A little while back I attended a book release at New Delhi’s Teen Murti Bhawan—once the home of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and now a museum and a library.
The book in question was ‘Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian,’ an autobiography by former Lower House Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, which was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the presence of numerous ruling Congress Party politicians, including its president, Sonia Gandhi.
Chatterjee was a Communist throughout his four-decade-long political life, representing the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) in parliament. But his association with CPI (M) ended last year when he was expelled from the party for his refusal to resign the speakership after the Communists withdrew their support from the Congress-led government (Chatterjee said he should remain in the post as the Speaker is supposed to be politically neutral anyway).
What’s interesting is that now, as he nears the end of his political career, the book is being praised not by his own party, but by his life-long political opponents in the Congress Party. Singh has paid tribute to the expelled Communist leader for his political achievements and for standing like a rock in defence of parliamentary tradition despite pressure from his party.
But personally, after reading the book, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. Aside from the run-in with his party, I couldn’t find anything extraordinary. Indeed, the book is something of a celebration of the author’s mediocrity.
The media, of course, is hyping the book because of the author’s scathing criticism of the present leadership of his former party, particularly General Secretary Prakash Karat. The writer also dwells on the rapid decline of the once formidable Communist party in its former strongholds because of the rigidities of its policies and leadership.
Yet there’s nothing new in the autobiography that hasn’t already been said many times before. As a politician with decades of experience in public life, Chatterjee disappointingly fails to give any new insight into the future polity of the nation. All he does is predict a bleak future for his former party if it doesn’t move with the times—hardly revelatory.
But it’s not just the lack of interesting political insight that’s the problem—the author’s own history is equally disappointing. Chatterjee was born into a rich family, his father a lawyer turned politician who represented a right wing Hindu party, Hindu Mahasabha. Chatterjee apparently was offered the chance to run on the CPI(M) ticket in the 1970s due to his father’s connections. Meanwhile, at no point in the book is there any indication that he tried to genuinely infuse communist ideology into his politics, and his decision to shun the party as its fortunes declined seemed more about expediency than making an honourable stand.
A couple of years ago, I spent five days in his Bolpur constituency in West Bengal and saw abject poverty wherever I looked. The trip transformed my view of the Communist regime in West Bengal, and I can’t help but feel that the reason communism is gasping for breath there is because of such elite disciples of Marx as Chatterjee.
Of course, there are many politicians like Chatterjee who owe their existence in politics to their privileged background.It seems ironic, though, that the former house of Nehru—a visionary who despite his faults helped shape a nation—should have been chosen for a celebration of mediocrity.
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Jacob Thomas
Sanjay’s comments could not have been any closer to the reality about the book, which, fortunately, is not yet hyped by the congenitatlly anti-left media as was dome by them when Shri Chatterjee left the Party which carried him on its shoulders for 40 long years. Since it is bereft of anything of relevance either to the polity or to a serious reader of politics in the country, Shri Chatterjee has tried to make up by adding a section on eulogy, which he seems to cherish more than anything else. By adding a few select speeches to it, he is trying to beat his own trumpet. Overall, the book is nothing but an exercise in mediocrity and a poor but realistic commentary on the author’s convoluted understanding of the role of a Parliamentarian and of the processes and events that go into the making of history and political instituions in the country. No wonder then that even after his 10 self-seeking terms in Parliament, why more things look the same and the dreams of the founding fathers still remain unfulfilled.It is strange that a reputed publisher has chosen to assoicate itself with such a poor script.
Tanya Gupta
It would have been better, if Somnath Chatterjee had given the title “Betraying the Faith” to his autobiography rather than “Keeping the Faith”. Since it was the betrayal of a Party, whose cadres’ blood and sweat gave him the privilege of being in Parliament for ten terms, as he claims, and made him a national hero overnight for an act of betrayal, thanks to the anti-left media, he did not keep any faith in doing what he did. In the book, though he is making an attempt to project that the country is what it is today in spite of well-meaning leaders like him, he has not touched upon any aspect that would help the future generations in any manner whatsoever. Even at above 80 years of age his ambition is still alive and he has not forgotten to keep the ‘right side’ pleased as three crucial paras are deddicated to the future leader and his mentors today as his own future is linked to theirs. With four decades of Parliamentary experiece behind him, if he were to introspect and write another book, forgetting the unexpected excitement of becoming a national hero, probably the country will get to know the true reasons for the mess that we are in. It looks as though he has written an autobiography only to tell ‘an obvious story’ which the media had already projected on the basis of a script written before the events unfolded, on his betraying the Party in July 2008.One would have wished to see his autobiography before his mentor Jyothi Basu died so that the country could know the truth about Chatterjee’s version. Otherwise, one would hope that the CPI (M) will tell the truth for the benefit of the country.