Was Former CPI(M) General Secretary Late Sitaram Yechury A Christian?

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury passed away on 12 September 2024. Following his death an image went viral on social media. The image shows a banner written in Hindi, "Comrade Sitaram Yechury Amar Rahe", in front of which there's a coffin and many people are standing around. It has been claimed that Sitaram Yechury was a Christian and that's why his body was kept in a coffin.

Sharing the image, the user wrote, "Name: Sitaram Yechuri

Religion: Christian

Imagine how many people he had fooled with his Hindu name while being a rice bag all along".

Facebook Link | Archived Link.

However, upon investigation, we found that the claim is false. Sitaram Yechury is not a Christian; he is an atheist born into a Telugu Brahmin family. Here's the fact check.

Fact Check

We started our investigation by conducting a reverse image search. As a result, we found the viral image uploaded on 14 September 2024 on the official X handle of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union(JNUSU). Along with the viral image two more images and a video were attached to the tweet where JNUSU paid homage to Sitaram Yechury.

Archived Link

Moving forward, using relevant keywords, we found a video uploaded on 10 August 2017 on the Sandad TV YouTube channel. The video showed excerpts from Sitaram Yechury's farewell speech from Rajyasabha. From the timestamp 16:03 of the video, Sitaram Yechury could be heard saying that he was born in Madras (now Chennai) General Hospital to a Telugu Brahmin family. His grandfather was a judge who moved to Guntur, so the whole family moved there in 1954. Sitaram Yechury was born in 1952. In 1956, they moved to Hyderabad. His school education was in an Islamic culture that was prevalent in Hyderabad under the Nizam rule in the early days of independence. Then he went to Delhi and studied there. Sitaram Yechury continued saying, "I am married to a person whose father is a Sufi of the Islamic order, and whose surname is Chisti… Her mother is a Rajput but a Mysorean Rajput who migrated there in the 8th century AD. We’re now in the 21st Century…I am from a south Indian Brahmin family married to this lady, what will my son be known as, sir?… There’s nothing that can describe my son rather than being an Indian. That is our country..."

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This makes it clear that by birth Sitaram Yechury was a Telugu Brahmin.

We conducted a keyword search again and then we found a tweet by Sitaram Yechury criticizing a remark by then Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in 2017, in which he called himself an atheist.

CPI(M), on their official X handle, mentioned that Sitaram Yechury's body was donated to AIIMS Delhi for medical research.

According to a report published in The Hindu, no last rites were held for Sitaram Yechury as his body was embalmed and donated to AIIMS Delhi for medical research.

Another report can be read here.

There is no religious aspect of keeping the body in a coffin. The body was embalmed for medical research and that's why it was kept in the coffin.

We contacted veteran CPI(M) leader and close aide of Mr. Sitaram Yechury, Mr. Prakash Karat, who clarified to us that, "Sitaram Yechury was a confirmed atheist, though he was born in a Telugu Brahmin family. His body was donated to the AIIMS for research as per his wishes. No religious rituals of any sort were conducted".

Conclusion

From our investigation, we can say that the claim is false. Sitaram Yechury was not a Christian. He was born to a Telugu Brahmin family, but he was an atheist. His body was embalmed and donated to AIIMS Delhi for medical research.