Gopalkrishna Gandhi: Know about the Opposition’s VP candidate  

In an open letter he wrote to then Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi in May 2014, Gopalkrishna Gandhi urged him to be the leader of 69 per cent of India’s population who didn’t vote for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In the same letter, Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, couldn’t contain his delight at a chaiwalla winning the elections to be the leader of the world’s largest democracy. “What a wonderful thing it is, I said to myself, that one who has made and served chai for a living should be able to head the government of India. Far better bearing a pyala to many than being a chamcha to one,” Gandhi had written.

His observations in that letter sums up the personality of the man, who on Tuesday was announced as the Opposition’s candidate for the post of India’s next Vice-President.

Coming from an illustrious family background, having British India’s last Governor General C Rajagopalachari as his maternal grandfather, Gandhi has always carried the baggage of expectations and a powerful political legacy.

He chose the way of bureaucracy to serve the nation, qualifying civil service exams in 1968. The highlights of his bureaucratic career were stints as Secretary to Vice-President from 1985 to 1987, and Joint Secretary to President from 1987 through 1992, when he opted for a voluntary retirement. After hanging up his boots from civil services, he served as Presidential Secretary in 1997.

Gandhi has done stints in India’s foreign missions as well. He served as the Minister (Culture) in the High Commission of India, UK, and the Director at the Nehru Centre, London. He has been India’s High Commissioner to South Africa and Lesotho (1996), and Sri Lanka (2000). He was also India’s Ambassador to Norway (2002) and Iceland.

Gandhi, however, is mainly renowned for his role as Governor of West Bengal (2004-09), a period which witnessed significant changes in Bengal politics as more than three-decade old Leftist regime was uprooted by Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress.

A Hindustan Times profile of Gandhi notes that the very fact he is being supported by both the Left and Trinamool as Vice-Presidential candidate speaks volumes about how he has been able to establish a connect across the political divide.

While in Bengal’s Raj Bhawan, Gandhi was also known to take secretive trips to gauge the mood of the countryside. He has been credited with bringing to negotiating table Banerjee and then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to find a solution to the Singur crisis.

A holder of a Master of English degree from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, Gandhi presently teaches history and politics at Ashoka University.

The Opposition will have a tough time finding a competitor against him.

The showdown between him and the current rulers in New Delhi has been on since his open letter to Narendra Modi.

Among the famous lines of his 2014 letter to Modi were, “Be an RSS-trained believer in Hindutva in your DNA, if you need to be, but be the Wazir-e-Azam of Hindostan that the 69 per cent who did not vote for you, would want you to be.”