The Workers Party of Ireland is deeply saddened by news of the untimely death of Comrade Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Cde. Sitaram was a leading figure in the struggle of Indian workers, women and young people and was deeply committed to the principles of secularism and socialism. A leading figure in the student movement, Sitaram Yechury joined the CPIM in 1975 and he was elected to the Central Committee in 1985, before becoming General Secretary in 2015.

As a young man Comrade Yechury studied economics Jawaharlal Nehru University along with senior CPI (M) theoretician, Prabhat Patnaik, who remembers him as “a brilliant student, …[who] could have walked into an Oxbridge post-graduate programme or to an Ivy-league US university,” but decided to remain in India, where he abandoned his studies to become a Party full-timer.

As the head of the International Department of the Central Committee, he played an important role in the international communist movement, and he was well known to the parties which participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. Sitaram was a genial and engaging man, a gifted writer and orator who emphasised the class nature of society and played a part in fostering relations between the workers of India and Pakistan in their common struggle.

Aware of the vicious character of the capitalist social order and the increasing aggressiveness of imperialism, Comrade Sitaram Yechury was forthright in his opposition to religious fundamentalism, xenophobia and sectarian chauvinism and to those anti-democratic forces which engaged in a communal and caste offensive designed to divide workers and to threaten women, religious minorities and marginalised social groups. As Cde. Sitaram knew, religious fundamentalism, xenophobia and sectarian chauvinism were strengthened as a result of the retreat from the universal progressive values which took place across the world after the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union.

Sitaram Yechury will be sadly missed by all who knew him. He is a great loss to his Party and his comrades. He will be fondly remembered. The Workers Party of Ireland sends condolences to his comrades in the CPI(M) and to his family and friends. Interviews with Comrade Yechury appeared over several decades in the Indian magazine, Frontline, and can be read here.