Authors: Jatin Gandhi,Veenu Sandhu
Rahul
Rahul
The Inevitable: Death and Politics
The Shaping of the Personality
‘Isn’t it too early to write a biography of Rahul Gandhi?’ was a question that we were often asked when we set out on this project about one and a half years ago. It was also one of the first questions we asked Penguin India when we were approached with the proposal. As we became convinced a book on the subject was in order, the map for it evolved.
We saw that Rahul Gandhi had ideas about revolutionizing youth politics that he was slowly putting into place. One look at the websites of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) now and you know the plan to revive these frontal organizations is nothing short of a mammoth management project targeting a few crore young people. This was something unprecedented in the history of India’s youth politics. As the year 2011 drew to a close, the IYC had an active membership base of one crore—a big number even for a country with a population more than a hundred times that number. Consider this: In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, at less than 60 per cent polling, under 42 crore votes were polled. Combine the targeted membership of the NSUI and the IYC, and the number of dedicated workers—two crore—suddenly becomes an important statistic not just in youth politics but also in electoral politics. With this army of young workers at different levels, the Congress could hold considerable sway over a large number of voters. The revolution in youth politics could usher in far-reaching changes in the politics of the country and ultimately impact all our lives. Yet, for that to happen, a mere plan is not enough. The plan would have to work, and for that to happen, several hurdles would have to be overcome.
This book is not exactly a SWOT analysis of Rahul Gandhi’s plans and the Congress’s prospects, but it does aspire, through the course of its narrative, to tell the story of what he is up to and how it will affect not just the voter but the average Indian. As the book goes to print, Rahul’s mark on day-to-day politics can be seen everywhere, whether it is the 2012 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s struggle against corruption, or special relief packages for weavers running into a few thousand crore rupees. He is influencing which side the government must take in the tug of war over land and minerals between corporate giants and tribals. Rahul got the Congress to widen its traditional focus on the
garib
(poor) to include the
aam aadmi
(common man). We know, for instance, from D.K. Singh’s April 2010 report in the
Indian Express
, that from 2007 to 2009, Rahul wrote nine letters to the prime minister on varied subjects, including his concerns about public health, climate change and water. Another report, by Diptosh Majumdar in the
Times of India
, in October 2011, revealed that Rahul wrote seventeen letters to the prime minister in the United Progressive Alliance’s second stint, increasing both the frequency and the scope of his interventions. In one such letter, he suggested that it was not enough for ministers to declare merely their own net worth, they should also declare those of their families.
In the age of coalition politics, where allies can make or break a party, Rahul has caused a shake-up within the Congress by questioning certain old and tested alliances. The last single-party government with a clear majority was led by Rajiv Gandhi. For over twenty years, successive governments have counted on external support, including the backing of small regional parties, to stay in power. And now a man still considered a political novice by many is working on the conviction that the Congress Party ought to do without burdensome allies. Rahul wants the Party to regain the dominance it enjoyed many decades ago.
The Indian National Congress’s dominance over the country’s politics was both inspired and consolidated by the nationalist movement that it led. A vast majority rallied around the Party during the nationalist movement and the trend continued well beyond Independence, till the 1967 general elections. If the nationalist spirit was the magnet that brought large numbers into the Congress fold and kept them there, Rahul hopes the aspirations of the country’s youth will now act as the binding agent. The average age of the Indian today is around twenty-six years, and two-thirds of the country’s population is under thirty-five. There are multiple and long-term advantages for a political formation targeting the young. Under Rahul, the IYC and the NSUI have set out to do precisely that for the Congress: draw young men and women into the Party’s fold. Despite its jibes, the principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, does not have a counterpart to Rahul, who is, at forty-one, a young man in present-day politics.
We are at an interesting phase in Indian—and Congress—politics. It’s a time when the ageing old guard is slowly and, at times, reluctantly making way for the younger lot represented, at least within the Congress, by Rahul. The army of young people he is building includes those who have never really given politics a serious thought or have family members even remotely associated with politics. There are some who have simply given up well-paying jobs, even outside the country, to join him. It’s a phenomenon that hasn’t been witnessed in Indian politics in a long time, perhaps since the days before Independence.
That Rahul Gandhi belongs to a political dynasty and yet aspires to create a Congress where merit is not devoured by dynastic succession is a contradiction that throws up a whole range of interesting possibilities and challenges. We have tried to look at these challenges through the prism of unfolding political events. The party to which Rahul belongs is the frontrunner when it comes to promoting and exalting dynasty. How then will the newest dynast succeed in challenging this issue within the Congress? It was essential to touch upon the history of the Nehru–Gandhi family to understand what has brought Rahul to the juncture at which he stands today, and how it affects his politics. This book, therefore, is also a brief story of the events that shaped the man as much as it is about the events he is shaping. We have gone back, again briefly, into his childhood and his growing-up years to get a sense of the events—the tragedies, and the political and personal fallouts of those tragedies—that kept him from having a ‘regular’ life and ended up shaping his personality.
The people who are part of Rahul Gandhi’s inner circle and his army of foot soldiers form an important aspect of this book. They help us gauge his intentions. We have spoken to people situated at various levels in his team. Our request to interview Rahul was turned down. Kanishka Singh, a core member of Rahul’s team and a close confidant, called back to say that Rahul felt that it was too early for a book on him and that an interview would seem like an endorsement of the book. We left it at that. The only endorsement we seek is from our readers. Every other journalist who has tried to learn directly from Rahul his views on crucial matters has run into the same problem of access. In June 2010, a columnist with the
Wall Street Journal
wrote: ‘The Gandhis are probably the most opaque major politicians in the democratic world. They rarely speak to the media, and when they do, it’s not to critics.’
Being journalists, we were able to speak with a fairly large number of politicians and members of Parliament, across parties, during the course of our work. There were some among them who took time out to grant us separate interviews for the book. We are grateful to one and all—those who spoke to us on the record and those who shared information on the condition that their names be withheld. Some of the young foot soldiers in the IYC and the NSUI were more forthcoming, and we are grateful to them for giving us crucial insights into the grassroots movement that started with Rahul’s advent in politics.
Uttar Pradesh and the Congress’s Dalit politics in the state are other crucial aspects of this book. Rahul has been working with the conviction that the only thing that can ensure the return of the Congress to its past strength is its revival in India’s Hindi belt. The Bihar assembly results were a big setback to the Party in 2010 and there is a lot at stake for Rahul and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh in 2012. Right from the beginning, Uttar Pradesh has been his focus and Mayawati among his prime targets.
In the years that he has been in politics, Rahul seems to have, by and large, based his politics on a few major issues: the problems of the poor and the marginalized, whether it is the farmers, the tribals or the Dalits. Hence we also take a close look at the careful branding exercise in which the Congress and the people around him work overtime to depict him as the messiah of the marginalized and the voice of the underdog, as well as his own efforts in connecting with the poor.
More than just a special word of gratitude is due to Hartosh Singh Bal, fellow journalist and long-time friend, for his incisive interventions and suggestions at different stages of the book. We also thank our editors at Penguin, Ranjana Sengupta for her help from the very beginning and R. Sivapriya for bringing this chapter successfully to a close, and Paloma Dutta, our copy editor for this book.
A bunch of other friends in the media helped us during the course of writing this book. We thank Rasheed Kidwai, Sanjeev Ratna Singh, Pallavi Ghosh, Ravi Dhiman, Subodh Ghildiyal, Nandita Suneja Baruah, Sandeep Phukan, Dhirendra K. Jha, Madhavdas Gopalakrishnan, Aresh Shirali and D.K. Singh who exchanged notes and ideas with us or whose reports were a great help to this project. This book would not have even taken off without the generous permission and encouragement of our respective editors at
Open
, NDTV and
Business Standard
.
We are grateful to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library for allowing access to their collection of books as well as the Lok Sabha secretariat for the various documents, archives and access to Parliament; and the team at pressbrief.in for the treasure trove of information and recordings on the Gandhi family. Tonusree Basu and M.R. Madhavan at PRS Legislative Research provided useful insights and statistics for the project and deserve a special mention here. So does Rajkumar Srivastava at the Indian Express Archive who offered important suggestions and some wonderful options when we were selecting the pictures.
Uday Shankar, who was the news director at Star News in 2005, deserves a ‘thank you’ for saying at that point in time: ‘Rahul Gandhi is not just a person, he is a full-fledged beat. Cover him like that.’
7 December 2011
New Delhi
Rain clouds were beginning to gather over Amethi. A young man in a white kurta–pyjama sat on the lawn under a darkening sky, speaking to journalists about a commitment he had recently made. It was the April of 2004. Less than a month earlier, on 21 March, the Congress had announced that Rahul Gandhi, the fifth-generation heir of the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty, would contest for the Lok Sabha from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
‘I could have joined politics soon after my father died,’ Rahul told his interviewer, Vrinda Gopinath of the
Indian Express.
But he hadn’t because he felt he was very young and ‘had nothing to offer’. The conviction of the man who had just taken his first step into politics that he could have stepped into his father’s shoes with ease thirteen years earlier, is a telling comment on the complexion of the party to which he belongs—the Indian National Congress—and that of Indian politics which has found it practically impossible to wean itself away from dynasties.
The last thirty years or so, since the death of Sanjay Gandhi, have shown what the Congress intrinsically believes—that a Gandhi can be replaced only by a Gandhi. For almost a century now, a Nehru–Gandhi has always held a key position within the Congress, and in those brief periods when the family has chosen to remain outside active politics, it has run the show from behind the scenes. The Nehru–Gandhi clan, one of the world’s oldest political dynasties, will have it no other way. The Congress, too, is most comfortable when someone from the family is in charge.
Motilal Nehru, the lawyer-politician to whom the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty owes its origin, was Congress president twice, in 1919 and then in 1928. His son Jawaharlal’s tryst with politics started in 1916 at the age of twenty-seven and, thirteen years later, in 1929, he took over from Motilal as Congress president. On the face of it, the succession happened through a democratic process, and Jawaharlal was made Congress president only after an election. But, being the son of an illustrious leader and having the backing of the country’s most towering personality, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he had an undeniable advantage over the others. That he was well-educated and gave a voice to the emotions and ideas of the youth in a manner no one before him had done further tilted the scales in his favour. M.J. Akbar, in his book
Nehru: The Making of India
, describes that historic moment in time when Jawaharlal was elected party president, though not without resentment in some quarters. On 13 July 1929, Motilal wrote to Gandhi making a case for his son, Jawaharlal. Gandhi, he wrote, must accept that:
The revolt of the youth has become an accomplished fact … It would be sheer flattery to say that you [Gandhi] have today the same influence as you had over the youth of the country some years ago, and most of them make no secret of the fact. All this would indicate that the need of the hour is the lead of Gandhi and the voice of Jawahar … There are strong reasons for either you or Jawahar to wear the crown, and if you and Jawahar stand together, as to which there is no doubt in my mind, it does not really matter who it is that stands in front and who behind.
By this time, an anti-Nehru lobby had already grown within the Congress. It tried to derail Motilal’s plans by putting up its own candidate, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. And though Patel enjoyed greater support than Jawaharlal among the provincial Congress committees, everybody knew in their hearts that Gandhi would have the final say in the matter. To his credit, Jawaharlal himself was far from keen on wearing the ‘crown’. On 9 July 1929, he wrote to Gandhi: ‘I am very nervous about the matter and do not like the idea at all.’ In August, despite Jawaharlal’s reservations, Gandhi publicly suggested that Motilal’s son be made Congress president. When he learnt of this, Jawaharlal, who was in Calcutta, sent a telegram to Gandhi begging him not to insist on his name for presidentship. But Gandhi had made up his mind and, on 28 September 1929, he told the All India Congress Committee (AICC) to elect Jawaharlal. What was meant to be an election was, in fact, the Congress bowing to Gandhi’s diktat. Despite visible resentment from some quarters, on paper, everybody voted for Jawaharlal.
Describing the third generation witnessing the transition of power from the first generation to the second, Jad Adams and Phillip Whitehead, in their book
The Dynasty: The Nehru-Gandhi Story
, write:
Gandhi had put Jawaharlal’s name forward for the presidency of the 1929 Congress at Lahore, a vitally important occasion. Jawaharlal was somewhat embarrassed and tried to refuse the honour, but Motilal was overjoyed, quoting the Persian adage, ‘What the father is unable to accomplish, the son achieves.’ Indira, now aged twelve, was present to see the transfer of power from father to son.
Thirty-five years later, the Indian National Congress would witness another attempt at a dynastic succession, this time from father to daughter. Barely three days after Jawaharlal’s death in 1964, Congress leader Lal Bahadur Shastri approached Indira and said, ‘
Ab aap mulk ko sambhal leejiye
(Now you take over the responsibility of the country).’ The belief ingrained in Indian culture that the right of first refusal lies with the son or the daughter in a succession plan permeates Indian politics as well. Katherine Frank writes in
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
that other Congress leaders also approached Indira mainly because, being Jawaharlal’s daughter, the issue of her candidacy had to be clarified first. The invitation to Indira to assume prime ministership was apparently made out of courtesy rather than a serious desire to see her at the helm of the country’s affairs. The actual succession battle was between Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai. But, had the grieving Indira taken up the offer, Congress leaders might have had to accept her decision. Backed by Congress president K. Kamaraj and the syndicate, Shastri was eventually the Party’s unanimous choice. On the evening of 1 June 1964, the day the decision was taken, he called on Indira again after visiting Jawaharlal’s cremation site. Once again, he suggested to her that she become prime minister even though the fact was that, at this stage, he was in no position to make such an offer to her. The next day, when he rose to speak in Parliament after acting prime minister Gulzarilal Nanda proposed his name as party leader, Shastri first lauded Indira and said he looked forward to her ‘continued association with us’. He went to the extent of saying that it was imperative to ‘have a Nehru in the Cabinet to maintain stability’, and promptly offered her the position of minister of information and broadcasting.
One and a half years later, when Shastri died, Kamaraj and other Congress leaders decided to make the forty-eight-year-old Indira his successor. Kamaraj succeeded in persuading all the other candidates, except Morarji Desai, to withdraw. During the vote in Parliament, the scales were tilted decisively in Indira’s favour. She received 355 votes against Desai’s 169. Zareer Masani, in his book
Indira Gandhi: A Biography
, talks about how an otherwise-harsh critic of Indira’s, her paternal aunt Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, former governor of Maharashtra and member of Parliament (MP) from Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, issued a statement: ‘We Nehrus are very proud of our family. When a Nehru is chosen as prime minister, the people will rejoice.’ On 24 January 1966, Indira was sworn in as prime minister of India. The dynasty had established strong roots within the Party; Indira would only nurture it further.
Some records indicate that Nehru was not in favour of Indira being promoted by the Party. On 2 February 1959, when she was formally elected president of the Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal had disapproved of the move. Not only was he doubtful of Indira’s political abilities, he was also worried about the impression her elevation would give, writes his sister Krishna Nehru Hutheesing in her book
Dear to Behold: An Intimate Portrait of Indira Gandhi
. Jawaharlal had said that he ‘would not like to appear to encourage some dynastic arrangement. That would be wholly undemocratic and an undesirable thing.’ However, journalist Kuldip Nayar writes in his book
India: The Critical Years
, published in 1971, that many senior Congress leaders of that time—including Kamaraj, S. Nijalingappa and even Shastri—thought Jawaharlal had Indira in his mind as his successor.
When Shastri was home minister I had occasion to talk to him on various matters. Once I ventured to ask him: ‘Who do you think Nehru has in mind as his successor?’ ‘His daughter,’ Shastri said without even a second’s pause, as if he had already pondered over the problem. ‘But it will not be easy,’ he added. Referring to this observation, which appeared in my book
Between the Lines
, Mrs Gandhi has said: ‘Had this been in my father’s mind, surely he would have wanted me to be elected in Parliament. However, whenever the suggestion was made he agreed that I should not go into Parliament.’ I don’t want to join issue with her but Shastri did tell me that Nehru did have his daughter in mind as his successor. We were talking in Hindi and Shastri said, ‘
Unke dil mein siraf unki ladki hai
(He only has his daughter in mind).’
For the Congress, too, every time it has found itself in need of a successor, a Nehru–Gandhi has been the most desirable and, in fact, the only choice. Rahul, by entering politics, was only following a pattern set by his predecessors and the Party to which he belongs. And herein lies the contradiction: a dynasty flourishing within a democracy. In India, such contradictions have always coexisted and go beyond politics. Their roots lie in the socio-cultural fabric of the Indian subcontinent where the family name takes precedence over almost everything else. Every village, town and city has a few prominent families which are considered the repositories of power in that area. Their wealth and influence compensate for any lack of individual achievement, and the status that members of the family enjoy is often inherited but not necessarily earned. It is not a mere coincidence that in business, too, the family name—Tata, Birla, Ambani, Munjal, Godrej, Jindal, Oberoi—determines how powerful and financially strong the company is perceived to be.
In public perception, family name and family values matter. The Gandhis realize this and have made sure that they possess both in abundance. Dynasties, like that of the Nehru–Gandhis, are the crème de la crème of the Indian urban élite. Yet, to remain acceptable to the masses, they have to balance contemporaneity with tradition. Sonia’s complete Indianization (she is always seen in a sari or a salwar–kameez); Rahul’s white kurta–pyjama when he’s campaigning, visiting villages or attending Parliament; and Priyanka’s clothes (always a sari) when she is in Amethi or Rae Bareli, are calibrated decisions aimed at making the right impression and living up to the image of being a truly Indian family.
That Sonia was the ideal bahu in contrast to Maneka, Sanjay Gandhi’s wife, has been widely discussed. Frank uses adjectives like ‘garrulous’, ‘loud’, ‘boisterous’ and ‘uninhibited’ to describe Maneka. In stark contrast to her sister-in-law, Maneka ‘could not and would not adapt to the Gandhi household’ and ‘could also be disrespectful of her mother-in-law’, something that was unthinkable for Sonia. Maneka later confessed that she ‘didn’t know housework and didn’t want to learn cooking’. Sonia was at the other end of the spectrum and is often eulogized as the ideal wife, the ideal daughter-in-law and the ideal mother. Though we have very little access to her private life, her understanding of Indian handicrafts and her cooking abilities are well known. These are precisely the qualities which the ordinary Indian expects in a woman. The Gandhis have to be seen as entirely submitting and ascribing to the values of an Indian family. The relationship between the Gandhi family and Indian culture is a symbiotic one, a two-way process.
Another reason why dynasties continue to be accepted in the Indian context is the tradition of royalty. At the time of Independence, the country was a cluster of small kingdoms and principalities. The ruling classes of India whether in business or politics—which often interpenetrate each other, with businessmen exercising considerable political clout and successful politicians possessing vast business interests—often aspire to and follow in the footsteps of kings and princes in behaviour and lifestyle. It sets the members of the ruling class apart from the masses, making them attractive to the
aam aadmi
. Though, over the last fifty years or so, a slow revision has happened, thousands of small towns and villages of India are yet to break out of this mindset.
Political dynasties, however, are not the same as royal dynasties which demand unquestioning acceptance from the people. While there is no denying that political dynasties stand in conflict with the principles of democracy, it is equally important to acknowledge that they do not, and cannot, negate the foundation on which a democracy is built. The dynast does get the initial advantage which comes with the family name and the goodwill which the earlier generation of leaders from the family may have acquired. But, once voted into power, he has to prove himself worthy of people’s trust even if he is allowed more concessions than a first-generation politician would be granted. Yet, for the dynast to be rejected by the people, he would have to do a great deal of wrong in public perception. While there are examples of the voter turning his back on powerful and charismatic dynasts, India’s political history also shows that the Indian electorate is more forgiving of their mistakes. Indira’s example is a case in point.
The politician who displayed shades of dictatorship by imposing Emergency when she felt that her position in the government was being threatened was ousted from office in the next election. Even then, it took the excesses of Emergency and a powerful political movement led by Jai Prakash Narayan (JP) to overthrow her. More than fifty Congress leaders defected to JP’s side and an even greater number wanted Indira replaced. The day she lost, India celebrated the way it had on the eve of Independence. But, less than three years later, in 1980, the same electorate which had rejoiced over her defeat with fireworks and drumbeats voted her back to power with a thumping majority. The Congress won 353 of the 529 seats.