On March 23, 1932, the Congress declared that it would force all public buildings to fly the party flag and force the administration to bring down the Union Jack. The British issued shoot-at-sight orders.
Fearing that its entire movement might be jeopardised by this one adventurist action, the Congress cancelled its plan. But a 16-year-old boy turned up at the Congress office in Hoshiarpur that morning and demanded a flag. He was told the plan had been cancelled. He refused to accept this and went to the collectorate with a Congress flag, brought down the Union Jack, and planted his own flag.
The police were about to shoot him when the collector came out and asked his name. “My name is London Todo Singh,” he replied. He was imprisoned, beaten up and tortured. But not once did Harkishan Singh Surjeet reveal what his name was.
Communists reject religion but Surjeet was an exception in this as he was in so many other matters — he was the only top Communist leader who flaunted a symbol of his religion.
He joined the Communist Party in 1934. For Indian Communists, this was a crucial period. War clouds were hanging over the world and in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, it was time to decide on which side of the fence they stood — should they endorse the earlier sectarian tendency of the Communist International or join the front against Fascism? Was it an imperialist war or a people’s war? During this period, many streams from the revolutionary groups, the Congress Socialist Party and the working class movement joined the party.
Surjeet also became a member and fired by the Communist ideals, offered to discard his turban and cut his long hair. He was tasked with working with the Kisan Sabha (the party’s peasant wing). How could he work among Punjab farmers without looking like a Sikh? He was ordered to retain his defining feature. Surjeet obeyed.
Soon after he rose to prominence in the party, Surjeet presented a paper on the policies of the Kisan Sabha which was so completely opposed to the ideas of the top leaders of the time like P Rammurthy that it was rejected. But everyone noted the new recruit’s ideas.
He became party general secretary in 1992. By now, conditions in India were similar to those in Europe in 1934, the year he had become a Communist. A colleague, EMS Namboodiripad, was fond of observing that if the Congress was cholera, the BJP was plague.
So what should a Communist do — join a front against fascism or oppose both fascism and imperialism? He chose the former, proving himself an expert in coalition politics. His acceptability and humility were his assets. Perhaps this was the reason he took an uninvited Amar Singh to 10 Janpath when the UPA was being formed.
Surjeet was more popular outside his party than within. As general secretary, almost all major policy changes proposed by him were rejected by the Central Committee and the Politburo, which was already in the grip of a new young band led by Prakash Karat.
The biggest defeat, of course, was his failure to make Jyoti Basu the prime minister. Throughout his term as the party’s general secretary, he remained a minority force in the internal politics of the CPI(M). After his defeat in 1996, he wanted to step down. He told comrades that as his line was not acceptable to the party, he should not be the one to run it. However, others stopped him.
But the CPI(M) proved that it was no better than others when it came to having a 20/20 vision in hindsight. In 1996, the party rejected Basu’s name for prime ministership. If a similar situation were to arise today, the CPI(M) would not say no to an office in South Block.
Surjeet and Basu have been hailed as “living legends” in the party but there were striking differences between them. Basu sometimes went public to voice his disapproval over the way the party was handling some issues. Surjeet was rebuffed and his line rejected but never, not once, did he ever criticise his party outside the four walls of AK Gopalan Bhawan.
What endeared Surjeet to people? When he was underground in the 1930s, his parents arranged his marriage. Halfway through the anand karaj, even before he could lift his wife’s veil, the police came and took him away. After some months, when his sister came to see him in prison, she brought a young woman with her. Surjeet paid no attention and at the end of the conversation asked idly: “Who is this?” “That’s your wife,” his sister replied.
In the last few months of his life, he ceased to recognise people. But Harkishan Singh Surjeet never failed to recognise changing times. He was the party’s obedient servant but never a dogmatic one.
