As 2020 comes to an end, it will be remembered as a year which shattered lives across the globe on an unprecedented scale. While the health concerns overpowered people’s mind space, there came along a few books, both at the international and national level that drew attention. The latter half of the year has turned out to be a season of tell-all books, one written by former US President Barack Obama, another by former President of India Pranab Mukherjee and also by outgoing US President Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump.
The books by Obama and Mary Trump deal with US and world politics while the memoirs of Pranab Mukherjee, ‘The Presidential Years’, set to hit the stands next month, dissects, among other things, the malaise afflicting the Congress party and the dangers being posed to the country by the style of functioning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although Pranab’s credibility had taken a beating, yet his exposes may cause some minor flutter both within the BJP and Congress. The Congress had pushed hard for Pranab’s presidential candidature yet he did not bat an eyelid before sacrificing all that his benefactor party stood for by going to the RSS headquarters at Nagpur to get acceptability as the Prime Ministerial candidate, should the BJP not be able to go it alone in 2019. Pranab died a sad man since elections took a completely different turn than what he had envisaged. While many may praise Pranab for his daring commentary in his book about Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it may be noted that he never uttered a word to correct course in both UPA I and II in both of which he was a very senior minister. Like all others, Pranab’s complicit silence when he enjoyed power has been the bane of the party tottering to collapse.
Interestingly, most Indians adorning high positions of power, be it political, military, bureaucratic or even corporate, have always preferred to remain silent and partnered all evil deeds. Those who have spoken up or written books, like Pranab, have done so at the end of their physical existence or when they are totally convinced of their irrelevance after losing power. Here is an excerpt from Pranab’s book: “Some members of the Congress have theorized that, had I become the PM in 2004, the party might have averted the 2014 Lok Sabha drubbing.
Though I don’t subscribe to this view, I do believe that the party’s leadership lost political focus after my elevation as president.” This shows Pranab as an extremely ungrateful person who was concerned only with his personal aggrandisement but never bothered about keeping the larger interests of the party that gave him all the prominence that he ever attained in his life.
Pranab was never a man of the masses. Most of his career spent as Union Minister was as a Rajya Sabha member. He could wangle a Lok Sabha seat from the Left combine in West Bengal only after decapitating the Congress in that state.
While it is true that the Gandhi family as well as the whole of the Congress has never learnt a lesson and has always preferred to pose a family member as the party head, the other side of the coin also shows that rest of the leaders within the party, starting from Pranab to Sibal have all opted to benefit from the power and pelf but never contributed to the organisation. That is the sole reason for which the Indian National Congress stands decimated and virtually destroyed today.