Five Decades in Politics
By Sushilkumar Shinde (as told to Rasheed Kidwai)
HarperCollins India, 240 pages, Rs 599.00

Sushilkumar Shinde is a veteran politician who served as the Minister of Home Affairs (2012-14) and Minister of Power (2006-12) and the Leader of the House in Lok Sabha. He served as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 2003 to 2004. He is coming out with his memoirs, in a joint endeavour with well known journalist and author Rasheed Kidwai.

Veteran politician Sushilkumar Shinde’s career trajectory is unrivalled in Indian politics. Beginning life working as a child labourer and as a ward boy to make ends meet, he went on to hold some of the highest offices in the land: the chief minister of Maharashtra, the union home minister, All India Congress Committee general secretary and the UPA’s vice-presidential candidate.

In this candid memoir, he takes us though the highs and lows of his fifty-year-long political journey: from being ‘discovered’ by Sharad Pawar and fighting his first few elections to his subsequent rise to the pinnacles of power.

Shinde’s tenure as Union home minister saw, among other things, the controversial trials and executions of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru, the 2012 Delhi gangrape case and an investigation of ‘Hindu terror’ groups. Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated into two states under his watch as governor. He gives us a behind-the-scenes view of these significant events and also sheds light on what went wrong with the Manmohan Singh-led UPA II government and why the Congress-led coalition lost to the BJP-led NDA in 2014.

Referring to the many challenges Sushilkumar Shinde confronted and overcame in his long career, President Pranab Mukherjee once said, ‘His [Shinde’s] story is the story of India.’ Five Decades in Politics, Shinde’s memoir, makes for fascinating reading, and the tale it tells will be an inspiration to many.

The memoirs come with a preface and a foreword by former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and NCP chief Sharad Pawar. Gandhi describes him as “a stalwart Congressman symbolizing the party’s foundational values”. Pawar writes: “Sushilkumar embodies Lord Krishna’s mantra on how to address a challenging situation: He who responds to every situation with a smile and never reacts with anger is the one who wins.”

Here is an excerpt from the book:

My Friend Balasaheb Thackeray

ALTHOUGH A CONTROVERSIAL figure in Indian politics, Balasaheb Thackeray had a soft corner for me. This, perhaps, explains why I am talking about my relationship with the late Shiv Sena leader with a sense of nostalgia. Of course, this has nothing to do with his brand of politics; it is an entirely personal response.

It was just after I had joined politics and was part of Sharad Pawar’s inner circle when I met Thackeray for the first time. While many other leaders distanced themselves from him for various reasons, I remained a friend of the Sena chief. Thackeray perhaps understood my feelings and often reciprocated in his characteristic style. He would often acknowledge, publicly, that I had been unfairly denied the chief ministership because I was a Dalit, despite being the most suitable for the job.

I still remember an incident that, if nothing else, showed Thackeray’s sensitivity that not many politicians from a rival camp may have been capable of. That was a time when our parties were headed for a tussle against each other in an election. I was contesting against the Sena–BJP’s candidate, and Thackeray had come to Solapur to campaign for the alliance. I wanted to meet him and he, too, I guess, had similar feelings. So, I went to his suite, hoping against hope that no mediaperson would be there. When I reached, I saw television crews adjusting their equipment. Thackeray noticed that the media photographers were zooming in on me. Another leader might have caused havoc by making me stand by his side for a photograph, but Thackeray told the journalists not to film us together, lest someone misused the visuals for political purposes.

There were quite a few raised eyebrows when Thackeray attended my daughter’s wedding at Mahalaxmi Race Course. The Sena−BJP alliance was in power then. That was Thackeray’s first public appearance since his wife Meena’s death in 1995.

In 2003, when I contested an Assembly by-election to validate my stay in office after I had finally been appointed chief minister, the Sena offered the Solapur constituency on a platter by choosing not to contest. Nobody bought Thackeray’s argument that he was not interested in the by-election because the term of the winner would be a short one (twenty-one months, as it turned out).

I must clarify here that I was not the only Congress leader in Thackeray’s good books. The Sena supremo had good relations with Vasantdada Patil, too, among others.

Thackeray began his career as a cartoonist. He formed the Shiv Sena in 1966 at the age of forty while working as a cartoonist for the Free Press Journal migrants from south Indian states, particularly Tamil Nadu, were calling the shots in the metropolis and many Marathi-speaking youths—‘sons of the soil’—were unable to find employment. On the political front, communists and labour unions were becoming increasingly dominant.

Before becoming a full-time politician, Thackeray had left his job to start Marmik, a satirical weekly. Marmik would highlight the recruitment of non-Maharashtrians in both government and private industries under the headline ‘Vaacha ani gappa basa’, or ‘Read and keep quiet’. Soon, people from south India were targeted with the war cry, ‘Bajao pungi, bhagao lungi’, which Thackeray had coined, playing on sartorial habits and preferences from southern states, particularly Tamilians.

Although I had cordial relations with Thackeray, I could never justify his politics or the tools he had adopted. He had a sharp tongue too and used to be strident in his views about Muslims in public, but this much I can say: He was different in private. One of my bodyguards was a Muslim and Balasaheb cared a lot about him.

Balasaheb’s son, Uddhav Thackeray, has taken his father’s legacy forward but will take time to learn. As for the Congress, it had always opposed the Shiv Sena’s communal views, but I think the Congress−Sena (MVA) alliance was necessary, and I see a fruitful partnership between the Sena, Congress and the NCP. The MVA alliance also led to a softening of the Sena’s Hindutva plank. As far as I am concerned, it was an astute political move.

[The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.]