New Delhi: Soon after lighting the lamp and presenting the first copy of her book Pranab: My Father: A Daughter Remembers to a portrait of her late father, Sharmistha Mukherjee took to the podium to address a packed hall at the India International Centre, Delhi. But she reserved her special gratitude for one particular guest.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, looking at former Finance Minister P Chidambaram. “Thank you so much for coming.” Chidambaram was the only prominent Congressman present.
And Sharmistha used the stage to vent her share of grievances with the Congress. “Do they [Congress] want to control what a gentleman writes in his diary or says to his daughter? Congress social media behaves exactly like BJP trolls. Where does their stand on freedom of speech go when I use it to criticise their leader [Rahul Gandhi]?”
The absence of the Congress leaders was pointed out repeatedly — four times to be precise. “The book has caused quite an earthquake because of some comments,” said Pavan Varma, former bureaucrat and the guest of honour, as the audience laughed under its breath. “Nobody else from the Congress [except Chidambaram] is here. One could be because he was a staunch Congress loyalist, but not loyal to any leader.”
Sharmistha nodded with a sheepish grin. “He has given an honest opinion of some people in the Congress. He knew he couldn’t make those comments. So he left it to me,” the former Congress spokesperson said. She also revealed that many leaders from the party were invited, and some had even responded positively, but people just didn’t show up.
The book, in which Sharmistha used the late president’s meticulous diary entries as notes, was launched on his 88th birth anniversary.
Mukherjee, before becoming president, was a lifelong Congressman and held various portfolios in UPA I and UPA II Cabinets. He was close to Indira Gandhi, who was impressed by his speech on the nationalisation of banks that he delivered as a newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP in 1969.
Barring former Delhi BJP chief and ex-MoS Vijay Goel and Chidambaram, the launch of the book, offering insights into one of the most successful statesmen in recent history, was overwhelmed by journalists, young and old.
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Rahul and Pranab
The book didn’t even need a launch. It has already become the talk in Lutyens Delhi and beyond after Mukherjee’s controversial opinions on Rahul Gandhi were published in the media. One pointed out that Mukherjee believed that the Congress leader had the arrogance of his family without their political acumen. Another jibe going viral is an excerpt recalling how Gandhi had turned up at Mukherjee’s office in the morning, even though the meeting was scheduled in the evening. Pranab noted in his diaries that before running PMO, Rahul Gandhi ought to learn the difference between AM and PM.
That the remark made it out of the late president’s diaries to national headlines right after the Congress lost Rajasthan and Chattisgarh to the BJP and performed underwhelmingly in Madhya Pradesh has added salt to the wounds of an already dampened party.
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Presidency wasn’t a consolation prize
Moderator, former bureaucrat, and a close friend of the Mukherjees, Varma posed difficult questions to Sharmistha, who took them with grace, although her pitch rose when she fielded tough questions.
When Sharmistha asked Varma to repeat his question, he remarked: “It’s like you don’t even want to hear my questions.”
But Mukherjee played the discussion like a test match, slow and steady, not letting discomfort get the better of her. When Varma asked about Pranab’s role in the Emergency years, Sharmistha acknowledged that in the later years, Pranab thought the Emergency wasn’t the best decision. But revisionist history, she said, is forgetting why Emergency was needed.
“There was total anarchy in the country. One has to see things in a historical perspective. Emergency was a constitutional provision. Under the current narrative, the Emergency is a black day, but nobody is asking under which conditions it was imposed,” she said.
Although, the audience sniggered whenever Rahul Gandhi’s name was taken on stage — as if it was an inside joke—it didn’t turn out to be an out-and-out occasion washing Congress’ dirty linen in public. Sharmistha, though discontent with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, wasn’t out to viciously attack.
She also dismissed the narrative that Sonia Gandhi and her cohort offered Pranab the presidency during UPA II as a consolation prize because he was a frontrunner for prime ministership when UPA I came to power. On that note, though, Sharmistha revealed that former Vice President Hamid Ansari was also a frontrunner for the presidency, and Pranab had reached out to Mulayam Singh Yadav to ensure he doesn’t lose out on the chair.
“Sonia was threatened by my father, she thought he could challenge her authority,” Sharmistha said. But she added that while there was a ‘trust deficit’, Sonia Gandhi was gracious and indeed trusting enough to offer Pranab key ministries throughout the UPA tenure, even though he had to content himself with the defence and finance ministries instead of Home. “That [defence] was the one sector he didn’t have much knowledge about. He was surprised when that was given to him. He thought he would be more helpful as the home minister since it’s also a political role,” Sharmistha said.
She added that despite all this, Pranab felt he enjoyed more autonomy under Manmohan Singh than any other prime minister he had worked for before.
BJP not spared
Sharmistha didn’t mince her words while criticising the BJP. However, any criticism was articulated only after profusely apologising to Vijay Goel.
She said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government’s vilification of Nehru is condemnable. “The Prime Minister didn’t even take Nehru’s name while addressing the government in the new Parliament. Making of India is a continuous process. You cannot take the process to such an extent that the atmosphere is vitiated,” she said.
Sharmistha also elaborated on the cordial relationship between Pranab and Modi when they worked together, even though they subscribed to different ideologies.
She also shed light on Pranab’s controversial visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s headquarters in Nagpur in 2018, something she was publicly opposed to. “But he reached the RSS office and gave a speech on Congress’ ideologies,” she said.
One comment on Twitter summed it all up, she said: “Pranab Mukherjee trolled RSS.”
Not all of the audience members heard Pranab’s thoughts on the Sangh Parivar. The one and a half hour talk was a bit too long for them and many were dozing off in their seats. The drowsy audience got up just in time to line up and get the author’s signature.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)