India’s Gandhi dynasty facing more than just election defeat

Frank Jack Daniel and Sruthi Gottipati | Reuters

NEW DELHI: The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has defined Indian politics for nearly a century faces more than humiliating election defeat when results come out on Friday.
An expected triumph for opposition leader Narendra Modi could condemn the family to political oblivion.
Often described as a mixture of a royal family with the tragic glamor of the Kennedys, the dynasty gave India its first prime minister, the empire-beating barrister Jawaharlal Nehru.
His daughter, Indira Gandhi, and grandson, Rajiv, both held the post subsequently, and both were assassinated.
By some measures, the family was in decline long before the parliamentary election; it has not won a majority in decades.
Shy scion Rahul Gandhi’s bid to stay in power for a third consecutive term was called lacklustre even by allies, and his speeches at rallies up and down the country in recent months were a far cry from Nehru’s legendary rhetoric.
Compare that with overwhelming favorite Modi’s electrifying campaign, during which he repeatedly derided Rahul, 43, and his mother Sonia for keeping India poor, and the house of Gandhi looks vulnerable.
Few would write off the clan completely. Sonia, the power behind the prime ministerial throne occupied by Manmohan Singh, delivered Congress its worst result to date in 1999. She then led the party to victory in the next two elections.

Weakening grip
Nonetheless, leaders of both the Gandhi’s Congress party and Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said they believed Modi would seek to loosen the dynasty’s grip on India if he wins.
They pointed to his home state of Gujarat, where he has systematically purged rivals from institutions and won three consecutive terms, capitalizing on his pro-business policies.
“He will defang them politically. Look at what he did in Gujarat: he has just reduced the Congress to a non-player,” said Kanchan Gupta, member of the BJP’s national executive committee.
Modi has questioned Sonia’s non-native roots — the widow of Rajiv was born in Italy. On Thursday, a BJP ally called Rahul a “foreigner,” even though he was born in New Delhi.
During the election, Modi contrasted his humble past as the low-caste son of a tea seller with Rahul’s privileged and cloistered life in plush districts of the capital.
In one recent newspaper interview, Modi said the family’s leadership could come under threat if the party fails to win 100 of parliament’s 543 seats, as some polls predict.
Congress sources said they were worried he planned to target their very existence in politics.
“We’re assuming this will be one of his priorities,” said a Congress strategist who is close to the Gandhi family. “The family is not worried, but the party is,” he said.

Rewriting history
The scale of Modi’s antipathy to the Gandhis was on display at the start of the campaign last year, when he launched the construction of the world’s tallest statue, a $338 million, 182-meter tall homage to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Nehru’s deputy and interior minister, who was often at odds with him.
Modi, a Hindu nationalist, sees Patel as a symbol of an India imagined without the dynasty, who would have led the country down a different, right-wing path if he had not been thwarted by the socialist and atheist Nehru.
“Every Indian regrets Sardar Patel did not become the first prime minister. Had he been the first prime minister, the country’s fate and face would have been completely different,” Modi said at the time.
The Congress party has lost power several times since Nehru’s era. After his daughter Indira Gandhi led the party to a crushing defeat in 1977, the prime minister who replaced her humiliated the family with arrests and investigations.
But that caused a backlash of sympathy among the public that helped propel her back to power with a landslide majority three years later.
If elected, Modi is not expected to follow the same course of using tax and police agencies to harass the Gandhis. In a campaign speech last month, Modi said he did not believe in “vendetta” politics or witch-hunts.
“The Janata Party government was in too much of a hurry,” said Gupta. “Modi is too savvy to be seen to be openly persecuting the dynasty. He has made it very clear that he is not going to be vindictive in politics.”
Going by his record in Gujarat, Modi prefers to move methodically against his opponents — often with the help of close aide Amit Shah, who held multiple posts in the Gujarat government and led Modi’s campaign in Uttar Pradesh, politically the most important state, during the election.
After Modi took office in Gujarat in 2001, Shah, a former stockbroker, helped him consolidate power by squeezing Congress loyalists out of non-state institutions, such as the state’s banking and dairy cooperatives, which are economically powerful and influence the lives of millions of voters.
He also helped the BJP wrest control of the Gujarat state cricket association from Congress after 16 years, getting Modi elected to head the organization in 2009.
Cricket is closely tied with politics in India, where the sport is hugely popular and politicians revel in exposure to it.
Modi is now the longest-serving chief minister in Gujarat’s history, a fact that has helped lure high profile defectors away from Congress ranks, another favored tactic. In the last two years, hundreds of Congress workers have switched sides in the state, including some of its top leaders.

Survival instincts
While Modi may not press legal cases against the Gandhis or their associates for alleged corruption — a move some in his party would encourage — a resounding victory on Friday would help him make the BJP India’s natural party of power, not Congress.
“We’re looking at being out of power for 10 years,” said the party strategist, when asked what the implication of a strong BJP majority would be for the Congress party.
Even so, Congress is unlikely to ditch the Gandhis any time soon, not least because the party has recovered from previous defeats.
In the hours after the exit polls came out, party leaders were quick to shift the blame for any potential loss away from Rahul Gandhi’s handling of the campaign.
“There are no leadership changes, there are no nights of the long knives, there’s no mindless recrimination, and as a political party that has known defeat before we work toward victory again,” said Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former minister and family loyalist.
And for many in the party who might be looking for fresh blood, the search ends with Rahul’s charismatic sister Priyanka, who had an important backroom role in the campaign.
“Party men would embrace her with both arms the moment she wants to join — in fact they’d grow a third arm to welcome her,” Aiyar said.

(Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty and Aditya Kalra)

Related

Otto Von Bismarck described politics as the art of the possible. After months of breathless anticipation and speculation, the BJP has finally thrown its lot behind Narendra Modi, opening the door to infinitely interesting possibilities. The high-stake Lal Krishna Advani resignation drama stealing his former protégé’s thunder and the subsequent climb down may just be the beginning.
This isn’t merely about an unsavory tug-of-war within the saffron family. The Gujarat chief minister’s nomination as leader of the BJP’s 2014 poll campaign and by implication its prime ministerial candidate marks a defining turning point for India’s vibrant democracy and is set to transform the country’s political landscape.
It is a testament to Modi’s cutthroat approach to politics and everything else that he sees no compunction in turning on his own mentor and godfather to get what he wants. He has split the party that he dreams of leading to power next year down in the middle. And even before taking power in Delhi, the Gujarat leader has managed to polarize and divide the nation like no other politician ever has, not to mention the notoriety that has come India’s way in the past 11 years thanks to Gujarat. And the 'Dear Leader' hasn’t even begun. You hardly need the third eye of a Nostradamus to divine what lies in store for India if it eventually gets Prime Minister Modi.
Call it poetic justice or whatever that Advani, who along with former Prime Minister Vajpayee founded the BJP and its earlier avatar Jan Sangh building it from a scratch, has been felled by the monster that he helped create. Indeed, more than Vajpayee, the once benign, smiling face of Hindutva, it is Advani’s groundwork and rabblerousing with clever campaigns like the Ayodhya yatra that helped the party catapult itself from a 2-member marginalized outfit to power in Delhi.
To see the architect of the BJP divested of leadership and eminence in his own party and upstaged by his own protégé at this stage in his life therefore is rather edifying. It is a telling comment not just on the fickle nature of political fortunes but the uncertainty of life itself.
The irony of ironies, when Vajpayee, scandalized by the brazenness with which Modi presided over the 3-month long carnage in 2002, wanted to fire the chief minister, it was Advani who bailed him out. And now his life-long dream of leading India has come crashing down to the ground thanks to the man groomed by him who has now replaced him in the good books of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the powerful ideological parent and boss of the BJP and its many other fellow travelers. The Sangh, seen as the inspiration behind Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, has been for the past seven decades working to paint this amazing land distinguished by its diversity in one overpowering hue of saffron.
By foisting someone like Modi on the BJP and making Advani fall in line, the Sangh, whose visceral hatred of Muslims remains its golden guiding principle, has once again demonstrated who really calls the shots and controls the party that could take the reins of the great democracy next year.
Whether Modi will ultimately get to Delhi or not, India will never be the same again. Doubtless, by picking someone who is seen and shunned around the world as the architect of the 2002 pogrom that killed around 3000 people as its leader, the BJP has taken a huge gamble.
The principal opposition party hasn’t merely thrown the gauntlet to a battered and bruised Congress and allies like Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who have baulked at the idea of a tainted man leading the nation. It has challenged the very idea of India and all that is essential to the wellbeing of the country as a pluralistic and democratic nation.
It is not as if the rough and tumble world of Indian politics hasn’t seen tainted men in power before. Indeed, India has had more than its share of corrupt, criminal and communal elements. From state assemblies to Parliament, you come across them in all shapes and sizes in all parties.
Advani himself went on to become the home minister and deputy premier despite the role he and other leading lights of the saffron brotherhood played in the Babri Masjid episode and the bloody upheavals that followed.
And for all its claims of championing inclusive, secular politics, the Congress has seen thousands of organized riots and conflagrations targeting Muslims and other religious minorities since it took charge of the country after Independence.
Who can forget what happened to the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and elsewhere in the country after Indira Gandhi’s assassination? Three decades on, the community that once took pride in being the defender of India and the Hindus, is still awaiting justice.
There is a critical difference though. The Congress has repeatedly apologized for 1984. And by picking up Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, for the top job in the land it has tried to atone for its sins in its own way although nothing can recompense for lives lost and permanent scars on the soul. Under Sonia Gandhi, the party has also tried to distance itself from characters like Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.
On the other hand, we have Modi and his party who remain singularly unrepentant and proud of what happened in Gujarat in 2002. In fact, instead of censuring Modi and holding him to account, the BJP has chosen to reward and anoint him as its leader for 2014.
A party bereft of ideas sees Modi as its savior, argues Shiv Visvanathan in The Hindu. In fact, he goes on to suggest that “a Modi can only rise in an India bereft of ideas, a country content to play with old clichés like development, governance, security as if they were freshly minted currency. Modi is a hybrid created out of an updated Swadeshi (nationalistic) rhetoric which now manifests itself as a technocratic and corporate, and a loose World Bank vocabulary we call governance.”
In an editorial, The Hindu itself notes that “Modi has so far been a deeply divisive figure and the Advani episode has revived all the doubts about his ability to lead an India distinguished by its diversity.”
If this is the best the BJP, one of the country’s two main parties, could come up with as its leadership choice for India, there is a real cause for concern for the billion-strong nation.
What is more disconcerting is the fact that you do not see anyone in this vast land and colorful, diverse democracy who could offer a credible alternative to check this frightening, all-conquering onward march of fascism complete with a Hitler like figure heading it. The scam-tainted and directionless Congress is mortified and paralyzed, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, to mount a credible and coherent defense against the challenge.
While its coy Italian-born president remains as distant as ever and the befuddled Dr. Singh counts his last few days in power, Rahul Gandhi, the party’s third generation dynastic hope, has been running away from the fight. You just cannot imagine him getting down and dirty to take on a mean and murderous opponent spoiling for a fight to the finish. And no one else in the Congress is audacious enough to take the initiative.
Meanwhile a bewildered nation awaits its fate and the ‘second coming’ of the colossus. Somehow one finds it still hard to believe that a country that calls Gandhi the Father of the Nation could end up electing someone who personifies everything that militates and goes against everything that Gandhi and the architects of this amazing nation believed in.
Between Modi and Advani and the toxic communalism and obscurantism of the BJP and political bankruptcy of the Congress, India deserves better. In the end, one hopes, commonsense will prevail and the nation will choose Gandhi’s view of India over that of his assassins.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Aijaz Zaka Syed

What is with the Congress? India’s grand ol’ party appears to be consumed by a death wish as it hurtles and tumbles through its second term like a headless chicken. The Congress-led coalition is inviting upon itself disaster after incredible disaster as it bleeds itself to death through self inflicted wounds. That this government still has two more years to go is almost overwhelming and not just to the disenchanted voters.
Allies like Mamata Banerjee and Karunanidhi cannot wait to leave the sinking ship although no one has the appetite for another election anytime soon. An imminent showdown, nonetheless, is approaching fast. For which the Congress has no one to blame but itself. Who needs opposition when a government gifts the people steepest petrol price hike in history on its third anniversary? Whoever is running this coalition certainly has a sense of humor.
No one appears to be in charge in Delhi. Senior ministers are forever working at cross purposes and poor party spokespersons have a hard time explaining the absurd ways of this government. The UPA II is on a harakiri mission.
While India has never been a stranger to corruption, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, picked up for the top job for his pristine image, now enjoys the distinction of presiding over the largest number of scams in the shortest period of time. The latest scandal involving the allocation of coal blocs threatens to taint Mr. Clean’s own hands.
Even the economy, the chief achievement of the economist premier, is unraveling fast. Pundits are rushing to write off the great Indian success story. The total rout of the Congress in the recent UP polls points to the shape of things to come.
Sonia Gandhi’s dream of seeing her son replace Singh in 2014 may well remain just that. The Congress chief must be ruing the day she chose the distinctly unambitious Dr. Singh eight years ago to stand in for her and keep the seat warm for the Prince.
Blame it on the presence of a parallel power center or the natural obsequiousness of Congress wallahs but Singh has proved a spectacular disaster, squandering all the goodwill and undoing years of hard work to return Congress to power. Dr. Singh already seems to have given up as he stoically waits, like the old man in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, for the imminent end.
How did the Congress end up here? I wouldn’t care two hoots for the party or why it’s driven by a death wish. What worries me sick is the alternate scenario. For all its flaws and sins, including its repeated betrayal of Muslims, Congress still represents a wide spectrum of Indian society.
What’s most disturbing is the fact that even as the party marches off like a zombie into the sunset, there’s no credible, healthy alternative to replace it. The so-called secular parties are in total disarray and are largely confined to their respective regional base.
That leaves room wide open to dangerous possibilities — like the return of the BJP and ascent of a certain Mr. Narendra Modi. The BJP’s friends in the media have been dreaming and obsessing over Modi’s march to Delhi for years now.
However, his desperate attempts to break free from Gujarat have so far been frustrated by the taint of the 2002 genocide which he presided over for nearly three months, with all state power and machinery at his disposal. Numerous riot cases and monitoring by the Supreme Court have had him bogged down in the state, souring his Delhi dreams.
That problem appears to have been taken care of with the Special Investigation Team recently giving the chief minister exoneration, especially in the Gulbarg massacre of 58 people, including former MP Ehsan Jafri. SIT chief Raghavan’s conclusions however have been challenged by the court-appointed amicus curiae.
There have also been reports of the ex-CBI chief and his family undertaking several foreign trips on Gujarat government’s account. But such minor irritants are unlikely to create any serious trouble now. Besides, when you have the voters and numbers on your side, who gives a damn about a court case or two?
Modi already seems to have scented blood as he moves to take charge of the BJP for the battle 2014, stepping up attacks on the Congress leadership. If his proud pageant at the recent national executive in Mumbai is any indication, the Sangh Parivar has clearly anointed its old apparatchik for the top job in the land. Modi arrived in the film city to a superstar’s reception, having kept the entire BJP leadership waiting all day and sidelining everyone else.
The stage is set for the 2014 elections and Modi is clearly the best and last hope of the Hindutva brotherhood in the eyes of the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP and associates. The timing couldn’t have been better too. Having milked the Ram temple cow bone dry and its poisonous anti-Muslim rhetoric reaching its saturation point, the Parivar has been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade. The BJP is mired in corruption, infighting and numerous scandals. It doesn’t have an avuncular, unifying figure like Vajpayee with a charismatic image — or mask, as some would suggest — either to rally the party and disenchanted allies.
Modi has stepped forward to fill that leadership vacuum. He’s already proved his saffron credentials within the Parivar with the 2002 pogrom. And he needed to win the larger Hindu middle class. Which the media, most of it owned or controlled by powerful business houses that have been pampered by Modi over the past one decade with unlimited sops, are working 24/7 to paint him as the bright future that the emerging India has been waiting for. It never tires of talking about the Hindutva haven of good governance that is Gujarat, witnessing unparalleled development and economic growth year after year.
So what if a couple of thousand of Muslims were killed and rest of them still live in terror in their refugee camps and ghettoes? That was 11 years ago. How long would you cry over the past? Isn’t it time to move on?
No matter what Muslims think, the Indian establishment seems to have not only accepted Modi, it’s breathlessly waiting for his arrival in New Delhi. This legend about Modi’s Gujarat is being spawned at global level as well with the top marketing gurus working the US media to wash the 2002 taint. It seems nothing stands in the way of Modi’s leap to Delhi now.
Indeed, given the total chaos in the Congress-UPA, it could be a cakewalk for the former RSS propagandist. Sonia Gandhi hasn’t been able to devote her time and attention to the party as in the past because of her health issues. And her 42-year-old son simply refuses to grow up. The PM-in-waiting-forever has so far demonstrated a singular lack of appetite for the big fight ahead. So the Delhi throne is now up for grabs for the man who has the blood of thousands of innocents on his hands.
In a way, if Modi finally beats Rahul to take Delhi in 2014, it would be a kind of poetic justice. The Congress has constantly shied away from confronting the Gujarat chief minister on his appalling crimes and continuing victimization of Muslims despite having a mountain of evidence against him.
Even as the UPA government has tried hard to ignore him for fear of hurting its Hindu vote bank, Modi has fortified himself wiping out all evidence of the 2002, targeting senior officials who testified against him and using the state machinery to perpetuate his power. And today he is out to snatch power from the Congress and he could very well succeed in his attempts. That would serve the Congress right. What would it mean for the country though? I shudder at the very thought.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf-based writer.

Aijaz Zaka Syed