Varun Gandhi has time and again said that he will not speak a word against his extended Gandhi family for electoral gains. He had kept his words till now. When he inadvertently spoke about Rahul Gandhi, it was to appreciate the work that was being done with NGOs in Amethi. He has studiously refrained from making derogatory personal remarks against Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka and even Robert Vadra. But it seems his was a one sided commitment to decency.
For, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has thrown all norms of decency to the winds by first saying that Varun has gone astray and then labeling him a traitor to the family. These are strong words and would have immediately invoked equally strong retaliatory words in this super charged atmosphere.
But Varun has simply responded by saying that Priyanka has crossed the “lakshman rekha of decency.” To his credit, he has stuck to his original decision of keeping family out of politics. He has simply said that his resolve should not be taken to mean that he is weak.
Varun could have reopened old wounds and talked about the betrayal of his mother, who was thrown out of the house by Indira Gandhi when he was just 2. Or he could have talked about the betrayal by the family of his father’s political legacy. Sanjay Gandhi was Indira’s closest confidante during and post Emergency. His untimely death had made Indira fall back on Rajiv, who was made to quit his airlines job and join the family ‘profession’.
Sonia and Maneka have not liked each other from day one. It was fine till Rajiv was a private person and Sanjay was in politics. After Sanjay’s death and Maneka’s subsequent attempts to carry forward his political legacy on her own with help from Sanjay cronies like Akbar ‘Dumpy’ Ahmad, the rivalry came out in the open. Mrs. Gandhi supported Rajiv, as he was to be the heir apparent and threw Maneka out of the house at midnight in full media glare.
Subsequently, the fight has escalated over attempts to gain control of the various Gandhi-Nehru trusts that dot the capital. Maneka, as minister in the Vajpayee government, had tried her utmost to wrest control of these trusts. But she did not succeed, and relations deteriorated to a point of no return.
For a family given to highlighting even the smallest of things their members have done for the country or to keep the family name alive, the complete blanking out of Sanjay’s name from the Congress political history was confounding, to say the least, until 2010. That year, the Congress published its official history. Edited by Pranab Mukherjee, the book completely disowned him and blamed the sterilization and slum clearance programmes undertaken by him for the excesses of Emergency. After that, did anyone expect Varun to join the family profession in the Congress party?
Sanjay Gandhi has been variously described as ‘Indira’s problem child’, a coarse and crude man and an ‘extra constitutional authority’ during the Emergency who operated through cronies. He never cared for the means if the end was achieved. He tried to bulldoze all opposition by force. His Maruti misadventure and other excesses had forced both Indira and him to appear before the Shah and Khanna Commission’s of Inquiry almost every second day. Still, mother and son had combined to keep their sanity, outfoxing the commissions with legal objections and plotting their remarkable comeback in 1980, after just three years of Janata Party rule.
History and historians have not been kind to Sanjay Gandhi for his waywardness and disrespect for democratic norms and institutions. But that is the legacy Varun has inherited. He invokes his father’s name sometimes. To say that he has gone astray is to adhere to the official Congress line on disowning Sanjay and his politics. Priyanka has done just that. But does she really expect Varun to subscribe to the same ideology that she does after all that he and his mother have been subjected to by the family?
Now, with one sided comments from Priyanka, the younger generation is also being made a part of this rivalry. But this is nothing new in India as there are many families that have members in opposite camps. While late Madhavrao was in the Congress as is his son Jyotiraditya , Vasundhara Raje and Yashodhara are in BJP. Digvijay Singh’s brother Laxman Singh went to BJP before rejoining the Congress in 2013. Deepa Dasmunshi and her brother- in- law Satyanarayan are fighting against each other from Raiganj in West Bengal. TMC MP Sougata Roy’s brother Tathagata is in BJP. There are hundreds of other families divided like this.
But having difference of ideology is one thing and tearing into one another for that is another. It is true, as Varun has said that no one becomes big by belittling others. Personal attacks, especially on non-retaliating family members, just shows how mean you are. But as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war and elections in India are much more than war. Priyanka has sounded the bugle. She will continue to needle him. Let us see how long can Varun resist retaliating.
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