Retrospective restraint: Pranab's last memoir hides more than it tells

It avoids real political issues, refuses to go into details, hides more than it tells, and is therefore a big let-down

Reading the fourth volume of the late Pranab Mukherjee’s memoir The Presidential Years (2012-2017), particularly if you’ve read the first three, the striking thing is his changing mood, tenor and reserve with truth-telling. Remember, I didn’t say lying. Only hesitation with truth-telling.

It could be that this latest, posthumously published volume was too close to the years he’s talking about. Or, that he took, as was characteristic of the statist in him, an overly self-restraining view of what he could leave for posterity of his time in Rashtrapati Bhavan, as a “non-party person”.

He’s careful to underline that point when