The Hindu Business Line : Harkishan Singh Surjeet passes away

New Delhi, Aug. 1 Veteran communist leader and former CPI(M) General Secretary Mr Harkishan Singh Surjeet passed away on Friday following a massive cardiac arrest. He was 92.

Born on March 23, 1916 at Badala in Jalandhar district of Punjab, Mr Surjeet began his political career as a follower of the revolutionary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

He shot into the limelight as a 16-year-old, who hoisted the Indian tricolour atop a court building in Hoshiarpur after tearing down a British Union Jack flag. Arrested after being shot twice by the police, he famously declared his name in court as ‘London Tod Singh’ or ‘The One Who Breaks London’. In 1936, Mr Surjeet became a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI). When the party split in 1964, he joined the breakaway CPI (Marxist) as one of its nine founder members — of whom the 95-year-old former Chief Minister of West Bengal Mr Jyothi Basu is now the sole survivor.

Mr Surjeet made his real mark on the national scene as General Secretary of CPI (M) from 1992 to 2005 — a period during which the Left, despite suffering setbacks worldwide, not only held on in India, but actually consolidated its position in the country’s parliamentary politics.

The nineties saw Mr Surjeet presiding over a shift in the party’s strategy from being uncompromisingly anti-Congress to forging tactical alliances with it to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other ‘communal forces’ at bay.

He was instrumental in the formation of two non-BJP Governments under Mr H.D. Deve Gowda and Mr I.K. Gujral during 1996-97, while getting the Congress to lend support from outside. Although the experiment proved short-lived with the Congress unable to reconcile itself to the position of propping up smaller parties, the ‘Surjeet line’ of bringing all ‘secular’ non-BJP parties on a common platform bore fruition with the installation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in 2004.

All through this, however, Mr Surjeet remained a strong votary of a ‘third front’ that would be an alternative to both the Congress and the BJP, with the Left parties providing the crucial binding force. The Left’s recent withdrawal of support to the Congress-led UPA essentially marks a return to the old equidistance line.

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Harkishan Singh Surjeet passes away