Pranab Mukherjee was a perfect Bengali gentleman politician. My endless respect must go to this son of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style of India. And also my deepest commiserations to his family, his near and dear ones.
by Anwar A. Khan
Pranab Mukherjee was an octogenarian Indian politician, statesman, former President of India and an unfeigned admirer of Bangladesh passed away on 31 August last at the age of 84. Her wife – Shuvra Mukherjee was from Bangladesh. And his first official visit as India’s President was Bangladesh.
Mukherjee was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 2019, after being given its second-highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2008. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.
He was a strong-boned supporter of Bangladesh’s glorious Liberation War in 1971 to establish Bangladesh, frequently visited the refugee camps of our millions of people who took shelter in different parts of India during those very arduous times and helped us a great deal in various ways.
The common traits of accomplished people-intelligence, perseverance, and stimulating social environments are hardly found like him in in India.
He will not now see the shadows, he will not feel the rain; he will not hear the nightingale sing on, as if in pain; and he will not dream through the twilight that doth not rise nor set.
As sunlight on a stream; come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years. Watch the slow door that is opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet, come to us in dreams, that you are living.
A farewell flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, our tribute wave deliver: no more by your steps shall be, forever and forever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, a rivulet then a river, nowhere by your steps shall be forever and forever. A thousand suns will stream on him, a thousand moons will quiver; but not by your steps shall be, forever and forever.
The beauty of Pranab Mukherjee is lying upon thy high places. How are the mighty fallen; and the flow of tears are not and will not be perished.
His ideal, as we find, embodied the necessary or important tenets of humanism, which considered Pranab Mukherjee the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.
His human being is the central or most significant entities in the Southeast Asian world. Pranab was polymath like an individual whose knowledge spans a significant number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.
People should idolise him, but his venerate is the reverence due to the ideals of perfect beatitude; it ought not to be inspired either not only by hope or anything else.
He shot an arrow into the air that fell to earth, he knew where; for, so swiftly it flew, the sight which could follow it in its flight.
Long, long afterwards, I think in an oak tree, we shall find the arrow, still unbroken; and the song, from beginning to end, we shall find again in the heart of a great Bengalee friend like him.
To him ‘Secularism’ has a broad range of meaning. Like our old songs, those golden days shall forever remain cherished and nostalgic; and as a part of a senior citizen’s waking dream! Now he is going to an endless sleep!
His life was the song of life in our life’s long journey, dear fellow traveller, we met you for a while only to depart! What remains are the sweet memories to torment our lonesome heart!
Since beauty is only skin deep, and fades with the passing of time, let us stay away from such come-ons as we journey on this road of life.
Plenteous rich tributes have poured out for Pranab following his death.
But death is nothing at all. It does not count. He has only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. He is he, and we are we, and the old life that he lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever he was to each other, that we are still. Call him by the old familiar name. Speak of him in the easy way which we always used. Put no difference into our tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Think of him, pray for him. Let his name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
Why should he be out of mind because he was out of sight? He was but waiting for you or us, for an interval, somewhere very near just round the corner. All is well. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period of peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For, they existed.
Every age has its great men. Every period of history has had its great men. In every emergency of the nation, thus far, men have not been wanting who were equal to the emergency. Men who could grapple with great facts, and great difficulties, and out of danger could bring safety to the nation. When passions have raged, and political whirlwinds have swept the nation; when political faction has risen against faction and party against party, and the fabric of government has rocked in the tumult; when enemies have assaulted our peace, by wars from without or seditions from within; there have always been found men of courage and capacity to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. Such men are the "glory and honour of a nation."
Humanly speaking, they are its rock of defence, the bulwark of its security. When men of great ability and great integrity man is the ship of state, there is safety to those on board. But when such men fail; when the material out of which such men are forged in the furnace of great affairs is wanting; whenever in any crisis a hero is not found equal to the need; then may that nation count that the day of its strength and glory is gone by.
We shall, therefore, first speak of the moral courage, the heroic persistency, the tireless continuity, of that group of statesmen, among which Pranab Mukherjee held a foremost place, and of which he was the last on Indian earth.
There is a grandeur in the heroism of men in great emergencies, which excites the admiration of noble minds, and compels the tribute of historic praise. The statesmanship, the sagacity, the individual worth, of the men who form the central group of him command the respect and challenge the admiration of the world. But when to these are added the sublime courage, the moral heroism which, for the sake of civil liberty and national independence, moved these men to defy the power of other mighty nations, swollen with the pride of great victories; a power which held undisputed empire of the seas; already encircling the world with his morning drum-beat, and among all nations politically omnipotent, they rise to the dignity of heroes who would, in a simpler age.
As a scholar, as a statesman and a secular Indian politician, the world will ever admire Pranab Mukherjee.
Pranab was a statesman of no mean order. He was an orator, clear, forcible, comprehensive, compact, and sometimes eloquent; he had vast powers of concentration, organisation and man-agreement; his capacity for running the state affairs was almost equal to none in the present-day India.
He was the soul of honour, integrity and manliness. In any phase of politics, and in any stage of history, he would have taken a respectable rank, if given the opportunity.
Pranab that which made him a great leader in his day; that which made him heard and respected in the councils of the Indian nation; that which raised him to the government’s first place within the gift of the people; that which gave him his distinctive place in history; that which has moved with profound emotions of sorrow the whole people of India and Bangladesh at the tidings of his death; was the cool courage, the unflinching devotion and the consummate skills with which he fought arduously in his country and government.
This was his life-work.
He did reach his full potential, but the memories he made in his long time, he will live in the hearts of his friends and loved ones.
Remember him when he was gone away, gone far away into the silent land; when we can no more hold him by the hand, nor we half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember him when no more day by day. We tell him of our future that he planned, only remember him, as we understand. It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet, if we should not forget him for a while and afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave, a vestige of the thoughts that once we had, better by far we should not forget and smile than that we should remember and be sad.
Time does not bring relief; we all have lied. Who told us time would ease us of our pain! We miss him in the weeping of the rain; we want him at the shrinking of the tide; the old snows melt from every mountain-side, and this year’s leaves are smoke in every lane, but last year’s bitter loving must remain heaped on our heart, and our old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where we fear to go, —so with his memory we brim. And entering with relief some quiet place where never fell his foot or shone his face. We say, “There is memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rage at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is not right, because their words had forked no lightning they do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight, blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, our dear friend Pranab Mukherjee, there on the sad height, bless you now with our fierce tears, we pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Now, and with no need of tears, here we left him, full of years, -- left him to his quiet rest in the region of the blest.
We know his name, his happiness and sorrow we know; while we pause on the crossing we lived it once more, and back to our heart surge that river of woe; that but in the breast of a mother can flow; for the little white hearse has been, too, at our door.
We count his life a grand and noble thing, that a great statesman with strong passions, and magnificent powers, who has been for more than five decennaries in public life, and has stood for the greater part in places so hymnal that all men could look at him; who has sustained the most intimate relations to public honour and private virtue; who has been a husband, a father, a neighbour, a citizen, a reformer, a statesman has died at his post, in the midst of his toil, on the scene of his victories, and has left a name and a fame unsoiled by any private vice or public crime.
For the sake of the state of India, for the sake of his good politics and India’s national honour, for the sake of the rising generation of public men, may the mantle of Pranab Mukherjee not fall upon a worse man.
Still then, let us express grief and sing a sorrowful song, while those songs shall not gladden our hearts!
Pranab Mukherjee was a perfect Bengali gentleman politician.
My endless respect must go to this son of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style of India. And also my deepest commiserations to his family, his near and dear ones.
A mournful poem; a lament for the dead we now sing or read. And the song of his long life of politics shall be remembered by people of all religions.
-The End –
The writer is an independent political observer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.
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