Sitaram Yechury

Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad. My first brush with this name came many years before I understood what politics was all about. That was in 1967. As an school student, one literally had to memorise this long complicated name to answer an inevitable question of general knowledge: who was the first Communist to become the head of a state government through elections? Who was the person who became the Chief Minister after having been dismissed once? Little did I know then that I would have the opportunity and privilege to work with him at close quarters. An association that irrevocably influenced, like with many others, the course and direction of my life.

As a student, one always looked forward to listen to EMS. Not only because he was an outstanding leader. But because on every occasion he invariably, had something new to say or suggest a novel nuance, a new emphasis to an idea already familiar. This freshness, so typical of EMS, had nothing to do with intellectual acrobatics so dear to many intellectuals' but was born out of his deep familiarity of the Indian people and their problems. As a student (something that he always wished to be known as) of the creative science of Marxism-Leninism, he was one of those who, as Lenin defined, understood the "living essence" of Marxism as the "concrete analysis of concrete conditions". EMS's freshness of thought emanated from this. One still recollects the interview he gave the Illustrated Weekly soon after Indira Gandhi's defeat after the Emergency in 1977. He said that achurning process’ has been set in motion in India’s socio-political life that will mark the end of an one party rule at the Centre. It is only in retrospect, can one understand the import of such a perceptive mind. Today’s India, in fact, reflects the depth and spread of such a churning process — coalition governments; the irreversible assertion of oppressed castes and the consequent caste based political mobilisation; etc.

The brush with such a mind came more than a decade after the brush with the name. In 1979, the Party had assigned me the task of manning, alongwith others, the newly established SFI all-India Centre at Delhi. Following the Jullandhar Congress decision to shift the Party headquarters from Calcutta to Delhi, the mass organisations also followed suit. Though Com. M. Basavapunniah was in-charge of the student front, one had to interact with EMS as the General Secretary.

I remember, sometime in 1979, after a public function at Delhi’s Mavalankar Hall, where I was a volunteer, Com. Prakash Karat asked me to meet EMS. In an empty auditorium Com. EMS told me that I should become a wholetimer. There was no long discussion, no discourse, just a simple statement. And, I started receiving Rs. 150/- as wages from the late Com. Des Raj Chadda.

Five years later, in 1984, when the then CC decided to include me alongwith others, as a permanent invitee to its meetings. I went to EMS, as the General Secretary, to say that I personally did not think of being capable to be in CC. His reaction was typically EMS. He just looked up while working at his table and said, (to the best of my recollection now) “CPI(M) functions on the principle of democratic centralism. This is the decision of the higher committee”. The implication was obvious.

These apparently dispassionate discourses do not reflect on EMS as a heartless, cold blooded Party apparatihck. Behind every such statement of his, lay a well reasoned analysis. For him, emotion was always subsumed by reason. Lack of emotion is so often misunderstood as lack of feeling. EMS was one of those who transcended this purile, facile misconception. He was one of those who truly internalised Marx’s observation, “when an idea grips the mind, it becomes a material force”. His passion was his reason. Unlike passion associated with the alienated false consciousness fostered by a class divided society, his passion was based on an ideological and theoretical reasoning aimed at ridding the society of class divisions.

These personal attributes, sublime as they were, were noticeable in the many in the many foreign visits that I had the opportunity to accompany him. He loathed shopping. But would always provide a list of people for whom something had to be taken back. Nothing expensive, nothing exclusive. If anything could be taken back, and this was rare, then it had to be for all. He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and above all a comrade.

My first visit with him was to the former GDR in 1986. Only later in the year, while returning from North Korea, we stayed at Beijing, at the invitation of the CPC that I comprehended his international standing. Comrade Deng Xiao Ping had publicly stopped receiving any foreign guest. He, however, made an exception with EMS. The comradrie between the two cannot really be described. Speaking to each other through interpreters and a stammer, they evaluated, assessed the international situation and arrived at certain conclusions. Right or wrong EMS’s opinion was listened to. And seriously.

I remember Cheddi Jagan, the late President of Guyana, in 1987 in Moscow, having a morning walk, telling me with awe his admiration for EMS. A three member delegation had gone there to attend the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution. Led by EMS, the delegation included Com. Surjeet and myself. It was there that one could see inner stuff that EMS is made of.

Irrespective of the time lag between India and the then Soviet Union, EMS would start his day at 5 a.m. And, he would insist on the delegation meeting before going for breakfast at 8 a.m. It is in one of these meetings that we decided to convey to the CPSU our disagreement regarding Gorbachev’s thesis of modification of contradictions on the international plane. CPI(M) was one of the few, may be at that time the only, to openly convey to the CPSU our position. Subsequent developments only vindicated the CPI(M)’s assessment and formulations.

One can go on relating many an experience. Each one of these reflected an aspect of his rich personality. One goes through these, not to discount his immense contributions to the Communist movement in India or to the intellectual and material development of modern Kerala or to the evolution of modern Indian polity. These are and will be well documented. But as a person, a living human being, he transcended all these to reflect, as Marx in a touching manner, admitted to his daughter in a letter, “nothing human is alien to me”.

This was reflected, amongst everything else, in EMS’s prolific writing. For him, writing was no exertion, no chore. Unlike many he did not require the quiet moment to write' or for inspiration rely on theflash of the inward eye’. Creativity was not something that came to him in isolated splendour. As an eminent Malayalee intellectual, Sukumar Azhikkode said, “he wrote as he lived. An integration rarely achieved”. It was such integration that made him an authority on a wide range of subjects.

That was EMS. A person born in the highest of the “twice born” hierarchy. Inheritor of immense fortune. He foresaked all that for a greater purpose. Purpose seldom understood by common mortals who obfuscate pleasures forsaken with a cliched description `sacrifice’. As a Namboodiri priest and landlord, his life would have gone unnoticed. As a political activist, moving from Gandhism to Congress socialism to communism, EMS is today immortal.

Right or wrong, through his writings, he would divide the `thinking society’ and move the oppressed into action. He would provoke the people into vociferously opposing him or fondly supporting. This passion to divide on class lines at one level and integrate at a higher level was his domain. That was and is EMS. He generated controversy. He commanded personally and for the Party a mass following. He also earned enemies. But he could never be ignored.

Remembering EMS all that one can say is to recollect Shakespeare in Polonious’ advicing his son says,

“And, above all be true to thine own self,
Then it shall follow,
Like, the night the day,
Thou shall do no harm to no man”.

That is EMS.

A conception that is inspiration.

A class partisanship that is passion.