Pranabda’s careful tread to Raisina Hill

There was none of the confusion of Sharad Pawar being seated next to the Prime Minister one day and finding A.K. Antony in his chair the next in Indira Gandhi’s time.

As mindful of personal egos and political ambitions as she was of protocol symbolism, Indira Gandhi put it down in writing that Pranab Mukherjee should preside over Cabinet meetings in her absence. That made him the anointed Number Two.
Some said she did so because she had total faith in his loyalty. Others sniggered that being without a political base, he presented no threat. A contemporary cartoon showed her measuring the height of another loyalist, D. Devaraj Urs, Karnataka’s chief minister who facilitated her return to politics with the Chikmagalur seat, with a tape. The caption read, “Honestly, I haven’t grown!”
Whatever her hukum meant in realpolitik terms, the President-elect can be relied on to be very careful. The BJP and, indeed, the entire country, if not the world, will watch him hawk-eyed for signs of partisanship. Mr Mukherjee cannot and need not shake off the allegiance of a lifetime. But as a consummate politician, he knows he cannot afford to deviate by even a millimetre from the strict impartiality expected from the President.
Two questions are now being asked. The first, mouthed mainly by commentators with no knowledge or understanding of history, is who will be the Congress Party’s troubleshooter if Mr Mukherjee isn’t available. The more relevant second question is what the country can expect from his presidency.
The first question is easily despatched. No one is indispensable in politics. “After Nehru, who?” the world once asked and was astonished when India and its parliamentary democracy strode ahead even without Jawaharlal Nehru. The second question involves the nature of politics, our Westminster heritage, and Mr Mukherjee’s experience and personality. Given the latter, he has the unique opportunity, nay duty, to undertake constructive re-invention of an office that may seem largely ceremonial but holds a tremendous capacity to influence the polity. As he said, it’s his job “to protect, defend and preserve the Constitution”.
Modest as always, he denies being unique among Presidents, trotting out some names in proof. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s austere dignity, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s prancing showmanship or the current incumbent’s hole-in-the-air anonymity were not mentioned. Instead, he named Rajendra Prasad and Zakir Hussain, presumably because they were the first to come into his head at that moment. There are no obvious parallels.
Zakir Hussain truly was unique. His Rohilla-Pashtun lineage, German education, nationalist credentials and long career at the Jamia Millia Islamia cannot be replicated. But the first President is a different matter. It’s no secret Nehru didn’t want Rajendra Prasad. He preferred Chakravarti Rajagopalachari with whom he had differences but whose wisdom and secularism he respected. As time went on, Nehru became increasingly impatient with a head of state whose fondness for soothsayers and veneration for the rebuilt Somnath temple reflected what might be called the saffron end of the Congress spectrum in those balmy days before even the Jana Sangh had raised its head.
Despite his personal religious observances — which are perfectly in consonance with India’s Constitution — Mr Mukherjee is also a secular politician. One can’t imagine him chuckling with glee while the Babri Masjid was being vandalised or turning a blind ear to the cries of Muslims being massacred in Ahmedabad. As President, he may not be in a position to do either, but this is where a conversation with the late Giani Zail Singh, and what it revealed of British precedents, comes in.
At the height of his differences with Rajiv Gandhi, the Giani told me — as he no doubt told others who visited him — that the problem was of communication. We were sitting in ornate white armchairs on either side of an occasional table with a rather old-fashioned radio set between us. Pointing to my chair, Zail Singh said Indira Gandhi would sit there on her regular visits and talk as we two were talking. Her son had ended the practice. Communication had broken down and confidence evaporated. The President said he had to learn what was happening from the radio.
The uninformed might think the Giani was talking of Helen Mirren in The Queen. But this conversation took place long before that film was made. The British monarch’s weekly chats with the Prime Minister are an established political tradition. No one else is present. No notes are kept. No one knows what they discuss.
When I mentioned this ritual in a TV discussion, another panellist sneered that India was not Britain. He couldn’t imagine Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spending time with the President. Clearly, he can’t imagine anything about Dr Singh because he has no idea of the Prime Minister’s reflective depths. The trite “India isn’t Britain” argument exposed ignorance of another kind.
When some members of the Constituent Assembly wanted the rights and duties of the President codified, Nehru objected because it would derogate from the prestige of the highest office in the land. Presidential conduct should be governed by healthy democratic conventions, he said, not bound by laws. Nehru saw the President’s position as analogous to that of the British monarch.
Apart from emergencies, Mr Mukherjee, like Queen Elizabeth, will enjoy the constitutional right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. He cannot ever forget the warning of another Constituent Assembly member, Tajamul Husain, “that the President must not be a mere tool in the hands of the majority party”. That was long before Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed.
Unlike many of my fellow journalists, Mr Mukherjee knows his history as thoroughly as he does politics. He is unlikely to fall into any trap. He will be careful.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author