The incident is of October 1977. In the Lok Sabha elections held after the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government was ousted and the first non-Congress government was formed in the country under the leadership of Morarji Desai. The Congress party had suffered a crushing defeat in the elections, despite this Indira Gandhi remained the Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The students of JNU were strongly opposing this. Sitaram Yechury was then the President of the JNU Students Union and a student of Economics. The students of JNU were furious with Indira Gandhi’s decision to impose Emergency and were calling her a dictator. The students did not like at all that a dictator was their Chancellor.
When Indira was no longer the Prime Minister but still remained the Chancellor of JNU, Sitaram Yechury marched on foot to Indira Gandhi’s residence with hundreds of students. The students were shouting slogans against Indira. When the students did not budge even after a lot of efforts, Indira came out of her residence and started talking to the students. During this time, Sitaram Yechury read a memorandum demanding Gandhi’s resignation. During this time, Indira stood next to him and kept smiling. After this incident, Indira Gandhi resigned from the post of Chancellor of JNU. However, Yechury was arrested after this incident.
Sitaram Yechury passed away, he was the pivot of leftist politics for 5 decades
Yechury had written in his memorandum that a dictator should not hold the post of Chancellor of a university and should resign immediately. Not only this, Yechury had also opposed Indira’s program in JNU during the Emergency. Indira wanted to organize a program in the JNU campus during that time, but her program could not be held due to the protest of the students.
Sitaram Yechury will be useful even after his death, his family donated his body to AIIMS
This incident brought Sitaram Yechury’s identity to the fore at the national level. He was the president of the JNU Students’ Union from 1977 to 1978. After this, he was made the joint secretary of the Student Federation of India, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Yechury wanted to do a PhD in economics but moved on the path of politics in such a way that his dream remained unfulfilled. In 2004, when the UPA government was being formed under the leadership of Manmohan Singh, Yechury played an important role behind the scenes.
