M R LALU
India’s political spectrum witnessed a complete transformation when an outsider from Delhi with a layman’s profile invaded it. Decades of Indian politics was full of powerful transcriptions of dynastic narratives that defined, decoded and at times demonized it in various vernaculars. Narendra Modi’s invasion into the political domain of India came with an unprecedented force and it was an unpredicted exercise until a decade ago. And the main reason such an exercise seemed unrealistic and insensitively brushed under the carpet was the political force that controlled India for decades with the power it garnered by playing its political shrewdness on the innocence that India’s landscape is inhabited with. The transformation seems to be completely overtaking all narratives effectively erasing the dynastic influence. The desperation of the dynasts and their shenanigans have often been surfacing with an ostensible denial. Would family dynasties cripple Indian politics? Before answering this, let us know who forced the desperation emanating from a total collapse of one of the dynasties to invent exercises such as a revival Yatra across the country? The answer comes from the dynast himself. Rahul Gandhi from the supreme Nehru-Gandhi dynasty conclusively recognizes the threat and revealingly proclaims it with all sensibility. He says that it is not the BJP but the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP that his party is fighting its war against. His quip seems to be a deliberate portrayal of Narendra Modi as an instrument in the hands of the larger framework of the Sangh. His lamentation on the Sangh Parivar is realistic as the reach and effect of the right wing group could overthrow the decades old dynastic supremacy. In his latest address in Haryana during his Bharat Jodo Yatra he reminisced a little bit of the Indian epic the Mahabharata and to the gathering of his party cadre he said, the RSS is the 21st century Kauravas and India’s selected billionaires are standing with the Kauravas. And the ‘Tapasy’ in him calls his party the conglomeration of the Pandavas.
To understand the significance of such an analogy, we need to know the epical importance of the two segments of the same royal family. On one side are the Pandavas the proponents of righteousness and on the other side are the Kauravas being immersed in treacherous demonization. Rahul Gandhi is seen beautifying his party with his refined vocabulary and emboldened oratory. So, the real threat according to him is not the BJP but the invasive power of the RSS. Hegemonizing India’s political institutions, dynasties have transformed them into family enterprises and Rahul Gandhi is a product of such a family enterprise. His rise to political significance in India tells us tales of a feeble democracy and its antithetical impulses. For him, political powers emerging from outside the jurisdiction of dynasties do not count to be reliable and supposed to be unsustainable. RSS, on the other hand is seen to be tabled as a platform which efficiently moulds leaders for the cause of the country. Its imagination, capturing the gist of India’s ethical and cultural veracity is often misread and embezzled. The hullaballoo on the RSS chief’s views on Hindutva and his latest quips on India’s minority essentially resembles the restlessness of an ideological opponent being unprepared for an intellectual dialogue.
Political dynasties in India have always camouflaged their real intent by misappropriating the democratic values of the country. The latest act of undermining the power of democracy in India was the induction of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s son into his cabinet. A healthy democracy always creates space for fresh and genuine faces. This deteriorating trend in Indian politics began with the Nehru-Gandhi family which showed the way and served licenses to all the power centers that later metamorphosed into dynasties. Training centers of RSS, the Shakhas, are probably busy in reversing this unethically political enterprising of the family dynasties. It keeps outsourcing its efficient cadre to the BJP and the situation emerging in the saffron party is by design dangerous for the political dynasties across the country and this caused Rahul Gandhi to come up with the Pandava-Kaurava analogy.
For a fact checking we can examine the trend in the RSS-BJP confluence. The list of its most prominent leaders deputed to the BJP by its parental organisation must startle us. Leaders like A B Vajpayee, L K Advani, Narendra Modi, M M Joshi, Nitin Gadkari, Pramod Mahajan and Ram Madhav are a selected few. The list is endless and the interesting aspect is that nobody among them comes with a family baggage. It is unnecessary to suspect their organisational efficiency. An ideological paradigm that A B Vajpayee is known to have brought into Indian politics is familiar to the Indian polity. Therefore, the Congress’ scion is justifiably disillusioned about the RSS presence behind the BJP’s dominance. When he says his fight is not against the BJP but against the ideology of the RSS, he convincingly comprehends the impact of Sanghism in Indian politics and the perils that the dynasty he represents has shrunk into.
Parties converted into family enterprises are evidently depicting the ideological and structural decline of India’s democracy. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu is wary and shaky at the rise of K Annamalai, BJP President of the state. Stalin’s incompetence to counter the intellectual eloquence and political shrewdness of Annamalai became another reason for his son’s induction into the cabinet. Annamalai, on the other hand is a disciplined party cadre of the BJP and emerging as a crucial challenger to the DMK dynasty in Tamil Nadu where its principal opponent AIADMK has shrivelled into insignificance. Annamalai’s deep-rooted Hindutva conscience and his fine tuning with the Sangh have made him the suitable choice for the party. Pandits, watchful of the degradation of the Indian political system seem to be appreciative about the manufacturing mechanics of the BJP workers by the Sangh. Undoubtedly, its new generation leaders are equally capable to row the party across turbulent political waters. Tragically, political dynasties are often seen fulfilling the familial requirements by being in power and in a democracy, if parties stoop into familial entertainments, we will witness the downfall of the democracy and its most important institution, the parties. Irrespective of electing its new president, the Congress party is still seen heavily leaning on the Nehru-Gandhi family and the image makeover Yatra by its leader indubitably tells us the intensity of degradation the party has come across. The rise of a dynasty in any party indicates the fall of its genuine leaders and the party’s disconnect from the grassroots. It seems the political discourse that the Sangh and its affiliates are trying to ignite in India’s political spectrum is to question the obfuscating impact of the dynasties and their debilitation of India’s democratic edifice. Rahul Gandhi’s revival strides made him sense this tremor.
