Pranab Mukherjee started out in a small regional party in West Bengal, but his career flourished in Lutyens’ Delhi. He was never a mass leader but, for much of his remarkable political life, spanning over four decades, he was a key strategist in the Congress. His ‘elephantine memory’ (the memory of two elephants, as Sonia Gandhi said at the launch of his most recent book) on historical precedents, parliamentary procedures and fine constitutional points, his masterly ability to draft a note with an inbuilt escape clause, and his understanding of how the political game is played were all there at the service of his party. In the years just preceding his move to Rashtrapati Bhawan, many in the Congress believed Mukherjee was the man who should have become Prime Minister. When it became clear that the party leadership would not give him that job, he set his sights on the Presidency.
A vast network of key political players, cutting across party lines, and whose respect he had earned over the years, as well as his own party colleagues (Sonia Gandhi preferred the then Vice-President Hamid Ansari in that position, as she felt the party still needed Mukherjee) ensured he became the 13th President of India.
As the ultimate informed insider, he became the repository of many a political secret.
Limited disclosures
It is this that made the recent release of the third volume of his political autobiography, The Coalition Years 1996-2012 , a much looked forward to event. But the lucidly written book, while providing political insights and historical perspective, displays the caution that marked Mukherjee’s political life. Only occasionally — just occasionally — he parts the curtains to make behind-the-scenes disclosures about what was a very dramatic period in contemporary Indian political history.
For instance, given the book’s title, Mukherjee could have dealt at greater length with the subject of the average Congressman’s discomfort with coalition-building.
Mukherjee makes it plain in his book that he opposed the Congress’ decision to forge alliances to challenge the BJP at the Shimla conclave in 2003, writing that his “was the lone voice stating a contrarian view as I believed that sharing a platform or power with other parties would undermine our identity.” But other senior leaders had similar reservations about the decision. Did they not speak at all, preferring not to be seen in opposition to Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh? Was that debate — so critical to the revival of the Congress — not worth writing about more, or is it that such matters are rarely discussed in party fora? One can only speculate.
In his preface, he promises to talk about “the triumphs and tribulations of a post-Congress polity,” but while he outlines the external factors that led to the party’s decimation, he doesn’t turn the spotlight inwards — there is no analysis of the role of the Gandhis, especially Rahul Gandhi. And while he takes the reader through the Congress journey from being a coalition of “various ideas, personalities and groups of interests” to heading a coalition of parties, he stops short of telling you what went wrong inside.
His thwarted ambitions
He is, however, frank about his own thwarted ambitions of becoming home minister and then Prime Minister, even hinting he had wide support in the party for the latter job. The book also details the influence he wielded both in party and government which was always far greater than any position he held. He is open about his differences with Manmohan Singh on economics, and with Sonia Gandhi on his approach to politics. But he balances this by acknowledging that Singh was an internationally acclaimed economist who gave him a position of pre-eminence in the Cabinet, asking him to head as many as 97 Groups of Ministers that examined tricky issues. He speaks warmly of Gandhi’s “sterling qualities of leadership” as Congress president. She may not have made him Prime Minister, but he clearly enjoyed an easy relationship with her: he refers to her saying she will miss his “tantrums”, once he moves to Rashtrapati Bhawan. Evidently his frequent bursts of temper was received with indulgence rather than annoyance.
There is the occasional nugget: he successfully intervened to save the Kanchi Shankaracharya from a prolonged stint in jail in 2004, arguing at a Cabinet meeting that if Indian secularism didn’t allow for the arrest of a Muslim cleric before Eid, the same principle should apply for Hindu priests as well.
Where the book is quintessentially Pranab Mukherjee, when he draws a comparison between the present BJP-led NDA’s government’s problems in passing legislation because of its lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha with Indira Gandhi facing a similar situation in 1969-70, when she tried to abolish the privy purses.
Or when he writes that President Shankar Dayal Sharma’s decision to call Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the leader of the single largest party but short of a simple majority, to form a government in 1996 (that lasted 13 days) “without ascertaining his support in Parliament was highly risky.” The book — despite all it does not reveal — is very useful, for the sweep of events it covers as well as the glimpses it provides of the inner workings of government at a critical time in the country’s history.
The Coalition Years 1996-2012 ;
Pranab Mukherjee,
Rupa,
₹595.
