| |
Dynastic succession dogs democracy
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI -
Republican India consigned hereditary monarchy to
history more than 50 years ago. But it has yet to free
itself from the spell of political dynasties, judging by
the heated exchanges between major political parties
ahead of general elections expected in late April or
early May.
The exchanges center on the the
Nehru-Gandhi family and the serious possibility of Rahul
and his sister Priyanka, both in their early 30s and
representing the fourth generation of the the family,
contesting the elections and laying claim to the prime
minister's job.
Neither of the Gandhi siblings
has indicated they will contest. But their January visit
to Amethi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the
parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi, their mother
and chief of the main opposition Congress party, has
ignited passionate reactions from the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP).
Pramod Mahajan, general
secretary of the BJP and the ruling party's main
election strategist, was provoked enough to call a press
conference and declare that any aspirant to the prime
minister's job must be "born of Indian parents - father
and mother must both be Indians".
The allusion
was to the fact that while Rahul and Priyanka are
descendants of a family of Congress party politicians,
several of whom were jailed by the colonial British
during India's independence movement, their mother
happens to be Italian by birth.
Sonia Gandhi
inherited the Nehru-Gandhi political mantle after her
charismatic husband and former prime minister Rajiv
Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a suicide bomber sent
by the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE).
Rajiv Gandhi's mother and predecessor in
office, Indira Gandhi, ruled India with an iron hand
through the late 1960s and most of the 1970s and was
assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984. She was
herself groomed for the job by her father and
independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru.
Sonia Gandhi's claim to be prime minister
appears to have been successfully thwarted by a
sustained campaign mounted by the BJP harping on the
supposed unsuitability of a person of foreign origin
ruling the country during key provincial elections in
November.
The BJP scored spectacular
victories against the Congress party in the western
state of Rajasthan and central India's Madhya Pradesh
and Chattisgarh states. Encouraged by the tide, the ruling
party called for dissolution of parliament this Friday so that general
elections can be held six months ahead of when they are
actually due in September.
Mahajan, the main
architect of the BJP victories, has since then stressed
repeatedly that Sonia Gandhi's foreign origins and
dynastic rule by the Congress party would be the main
issues over which the general elections would be fought.
"It hurts my national pride to think that someone born
outside the country should be foisted as candidate for
prime minister," Mahajan said, referring to Sonia
Gandhi, who is never seen in public except in Indian
traditional costume and speaks halting but correct
Hindi.
Sensing vulnerability, the Congress party
has been testing the political waters with Rahul and
Priyanka. Its managers have dismissed the BJP's sharp,
rather racial-sounding reactions as betraying
nervousness at the prospect of the political dynasty's
comeback.
Asked for a reaction to Mahajan's
revised genetic specifications for the prime minister's
job, Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said: "It is a
shame that the general secretary of the ruling party is
unnerved by a mere visit of Rahul and Priyanka to Amethi
and shows their lack of confidence."
With the
popular appeal of the Gandhi siblings apparent, the BJP
seems ready to fall back on its original plank of
opposing dynastic rule. The BJP's own candidate for the
top job and present incumbent, Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
claims no great political lineage and is an octogenarian
bachelor.
Still, political scientists think
the BJP may not find it easy trying to sway voters
against the Gandhi clan, or even the dynastic principle
itself.
According to Dipankar Gupta, who
teaches sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Indian
society lives in a "family first, citizenship later"
mode. "Singling out one or the other family, that too
in a poll-time debate is hypocritical."
Mahajan's views have also been criticized as
"smacking of intolerance" by Omar Abdullah, the
outspoken leader of the pro-India National Conference
(NC) political party in Kashmir and a former minister in
Vajpayee's BJP-led coalition government.
Like
Rahul and Priyanka, Omar comes from a political family,
and both his father and grandfather have had long runs
as chief ministers in Kashmir, which Pakistan also
claims. Like the Gandhi siblings, he also has "foreign
origins" in that his mother happens to be British.
"There is no constitutional bar on Sonia Gandhi
or Rahul or Priyanka becoming prime minister - the only
bar is the wishes of the voters of India," said Omar,
whose pedigree failed him and the NC in the 2002
elections held in Kashmir.
Both the BJP and the Congress party are guilty of
seeking support from powerful political families that hold
sway in the provinces - the Patnaiks in
Orissa in the east, the Karunanidhis in Tamil
Nadu in the south and the Thackerays, who run
the Shiv Sena party in the western state of
Maharashtra.
In some provinces, genuine blue-blooded
royalty disgraced in the past for collaborating with the
British Raj have resurfaced as chief ministers. Amrinder
Singh, a scion of the Patiala royal family and Congress
party leader, now rules Punjab state, and Vasundhra Raje
Scindia, a princess from the Scindia family, was
installed as Rajasthan's BJP chief minister after
winning in the November elections.
According
to Ashis Nandy, one of India's best-known sociologists, the
principle of dynasty is alive and working not only in
politics but, for example, in the country's immensely
popular film industry. The current crop of matinee idols
includes Sunjay Dutt, whose parents were both leading
stars in their day, and Karishma Kapoor, who represents
the fourth generation of the well-known Kapoor family of
actors and film producers.
India's business world
is also dominated by household names such as the
Tata, Bajaj, Birla and Godrej houses, which made their
fortunes during the colonial period and have
effortlessly flourished into third and fourth
generations.
Explains Inder Malhotra, political
commentator and the author of a recent book Dynasties
of India and Beyond: "In an area ruled for hundreds
of years by monarchs and princes, there is a deeply
entrenched feudal outlook."
(Inter Press
Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
