“It’s the class for which you work that is the defining character”: An Interview with Sitaram Yechury

B Mathur/REUTERS
05 May, 2015

Late in the day on 30 April 2015, I made my way to AKG Bhavan, the central office of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, on Bhai Vir Singh Marg in Delhi to meet Sitaram Yechury, the newly elected general secretary of the CPI(M), at his office. Yechury, who had just finishing writing an editorial for the party’s weekly newspaper People’s Democracy, looked tired but jubilant—presumably as a result of his victory in the laborious battle to be elected as the party’s new leader. With his inimitable self-deprecating humour, he reacted to discovering that the interview was for The Caravan: “Oh, that will take hours! They don’t write anything less than eight to ten pages. They have beaten everybody in the business except us—they still haven’t been able to beat our party resolutions.” This is the conversation that followed.

Parul Abrol: The new government has been in power for some time—almost a year now. What is your reading of Prime Minister Modi?

Sitaram Yechury: Achche din are too far away now. At the ground level, people are saying, hamare poorane din lautao. Why? Mr Modi is aggressively pursuing the same policies of economic reform that Manmohan Singh saab pursued. But Modi saab is pursuing them with greater vigour. You see the petroleum prices: international prices fell, but only one third of it was passed on to the people, and two thirds was cornered in larger excise corrections—hiking the excise ratings. That is one example, but the point is, you see a kind of trajectory—the crisis in agriculture has become worse. It was symbolic, the suicide at the AAP [Aam Aadmi Party] rally.

Global economy is in a crisis, India cannot sell what it produces abroad, and our exports have fallen by 26 percent, so it has to sell what it produces inside the country. If it has to sell what it produces inside the country, people have to buy. But the people’s purchasing power is declining. In which case, how do you see industrial growth and manufacturing? So that means jobs are not growing—so that is finding reflection in everything in our country. That is why we are saying that with these economic policies, the Modi government has shown that they are as bad or worse in terms of imposing burdens on the people.

Secondly, it is carrying a systematic communal agenda. It’s virtually patronising the communal forces and their activities. All that was asked of Modi saab in the Parliament was, as the prime minister, assure the Parliament and the country that those who are giving such communal polarising speeches, those will be dealt with according to the law of the land. The Code of Criminal Procedure says that making such speeches is a violation of the law. But Prime Minister Modi refused to give that assurance, and not one action has been taken against them. So you see, the entire revamping of Indian history—mythology replacing history, theology replacing philosophy, science development, etc.—all this clearly shows that there is a very systematic communal agenda of the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] that is being patronised by the Modi government. That is very ominous for the secular, democratic foundations of India.

PA: How do you think the electorate has responded to the present government?

SY: In less than one year, the anti-incumbency against Modi has set in. What was the Delhi election all about? Mr Modi canvassed for himself. In every election after the parliamentary election, their [the BJP’s] percentage of the vote has declined. He has already started messing it up. The only way that they can get out of this is by diverting people into communal polarisation. I hope it doesn’t work. If that works, the idea of India is lost.

PA: You seem to be leading the House against the government on the land-acquisition ordinance. Given that the Congress’s line seems to be very similar to the one that your party has adopted, have you had any conversations with the Congress, and with Rahul Gandhi in particular, about how the opposition is going to tackle the government on the ordinance? What is your reading of him?

SY: No. We have taken our position in the Parliament on issues. If they [the Congress] take the same position, we will work together—in the Parliament. My party, our party—that is, CPI(M)—and I personally, we have never and we shall never evaluate individuals. We evaluate policies. Even with Mr Modi—what are the policies he follows? Our opposition to him, to this government, is based on the policies they follow. Likewise, our opposition or support or whatever it is to anybody will be on the basis of policies.

PA: Your party’s opposition to the ordinance now seems a little inconsistent considering it was the CPI(M)’s approach to land acquisition in Singur that resulted in its exit from power in West Bengal after the assembly elections of 2011.

SY: How? (Laughs) You see, a couple of years before Singur, CPI(M) was the first political party in the country that demanded a new land-acquisition law. We have said this in the Parliament as well, that the current law with which the government of India was operating [before the new law came into force in 2013] was a law enacted by the British, when they were expanding the railways and before the World War I etc., in 1894. So we said that this is antiquated, outdated, and you should have a new law, whereby you give the legal right to the kisan whose land is being acquired, both to compensation and a future stake in the value of the land that will go.

Now what happened in Singur is not really a question of land acquisition, but of the homework that had to be done for this land acquisition. Our practice all along has been that we would go and discuss in detail with the affected people whose land is being acquired about what is the level of their compensation, what should be the rehabilitation provided to them, and not just to them, but also all others whose livelihood was dependent on that land. Singur was not the first instance of land acquisition in Bengal, and neither is it the last. We had acquired land earlier for Haldia, for Rajarhat—the big complex that’s coming up in Kolkata. But always there was very detailed homework.

In Singur, because it was soon after the 2006 election—those elections were held on the main slogan of industrialisation, and we got a two-thirds majority—it was wrongly interpreted by us to say that people had endorsed our industrialisation plans. So the homework was not done. There was some resentment among the farmers that was fully exploited by our political opponents. In Nandigram, not an inch of land was acquired. It was a central government proposal for a chemical hub, having six hubs all over the country, and one was located at Nandigram. So that was more of propaganda than anything else. So this is what happened in Singur. This is not the misuse of the Land Acquisition Act. On the contrary, it was precisely our urging that finally resulted in the 2013 Act.

PA: So you accept that the party was arrogant there?

SY: That is there. Arrogant in the homework being done.

PA: Following your election to the post of general secretary, you had identified as a key challenge the need to “strengthen the party’s capacity to intervene.” How are you planning to achieve this, given the dilution of the party in recent times?

SY: We have decided that there should be a cleaning in the organisation. Much of that [failure within the party] has also been due to a very serious weakness in our organisation, whereby we could not effectively take the issues to the people. Organisation for a communist party is its biggest weapon. It is the vehicle with which the party’s understanding, or line, or whatever you may call it, is taken to the people. If that becomes weak, then however correct your political line may be, it’s meaningless. So that exercise will be completed by the end of the year in the organisation clean-up. Then we will be able to identify the concrete areas in which we have lagged behind, or committed mistakes.

PA: A dominant view is that the CPI(M) had always had a strong base of leaders from organisations such as the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the Kisan Sabha, who are now being replaced by leaders from  the Student’s Federation of India (SFI). It is believed that the people who came from grass-roots organisation are being removed from the party due to this. Do you think that could be a reason for the organisation’s falling apart?

SY: That is only part of the story, not the whole story. That is also in essence wrong, because it has always been a combination. Yes, it [the CPI(M)] is an organisation of mass movements, but people who come from the student front are always at the highest in our party congress’s… credential reports. There was no SFI [earlier], but Basavapunnaiah, P Ramamurthi, all of them came from student movements, and that’s only natural. You see, as a student, you are attracted towards Marxism ideologically, and through the student front you enter the party, but then you branch out into other areas. All of us came from the student front. All of us branched out into other trade union activities.

PA: But many seem to feel that these members, coming from the student organisations, are armchair politicians.

SY: That’s not true. Where are they coming from? They are from the working class; they are from kisan, a family, that’s where they all come from.

PA: Not all of them belong to the working class.

SY: Most of them. Except a few who may come from bureaucrat families … and very few come from landlord families. So it’s not that there is any front-wise discrimination. That is not the problem. Once you enter the party from the student front, then you branch out. All the leaders from the student movement, at least from my period, all of them are either in Kisan Sabha or CITU. They are leaders of the working class. And some of them came directly into the party organisation. Most of the party secretaries that you find now, most of them entered the party through the student movement. And that is not unnatural, [there is] nothing wrong with it.

See, eventually, all our founding fathers—whom we call Navratnas—of the CPI(M), most of them came from very big landlord families. Did that take away [from their contribution]? It’s not the class in which you are born; it’s the class for which you work that is the defining character.

PA: Do you think it is time for a united Left in place of the fragmented groups that exist right now?

SY: That is our idea. That will have to emerge through struggle. But … the unity of Left parties is not like the unity of other parties, where leaders can come together and shake hands and say that now we are one party, like it is happening with the socialist groups. We support that they are coming together, but we cannot do that sort of thing, because, after all, remember it was ideological differences that divided the Communist party. When the situation actually demands that we unite in action [we do]. This unity or coming together of the parties will happen overtime, but that will happen with united struggle growing from below.

PA: You have said that it is good that the Janata Parivar is coming together. How does it matter? And does it?

SY: Historically, in the evolution of modern India, the Left viewpoint was always a major input. And that Left viewpoint always had two strings—the communist left and the socialist left. Now the socialist left has disintegrated … much more than the communist left. And you had parties from the old socialists which supported the BJP [and] the Congress … Now, if they are all coming together, and we hope this finds reflection in their policies and direction, then that’s good for India. That is one aspect, apart from the immediate electoral aspect of facing the BJP in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. I am not saying this is good in the sense that we will go and join hands [with them]—that’s not the issue. But at least there will be a unified non-communist left viewpoint that will be coming to Indian politics, which will be good. It will contribute.

PA: So you look forward to working with them?

SY: That we will see. First let us see how they unite, what are the issues they unite for.

PA: But are these parties not also conservative? Are they any less communal?

SY: Not communal, but casteist. For instance, with Muzaffarnagar, we criticised the Mulayam Singh Yadav and Samajwadi [Party] government very strongly.

PA: About the AAP—do you think they are working on the same base as your party?

SY: They are taking up many issues that we have always championed. But the problem with them is the [kind of] “reality show” you saw recently. There are bound to be such [things] unless there is clarity on two fundamental issues: one—what is their attitude vis-à-vis communalism and communal parties; secondly—what is their response to [present] economic reforms. On both of these, they are not clear. But they are picking up local issues, like I said—somewhere it is electricity, somewhere it is water—and then mobilising people [around] that. In Delhi, they’ve come up as a more viable force than us.

PA: Do you see you party working with them as a united opposition?

SY: The question is, on these policies, where do they stand? Those who have left the AAP, they have formed themselves into a movement. Yesterday, Yogendra Yadav was with me at Bangalore. We were on same platform. They are still to work out what are their positions on various issues.

PA: Do you see Hillary Clinton coming to power in the next US election, in 2016? What do you think that would mean for India?

SY: Whatever be the face with which US imperialism comes...

PA: Why do you still use terms like imperialism?

SY: Why not? I will tell you why. A leopard can never change its spots. When Obama was elected, there was huge euphoria around the world. Even I had written, but in the same article, I said here is an African-American man coming into the White House asking for change. When I visited New York in 1971 January, then it was not uncommon to see an African-American asking for change. The change they were asking for was the loose change in your pocket. But here is an African-American who actually walked into the White House—it was named White House with a certain meaning during the days of slavery. So that it itself was a big thing. Never in America have they elected a woman [as president]—that itself [would] be a big thing. But, always, it actually comes down to policies. There, there is actually no departure. There cannot be. That is why we said we comment only on policies. So whether Hillary Clinton is elected or not, [what matters more is] that the American people actually finally reconcile themselves to giving women equal rights or not—like they finally reconciled themselves to giving an African-American a chance [to be president] for the first time. [Whether] this will be another first time—that we will have to wait and see. If they do it, at least they are becoming modern. (Grins.)

PA: So what’s your focus now—youth, or rural India?

SY: Youth in rural India. (Laughs.)

Correction:An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the location of the central office of the Communist Party of India- Marxist as Rafi Marg. The Caravan regrets the error.  


Parul Abrol  is an independent journalist based in New Delhi.