After he was sworn in as Prime Minister on May 26, 2014, Narendra Modi set aside ceremonial pleasantries to tell the then President, Pranab Mukherjee: “Pranabda, pull me up if there is ever any mistake”. The elderly Congressman was touched, as much by the words as the gestures of genuine admiration and respect that the PM and senior members of his Cabinet displayed towards him in the remaining years of his Presidency and even afterwards. The first dignitary Nirmala Sitharaman met after being elevated to the Union Cabinet was Pranabda, as he was universally known. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad went around frequently. And among the few people the PM spent Diwali with in Delhi was Mukherjee, even until last year when he was in frail health and no longer an occupant of the President House.
As the deadly Covid-19 pandemic claimed the 84-year-old former President on Monday, the loss was felt not just by his colleagues in the Congress but by politicians from across the spectrum, diplomats and Heads of other States, particularly Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for whom Mukherjee was more an elder brother than a foreign dignitary. In August, 2015, when Mukherjee’s wife Suvra passed away, the Bangladeshi premier broke all protocol and stayed with the family for two days. Mukherjee and his wife were, after all, the only family Sheikh Hasina had when she was in self-exile in India in the early 1980s’.
Pranab Mukherjee or “PM” as he would himself ironically reflect on the aspirational significance of his initials, missed being the Head of the Government only as much as he enjoyed being the Head of State. In his passing away, India has lost the last of the quintessential parliamentarians and politicians who had the grace to keep the professional strictly apart from the personal. He wrote as passionately about former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee’s skills and abilities as a parliamentarian as he opposed the politics that Vajpayee practiced. Mukherjee and Vajpayee frequently went for morning walks together even when he bitterly criticised the BJP on Ram temple. And he commanded collaboration from parties of all hues. For his election as President in 2012, constituents of the opposing NDA – the Janata Dal (United) and the Shiv Sena – broke ranks and supported his candidature.
But in his almost universal acceptance as an elderly statesman, Mukherjee could also get uncharacteristically touchy and flash his dreaded temper to those unfortunate enough to be close by. In his downstairs room in Parliament, senior party colleagues could sometimes be seen nudging each other to go in first, just in case Mukherjee was in a bad mood. During his election, there were initial signs of reluctance from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee even though all her party MPs were frequenting Mukherjee’s residence as a gesture of support. A senior Trinamool Congress MP got the dressing down of his life when he called Mukherjee to cajole him to convince Mamata Banerjee officially to support his candidature. Banerjee finally did give in because it would have been impossible for the Chief Minister of West Bengal to not back a Bengali as President, a fact that the canny veteran had probably already factored in when he snubbed her by refusing to personally call to canvass support.
The former President wore many hats in his over 50-year-old political career, especially in the two terms of the UPA – besides being Minister of Finance and Defence, he unofficially managed Parliamentary Affairs for the Congress, even getting the BJP on board to support crucial legislations like the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill (PFRDA), headed over 50 Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and was the perennial trouble-shooter for the then PM Manmohan Singh.
But what remained his lifelong passion was Finance, from the time he was an economics teacher in a non-descript Bengali school to when he rose to become India’s youngest Finance Minister in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet in 1982 and skilfully negotiated the IMF’s biggest ever loan and even returned the third tranche unused. In the time that India was still fashionably socialist, Mukherjee was among the few influential politicians who encouraged private enterprise, as Finance Minister and key figure in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet.
Mukherjee’s temporary eclipse into the oblivion came when he fell out with Rajiv Gandhi who dropped him from his Cabinet and expelled him from the Congress. For a few years, Mukherjee floated his own party – the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress – which he eventually merged with the Congress again in 1989. Like Indira Gandhi, P. V. Narasimha Rao recognised Mukherjee’s potential and completed his rehabilitation in the Congress by appointing him Chairman of the Planning Commission and then Foreign Minister in 1995. For the rest of his life, he remained steadfastly loyal to his parent party and the diverse offices he held. In Pranab Mukherjee’s demise, there is simply no one left in the political arena with his encyclopaedic knowledge and respect for Parliamentary and Constitutional ethics.