In a country such as India, where millions migrate each year for millions of reasons, a family’s migration history still makes news.
From left: Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. (Supplied)
Suddenly, information from the Nehru-Gandhi Family is scarce. Or is that a hasty assumption?
One is talking about information that usually keeps the Family’s name — or anyone’s name, for that matter — in circulation at poll time.
For instance, will Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra share the stage with Rahul Gandhi at a rally in Hyderabad on Friday, 6 April, when the Congress manifesto is released in the South?
The Family is expected to be present in Jaipur, the northern city, earlier the same day, where the manifesto will be released. (Officially, it was released in Delhi the previous day.)
The only information available in Hyderabad is that Rahul and party president Mallikarjun Kharge will do the honours at the Thukkuguda rally, announcing a sub-manifesto for Telangana, among other southern states.
The party does not even disclose whether Rahul’s mother and sister will accompany him to the Thukkuguda rally or whether South India is Rahul’s alone to conquer.
If one has not noticed, the party’s national manifesto released in Delhi features only two photos on the cover — those of Rahul and Kharge.
Secrecy also surrounds larger issues. For example, who are the Congress candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh?
Logically, the names need not be disclosed before the notification of the fifth phase of the election on 20 May.
However, Sonia and Rahul figured in the very first list of 15 candidates in 2019, contesting from their electoral citadels.
This time, the first list saw Rahul’s name from Wayanad. Sonia’s matter was settled much earlier when she opted to go to the Rajya Sabha from “safe” Rajasthan.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s name cropped up when the Himachal Pradesh and Telangana lists were discussed, but nothing happened.
Cheeky social media posts even threw up the name of her husband Robert Vadra from the Family seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Most curious to confirm if the Family was indeed migrating from the North to the Northwest and South would be BJP. How it would go to town talking about it at election rallies!
Congress insiders are divided on what’s happening. Some say the party waits to know the Opposition candidates before naming its own. Others say the Family still assesses what it can gain by contesting from the two seats.
Even a mighty family like the Nehru-Gandhis is getting — or has already received — feedback from Ground Zero in Amethi and Rae Bareli.
What are the common folk saying? What do they feel about their former MPs? Before social media, communication technology, and campaign algorithms, that was how leaders assessed their chances.
Chandulal Chandrakar was one such leader. He was the Congress spokesperson in the 1980s and 1990s. Old school. A journalist to boot. Before the elections, he would spend some time in Durg, his constituency in Madhya Pradesh.
Here’s a sample of questions he asked his voters:
For rural voters, MPs who can get basic things done are more than messiahs. The MPs should have the clout to get these “small” things done. They matter, even today.
For a long time, Sonia in Rae Bareli and Rahul in Amethi could get anything done for their voters. They were the people’s patrons. They may not have refurbished – and did not refurbish – their constituencies, but a call to the BDO or ZP chairman was enough to get things moving.
They exerted their power even when Uttar Pradesh was ruled by non-Congress parties, the Samajwadi Party (SP) or the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Nobody would say no to Sonia’s request.
Things changed after 2014. Yogi Adityanath was no Mulayam or Akhilesh or Mayawati. And BJP was no SP or BSP.
Locals will tell you how the patronage gradually sizzled out. There came a time when being known as a Sonia or Rahul voter worked against villagers.
Yes, Sonia and Rahul could utilise their MPLADS amounts, but not everything can be done with money. Sonia’s word has to have value regarding her stature and her family’s influence. After all, she came from a house that gave the country three prime ministers.
The loss to Smriti Irani may not have hurt Rahul more in 2019 than his weakened ability to get things done through the government in Lucknow. How much more would Sonia be hurt if she were to find herself in that situation?
Their internal assessments also told them what they surmised already. The “pran pratistha” (consecration) in Ayodhya may increase the electoral difficulties for the mother and son. In any case, who will take that chance to check if that is true?
Given her age and health, the Upper House might be seen as a natural next step for Sonia. Not so for Rahul, though.
Things were not looking well for them in the North. Even the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu government in Himachal Pradesh is tantalisingly on the edge. It lost three states in the last round of Assembly polls.
In Madhya Pradesh, some senior leaders say nearly 50,000 workers, from the village and block levels to MLAs and former MPs, may have left in the last few years.
There still is a large amount of Congress vote left in these Hindi states. Even the BJP grudgingly admits that. But that is not a winning vote.
In Rajasthan, Congress has been told it is in a serious fight in at least ten constituencies as of today. However, certainties, and not uncertainties, will affect elections.
Let us get back to the Nehru-Gandhi Family citadels in Uttar Pradesh. The Family home was in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad). At Anand Bhavan. No Nehru contested from there, though.
The closest to win from there was Jawahar Lal Nehru’s successor in office, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Later, the Family’s biggest “enemy”—Vishwanath Pratap Singh—won from there as a Congress candidate and once as an independent. (He won from Fatehpur to become the prime minister.)
Nehru preferred Phulpur, a small town around 30 km from Allahabad, as his constituency. It became the Family seat of the Nehrus. He won thrice from there, and after him, his younger sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, represented it twice.
The 1952 campaigning in Phulpur represented a polarisation that would continue to snap at secular India’s heels 72 years later.
Nehru’s rival was Swami Prabhu Dutt Brahmachari, close to RSS’ second chief MS Golwalkar. He contested as an independent, supported by Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad and All India Hindu Mahasabha.
Nehru campaigned for a “sukhi” (happy) India. His discourses centred around an “India of the future.” His main aim was poverty abolition.
Brahmachari wanted cow protection and sought changes in the Hindu Code Bill. His speeches were peppered with shlokas and mantras. He wanted a Hindu India.
The seeds for a debate between two distinct, opposite ideas about India were sown in Phulpur. Nehru got 73 percent of the votes, and Brahmachari got 9.41 percent.
The Family contested from Phulpur five times till 1967. By then, Indira Gandhi had emerged as a leader in her own right.
Indira Gandhi chose Rae Bareli because she knew about it through her father’s recollections and letters. The town has a curious history, but that’s for another day.
For now, let this suffice: It is said that Nehru visited this place on 6 or 7 January 1921. The police of what was then the United Provinces had fired at local farmers near Rae Bareli. Nehru wanted to visit their families, but the police stopped him.
Farmers started gathering around him, and Nehru addressed them on the spot. He would later say it was among his first political acts.
Feroze Gandhi, an unusual candidate from the Nehru family, was elected to Rae Bareli’s first election in 1952. He also represented the district in 1957 and died in 1960.
Perhaps that’s why Indira chose Rae Bareli — because of its links with her father and husband. She contested from there in 1967, 1971, 1977 (she lost), and 1980.
Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin Arun Nehru represented the seat in 1980 and 1984. Sheila Kaul, married to Kamala Nehru’s brother Kailas Nath Kaul, won from here in 1989 and 1991.
The Family’s retainer, Captain Satish Sharma, was elected in 1999 (he was earlier elected from Amethi as well). Then came Sonia’s longest stint — 2004, 2006, 2009, 2014, and 2019.
Of the 20 elections Rae Bareli witnessed till 2019, the Family represented or contested it 16 times. Now that’s called a Family bastion!
Just over 60 km away is the Amethi constituency. Sanjay Gandhi was the first Family member to contest from there in 1980.
After his untimely death, his brother Rajiv won the seat in the 1981 by-election, representing it again in 1981, 1984, 1989, and 1991 — till his assassination. Family friend Satish Sharma won from here in 1991 and 1996, losing in 1998 (when he shifted to Raae Bareli).
Sonia Gandhi won from here in 1999, when she defeated BJP’s Sushma Swaraj in Ballari in Karnataka as well.
Rahul’s constituency was in 2004, 2009, and 2014, till he lost in 2019 but won from Wayanad in Kerala.
Of the 16 elections held in Amethi, the Family won or represented it 12 times. That’s a Family bastion as well!
In all, 32 outings from the same Family in three constituencies in Uttar Pradesh—with three members becoming prime ministers—represent dynasty politics in the largest sense of the phrase. No other family comes close to it and its performance.
With that pedigree gained over seven decades, the departure of the current head of the Family, Sonia, from UP to Rajasthan has tongues wagging.
While Sonia technically still represents the Hindi heartland, Rahul appears to have crossed the Vindhyas to make his mark in the region (unless the party asks him to fight from the family borough in UP).
He has his task cut out in the South. His party has a strong presence in Kerala, is in government in Karnataka and Telangana, and is a trustworthy ally of the DMK in Tamil Nadu. Andhra Pradesh is the only weak point.
From the Family standpoint, too, Rahul has interesting roots in the South. In 1978, noticing a change in the air barely two years after she was trounced in the 1977 polls, Indira Gandhi chose Chikmagalur (it means “town of the younger daughter” in Kannada) in Karnataka in 1978 to signal her return to national politics.
A non-electoral initiative, visiting the interior village of Belchchi near Patna in Bihar on elephant back, would have given her the stamp she needed for an electoral victory in the 1980 elections.
However, the post-Emergency defeat was still raw in her mind. So, along with Rae Bareli, she wanted a second seat and chose Medak (then in Andhra Pradesh, now in Telangana), where she came to be known as Indiramma.
The Family will remember how Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh stood by Indira in her worst year, 1977, and the year of her return, 1980. In Karnataka, the Congress won 26 of 28 seats in 1977 and 27 seats in 1980.
Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh returned the figure of 41 out of 42 seats for Congress in both 1977 and 1980.
Years later, her daughter-in-law Sonia also saw a need to go South. It was her debut election in 1999. She was intent on fighting from her husband’s Amethi constituency. However, certain advisors spun a web of alarm, finally convincing her to fight from a second seat.
That was Ballary, where the contest was masked in secrecy till the last minute. It was a cat-and-mouse game between BJP and Congress: Midnight calls between Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam — to LK Advani, M Venkaiah Naidu, and Ramakrishna Hegde on one side and Sonia, Ghulam Nabi Azad, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Vincent George, and few more on the other.
It was touted as a showdown between “swadeshi” Sushma Swaraj and “videshi” Sonia Gandhi.
Sonia won but chose to retain Amethi. That is the legacy Rahul shoulders today.
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