People power? It’s all in the family

Indian politics is replete with examples of leaders passing the baton on to their kith and kin. The trend is only growing, says Yogesh Vajpeyi

They are clinging to the dynasty as the last straw,” said BJP’s ebullient General Secretary Pramod Mahajan the moment the Congress party announced Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Amethi. But the very next day, the BJP itself was going to endorse dynastic succession in politics. It was fielding the son of Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, Manavendra, and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhararaje Scindia’s son, Dushyant. The two would fight from Barmer and Jhalawar respectively. And barely a fortnight earlier, the party had inducted Varun Feroze, son of Maneka and the late Sanjay Gandhi, with much fanfare. If Varun hasn’t yet been given a ticket, it is probably only because he is underage.

A look at the aspirants to the 14th Lok Sabha reveals that almost every party has adopted the “family first” brand of politics. And that includes parties that came out of the ‘socialist’ strain and opposed the Congress’ dynastic politics. As sociologist KK Sharma puts it, “Singling out any family or party for perpetuating dynastic rule would be hypocritical.”

The Congress has fielded the scion of the erstwhile Gwalior rulers, Jyotiraditya Scindia, in Guna (Madhya Pradesh) in the hope of retaining the family’s hold. That is even though Guna is the subject of a bitter family feud between the erstwhile royals.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has fielded wife Preneet Kaur as the Congress candidate from Patiala. Former Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal’s son Sukhbir is batting for the Shiromani Akali Dal in Faridkot. The wards of the three Haryana Lals — Devi Lal, Bansi Lal and Bhajan Lal — are battling it out in the state on behalf of different outfits. And in Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son Akhilesh Singh and brother Ram Gopal Singh are Lok Sabha candidates for the Samajwadi Party .

And new political dynasties are mushrooming. So, Rahul will have company in the next Lok Sabha if he wins. Apart from Jyotiraditya, the list of Congress candidates includes C Rajagopalachari’s grandson CR Kesavan, Rajesh Pilot’s son Sachin, Madhav Sinh Solanki’s son Bharat and the late Jitendra Prasada’s son Jatin.

The BJP has caught the syndrome as well. By propping up their kith and kin, its leaders are trying to establish new political families. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee may by a bachelor, but his family members are rising up fast. The party has given his niece Karuna Shukla a ticket for the Janjgir Lok Sabha seat and made his nephew Anoop Mishra a minister in Uma Bharti’s Madhya Pradesh government.

One of the key BJP strategies this time has been wooing some erstwhile Congress families. Or, if that was not possible, to split them and adopt the disgruntled faction. It had made a dent in the Scindia family long ago when the late Vijayaraje Scindia and her son Madhavrao parted. After Sonia’s ascendence in the Congress, it adopted her sister-in-law Maneka and is now propping up her son Varun. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh’s younger brother and Raghogarh’s sitting MP Laxman Singh was a villain till he was in the Congress. Now that he has joined the BJP and is its candidate in the same constituency, he has overnight turned into a saint!

Other parties too are not far behind. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Abdullahs continue their pursuit of power. Ironically, the patriarch, Sheikh Abdullah, led a mass movement against the one family rule of the state’s Dogra dynasty. The Abdullahs were only recently ousted from power by Mufti Mohammed Saeed. Mufti, ironically again, is trying to foist his own dynasty through daughter Mehbooba. In Orissa, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik represents his father Biju Patnaik’s political legacy. In Tamil Nadu, Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam supremo K Karunanidhi has anointed his son Stalin as his heir apparent and in the Shiva Sena Bal Thackerey’s son Uddhav is all set to take charge after his father.

Even those parties whose very raison de etre is opposing privileges gained by birth have caught the dynasty disease. Thus, we have Mandal messiahs like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav trying to perpetuate their own brand of family rule in UP and Bihar. The Bihar chieftain has retained his two-decade-old iron grip over the state through his wife Rabri Devi and brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav. Mulayam had propped up his brothers Ramgopal and Shivpal in the SP hierarchy years back and inducted his son Akhilesh into the Lok Sabha in the last elections. Bihar dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan has helped his two brothers get into what has now become ‘family business’. His brother, Ramchandra, is an MP from Rosera while the other brother, Pashupati Kumar Paras, is an MLA from Atauli.

Political scientists attribute the increasing role of dynasties in contemporary politics to the changing character of political parties in India. Says Prof Pushpesh Pant of Jawaharlal Nehru University: “Most Indian parties started as mass movements. But once in power, they turned into mafia gangs in which the leader decided the distribution of spoils of power.” This explains why most political parties in India today are one-leader outfits. These autocratic leaders are suspicious of even their own party members. And therefore, they ensure that the key positions in the party are given to their kith and kin.

During the heydays of the Janata Dal government, Devi Lal said it crudely but bluntly. When a journalist asked him why he was promoting his politically novice son Om Prakash Chautala at the cost of other more talented leaders in the party, he retorted: “Who should I promote, if not my son, you?”

The founders of new political dynasties today are less outspoken. “No one in my family has got anything because of me. They have earned their place through hard work and by winning the people’s faith,” says Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Others, like UP Congress leader Arun Kumar Singh Munna, see nothing wrong in a politician’s son turning to politics. “You don’t question it when an actor’s son takes to films and a doctor’s son takes to medicine. Why single us out?” he asks.

All these political families have one thing in common. A leader who created a following — and in most cases, a family fortune amassed by hook or by crook — and a string of successors who tried to cash in on it. If the successors were anywhere near as clever as the patriarch, the dynasty continued. But if they squandered their acquired political capital, the dynasty quickly crumbled.

This makes predicting the fate of political families tricky. Especially when they have to seek the people’s mandate. The chequered political profile of the Nehru-Gandhi family underlines the vagaries of family rule. While most Indians recognise the service and sacrifice of its members, they have not flinched from inflicting severe punishment whenever they appeared to stray. They hailed Indira Gandhi as Durga after the 1971 Bangladesh war. But they were ruthless enough to show her the door in the next elections after the infamous Emergency.