'There was trust, but perhaps there was also this apprehension that given the supreme post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi felt her authority may be a challenged.'
In 1980, India was headed for fresh elections after Charan Singh resigned as prime minister. Pranab Mukherjee, despite being told not to by Indira Gandhi, contested from the Bolpur seat in West Bengal, and lost badly.
The Congress-I under Indira Gandhi won the elections and Pranab was summoned to New Delhi. He went to meet Mrs Gandhi at her residence.
In his diary he wrote that she was seated at one end of a long dining table taking a foot bath as she had a cold. He stood at the other end. There was no one else in the room. Pranab was severely and endlessly reprimanded for being obstinate on contesting. Sanjay Gandhi walked in to the room at some point and said, 'Mummy, at least let him sit'.
India's 13th President left behind 51 volumes of diaries, which form the basis for his daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee's just-released biography, Pranab, My Father. A Daughter Remembers.
Though diaries from 1978 to 1985 were destroyed in a flood, what remains are incredibly meticulous memoirs -- for instance on 1 September 1975, Pranab wrote in his diary, 'PM called. Spoke to PM on phone for the first time'.
When Sharmistha asked decades later who he thought was India's best prime minister, Pranab replied, 'Indira had her strengths, but not a patch on her father'. Then he added: 'But if the daughter was the father, entire Kashmir would have been ours'.
From a career in politics that began in 1969 as a Rajya Sabha Congress MP, Pranab Mukheree went on to hold important portfolios -- finance (under Indira Gandhi), defence and external affairs (under Dr Manmohan Singh), mentored a political novice Sonia Gandhi after her husband's assassination, and finally left politics for the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Sharmistha Mukherjee talks about a father, a Bharat Ratna, a Congress firefighter and a man who came to terms with the reality that he would never be prime minister with Rediff.com's Swarupa Dutt in the concluding segment of a fascinating two-part interview:.
- Part 1 of the Interview: 'My father was disappointed by Rahul Gandhi'
You spoke of your father's dismay on the lack of grassroots leaders. On the matter he wrote, 'Grassroots have to be strengthened at every single level.
If this happens, there will be no need to raise slogans like 'Priyanka lao Congress Bachao'.
What did he think of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra?
Well, other than that reference, he doesn't mention her in his diary of 51 volumes. There was little interaction between them since Priyanka actually joined politics when my father was out of active politics.
Even in the whole book there are actually just 5-6 references of Rahul Gandhi because even with him there was hardly any interaction. But what he wrote about Rahul has been blown out of proportion.
He writes about Narendra Modi saying the PM touches his feet every time he meets him.
Modi also touched his forehead to the Parliament steps when he first entered it as an MP and a PM in 2014. But his party has subverted due process in Parliament by passing bills without debate or discussion.
Your father was such an astute politician, did he not think that these gestures are just optics if you don't follow through?
These are two totally different issues. Touching someone's feet is a part of Indian culture and sensibility and has got nothing to do with subverting democracy by going the ordinance way.
My father believed that it is the government's responsibility to run Parliament. You will find many of his speeches in the public domain during his Presidential years and even post presidency where he repeatedly said that bypassing Parliament through ordinances is a very wrong practice.
As President he spoke that it was the responsibility of the government to carry the people along who voted for them, or did not, which is the Opposition.
As President, he talked about polarisation of society, marginalisation of minorities, without making any direct reference to anybody, because he was not in politics, and it's not in his nature to directly abuse anybody. But he was a President who spoke his mind.
And then there is the word 'De-Nehrufication' used in the book. Pranab writes, 'Modi government's program of 'De-Nehrufication' has begun.
If they think they can erase Nehru-Indira-Rajiv from history, they are mistaken'.
But Pranab told you that, 'Sonia and her children believe that apart from their own family, no other leader has made any contributions to the Congress or the nation'.
So isn't there a dichotomy in the thinking?
It's not a dichotomy but contradictions within the Congress party and its philosophy.
In my own short five-year political career, I have seen Indiraji's, Rajivji's birth and death anniversaries celebrated every year by the AICC, but not P V Narasimha Rao's, not Lal Bahadur Shastri's.
Narasimha Rao's body was not allowed in the AICC and my father spoke to Soniaji about it but she kept quiet. This is a degeneration of the political discourse in this country.
Don't forget that Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was invited by Pandit Nehru to be a member of the first Cabinet. Dr Mukherjee was the founder of the Jan Sangh and he and Nehru were ideologically poles apart. Yet, Nehru had a great regard for Dr Mukherjee.
There is a very interesting anecdote I heard from my father. Dr Mukherjee could speak and would hold forth on every subject. But the time allocated to a member to speak in Parliament depends on the strength of the member's party in the House. The Jan Sangh had only three MPs at the time so the time allocated by the Speaker was small. Dr Mukherjee's speeches were lengthy, but the Speaker never objected.
Once, when he speaking, a Congress member got up and said Dr Mukherjee was exceeding his allocated time. Pandit Nehru was present in the House at the time and he got up and said, 'Honourable member, when you speak the House listens, but when Dr Mukherjee speaks, the whole of India listens. Let him speak'. That is respect, and that is the spirit of true democracy.
You may not necessarily agree, but you have to listen, you have to give space to other political ideologies. Can you imagine this in today's scenario?
My father had the ability to listen to the arguments of Opposition leaders and that's perhaps why he was known as the 'consensus generator'.
My father was very pained by this whole process of what he called, de-Nehrufication of India, of totally ignoring the legacies of the Congress prime ministers, especially the Nehru-Gandhi family, especially Indiraji, who was his mentor.
But he noted that this practice was also done by Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi -- they ignored the legacies of Shastri and especially Narasimha Rao.
Neither Rajiv, nor Sonia after him, trusted Pranab Mukherjee after Indira Gandhi's death over his perceived ambition for the PM's job.
But when Sonia became Congress president, unlike Rajiv, she did not push him to the margins.
Was this because she was an absolute political novice at the time and needed his advice, or that she forgave him?
I don't know the reasoning behind this, we can only conjecture. But I think that whatever the distance between Sonia Gandhi and my father, the frost in the relationship thawed much before UPA-I because Soniaji perhaps realised the value of his mind and his experience. They shared a very warm working relationship.
I have been through his diaries, and I have read about their disagreements too.
In life as well as in politics, nothing is black or white. If this mistrust was so deep rooted, why was my father given so many important positions in the Union Cabinet and in the government; he was named the leader of a party in the Lok Sabha...
So there was trust, but perhaps there was also this apprehension that given the supreme post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi felt her authority may be a challenged.
Continuing with Narendra Modi, your father writes, 'It was very clear that Modi wants to learn and does not pretend to be a know-it-all'.
Yet, the prime minister overrode the RBI, policy experts, and imposed demonetisation. According to political observers, he did not listen to advice because he believed he knew best.
Did Pranab's opinion of Modi change after demonetisation?
There are various instances where Pranab raised serious questions to the government -- demonetisation, imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand and in Arunachal Pradesh. But he was very clear that he is not an activist President.
Towards the end of his Presidential years, he said, 'It is not that I agreed to everything the government said and did, but this disagreement was always within closed doors'. He did not want to bring it in the public domain because he believed in the role of the President and the Constitutional limitation of that role.
On to the Congress party's pet peeve -- V D Savarkar: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar removed a plaque with a quote of Savarkar at the Swatantra Jyot memorial at the Cellular Jail.
Pranab felt it was wrong. 'We are making a mistake. We are going to pay for it in future', he wrote in his diary.
How will we pay for it in the future? What did he mean?
We are paying for it now. See, this government's attitude towards Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi -- this attitude was not there in the earlier Vajpayee (then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee) government.
When Vajpayeeji became prime minister, there was a photograph of Pandit Nehru in the prime minister's office. Some officers removed it, and when Vajpayeeji realised it was missing, he scolded them and asked for the portrait to be put back in the room.
De-Nehrufication began with this government and I wonder is it because there have been direct attacks using bad language on their ideologues? Is de-Nehrufication a reaction to this attack on Savarkar?
Indira Gandhi's government issued a stamp on Savarkar [in 1966]. Indiraji wrote a letter on Savarkar praising him.
But her grandson continues to make disrespectful statements on Savarkar! You may not agree with somebody's ideology -- I strongly disagree with Savarkar's idea of Hindu Rashtra -- but that doesn't mean Savarkar was not a patriot, or that he was a coward to write a mercy petition.
To use this kind of language to insult and humiliate, whether it's the BJP, Congress or the Left, is not good practice in a democracy.
Did Pranab ask Rahul to desist from Savarkar bashing?
I don't know. I don't think so. There were very few interactions between my father and Rahul. But he did tell a Congress MP in my presence, that this practice of Savarkar bashing was totally wrong. Rahul had just made a statement on Savarkar in Parliament at the time.
Pranab said that a combination of regional parties at the Centre cannot be a substitute for a national party.
In effect, he said, the government would be fragile and it won't have a national outlook. You shared a close bond with him.
Would he have thought the coming together of non-BJP parties into the INDIA bloc, a winnable strategy?
Any follower of Indian politics would know that coming together of different political parties hasn't happened for the first time.
After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination there were coalition governments led by V P Singh, by Chandrashekhar, and neither could complete their full term. There were coalitions under HD Deve Gowda and under I K Gujral. So the idea of idea of regional parties coming together with or without Congress is not new.
My father was a very strong believer in the theory that there has to be a strong national party at the Centre, because coalition governments are fragile.
There were coalition governments in UPA-I and UPA-II to and he felt the government is subjected to many pressures, internal and inherent contradictions, and strong policy decisions cannot be taken.
You write that a few months before his death, you said to him, 'You got everything in life, but did not get what you desired the most -- becoming the PM. He was in full agreement'.
Was this his deepest regret? Was he bitter about it?
No, not at all. This is something he said only in response to my question. But even before that, he wrote in his diary, I think, on the last day of his presidency, that, 'I became a member of Parliament in 1969. I was MP for 37 years, minister for 22 years and President of the country for 5 years. I bow my head to the Almighty for his blessings on me'.
He was a very religious person and was grateful to God for what he received, and not what he did not receive.
In fact in response to my question to him, he wrote quoting a very beautiful line from Rabindranath Tagore's poem, Ki paai ni taari hishab milaate mon more nohe raaji (I may not have got everything, but I did get so much that I want to remember only the things I received than keep an account of what he I did not get)'.
That was the kind of person my father was.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
