Pranab Mukherjee: Trusted by Indira Gandhi, doubted by Rajiv & Sonia, and outraged by Rahul’s sense of entitlement

Earlier this week, I was in conversation with Sharmishtha Mukherjee, at the launch of her much discussed and best-selling book, Pranab: My Father: A Daughter Remembers, launched on 11 December, Pranab Mukherjee’s birth anniversary, to an overflowing audience at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Pranab bequeathed the 34 volumes of his diary to Sharmishtha, with the strict instructions that they should be read only after he is no more, since some of the content was both sensitive and explosive.

I want to focus in this column on Pranab’s comments on the relationship he had, and his opinion of some of the key people who played a very important part in his life.

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Coming from a humble background from a small village in what is now Bangladesh, Pranab owed his meteoric rise to Indira Gandhi. In 1967, he was elected for the first time to the Rajya Sabha from the Bangla Congress, which later merged with the Congress. A little-known backbencher, it was Indira Gandhi as prime minister, who spotted his talent and mastery of facts in a speech he gave in the Rajya Sabha on the nationalisation of banks. Soon he was made a deputy minister in her cabinet, later a minister of state, and finally raised to cabinet rank, first as minister of commerce, and later as one of the youngest finance ministers.

For Pranab, Indira was his ultimate benefactor. Given his sense of gratitude and loyalty, he stood by her during the Emergency, and after she lost the elections in 1977, when many other stalwarts of the Congress deserted her. Her return to power in 1980 was naturally the ‘golden period’ of Pranab’s career, where he enjoyed her fullest confidence and trust and became the de facto number two in the cabinet, even presiding over its meetings in her absence.

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Her tragic assassination in 1984 left Pranab bereft. His relationship with her son, Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her as prime minister, was dramatically different. When news of Indira’s assassination came, Rajiv and Pranab were in West Bengal and flew back to Delhi together. The news that she had passed away came during their flight. A canard was spread that Pranab, instead of endorsing Rajiv’s succession immediately, displayed his own ambition to become the prime minister.

Rajiv was new to politics, surrounded by a coterie of apolitical friends, led by Arun Nehru. They succeeded in convincing Rajiv that Pranab was a threat to him. The consequences were traumatic. Pranab was not included in Rajiv’s cabinet, removed from the Congress Working Committee (CWC), and finally expelled from the party.

For a man who had been the most trusted lieutenant of Rajiv’s mother, he now was summarily humiliated by her son. For seven long years, Pranab went into the political wilderness and was rehabilitated only much later, when PV Narasimha Rao became the prime minister.

This ‘trust deficit’ with first Rajiv, and after his tragic assassination, with Sonia Gandhi, persisted. When Congress returned to power as part of UPA 1, Sonia Gandhi chose Manmohan Singh as the prime minister, when on the basis of sheer experience and seniority, Pranab was the obvious choice. Singh was far junior to Pranab. In fact, in 1982 as finance minister, it was Pranab who appointed him as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Fortunately, Manmohan Singh showed the utmost respect for Pranab, and they got on very well.

The ‘trust deficit’ with the Gandhis showed up again when the time came to choose the next President of India in 2012. It was rumoured that Sonia’s first choice was Vice President Hamid Ansari—and Sharmishtha in our interaction endorsed this perception. It was only when Mulayam Singh Yadav—an alliance partner in the UPA—decisively came out in support of Pranab that she was left with no choice but to support his candidature.

In his diaries, the most critical comments by Pranab are about Rahul. He was livid when Rahul, in a press conference being addressed by Ajay Maken, publicly tore up an Ordinance passed by the cabinet, especially when the prime minister was abroad. His diary entry actually says, “Who does he think he is?” It was also his opinion that Rahul, although inquisitive about issues, had a low attention span, and jumped from subject to subject.

Sharmishtha found in his diary the observation that Rahul displays all the sense of entitlement of his lineage without the acumen of his ancestors. Pranab advised Rahul to take up a ministerial assignment so that he acquires experience, but this was disregarded by him. When one morning, Rahul came to call on the President, in the morning instead of the time fixed in the evening and provided a lame excuse that his office had messed up the timing, Pranab’s wry remark to his daughter was that how could you expect Rahul to run the PMO, when he could not figure out the difference between ‘am’ and ‘pm’.

Finally, Sharmishtha records that the relationship between Pranab as president and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was cordial and imbued by mutual respect from the very beginning. Pranab made it clear that although his political ideology was different, as head of state he was above politics, and would not, in accordance with the Constitution, interfere in the running of the government, unless required to, or when his advice was sought. She records that every time Prime Minister Modi would meet him, he would touch his feet.

There is much more in the book, and I would recommend readers to go through it, to better understand the unfolding of history since 1947.

The author is a former diplomat, an author and a politician. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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