Anybody who interacted with Pranab Mukherjee during one of his informal interactions, either as the First Citizen or in his numerous avatars as a member of the Union Cabinet, is familiar with his response: “I have written in my diary but the content will not be known during my lifetime”. He said so in one form/language or the other.
Sharmistha Mukherjee
Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers
Rupa Publications (December 2023)
That is why Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers is such an important book. It brings to the fore, for the first time, the observations and apprehensions of India’s most respected and astute politician while infusing what is essentially a crucial piece of Indian history with honesty, spontaneity, and welcome wit that are hallmarks of the daughter – Sharmistha Mukherjee. From spurning her father’s cryptic offer for the Jangipur seat – “Lodbi (will you fight)” – to becoming a Congress politician after her father asked her if she wanted to become one and then starting veritably from the bottom to quit it all and now to write this book that has created a mini political storm in a teacup over Mukherjee’s observations about Rahul Gandhi, Sharmistha has travelled some distance, her brief political sojourn notwithstanding.
She has had kings holding umbrellas for her (then Bhutan king Jigme Singye Wangchuk), and the man who her father thought was the only prime minister of the county after Indira Gandhi with his hand on the people’s pulse – Narendra Modi – honouring her impromptu dance programme invites and giving her appointments to talk about life and politics in general. The stories flow thick and fast along with extracts from the valuable diaries (tomes that even she was not allowed to read during his lifetime, as she mentioned during the launch event earlier this week). What one misses in those pages are indications about her own equation with the leaders of the party – Congress – she briefly served and is often left wondering whether those Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) meetings have outlived the greatest prime minister India never had.
The book in a sense eats and breathes politics but is a must-read not just for students of politics or history. It is a breezy and enjoyable read, an honest account, at least in the first part (before politics eclipsed the personal in Pranab’s life) as much of the young man who quickly became among Indira Gandhi’s most trusted lieutenants as of Geeta (Pranab’s wife Subhra) – the woman who stood surety for one prime minister (P.V. Narasimha Rao) and “wept uncontrollably” for another (Indira Gandhi) and at whose funeral, the prime minister of another country (Sheikh Hasina) could not hold back her tears. Even the family’s pets feature prominently – from the one who bit a future prime minister to the one that bit the master during one of the lowest points of his life – when he was left out of the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet in 1984.
In fact, rarely is there a book that has politics at its core this wholesome.
Sharmistha’s disclaimer in the foreword that she is not a writer comes across as rhetorical humility. She does a deft job of chronicling what it was like being the daughter of Pranab Mukherjee (as advised by her friend, author Amitav Ghosh) while also etching a warm, loving picture of the human being behind the political persona of a workaholic, a leader whose political acumen was respected across the political divide (Bhutan king told his three wives that he was holding the umbrella for Sharmistha “for her father”) and across borders and yet, who managed to win a mere two Lok Sabha elections in his political life of 48 years (he first entered parliament as a Rajya Sabha member in 1969). Through all of this, the backdrop of contemporary politics is never allowed to fade.
The book touches upon his own internal turmoils – how he struggled to keep his temper and chastised himself in the pages of his diary for failing to do so and his propensity to use the phrase “firmly and frankly” to describe his own interventions while documenting many of his political meetings. She also shared witty yet politically loaded anecdotes of how the political blended into the personal (Pranab parrying his daughter’s query about why he won’t share his prime ministerial ambitions with Congress president Sonia Gandhi with a hilarious “I am not like you that I would throw a tantrum when I don’t get what I want”).
He was a no-nonsense but loving father – in the mould of many middle-class fathers of his generation. For example when ex-UK PM Margaret Thatcher met her during a visit to India and asked her, “You have the beauty and grace of a dancer. Are you a dancer?” sending a young Sharmistha over the moon, Pranab gives his daughter a reality check that visiting dignitaries are briefed about family members of key people in the host country. But when Sharmistha’s performance in Rashtrapati Bhawan he objected to on the ground that she is not in the league of performers that normally get to be on that exalted stage goes off flawlessly in the presence of the newly sworn-in prime minister of India Narendra Modi who Sharmistha had invited almost on an impulse much to the discomfiture of her father, the proud father records it in his precious diary.
Much has been made of Pranab’s observations about a younger Rahul Gandhi in his diaries, coloured no doubt also by the timing of the book’s release – less than six months to the next parliamentary elections. Sharmistha launched a spirited counterattack to the Congress ecosystem at the launch event when she asked whether the proponents of freedom of speech want to control what a man writes in his diary and what his daughter reminisces about him. Those diaries – and the book – also have countless instances of the trust deficit between Pranab and the Gandhis post-Indira, sometimes trying to address their genesis and at others offering Pranab’s own assessment like when he says of Sonia: “She is only trying to protect her own and her family’s interests.”
The launch at the India International Centre on Monday was significantly bereft of any Congress leaders except former Union minister P. Chidambaram, whose coming was a surprise even for the author and who, ironically is also the man often accused by political opponents of having bugged Pranab’s office when both were a part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) cabinet. But there are unsavoury comments – admittedly far less scathing – made against both sides of the political divide in the book while tackling some of the criticism that had dogged Pranab’s public life (retrospective tax, constitutional crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand).
When asked about the former president’s appearance on a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) stage during the launch conversation with former diplomat Pawan Verma, the author could barely hide her glee about a tweet that she had come across during Pranab’s speech in which he had espoused the Congress ideology from a stage that is usually witness to professions of a different nature. “Pranab Mukherjee is trolling the RSS,” Sharmistha said while breaking into laughter. Pranab’s own justification about the criticism that his appearance gave “legitimacy” to the RSS was that “who am I to give legitimacy to the RSS! The people of India have given legitimacy to the RSS”.
But, there is one thought one comes out with, especially given the clear intent that Pranab seems to have conveyed – that he hopes his dear “Munni” will one day write a book from the contents of his diary. Is Pranab Mukherjee trolling the Gandhis from beyond the grave?
Abantika Ghosh is a journalist and public policy professional.