Sitaram Yechury

He is survived by his wife Seema Chishti, editor of The Wire, daughter Akhila and son Danish. A Marxist theoretician, Yechury was a believer when it came to the Communist ideology but showed the rare willingness to test the limitations of its hard boundaries for the imperatives of democractic — and practical — politics. Yechury’s political life, however, cannot be limited to the last two decades. Neither can he be framed only as a pragmatic Communist. The CPI(M) general secretary meant much more than that – from the time he emerged as a bright young spark in the party’s firmament in the 1970s, to the last nearly a decade that he headed the frontline Left party.