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President Murmu should have followed precedent instead of going public about Mamata Banerjee

We must condemn any disrespect toward our President, but the incident involving Droupadi Murmu and Mamata Banerjee raises many questions, some of them uncomfortable.

How bad is it for the chief minister to insult the President of India? The answer is obvious: it’s disgraceful—an insult not just to the individual but to the office of President and to the Republic itself. 

So, should we all condemn West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee? Well, the central government seems to think so. No sooner had the President, Droupadi Murmu, complained about how Mamata treated her than the Prime Minister issued his condemnation. Then, one by one, various ministers, former ministers, and wannabe ministers took to social media to issue their own condemnations. 

Even External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tore himself away from coping with a world in chaos to post a tweet that echoed everybody else’s tweets.

And indeed, all of us should condemn any disrespect toward our President—especially toward a tribal woman who has risen to the highest office in the land. And the incident raises many questions, some of them uncomfortable.

But, the notion of a conflict between the President and a politician is not novel. Apart from historical instances of Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru disagreeing (not sure it rose to the level of a conflict though because of the stature of both men), there are instances of SanjivaReddy and Morarji Desai fighting in 1978-1979, even though Reddy had been nominated by Desai’s government.

The issue was one that concerned the President directly. Reddy was upset about the backgrounds of businessmen that Morarji’s government was inviting to state banquets at Rashtrapati Bhavan. He complained that the Hindujas had been put on lists of invitees. Reddy’s real objection was that they were close to Kanti Desai, Morarji’s errant son.

Morarji got the subtext and made it clear to Reddy that he would not yield on this issue.

We know all this because Morarji stole PMO files and, some years later, gave them to a journalist who was writing a book about the period. The letters were included in those........

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