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If there was one man who was responsible for pivotal role that the Left parties played on the national stage from 1989 to 2008, it was Harkishen Singh Surjeet, who passed into the ages on August 1. He was 92.
During the last two decades, the Left parties influenced governments and policy, quite disproportionate to the mass, parliamentary or geographic following they enjoyed.
Right from the days of V P Singh's prime ministership to H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral and P V Narasimha Rao in his early days as a minority government and finally in 2004 when the Left decided to support the UPA and wielded enormous influence over the Manmohan Singh ministry, the Left has called many a shot.
Surjeet: Pragmatic king-maker and coalition man
Surjeet emerged as a maker and influencer of prime ministers since the eighties. But for him and the Left's support, V P Singh may not have become prime minister in 1989. It was Surjeet who played a key role in persuading the Left parties to support the National Front ministry led by V P Singh, even though the 'untouchable' Bharatiya Janata Party was also supporting it from the outside.
But for him, Rajiv Gandhi may have become prime minister in early 1991.Tensions developed between Chandrashekhar and Rajiv Gandhi soon after Chandrashekhar replaced V P Singh, at the head of a rump, supported from the outside by the Congress. There was a little known move to install Rajiv as prime minister, while making Jyoti Basu and Devi Lal deputy prime ministers. Wittingly or unwittingly, Surjeet is believed to have spilled the beans to Chandrashekhar and the move got aborted,.
Surjeet was instrumental in H D Deve Gowda being installed in South Block, when both Jyoti Basu and Chandrababu Naidu turned down premiership offered to them in mid 1996. The then Congress president Narasimha Rao also favoured Gowda, thinking that he would be more pliant and may in time make way for Rao.
Had he not gone to Moscow in 1997, Mulayam Singh Yadav may have made it as prime minister. When then Congress president Sitaram Kesri pulled the plug on Gowda, Surjeet favoured the installation of Mulayam as his successor. He left for Moscow thinking the plan was in place. It came unstuck in the hours that followed with Lalu Yadav asserting his stiff opposition to the move and Jyoti Basu was persuaded to support I K Gujral, who was not favoured by Surjeet.
Dr Manmohan Singh enjoyed a rapport with Surjeet and was known to consult him. In fact Surjeet helped him bring in Montek Singh Ahluwalia, whose name was being opposed by the Left parties in 2004, as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.
He was at the centre of political action when the United Progressive Alliance government was being cobbled together in 2004. It was Surjeet who brought Samajawadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh 'gatecrashing' to the famous UPA dinner at 10, Janpath soon after the UPA came to power, setting the stage for the SP's subsequent animosity towards the Congress.
Comrade Surjeet understood the value of relationships and it was thanks to these relationships across parties that he was able to play the role of the grand reconciler. His detractors used to say that he could have breakfast with Morarji Desai, lunch with Charan Singh and dinner with Jagjivan Ram during the first anti-Congress experiment in 1975-77, intervene in the quarrels of Janata Dal during those heady days between 1987-90, defuse tensions during the United Front's stewardship of the country in 1996-97, and get the Left to support the UPA in 2004.
While he was convinced about the need to create a non-Congress, non-BJP platform, he helped dilute the anti-Congress mindset of the Marxists when the BJP emerged as a force and the CPI-M decided to back the Congress. Though the CPI had been close to the Congress during Indira Gandhi's premiership, this had not been the case with the CPI-M.
The general secretary of the CPI-M for four terms, it must not have been easy in 1992 to have stepped into the shoes of E M S Namboodiripad, who was a colossus. Very few Communists understood north Indian politics and its nuances as Harkishen Singh Surjeet. He was the only north Indian leader amongst the top hierarchy of Communists since the party split in 1964. But he had an equation also with the southern parties and enjoyed a rapport with both the AIADMK as well as the DMK.
Surjeet has been described as the Chanakya of Indian coalitions. While at one level this was true, endowed as he was with immense patience, pragmatism and flexibility, and an ability to bring together warring individual leaders and diverse political formations on a common platform. But he could be more than a skilful practitioner of realpolitik.
A nationalist -- and a pragmatist -- to the core, he worked closely, and behind the scenes, with Rajiv Gandhi -- and later with Narasimha Rao -- to try and meet the challenge of the separatist movement in Punjab, from the early eighties to 1993, which he opposed passionately.
At a time when the Indian state was fighting against secessionists, he met with their leaders, who were in jail to bring them around. He was also not averse to sitting, at meetings, formal or informal, or issuing joint statements with leaders from the BJP and the Akali Dal, though he was dead against them, to find a way out of the Punjab imbroglio.
As probably he was the last of the Communists linked to the country's freedom movement -- he was drawn to the legendary Bhagat Singh at the age of 15, and joined his Naujawan Bharat Sabha five years before he joined the Communist Party of India -- and as someone who went on to play an equally crucial role in the 60 years after independence, it is in the fitness of things, that Surjeet should be given a state funeral.