Mentoring Mamata Banerjee and much more, Subrata Mukherjee was man for all seasons

As the Indian tricolour flew at half-mast across West Bengal and the police offered a gun salute, veteran politician and Trinamool Congress (TMC) minister Subrata Mukherjee, 75, was cremated in Kolkata on Friday evening.

Even as politicians cutting across parties and Mukherjee’s fans and followers - to whom he was ‘Subrata Da’ or, simply ‘Dada’ (elder brother) – lamented the end of a chapter in Bengal’s Congress-era politics, those who knew the veteran closely during his five-decade-long career had recollections of an ever-smiling person who lived beyond parties and regiments, loved sweets and sports and believed in ghost stories.

Despite holding the still unbroken record of becoming Bengal’s youngest minister at the age of 26 in 1972, Mukherjee never lost relevance because he remained grounded, his colleagues said.

For most people, Mukherjee, who is survived by his wife Chhandabani, was a wonder because the son of a teacher from South 24 Parganas district came to Kolkata’s Bangabasi College to study anthropology in the 1960s when politics adopted him and pushed his career to the pinnacle.

“Bengal was going through political turbulence at that time. The Naxalites were rising. Subrata Da became a close follower of the prolific Congress student front leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. They toured every district and strengthened the student units. This helped the Congress come to power in 1972. Dasmunsi died in 2017 after a prolonged illness. We have lost the second architect of that success,” said author and college professor Nirbed Roy, who, like Mukherjee, left the Congress and joined TMC.

Dasmunsi and Mukherjee were both known to be close to Indira Gandhi because of their leadership role in Bengal. In 1972, chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who was often described as the architect of the Emergency, appointed Mukherjee deputy minister in as many as 11 departments, including home and information.

Mukherjee was also entrusted with the crucial task of vetting reports that the Bengal media published during the Emergency. While he criticised the Emergency later in life, Mukherjee acknowledged that he came to know the media better during those years. “People often don’t realise how important the role of the media is in our society,” Mukherjee told HT a few years ago.

“Indira Gandhi was very affectionate towards me. I travelled with her many times. She hated liars and those who she suspected of stealing party funds,” Mukherjee said during an interview to a television channel earlier this year.

Dasmunsi and Mukherjee also played a significant role in mentoring Mamata Banerjee and helped her rise as a youth Congress leader, said Congress and TMC veterans. In 1984, when nobody in the Congress was ready to challenge CPI(M)’s Somnath Chatterjee at the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency, Mukherjee proposed Banerjee’s name. She wrested the seat and, at 29, became the youngest member the Parliament had seen till then.

Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress and formed the TMC in 1998.

In 1999, Mukherjee joined her after the Indian National Trade Union Congress, of which he was a national general secretary for 30 years, denied him a second nomination to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). He was elected mayor of Kolkata in 2000 and was soon recognized as one of the best civic administrators the city had seen. He increased revenue generation and solved water logging problems that persisted for decades.

“Darkness descended on the night of lights,” murmured the Bengal chief minister at Kolkata’s SSKM hospital on Thursday night when Mukherjee died while Kolkata was celebrating Diwali. She stayed away from the funeral on Friday, saying she could not bear the sight of Mukherjee’s lifeless body.

Mukherjee wrested an assembly seat for the first time in 1971, contesting the Ballygunge bypoll. He won the seat again in 1972. Defeated in 1977, when the nation rejected the Congress, Mukherjee made a comeback from Kolkata’s Jorabagan in 1982 and represented it thrice. In 1996, he shifted to the Chowringhee seat and emerged a winner. He won the seat again in 2001, this time for the TMC.

Mukherjee had his differences with Mamata Banerjee as well. He left the TMC in 2005 and returned to the Congress but could not win the Chowringhee assembly and Bankura Lok sabha seats in 2006 and 2009 respectively. He returned to the TMC and never looked back although he could not win the Bankura seat in 2019 when the BJP wrested 18 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, creating a record.

To the masses, Mukherjee, apart from being a politician for all seasons, was a colourful, dhoti-clad gentleman who held the Ekdalia Evergreen Club community Durga puja in south Kolkata and the famous Mohun Bagan football club close to the heart. “Strangely, he was afraid of ghosts and used to sleep with the lights on,” said TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee.

Mukherjee was never hesitant to experiment. Ignoring his signature husky voice, he agreed to act in the lead opposite actress Moon Moon Sen in a 14-part television serial, Chowdhury Pharmaceuticals, in 1989 that was pulled off the air by Doordarshan because officials found the episodes meandering from the sanctioned script.

“I have lost a dear friend,” Sen, the actor-turned TMC leader, said on Friday. Incidentally, she wrested the Bankura Lok Sabha seat from the CPI(M)’s Basudeb Acharia in 2014, a feat Mukherjee failed to achieve a decade ago.

Mukherjee took oath as a minister for the last time on May 1 after winning his Ballygunge seat by around 72,000 votes, which, again, was a record. Mamata Banerjee put him in charge of four departments, including panchayat and rural development.

On May 9, Raj Bhawan said Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar accorded prosecution sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against TMC legislator Madan Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee, minister Firhad Hakim and former party leader Sovan Chatterjee. On May 17, Mukherjee was arrested along with the others.

“He could not accept the arrest. He used to tell how deeply it hurt him. The episode probably affected his health as well,” said TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.

Couldn’t Subrata Mukherjee be the chief minister of West Bengal, people often asked.

“I never aspired for the post because by default I was always the second man in the leadership strata. I love to work in the field. Dasmunsi was my mentor but unlike him, I did not leave the Congress. With Mamata, I always shared a different relationship. So, when the Congress was almost folding up in Bengal, I joined her,” Mukherjee said in an interview after winning the Ballygunge seat six months ago.