Prakash Karat greets Sonia Gandhi at the funeral. (Below) Karat with Mulayam Singh Yadav at the CPM headquarters. Pictures by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, Aug. 3: Former CPM general secretary and one of the country’s most respected old communists, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, was cremated with a rousing Red-cadre guard of honour and a sombre three-gun salute by Delhi police this evening.

Full-throated bursts of “lal salaam, lal salaam” rose in the rain-drenched air as elder son Paramjeet Singh lit his pyre at the Nigambodh Ghat on the banks of the Yamuna.

Wife Pritam Kaur, daughter Charanjeet Kaur, sons Paramjeet and Gurchetan, grandson Sandeep and brother Jujhar Singh stood composed among thousands of mourners who had gathered to bid the 92-year-old Marxist their final farewell.

Among them were several of his lifetime comrades — Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, Biman Bose, and A.B. Bardhan of the CPI — and an array of allies and adversaries: Congress president and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi; Union ministers Shivraj Patil, Jaipal Reddy and Saifuddin Soz; Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayavati; former Prime Ministers I.K. Gujral and H.D. Deve Gowda; Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh; and Telugu Desam chief N. Chandrababu Naidu.

Surjeet, who held the CPM’s reins during an ideologically testing and politically difficult period that spanned from 1992 to 2005, had passed away after a long illness on Friday.

His mortal remains were brought to his 8 Teen Murti Lane residence from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for a brief while this morning before being moved to the CPM’s A.K. Gopalan Bhavan headquarters.

Both places streamed with people arrived to pay respects. Sonia and Mayavati both went to the Surjeet home to pay homage and spend time with the family. Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Union home minister Shivraj Patil and railway minister Lalu Prasad were among the mourners too.

“My lal salaams to him,” Lalu Prasad said. “He was a real messiah for the poor and the underprivileged. Such great leaders are not born every day.”

Among those who visited the CPM headquarters to pay their last respects were defence minister A.K. Antony, chemicals minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav and BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and V.K. Malhotra.

Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, who had attended the last rites of Surjeet’s predecessor E.M.S. Namboodiripad, was prominent by his absence.

The CPM headquarters, where the leader’s body lay most afternoon draped in the blazing party flag, teemed with cadres holding aloft Surjeet’s portraits and fisting the air with “lal salaam” cries.

At the stroke of three, his remains were carried out — Karat and Yechury were the lead pall-bearers — and placed on an open truck. It was surrounded by cadres holding hands and decked with roses and party banners.

Karat, Yechury and Bose travelled beside the body along with Surjeet’s sons and Dr Purushottam Lal of Noida’s Metro Hospital where Surjeet breathed his last.

The truck rolled in a hail of “Comrade Surjeet amar rahen” from cadres. Thousands followed it in a snaking column of red flags that slowly wove through parts of central Delhi, skirting Paharganj, curving along Connaught Place, then underneath the Minto Bridge and onto the final lap past Rouse Avenue and Rajghat.

It was a Sunday, and the cortege proceeded blessed by the absence of traffic. It was also rainy and overcast, but this wasn’t a lachrymal farewell, not in the least.

If anything, it was a hearty sendoff to a leader whose followers thought the task was upon them now to take ahead. It wasn’t unsentimental, but the governing sentiment was not soppy solemnity, it was stout solidarity.

“Comrade Surjeet ki soch par, pehra denge thok kar,” was the cry that rang out from a feisty and robust section of the procession — a throng that had descended from Punjab to pay their last respects.

“He is gone,” said one of them from Surjeet’s native Badala, “but his thinking hasn’t. What are we there for?”