Pranab: A filial perspective

Pranab Mukherjee's daughter shares an unputdownable account of her father's diary - filled with entertaining anecdotes, priceless stories, and some controversial perspectives

Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers 

Author: Sharmistha Mukherjee

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 380

Price: Rs 795

This is one of those books in which you get to read two stories for the price of one. Sharmistha’s recollections of growing up as the daughter of one of India’s leading politicians, Pranab Mukherjee, who was  President of the country, its finance, external affairs, defence, and commerce minister, and a veteran Congressman, is as much her story as her father’s. It is charming, artless, and sometimes disingenuous. But it is a valuable account because it describes her father, a complex politician, from a different perspective.

Mukherjee  wrote his memoirs but bequeathed his diaries to his daughter. This book is based on his diary notings, though it is embellished with accounts of conversations Sharmistha had with her parents, daughters of her father’s political and other associates who played with her as friends and what she observed at their home.

First, Sharmistha’s story: After a short and unmemorable stint as a Congress politician, Sharmistha announced her retirement from politics (2021). She says the thought came to her after the Congress’s disastrous defeat in the Delhi Assembly elections in February 2020, the party failing to win a single seat for the second time, with a vote share down to 4.26 per cent. She says she sought her father’s advice. “Baba, would you feel very bad if I quit politics?” Pat came the reply, “When did you do politics that you would quit?” That was classical Pranab Mukherjee. But he advised his daughter to always remember a Sanskrit phrase, “Swadharme Nidhanam Shreyah [It is better to perish in your own dharma]. Always remember that Congress is your  swadharma,” he told her.

No matter which side of the political spectrum he strategically favoured, this much is true: That Mukherjee  obeyed his swadharma his entire life. The book records that the Congress never gave him what he wanted: The prime ministership. But although his daughter writes that he told her Sonia Gandhi would “never let him become Prime Minister”, the book explains his tussles with the ruling cliques, whether around Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao, Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi.

His strategic political autonomy riled the Congress no end (both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul skipped the ceremony when he was awarded the Bharat Ratna). He made no effort to course-correct and instead went on with constant unfavourable comparisons of Congress leaders with Narendra Modi. For instance, on October 23, 2014, he noted in his diary: “PM’s decision to spend Diwali with jawans at Siachen and flood affected people at Srinagar speaks of his political sense, which was not visible in any other PM except Indira Gandhi.”

In 2013, after Rahul Gandhi had torn up a government ordinance on criminals in politics, Mukherjee wrote in his diary: “He has all the arrogance of his Gandhi–Nehru lineage without their political acumen....The party’s vice-president had shown such disdain for his own government publicly. Why should people vote for you again? Perhaps his distance from the party and a lack of killer instinct could be reasons for his failure to enthuse the party workers to fight the election — which BJP got from Narendra Modi.”

But the book also makes note of Mukherjee’s interventions that saved the Congress’s bacon on more than one occasion. The conclusion it reaches is that Mukherjee was unable to say/do what political survival in the Congress demanded — obsequiousness, sycophancy, call it what you will — and thus paid the price.

But did he? As a Congresswoman at the time, his daughter was the first one to criticise his move of attending a function at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters while President of India. But now that she is no longer in the Congress, she says she sees what made him do it. Also, while the party created Pranab Mukherjee the institution, he made his peace with violation of institutions during the Emergency. The extenuating factor he cited was loyalty to Indira Gandhi, but his daughter says he did not rebut her when she challenged him on this intellectual compromise.

The book has some extremely entertaining anecdotes: About Mukherjee’s love marriage to his wife Geeta; and his personal quirks, especially his short temper. On March 15, 1994, he notes: “Today in RS [Rajya Sabha] I made an ass of myself simply by losing my temper”. He adds,

with a metaphoric groan: “I do not know what to do with my temper…I cannot but only curse myself”.

It also tells the story of Mukherjee’s encounter with one Pashupati Mandal, an MP who served four terms without making a single speech, being in such mortal fear of speaking in the House that he locked himself in the Parliament House bathroom for five hours when the Speaker warned him that he would be calling upon Mr Mandal to make his “maiden speech”. Yet, the same man delivered rousing speeches in his constituency.

Similarly priceless is the story of how, as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Mukherjee “bribed” Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Gegong Apang, known to make speeches that would go on for hours rather than minutes, with Rs 1 crore extra for his state for every five minutes he shaved off his speech. At the next meeting of the National Development Council, Mr Apang cut his peroration short and got the loudest applause from the other chief minister who waited his turn to speak with mounting dread.

These and many other stories — both the daughter’s and the father’s — told with candour and honesty make this book unputdownable.