Nicolae Ceausescu was still ruling Romania. Rising from the Romanian Communist youth movement, Ceausescu was the undisputed leader of the European nation since he assumed power in 1965.

Cut to 1989. Sitaram Yechury had returned from a tour of Romania and anti government protests had begun against Ceausescu.

“A little while after Sita returned from Romania it was time for the students’ union elections at JNU. I was a candidate on an SFI ticket and spoke at the presidential debate. Sita, as he was fondly called, was also among the speakers as JNU tradition allows former student union functionaries to speak. In my speech, I had referred to Ceausescu and the uprising against him. I said Ceausescu was a Romanian dictator and must go. Speaking after me, Sita did not contest me. He gave his view that Ceausescu would be able to overcome the uprising. That was the beauty of Sita. Even though we belonged to the same party, he gave space to everyone,” said retired Calcutta University professor Jagdishwar Chaturvedi, who had known the CPM leader since 1977 and was five years junior to him in JNU where they both studied.

Yechury, 72, died at AIIMS in New Delhi on Thursday.

The professor brought up the JNU anecdote to point to Yechury’s accommodative spirit and said that one does not come across such an attribute among most Left politicians these days.

Speaking about his first association with Yechury, Chaturvedi, who retired from the Hindi department of Calcutta University in 2017, and has since shifted to New Delhi, said: “I was the Mathura district unit general secretary of the SFI when Sita was already a name in the students’ movement in the country. It was during the emergency that we came to know each other.”

Chaturvedi, who was always in touch with his leader and friend from the JNU days, said the CPM general secretary was “so passionate about students’ and youth movement that he never forgot his roots.

“Even till a few years ago, Sita would frequent the campus and showed how he loved his roots. He did not forget the varsity that churned a leader out of him. Such was his love for his political roots,” the professor said.

Almost echoing Chaturvedi, another JNU-ite and socialist Surajit Mukhopadhyay recalled his memories about “Sita”.

“I heard him speak several times at JNU and once in Calcutta. I was impressed by his soft persuasive gentle arguments. One could talk to him on a wide range of issues. That fascinated me as a young student. He symbolised the very essence of JNU. Reason, reading, arguments and engagement with the matter both empirically and theoretically,” Mukhopadhyay said.

He added that Yechury’s death would leave a huge vacuum in the country’s Left movement as well as against the consolidated fight against communal forces in India.