Eye on Maharashtra: A lesson on dynasts & dynasties

Amid the heat of elections in five states across the country, and a surfeit of foul language used by BJP leaders against political rivals, two enduring images warmed several hearts in the state, if not elsewhere. Both were of Supriya Sule, the Nationalist Congress Party MP from Baramati and daughter of NCP president Sharad Pawar.

The first was of Sule squatting on her haunches and strapping on her father’s shoes to his feet at the funeral of Lata Mangeshkar at the Shivaji Park. The second was from her response to BJP MP Tejasvi Surya to his comment on dynasts in politics. The first image was evocative of not just the love and trust between father and daughter but the very Indian tradition of respect and consideration for one’s parent, as in the Sanskrit sloka from the Mahabharata:

Pita swargaha, pita dharmaha, pita paramankam tapaha,

Pitri pritimapanne sarvaha priyanti devataha.

(My father is my heaven, my father is my dharma, he is the ultimate penance of my life/ If he is happy, all gods are happy).

‘Dynasts’ in the Congress and the NCP, by and large, have shared precisely such a relationship with their parents. Given what has happened in other political dynasties, I cannot be sure of other political parties. Perhaps this is what burns up the BJP because they are unable to drive wedges between families-- for example, between Sonia and Rahul Gandhi or between Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi.

They tried to do so between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar till some years ago but ultimately blood proved to be thicker than water and Ajit returned to the family fold, that is if he had been away at all (I doubt that very much).

They tried it with the Thackerays by attempting to project Raj Thackeray as the better politician and succeeded for a time. But the estrangement between Uddhav and his cousin was never absolute, they continue to maintain personal ties though politically they have driven miles apart.

It is Supriya Sule gently but firmly taking apart BJP’s poster boy Tejasvi Surya in the Lok Sabha that has been most impressive and has emerged as a talking point. No dynasts in BJP? Then who are Poonam Mahajan, Pankaja and Pritam Munde, Piyush Goyal and others who have all made it to parliament or assembly under their father’s steam, she asked with a smile.

“They are all my friends. I am proud to be a dynast and proud to be born to my parents,” she said.

Could any of these BJP dynasts deny that they are not proud to be the children of their parents? No. Would they have made it to parliament had they not been the children of their particular parents? No, again. But are they all as well brought up as Supriya and the Gandhi siblings? I cannot say.

Surya is obviously an ‘immature’ brat, given how he had almost caused a diplomatic row between India and the Gulf nations by his obscene comments on the sex lives of Arab women. Other examples abound. I remember Pankaja Munde cribbing about her make-up melting in the heat of summer as she visited drought-prone Marathwada where people had no water to drink.

Piyush Goyal has been extremely rude to journalists for pointing out he had mixed up Einstein with Newton without acknowledging or apologising for his mistake. Poonam Mahajan is the nicest of the lot, though the same cannot be said about her brother who ended up drunk and late at his father’s funeral (thus annoying then senior leader L.K. Advani to furious condemnation) and later mixed cocaine with champagne the night before immersing his father’s ashes and almost died in the bargain. That is how Poonam is now a ‘dynast’ and her brother nowhere to be seen these days.

It is not by spouting pretty words like ‘shuchita, samrasta aur sabhyata’ that BJP members will become refined. Those values have to be cultivated and ingrained since birth as they have been in Supriya and the Gandhi siblings.

Years ago, at an election in New Delhi, I recall former Lieutenant Governor Jagmohan, who had shifted allegiance to the BJP, finding himself standing some places behind Priyanka Gandhi in the queue for voters. When she noticed, she stepped back and gave him precedence.

As journalists questioned, she said very sweetly, “My mother always taught us to respect our elders” and took her place at the back of the queue. No one dared utter a word after that even as Jagmohan, who had lately been critical of the Nehru-Gandhis, seemed dazed and speechless.

Many such examples vis-à-vis Rahul Gandhi abound. Like how he quietly paid for and set up Nirbhaya’s brother as a pilot – perhaps a leaf out of his grandmother Indira Gandhi’s book. She had paid out of her personal funds and took care of the children of Ravindra Mhatre, the Indian diplomat who was killed by Kashmiri terrorists in the UK, until they could stand on their own feet.

Supriya is fond of relating the story of how her father scolded her roundly for referring to a bureaucrat as “tu” rather than “aap” though he was years younger than her. Her nephew Rohit Pawar, also an MLA, once told me how Pawar had told him to look after each one of his constituents whether they had voted for him or not because even the non-voters deserved to be treated well.

Strangely, there are no such signs of refinement in Surya, who is also the nephew of a Karnataka MLA, Ravi Subramanya, as Supriya politely pointed out to him. Yet he has the gall to derisively speak of dynasts in parliament – at least Yogi and Modi have no such connections to boast of when they criticise dynasties. But, then, Surya embodies everything that is wrong with them by spouting the kind of foul language used by his top leaders.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that family background matters, the lack of it is a definite handicap. And the BJP gets the worst of both–the dynasty debate and the culture of refinement.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald, Mumbai)

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)