'Baba felt Rahul had the arrogance of his lineage minus their acumen'

She tells Archis Mohan how she was wrong in opposing her father's visit to the RSS headquarters, his views on Rahul Gandhi, his equation with PM Narendra Modi, and her political ambitions

Sharmistha Mukherjee, a former Delhi Congress leader and daughter of former President of India Pranab Mukherjee, will launch her book, Pranab, My Father, in New Delhi on Monday on his birth anniversary. She tells Archis Mohan how she was wrong in opposing her father’s visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters (HQs), his views on Rahul Gandhi, his equation with Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, and her political ambitions. Edited excerpts:

Why did you decide to write the book at this juncture?

The question was never about any juncture. My father expected me to write the book and had made me the custodian of his diaries. He also made it clear that it had to be done posthumously. He even forbade me to read the diaries during his lifetime when I suggested that we start working on them.
 

I began working on his diaries after he passed away in August 2020. It took me more than two years to work on the book. December 11 is his birth anniversary, and we decided to release the book that day.
 

I have tried to capture his journey, from his birth in rural Bengal to reaching Raisina Hill. I have also written about Baba as a person and how being his daughter influenced my life.
 

His work as an administrator, his contribution to policymaking, his long years in the government, and the Bills he introduced or helped pass would require voluminous research and probably another book. What intrigued me the most was his relationship with the PMs he worked with.
 

What about his relationship with the Nehru-Gandhi family?

I have touched upon his relationship with Indira Gandhi in detail. He would say that working with Indira was the golden period of his life and that she was his mentor, and he reached the heights he did thanks to her. I have devoted almost a chapter to the rumour that he had staked his claim to be the interim PM. He said it was false.

According to him, the root cause was mistrust. There are also details of his friendship with P V Narasimha Rao and Baba’s disappointment that when Rao died, his body was not allowed inside the Congress HQs.
 

Much has been said about his views about Rahul Gandhi.

There are barely half a dozen references to Rahul Gandhi in a book that is 370 pages long, but you know how the media works. There was hardly any interaction between the two. The earliest reference in Baba’s diaries to Rahul is from the end of United Progressive Alliance-I (2009), when, at a Congress Working Committee meeting on the election strategy for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, Rahul vehemently opposed any alliances, with Baba asking him to put across his views more logically, to which Rahul said he would come and meet him.
 

Rahul met him rarely during Baba’s presidential term. An observation of his about Rahul that I can share is that Baba felt Rahul had lots of questions but shifted from one topic to another, and, he wrote, one wonders how much he absorbs.
 

In 2013, Rahul trashed an ordinance publicly, which made Baba very angry. That night, he wrote in his diary that Rahul had the arrogance of his lineage without their political acumen. It shook my father’s faith in Rahul. He felt that Rahul was courteous but needed to mature politically.
 

After the Congress defeat in the 2014 elections, Baba wrote in his diary that Rahul seemed distant, which left Congress workers unenthused. Perhaps he lacked the killer instinct, he wrote.
 

What was Pranab Mukherjee’s equation with Narendra Modi?

After he became President, Baba’s earliest mention of Modi is from his initial years at Rashtrapati Bhavan when Modi, who was then the Gujarat chief minister, invited him to attend the Vibrant Gujarat Summit. He wrote that Modi is a bitter critic of the Congress government, that there had been sharp exchanges between Modi and him at the National Development Council meeting, but he “has a strange soft corner for me”, “touches my feet”, “and told me that he takes pleasure in doing so”.

The PM shared with me his first meeting with Baba after becoming the PM-designate, where he touched his feet and sought guidance but was slightly nervous. “Dada told me very frankly that we come from different ideologies, but it is you who have the mandate to rule. Governance is your job, and I will not interfere. But on constitutional matters, if you need it, I will help you. Dada ke liye yeh kehna bahut badi baat thi,” the PM told me.
 

Their relationship began on an open and honest note. Baba fervently believed that a President should be a copybook President, and this belief of his predated his reaching Raisina Hill. He felt that the job of governance was that of the executive. The President should not interfere with that. He was conscious of his constitutional role as President and his constitutional limitations. He made a conscious effort that the PM and he should work as a team.
 

You were unhappy when he visited the RSS HQs in Nagpur.

Frankly, I was extremely angry with my father. I even tweeted against it. I fought with him day in and day out, asking him not to attend. He stuck to his point, even snapped at me, and was irritated by the Congress and the Left circle’s narrative that he 

was giving the RSS legitimacy by visiting the RSS headquarters.
 

He said, “Who am I to give them legitimacy when the people of India have elected a pracharak as the PM with a majority?”

But when I look back, I think I was exceptionally stupid. The Congress jumped the gun in its criticism. Later, people observed that my father held up a mirror to the RSS. His critics should have waited for his speech at the RSS headquarters before letting their discomfort known. He believed that in a democracy, dialogue is paramount. He used the RSS platform to preach Congress ideology. He quoted Pandit Nehru, their bête noir, on their platform. During that time, I learnt that my father, in one of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) sessions, had called for banning the RSS. The credit goes to the RSS for reaching out to a person who had once demanded banning the RSS.
 

It is quite paradoxical that Congress preaches tolerance and freedom of expression but reacted the way it did, while the RSS, which seemingly holds the opposite view, invited Baba when they knew he was not going to endorse their ideology.
 

Where do you see yourself in active politics?

I quit politics two years ago, in 2021. I do not blame the party. I wasn’t meant for politics. I joined in 2014 at a very late age. I broached the topic of my quitting politics with Baba when he was alive after the Congress’ devastating defeat in the February 2020 Delhi Assembly polls. It had galled me that we failed to give a good fight. I asked Baba whether he would feel bad if I quit politics, to which he promptly replied, “When did you ever do politics that you would quit?”
 

I also reassured him that I did not have any intention of joining any other political party. He quoted a Sanskrit phrase, “Swadharme Nidhanam Shreyah’ (It is better to perish in your dharma). Always remember that Congress is our Swadharma.” Congress is my Swadharma, and I will always ideologically belong to the Congress. But that Congress, perhaps, now exists only in the pages of history. Now, people are attributing motives that I want to go to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). People lured by power fail to see beyond this.
 

A Rajya Sabha seat is not a nirvana for everybody. Politics does not lure me, and after Baba’s demise, I didn’t want to be in politics.
 

What were Pranab Mukherjee’s views about reviving Congress?

He kept telling me that Congress has to survive. In his diary, he wrote that he could not believe in a Congress-mukt Bharat. But he had lost faith in Rahul. Immediately after the 2014 defeat, he noted in his diary that the only way forward for the Congress was to restore internal democracy. He felt the centralisation of power and sycophancy of the Nehru-Gandhi family could not go on.
 

The earliest observation on this is from the December 1975 AICC session in Chandigarh, where he noted there was no dissent. Still, it took him more than 40 years to admit to himself that perhaps all was not well with his mentor Indira. In his post-retirement days, there are references to Indira’s feet of clay, of a personality cult around the family developing during her time.

In an entry on December 18, 1998, in the context of a special AICC session held in Talkatora Stadium in Delhi, he noted sarcastically, “The whole session was Sonia vandana”. After Independence, if five family members of the same family controlled the Congress presidency for 37 years, it speaks of the worst form of hegemony, he noted. He wondered whether the blind loyalty of people like him to Indira in the 1970s and 80s, and later to Sonia, was greatly responsible for mortgaging the party to the family.