Harkishan Singh Surjeet, one of India’s great communist leaders has passed.

A Punjabi hero to the community, Surjeet struggled through British colonialism/imperialism and fought alongside many comrades for a better world. The following is a memorial written by the CIP(M).

in love,

Harjit Singh Gill

Homage to Harkishan Singh Surjeet

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) records with
profound grief the passing away of Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet,
veteran leader of the CPI(M), an outstanding figure of the Communist
movement of the country and prominent national politician.  He died after
a prolonged illness on August 1, 2008. He was 93 years old.

The seven and a half decades-long political life of Harkishan Singh
Surjeet began with his staunch fight against British colonial rule. He
played a pioneering role in developing the peasant movement and the
Communist Party in Punjab before emerging as a national leader of the
Communist Party of India and the All India Kisan Sabha. It culminated with
his leading role in the CPI(M) for an eventful four decades.

Surjeet began his revolutionary career  influenced by the martyrdom of
Bhagat Singh.  He hoisted the tricolour in March 1932 at the district
court in Hoshiarpur at the age of 16. He was arrested and sent to a
reformatory school for juvenile offenders. He came in touch with the early
Communist pioneers in Punjab after his release. He joined the Communist
Party in 1934 and became a member of the Congress Socialist Party in 1935.
He was elected as the  secretary of the Punjab State Kisan Sabha in 1938.
The same year, he was externed from Punjab and went to Saharanpur  in
Uttar Pradesh where he started a monthly paper, `Chingari’.  He went
underground after the outbreak of the second world war and was arrested in
1940. He was imprisoned in the notorious Lahore Red Fort where he was kept
for three months in solitary confinement in terrible conditions.  Later he
was shifted to Deoli detention camp where he remained till 1944.  During
the partition, he tirelessly worked for communal harmony in violence-torn
Punjab.

In common with the pioneering Communist leaders, Surjeet displayed amply
the capacity to sacrifice and undergo difficulties.  He spent ten years in
jail, of which eight were in the pre-independence period; he also spent
eight years underground.

Surjeet was elected to the Central Committee and Polit Bureau of the
Communist Party of India at the Third Congress of the Party in January
1954.  He continued in the leadership of the CPI till the split in 1964.
Surjeet was one of the leaders who fought against revisionism and
constituted the core of the leadership who went on to form the CPI(M). His
deep experience in developing the peasant movement and building the Party
led him to shun Left sectarian positions whenever such deviations arose in
the Communist movement.

He had a life-long association with the peasant movement. He led the
anti-betterment  levy struggle of the farmers in Punjab in 1959. He
served as the President and General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha
for a long period.

Surjeet was elected to the Central Committee and Polit Bureau of the
CPI(M) at the Seventh Congress in 1964 and he continued in these positions
till the recently-held Nineteenth Congress of the Party. In these  four
decades, Harkishan Singh Surjeet made a key contribution to the Party’s
programmatic and tactical policies.  He was a master tactician who could
translate the Party’s political line into practice, implementing it with
great skill and innovation.
His was a life-long fight against communalism.  He was one of the first
leaders who recognized the threat posed by the rise of the communal forces
to the secular principle of the Indian State.  He played a crucial role in
1989, 1996 and 2004 in creating the political formations and the setting
up of governments which excluded the communal forces.

Surjeet played a remarkable role in the defence of  national unity and in
formulating policies to counter the threat from the divisive forces.  His
firm stance and leadership in fighting against Khalistani terrorism in
Punjab and the sacrifice made by over 200 Communists in fighting extremism
constitutes a glorious chapter.  From the late fifties, Surjeet was
involved in tackling the problems of Jammu & Kashmir. He played a role in
the evolution of the Assam Accord in the eighties.  Imbued with deep
anti-imperialism and the values of the nationalist movement, Surjeet
looked at all issues of national unity from a democratic and secular
standpoint.

In the CPI(M), Surjeet headed the international department for three
decades. He developed relations with all the communist and progressive
parties around the world.  Under his leadership, the CPI(M) expressed firm
solidarity with  anti-imperialist struggles and national liberation
movements. He made a notable contribution to the solidarity activities
during the Vietnam liberation struggle, the Palestinian movement and the
Cuba solidarity campaign.

Surjeet played an important role in making the CPI(M) the largest
contingent of the Left movement in the country.   Surjeet absorbed
Marxism-Leninism by sheer dent of self-study and learning from experience.
He always stressed the fundamental importance of critically examining the
Party’s ideological and political positions on the basis of Marxism. After
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineteen nineties, he guided the
Party in arriving at correct positions learning from the experience of the
past.

He authored the books Land Reforms in India, Happenings in Punjab and the
Outline History of the Communist Party. He wrote innumerable pamphlets on
current political issues.

As General Secretary of the CPI(M), he became the most authoritative
spokesman for the Left and democratic forces in the country. He worked
tirelessly for the defence of democratic and secular values and to see
that India maintained its non-aligned and independent foreign  policy.
His views were sought and his advice heard with respect in political
circles.

In his death, the Party has lost an outstanding leader and the country an
authoritative representative of the Left and secular tradition.

The entire Party will cherish and uphold the ideology and principles for
which Harkishan Singh Surjeet dedicated his life.  The Polit Bureau pays
respectful homage  to this outstanding Communist and beloved leader.  It
conveys its heartfelt condolences to his wife Pritam Kaur, sons, daughter,
grandchildren and other family members.