New Delhi:
What’s wrong with it, asks Sharmistha Mukherjee, Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter, 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”.
Defending her late father, she said his prime ministerial ambition was supported by “decades of experience” and a “brilliant mind”.
Sonia Gandhi, in her memoir ‘Belonging: A Journey Of Love’, which released worldwide today, references 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”.
“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?” Sharmistha Mukherjee asked.
What’s there to get ‘shocked’ about? https://t.co/G176imSSfy
— Sharmistha Mukherjee (@Sharmistha_GK) November 10, 2026
Recounting her own question to her father about his desire to be prime minister, she says, he “candidly answered that any politician worth his salt has this ambition”.
She goes on to underline that her father rose from humble beginnings and went on to achieve all he did through “sheer merit & hard-work”.
“There was no-one to serve him positions, including PM-ship, on a platter due to dynastic entitlements. 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?” she says.
Gandhi, in her memoir, mentions that when Pranab Mukherjee mentioned about the “change at the top”, she pivoted to another subject, adding that he “never held it against me”.
“I gently changed the subject, and though he may have been disappointed, he never made me feel he held it against me,” she adds.
The daughter confirmed that assessment, saying her father was a pragmatic person” and did not hold it against her.
“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.
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 expreince made him a natural candidate for the prime ministership,” she writes.
