Making the most of what you have
There is much to learn from Bharat Ratna Pranab Mukherjee
It was hot, that evening of May 22, 2004, a day before the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was to be sworn in. This was the first major tryst of the Congress party with coalition politics at Delhi. As television channels were going wild speculating about who was going to get what portfolio, Pranab Mukherjee was sitting quietly in his small study in his Talkatora Road residence, going through various reports on the functioning of the Union home ministry; a few party seniors had confidently told him that he would be India’s Union home minister in a few
hours. Kashmir had seen a terror attack and some news channels — confident that they were interviewing the next home minister — even aired some comments from Mukherjee on the attack.
Late in the evening, as those channels flashed the portfolios of the new ministers in Manmohan Singh’s council, against Mukherjee’s name the legend said: Defence Minister. There was an air of disbelief at Talkatora Road. His close aides, under the mistaken impression that the Ministry of Defence was a portfolio a notch lower than the Ministry of Home, were both shocked and indignant.
But what did the man himself do? He took 10 to 15 seconds to digest the new situation. Went to the toilet. Came back and ordered his assistant: “Connect me to the defence secretary.”
Pranab Mukherjee, then the most experienced minister in the UPA, knew that slippery patches abound in the corridors of power — and you must take what you get, there is no time to ponder over unfulfilled possibilities.
That trait has paid off. He might have failed to become the Prime Minister of India. But he did become the President. And now he is a Bharat Ratna.
What would Pranab Mukherjee have told the Congress party to do on Article 370? It’s an easy question to answer. And it has nothing to do with his visit to the Nagpur headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He would have told the Congress to quit shillyshallying and support the government in the larger national cause. Much in the way he dealt with a group of Trinamool Congress MPs that came to meet him in 2009.
The UPA government was conducting massive campaigns against Left Wing Extremists (LWE) in the Junglemahal areas of Bengal. Obviously this was hurting the Trinamool Congress government that was supporting the UPA at the time. Mamata Banerjee sent a delegation of MPs to meet Mukherjee to persuade him to talk to P Chidambaram who was home minister, and stop these campaigns. The delegation was led by MP Kabir Suman, Bengal’s answer to Bob Dylan and a vocal supporter of democratic rights.
The group made its pitch to Mukherjee. “Dada, you have to tell the home minister to put an end to this state terror. This is just unacceptable”, said Suman, ill-advisedly, as he wrapped up the delegation’s collective view.
Mukherjee looked up and the light glinted off his glasses. “Chharpoka!” (bedbugs), he said softly. “Peeshe peeshe marbo” (we will crush them underfoot, one at a time) he hissed and resumed his work. The delegation left and Suman never went back to meet Mukherjee again.
Of course, there is much about Mukherjee that makes him an attractive mascot for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But this world view — that India is indivisible, there are no nationalities or self determination issues in this country and those who question the state must be crushed — is what brings Modi close to Mukherjee. Ironically, Mukherjee himself derives this from Indira Gandhi.
The man who has been bestowed the Bharat Ratna turned down all mercy petitions during his tenure as President. In 2016 he summoned the finance minister over the insurance Ordinance, which the NDA government was chasing as its first big-ticket reform move. He discussed fine print of the Land Acquisition Bill with the government a few months later. When the government sent the contentious enemy property Ordinance (as the bill on the issue was stuck in a parliamentary committee) Mukherjee summoned his team of legal experts and asked the government for a clarification. It was all done with complete cordiality. Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited him almost every week and sat with him virtually the entire day when he lost his wife.
Mukherjee is not getting the Bharat Ratna because he sold out. He’s getting it because he made the most of the opportunities he got, without compromising his convictions. There’s a lesson in that, somewhere.