‘A stalwart Congressman symbolizing the party’s foundational values’, ‘he embodies Lord Krishna’s mantra on how to address a challenging circumstance’, is how political stalwarts Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar describe former Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde.

Shinde (82), who began his life as a ward boy to make ends meet, went on to become the chief minister of Maharashtra, Union home minister, AICC general secretary, Andhra Pradesh Governor and even UPA’s vice-presidential candidate.

In his tell-all memoir “Five Decades in Politics”, written with journalist-author Rasheed Kidwai and published by HarperCollins India, the Congress loyalist opens up about his tumultuous tenure as the home minister in the wake of the controversial hangings of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru as well as the 2012 Delhi gang rape.

Although the book takes its readers through various political facets of the Congress stalwart, certain chapters that talk about Shinde’s struggle to prove to the world he was more than his low caste, his camaraderie with former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, or his gratitude to his mentor Sharad Pawar, stand out.

“I have a simple mantra: Be happy in every situation. I have experienced many ups and downs, moments of joy and grief. I have faced utter helplessness and enjoyed dream-like pleasures. Life is worth living. My autobiography is a treasure chest of memories, experiences, travel, and emotions,” he says.

Pawar is credited with bringing Shinde, a former sub-inspector, to the political arena. Shinde won his first election to the Maharashtra Assembly in 1974 from a reserved constituency, Karmala, in his home district of Solapur. A year later, then Maharashtra chief minister V P Naik inducted him as a junior minister in the government a few months later. There was no looking back.

In the memoir, Shinde says, “I made many friends during my long career, but my friendship with (Vilasrao) Deshmukh was exceptional. We had both arrived on the political horizon of Maharashtra…..though I was elected directly to the Assembly and Deshmukh started at the village level as head of a gram panchayat. In 1985, we both were mentioned as contenders for the top-most political job in the state. To the amazement of the high command, we would recommend each other’s name to observers whenever there was a prospect of electing a new leader.”

Talking about the crippling burden of being born into a caste long consigned to the lower rungs of the social hierarchy, Shinde mentions how he lost out on many political opportunities due to his caste.

“… when the NCP elected R R Patil as its leader in 2004 (in Maharashtra), the Congress central leadership was led to believe that a tough chief minister would be needed to handle a strong Maratha satrap like Patil. In other words, if a Maratha leader was not named in my place, the community would switch loyalties to the NCP. It was ironic that my caste would become a hurdle after I had helped the party do well…,” he says in the book.

The veteran Congress leader also talks vividly about his stint as the Governor of undivided Andhra Pradesh and how he appointed a teacher who helped him polish his Telugu.

Heaping praises on his mentors, Shinde says “If Sharad Pawar was my friend, mentor and colleague who guided me through those initial years, Sonia Gandhi has been the rock whose unstinted support played a huge role in my career.”