On a freezing Sunday evening in Delhi, some of Pranab Mukherjee’s former colleagues, friends, contemporaries and students gathered to remember the ‘master negotiator’. Soon, the discussion veered into the ‘what ifs’ and how ‘he could have been given his due’ — the prime ministership.
“The two people who could have become prime ministers were both Bengalis—Jyoti Basu [former West Bengal Chief Minister] and Pranab Mukherjee,” said Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, at ‘Remembering Pranab’, a panel discussion organised by the Pranab Mukherjee Legacy Foundation on 8 January.
Yechury remembered the late president as a man who celebrated the plurality of India. “He believed that the Parliament was a sacrosanct institution of nation-building; you debate and dissent, but you decide.”
Sharmistha Mukherjee, founder of the Pranab Mukherjee Legacy Foundation and the statesman’s daughter, had set the tone for the evening. It was about her father: The President, the politician, the parliamentarian and the “consensus maker”.
“Parliament was my father’s first love. He always wanted to be a good parliamentarian. In his later years, he was very disturbed with the way the Parliament was functioning, the way ordinances were being made and passed without any proper debates,” said Sharmistha to an audience that mostly comprised academicians, politicians and bureaucrats who had started their careers in the early 1980s.
Among the speakers at the event were Pavan Varma, former diplomat and MP; Shekhar Dutt, former Governor of Chhattisgarh and ex-defence secretary; and N.K. Singh, chairman of India’s 14th Finance Commission.
Also read: Pranab Mukherjee’s wilderness years
The troubleshooter
There was roaring consensus for the ‘consensus maker’: All agreed that Mukherjee was a key instrument of negotiation — not just as an MP but also as an interlocutor between Congress and the Left.
Mukherjee was the only president in the history of India who held multiple portfolios within the Union government—from defence to external affairs, commerce to finance. He also played a crucial role during former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s tenure, where he was the ‘point person’ for consensus building between the Left and the ruling Congress party.
But the narrative changed soon after Rajiv Gandhi took over the prime ministerial reins following the assassination of his mother in 1984. Indira’s demise led to cracks within the party leadership, as Mukherjee was widely considered the late PM’s ‘rightful successor’. Mukherjee then formed his own party, Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, in 1986. However, after discussions with Rajiv, it merged with Congress in 1989.
“Without a doubt, he could have been the choice for prime minister. Even for becoming president, there was a fair amount of behind-the-scenes, including within his own party. Destiny unfairly dealt with him after Rajiv Gandhi came to power. He [Mukherjee] was actually the de-facto number two. He was a senior member of the cabinet with a vast experience in governance. Then he was treated such that he was forced to be in the wilderness for five years,” said Varma.
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Tryst with the IMF
According to Professor Dinesh Singh, former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, Mukherjee, as India’s finance minister from 1982-1984, helped boost the morale of the country’s disgruntled youth population.
“Some of us were just beginning our careers. Most of us were discouraged by what was happening to the state of our country. Dire predictions were made that India would soon become a banana republic. This was also a time when India had taken a hefty loan from the IMF,” said Singh.
He added that the loan was not only fully utilised but “was returned before time because India did not need it”.
The final instalment of the loan—amounting to $1.1 billion—was returned because India did not need it while the rest was paid in time. “All of this happened because of his guidance. People began to look at India with a certain degree of respect,” Singh said in his address.
Also read: Many in Congress will agree with Pranab Mukherjee’s view on leadership but won’t speak up
Recalling bitter memories
The trip down memory lane was tinged with bitterness. Yechury and some other panellists, like Mukherjee’s daughter lamented the passage of time and the changes it has wrought.
“My father, when he was the president, and in his post-presidential years, kept saying that Parliament disruption hurts the opposition more because then they don’t get a platform to speak,” said Sharmistha.
Without taking names, conversations were rife about how politics and Parliament now are different from what they used to be. “That was a different era of politics and it is hard to find it now,” Varma told ThePrint.
“I think we left the Rajya Sabha at the right time,” added Yechury. “Today, the Parliament does not function as the Parliament ought to function.”
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)