About the Book
This is a delightful book wittily conceived and sensitively written, where Hiren Mukerjee remembers his twenty-five years in Parliament (1952-77), deliciously re-living such moments as when Acharya Kripalani quietly asked his wife Sucheta's neighbour in the front bench to give him room for a while: "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder". Or, when he himself snapped at Jawaharlal Nehru on the floor of the House of the People as "a minor poet who has missed his vocation".
Pen-pictures, especially, of personalities constituting the first five Lok Sabhas are vivid, often amusing yet significant and evocative and helpful towards understanding of the parliamentary process and its problems and perspectives. The original text (1978) of 'Portait of Parliament' is supplemented in this volume by several later essays captioned as "Addenda' that along with the Foreword, bring the theme up to date. Warmly received on its first publication, 'Portrait of Parliament', penned by one who has been called a living legend in India's Parliamentary annals is a piece of piquant yet pleasant writing which is proof that it is possible to purvey significant insights and entertain the reader at the same time.
About the Author
HIREN MUKERJEE, born November 23, 1907, was educated at Calcutta and Oxford and was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, London. He han lectured in History and Politics at Andlira and Calcutta Universities, and addremed numerous Indian and foreign centres of learning. including the German Academy in Berlin and Toronto University in Canada, besides academic audiences in Moscow, Leningrad, Alma Ata, Sofia etc. Awarded honorary doctorates (D.Litt.) by Andhra, Calcutta, North Bengal and Rabindra Bharati Universities he has been the recipient of various distinctions like the Soviet Land-Nehru Prize (1978), Vidyasagar literary Prize (1991) and the Government of India's Padmabhushan (1990) and Padma Vibhushan (1991) Awards. "A jack of several incompatible trades" (as he once called himself), Hiren Mukerjee has been, for some five decades now, eminent in India's political and cultural life. He resents "the adjectives", he says, in the appellation, once given him of "a grand old Communist", but prefers to call himself (especially these tormenting days of world history) an unrepentant Communist, holding fast to ideological convictions that made him join in July 1936 the then 'illegal Communist Party of India. He has served in bodies as disparate as the All India Congress Committee (1938-39) and the National Council of the Communist Party of India (1958-68). From 1952 to 1977 he held a Calcutta seat in Lok Sabha, was for many years deputy leader and from 1964 to 1967, leader of the Communist Party in Parliament. Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (1975-77), he has served Parliament often on assignments. abroad and has represented it on such diverse bodies as the All India Council of Sports and the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology. A prolific writer in Bengali and in English, he has authored studies of Gandhiji, Jawaharlal, Netaji Subhas, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, apart from a near-classic story of India's freedom struggle and other themes of political cultural interest. Still active in public life, chairman at present of the Mass Media Centre, Government of West Bengal, Hiren Mukerjee, long known in and out of Parliament as a master of the spoken word, writes here on a subject of wide and vibrant interest.
Preface
There is a story to the writing of this book which perhaps needs telling. Some two-thirds of the script, as originally planned, was ready in June 1975 and about to be sent to the press when the emergency was clamped on the country and censorship operated so dementedly that publication was feared impracticable. A period of suspense followed because consignment of the chapters to the waste paper basket was felt rather cruel. Months passed and there were thoughts from time to time of some prudent pruning to disarm the censor. It was an unhappy predicament from which I was rescued by the dissolution of Lok Sabha and the shattering defeat of the ruling party, bringing at once in its wake the revocation of the emergency and the opportunity of the book being completed without inhibition. My distress, which it will be dishonest to hide, at my failure in the March 1977 elections to retain my own twenty-five year old Calcutta seat in Lok Sabha, was to an extent compensated by the freedom I now felt to write the way I wanted on my recollections and reflections on our parliament. This I have done in some haste and under the pressure of much personal worry, but I shall feel more than rewarded if the discerning reader finds things in it that are worthwhile.
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