements, but as an outlier in the lineage of Indian Marxism—a leader who sought relevance through alliances and liberal posturing, but presided over the erosion of the Left’s mass base in West Bengal, Tripura, and beyond. The CPM’s entanglement in the web of neoliberal economics, and its inability to develop a concrete revolutionary strategy while remaining faithful to Marx-Lenin-Stalin-Mao principles, stands as a cautionary tale. Without theoretical rigor, grassroots mobilization, and class clarity, even the most historic parties risk being absorbed into the very bourgeois order they were created to overthrow (Suyin 1967).

References

Deman, S. 2015a. “To Be Marxist or to Be Communist, That Is the Question.” Times of India, April 26. Letter to the Editor.

Deman, S. 2015b. “CPM Party Line of Yechury—Concrete Analysis of the Concrete?” NewsView–RaceClass (blog), December 26.

Election Commission of India. 2004–2014. Statistical Reports on General Elections. New Delhi: Election Commission of India.

Engels, Friedrich. 1989. “Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx.” In Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 24. New York: International Publishers.

King, Ambrose Yeo-chi. 1977. “A Voluntarist Model of Organization: The Maoist Version and Its Critique.” British Journal of Sociology 28 (3): 363–374.

Mohanty, Mahaparta. 1975. “Mao’s Portrait of Stalin.” Economic and Political Weekly, July–August.

Suyin, Han. 1967. Asia Today. London: Jonathan Cape.

This shift in leadership style stands in stark contrast to earlier stalwarts of the movement such as Major Jaipal Singh, a freedom fighter who, along with Harkishan Singh Surjit, served on the Central Committee during the party’s formative years. Leaders of that generation combined theoretical clarity with a lifetime of sacrifice and direct confrontation with the state (Deman 2015b).

The CPM’s fateful decision to support the Congress-led UPA government in 2004 marked a turning point. Despite Congress’ unabashed commitment to neoliberal economic policies, its deepening military exercises with the United States, and closer ties with Israel, the CPM chose to lend its support under the justification of keeping the BJP at bay. The results were catastrophic. From 42 parliamentary seats in 2004, the CPM fell to 16 in 2009 and just 9 in 2014 (Election Commission of India 2004–2014). Far from strengthening the Left, this alliance eroded its ideological distinctiveness, alienated its grassroots cadres, and associated it with the very neoliberal policies it claimed to oppose (Deman 2015b).

Yechury’s political line further reflected a retreat from Marxist-Leninist fundamentals. Critical analysis—a method first elaborated by Immanuel Kant and later adopted by thinkers like Han Suyin, the Chinese doctor and writer who defended the Cultural Revolution—demands a concrete study of concrete conditions while remaining rooted in fundamental principles (Suyin 1967). Yet, Yechury’s leadership increasingly embraced liberal rhetoric—secularism, anti-fascism, and democratic rights—without grounding it in class struggle or revolutionary praxis. His speeches rarely invoked terms like “class struggle” or referenced historic campaigns such as “Operation Burga,” instead sounding more like those of a liberal opposition leader than a Marxist revolutionary (Deman 2015a).

It is worth recalling that 14 March 1883 marked one of the saddest days for the international working-class movement: Karl Marx passed away (Engels 1989). In reflecting on Marx’s death, Frederick Engels dismissed bourgeois democracy as an “incurable mental condition with which some people are born,” a caustic observation that underscores the chasm between revolutionary politics and the liberal democratic illusions that increasingly color the CPM’s discourse today (Deman 2015b).

Perhaps most striking was Yechury’s decision to pay tribute to Deng Xiaoping—the architect of China’s market-oriented reforms—while failing to even mention Chairman Mao Zedong, the great revolutionary who led the Chinese people to power through Marxist-Leninist struggle. His praise for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a figure emblematic of bourgeois liberalism, further underlined a departure from the core tenets of Marxist analysis (Deman 2015a).

Mao’s own contribution to dialectical materialism stands in stark opposition to such opportunism. Mao emphasized the supremacy of the masses over the Party, insisting that if the Communist Party—understood as the conscious vanguard of the working class—deviates from Marxist-Leninist principles, it is the duty of the masses, both party members and non-members, to organize and overthrow the errant leadership. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution embodied this principle (King 1977). Far from being a Trotskyist notion of “permanent revolution,” Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a practical application of the transition of revolution, a mass mobilization designed to purge revisionist elements like Liu Shaoqi and to reaffirm the primacy of the people in the socialist project (Mohanty 1975).

In this light, Yechury’s silence on Mao and his open admiration for Deng and Roosevelt are not mere omissions; they are symptomatic of a worldview increasingly shaped by compromise and accommodation rather than revolutionary vigilance (Deman 2015b).

In the end, history may remember Sitaram Yechury not as a builder of movements, but as an outlier in the lineage of Indian Marxism—a leader who sought relevance through alliances and liberal posturing, but presided over the erosion of the Left’s mass base in West Bengal, Tripura, and beyond. The CPM’s entanglement in the web of neoliberal economics, and its inability to develop a concrete revolutionary strategy while remaining faithful to Marx-Lenin-Stalin-Mao principles, stands as a cautionary tale. Without theoretical rigor, grassroots mobilization, and class clarity, even the most historic parties risk being absorbed into the very bourgeois order they were created to overthrow (Suyin 1967).

References

Deman, S. 2015a. “To Be Marxist or to Be Communist, That Is the Question.” Times of India, April 26. Letter to the Editor.

Deman, S. 2015b. “CPM Party Line of Yechury—Concrete Analysis of the Concrete?” NewsView–RaceClass (blog), December 26.

Election Commission of India. 2004–2014. Statistical Reports on General Elections. New Delhi: Election Commission of India.

Engels, Friedrich. 1989. “Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx.” In Marx/Engels Collected Works, vol. 24. New York: International Publishers.

King, Ambrose Yeo-chi. 1977. “A Voluntarist Model of Organization: The Maoist Version and Its Critique.” British Journal of Sociology 28 (3): 363–374.

Mohanty, Mahaparta. 1975. “Mao’s Portrait of Stalin.” Economic and Political Weekly, July–August.

Suyin, Han. 1967. Asia Today. London: Jonathan Cape.