Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 10: The former president Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee has hit back at the former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi for becoming surprised and getting shock in “learning” about his ambition to become the prime minister and questioned what was wrong for a competent person to nurture such an ambition.
“What’s wrong with it, what’s there to get ‘shocked’ about? Is it a crime to be ambitious, especially when that ‘ambition’ was supported by decades of experience in politics & governance, hard work & a brilliant mind?” asks Sharmistha Mukherjee about her father’s prime ministerial ambition, and how it “shocked” Sonia Gandhi when the veteran leader suggested it was time for a “change at the top.”
The controversy arose from the release of Ms Sonia Gandhi’s memoir “Belonging: A Journey Of Love,” in which she referred to a 2010 conversation with Pranab Mukherjee and writes “he shocked me with the suggestion that perhaps it was time for a change at the top which I understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister.” The book was released worldwide on Tuesday.
The much anticipated book’s release immediately triggered a war of words after Sonia claimed Pranab Mukherjee had prime ministerial ambitions, but the former President’s daughter Sharmistha has defended her father and questioned why is it a surprise.
“He (Pranab) had developed serious differences with the Finance Minister P Chidambaram, and on one occasion, in 2010, I think after expressing his frustration, he shocked me with the suggestion that perhaps it was time for a change at the top, which I understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister,” Sonia says, “I gently changed the subject, and though he may have been disappointed, he never made me feel he held it against me.”
But Sharmistha on Tuesday came to her father’s defence and asked why it was a surprise for Sonia. In a long post on social media, Sharmistha said praised her father, who came from a “very humble background”, adding whatever he had achieved in his life, it was through “sheer merit and hard work,” while emphasising that nothing was served to him on a platter.
Sharmistha said she had once asked her father whether he wanted to become the prime minister. To this, he very candidly answered that “any politician worth his salt has this ambition.”
“If a well-deserving person harbours ambition to become Prime Minister, what’s wrong in that, unless Sonia ji was ‘shocked’ by the fact that anyone outside Gandhi-Nehru family could even dare to nurture such an ambition & furthermore dared to ‘hint’ it to her?” Sharmistha replied to Sonia.
“In this same context, I read that she said she felt ‘he never held it against me’. From what I read in his diaries & whatever conversation he had with me, I would like to reassure her that he DID NOT hold it against her or anyone else. He was a pragmatic person with deep understanding. He understood her reasons & insecurities that all human beings are prone to,” she said, while targeting Sonia.
The 79-year-old former Congress chief goes on to point out that the Congress did nominate Mukherjee in 2012 as the UPA candidate for President, the highest office in the republic, and he was elected. “I often called on him, mostly just to converse with the erudite and knowledgeable politician that he always remained.”
Pranab, Sonia Gandhi writes, was celebrated for his “encyclopaedic mind and any question on the Congress’ long history would find in him a ready answer.” “He was equally scholarly on world history, world affairs, and philosophical questions, but at times short-tempered to the point of becoming purple in the face,” she writes.
Sonia writes that Pranab felt he “had been side stepped” when Rajiv was chosen as prime minister. “He, too, had left the party in 1984 and formed his own after Rajiv was chosen as prime minister, feeling he’d been side stepped. He returned in 1989, but that aspiration he never lost. Over the years he held virtually all the important portfolios in previous Congress governments, but deep down he felt his seniority and experience made him a natural candidate for the prime ministership,” she wrote.