At her home in Gurugram, Sharmistha Mukherjee, the daughter of India’s 13th President and veteran Congress parliamentarian, has just wrapped up the third interview of the day after the release of her book Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers (Rupa) on December 11. The toll on her shows; with her recalling her father’s comment on Rahul Gandhi’s “political acumen” in tearing up an ordinance in 2013, she has set, as they say, the cat among the pigeons. At the launch attended by a few Congressmen of note, she spoke of her father’s unwavering loyalty to India’s grand old party and Indira Gandhi, and his cordial working relationship with Sonia Gandhi.
The book is, by her admission, from a daughter’s standpoint, a putting together of key moments of Pranab Mukherjee’s life as a politician with the Congress—as a ruling party and in the Opposition. Well-known writer and friend, Amitav Ghosh, she says, advised her to make it as much her story as that of her father. The primary source for this book is his diaries and the conversations she had with her father during her short stint in politics. Sharmistha joined the Congress in 2014; she quit active politics in 2021.
Excerpts of her conversation with TMS:
How easy or difficult has it been for you and your ambitions because you are Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter?
When I was born in 1965, my father was a nobody. As everyone knows, his rise was meteoric and he became a minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet in 1973. So, I grew up amidst power. But the credit goes to my parents, especially my mother, who ensured that I had a normal upbringing. It was told to me quite early on that I was not to expect anything from my father’s position.
At the time of the debate over Pranab Mukherjee’s presence at an RSS event in 2018, you opposed your father’s attendance while now you seem closer to his position, that there should be dialogue among oppositional ideologies in a democracy. Doesn’t dialogue have its limits?
I agree with him that the Congress and the RSS are ideologically very different but there should be the option of a dialogue. In a democracy, there is a legitimate right for different ideologies to exist. Like a shrewd politician, he used the RSS platform to preach the Congress ideology of inclusion and constitutionalism. I see it as an act of courage to go to ‘a tiger’s den’ and quote their bête noire, Nehru, to them. He was a consensus generator—my father was known for that. To me, that is the hallmark of a great leader in a democracy.
For your book, was it tough to have the two roles of being a daughter and a researcher negotiate with one another – did you have to hold things back on his deepest regrets, his failures?
I do not consider my job to be that of a historian but of a chronicler of a narrative through what I found in my father’s diaries. And he did write about his regrets. After being first sidelined and then expelled from the party as he had formed a separate party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, during Rajiv’s time, his party fought its only election with disastrous results in West Bengal. My father called it a political blunder because he was never a mass leader and it was too early a move. Rajiv’s popularity then was at its peak and Bengal was then a Left bastion. The timing was wrong. PV Narasimha Rao told him had he not founded a party, he would have been brought back earlier into the Congress fold.
Much is being made about the comment your father made about Rahul Gandhi’s “maturity” and why you felt the need to bring it up, given that the next general elections are close. Is this a reach-out to any other party?
This book focuses on his political journey and his interactions with political leaders. I have no agenda. I’m not looking to incur anyone’s wrath or favour. I have no political ambition of any sort. When I quit, I realised it is not my cup of tea. So, I’m not looking at a Rajya Sabha seat. It is not my path to nirvana.
The only timing I was considering is that I wanted the book to be out on December 11, my father’s 88th birth anniversary. He passed away three years ago, it took me two years to write it. If people think that my book, any book, can have that kind of impact on a general election, they are flattering me. It will have no impact on the outcome of the elections if they happen four months down the line or tomorrow.
Has anyone in the Gandhi family reached out to you on the book?
No. But I have been trolled by the Congress ecosystem. It makes me wonder how different is today’s Congress from the BJP, which is a highly intolerant party as we know. The Congress talks of inclusivity and free speech. Is free speech to be upheld only when one is praising its leaders?
Did the diaries reveal any unknown side of Pranab Mukherjee’s personality?
I was touched by an entry. We are a family of dog lovers. I have four. In the ’70s, one of our dogs, Jimbo, died. And I didn’t remember my father showing his feelings—people of that generation were not that expressive. But at night, he hid in his bathroom and cried. That shook me, to think that my father, who I thought could take any blow, could cry over the death of Jimbo.
Had Pranab Mukherjee been with another party do you think he would have been the 13th Prime Minister of India instead of its 13th President?
I say this both for my father and myself. I’m ideologically Congress and will always belong to the Congress ideology, but the Congress needs to ask themselves whether they are upholders of the Congress ideology or not.
Sharmistha Mukherjee’s chronicle of her father Pranab Mukherjee’s political journey is equally her story—the way she understood her father’s life, his highs and lows, and his success as a ‘consensus maker’