Freedom fighter, journalist, he wrote speeches for 3 PMs

Destiny brought him close to greatness and power and he wrote about the people he knew with erudition and affection. In his 2003 collection The Book I Won’t be Writing and Other Essays, he wrote on the political styles of our prime ministers; on why Nehru did not want his daughter to be prime minister, on JP who had a “deep earnestness of face, gesture and voice”, on Morarji Desai who he called “a big man and a very interesting man” with an “innate sense of fair play” and “one of the best-dressed Congressmen in a crowd so notorious for sloppiness” and on R K Narayan who “signed no manifestos, presided over no conferences, delivered no lectures on the responsibilities of an author in the ushering of a more just and humane society”.

He was the speech writer she implicitly trusted. He was blindly loyal to her. “It is fair to say that in matters small and large, Sharada Prasad is inclined to give Mrs Indira Gandhi the benefit of doubt,” wrote Ramachandra Guha on the publication of The Book I Won’t be Writing. The title of the collection was a reference to his steadfast decision not to write a tell-all memoir about his time with Mrs Gandhi, including his controversial participation and role in the infamous Emergency years.

Sharada Prasad had several publications to his credit and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2000, the Indira Gandhi Award for national Integration in 2001, and a special award of the Karnataka Patrika Academy in 2002.