Pranab Mukherjee’s The Turbulent Years: Book of No Revelation

The book begins with the death of Sanjay Gandhi in the Pitts plane crash. Mukherjee, a protégé of the enfant terrible of the Emergency, has only kind words to say about Indira Gandhi’s younger son. He recalls how Mrs Gandhi tried valiantly to hide her grief at Sanjay’s death by wearing dark glasses, but sometimes her emotions got the better of her. He believes that in her awareness of power and willingness to use it, Mrs Gandhi excelled all other prime ministers.

Ten years before economic liberalisation, as finance minister, Mukherjee understood the need to encourage NRIs to invest in the economy. This led to a three-year-old battle with the London-based Swraj Paul, who was attempting to take control of Escorts and DCM from the promoter families which ran them. He contradicts a claim made in Manmohan Singh’s daughter Daman Singh’s biography, Strictly Personal, that there were serious differences between Mukherjee as finance minister, and Singh, then governor of the RBI. He maintains that he had no role in Singh’s departure from the RBI.

The biggest shock in Mukherjee’s political career came in December 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi was elected prime minister and abruptly dropped him from the

new cabinet, although he had served his mother in a series of important positions, including as the leader of the House and finance minister. Mukherjee had not a clue of his impending downfall. At the same time, RK Dhawan, Indira Gandhi’s trusted private secretary of 22 years, was also summarily dismissed.

Mukherjee was also compelled to resign as president of the West Bengal PCC, asked not to campaign for Siddhartha Shankar Ray in the Bolpur election and dropped from the Congress Working Committee. When Congress veteran Kamalapati Tripathi sent Rajiv a series of confrontationist letters, Mukherjee was accused of drafting them. An innocent interview with the editor of the Illustrated Weekly, Pritish Nandy, proved the last straw. Nandy mischievously titled the cover story on Mukherjee as “The man who knew too much’’. Nandy claimed that Mukherjee was waiting for the right time to use his information against Rajiv, whose power base was weakening. In April 1986, Mukherjee was expelled from the Congress for six years.

Mukherjee went on to form his own party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, which flopped miserably in the West Bengal elections. He concedes that he is not a mass leader. The author believes that Rajiv’s hostility toward him was fuelled by stories that Mukherjee had ambitions of becoming the interim prime minister after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. A charge that he refutes emphatically, claiming that he, like many others, had advocated that Rajiv Gandhi be sworn in as prime minister the moment the then president, Zail Singh, arrived in Delhi from his foreign visit.

Mukherjee, along with Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary PC Alexander, differed with Arun Nehru’s plan that the then vice-president, R Venkataraman, swear in Rajiv immediately, without waiting for Zail Singh, who was on a flight back home. Nehru did not trust Zail Singh to fall in line.

As abruptly as he was ousted from the party, Mukherjee was mysteriously reinstated in 1988. By then, Arun Nehru and VP Singh had deserted the Congress. Later, Rajiv conceded in an interview that many things said about Dhawan and Mukherjee at the time were eventually found to be untrue. The impression, though not spelt out, is that Nehru was behind Mukherjee’s downfall.

But the Gandhi family was obviously also wary of Mukherjee’s ambitions. PV Narasimha Rao, a good friend whom Mukherjee had actively supported as Congress president, did not initially induct Mukherjee into his cabinet in 1991 when he became prime minister, much to his shock. Rao confided to Mukherjee that he would tell him the secret for his exclusion some day. He never did.

The Turbulent Years: 1980-1996
Author: Pranab Mukherjee
Publishers: Rupa
Pages: 243
Price: 595