New Delhi: “I am just your Mukherjee sir. I am not the president of India or a politician now. I would be happy if you call me Mukherjee sir,” President Pranab Mukherjee requested students on the eve of Teachers’ Day.
A visibly happy Mukherjee, who taught students from Sarvodaya Vidyalaya the brief political history of India since independence on the president’s estate, asked the children to tell him when they were bored.
Covering a wide spectrum of issues, from pre-independence famine in Bengal to post-liberalisation India and the Anna Hazare movement for Jan Lokpal as he saw it, the president’s hourlong lecture was dotted with references to his own childhood and school years. He recalled walking through wet paddy fields to go to school. “Whenever I would complain to my mother that I can’t walk 5km each way every day, she would say you don’t have any option. You have to do it,” he recalled.
Asked by a student who had the biggest influence in his life, Mukherjee replied it was his mother and a school principal who taught him English.
The president credited his mother for his sharp memory. “She sharpened my memory by making me recollect the events of the day chronologically.”
Mukherjee also noted that he was “going back to the role of a teacher after many years”.
“The last time I taught was in 1968 ... many of you were not even born then,” he said.
The president also joked that his past as a teacher was reflected even in his speeches in parliament; sometimes he felt that he was giving a lecture to the country’s politicians.
He also took questions from some students.
To a question on how to overcome teenage problems, the president replied the basic problem in the country was poverty and nothing else.
As another student asked him whether if his parents’ claim that he would not be able to get a job if he pursued his love of music was true, Mukherjee said: “It is partially true.”
Mukherjee was born in the village of Mirati in Birbhum district of West Bengal in 1935. His father was a Congress leader who endured great hardship including being sent to jail several times for his role in India’s struggle for independence.
Mukherjee acquired a Master’s degree in history and political science as well as a degree in law from the University of Kolkata, and then embarked on his professional life as a college teacher before joining politics full time in 1969.
