Sunetra Pawar’s succession, Nitin Nabin's elevation expose gaps between BJP rhetoric on dynastic politics and reality of family rule and patriarchy across NDA
Political developments following Ajit Pawar’s tragic death last week turn the focus on two facets of Indian politics.
The first is a matter on which the BJP and its leaders run a contrary narrative or campaign. The other is an issue on which Indians remain in a state of collective denial.
From when the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi mounted the electoral campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, one of its central accusations against the Congress party was that it was a dynastic party. Several other allies of the Congress, or other Opposition parties, were and are being similarly accused.
The campaign against dynasticism still remains one of the central issues that the BJP uses to run down its adversaries.
BJP's dynastic allies
But, the party remains conspicuously silent about its allies, which are also dynastic in the same way that the accusation is hurled at the Congress — that leadership remains in the hands of 'a family'.
It needs to be clarified that I'm of the view that although Mallikarjun Kharge has been Congress President since October 2022, the balance of power tilts towards the Gandhi family; no crucial decision is taken by Kharge alone.
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That apart, the list of BJP’s ‘dynastic allies’ makes interesting reading:
Telugu Desam Party (TDP): N Chandra Babu Naidu was the son-in-law of the party’s founder, NT Rama Rao. Now, his son Nara Lokesh is a minister for several crucial portfolios in Andhra Pradesh besides being the general secretary of the party.
Lok Janshakti Party (LJP): The party was established by Ram Vilas Paswan and his legacy has been successfully ‘inherited’ after his death by his son Chirag Paswan after a bitter tussle with his uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras. The LJP split in 2021, with Pashupati heading the Rashtriya LJP and Chirag heading LJP (Ram Vilas). The latter is also a Union minister now.
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD): Established by Ajit Singh (also a dynast by virtue of being son of former Prime Minister Charan Singh) and ‘inherited’ and run by his son, Jayant Chaudhary, a Union minister. Jayant is also the president of the party since his father’s death in May 2021.
Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS): Established by another former Prime Minister, HD Deve Gowda. His son HD Kumaraswamy is both UJnion Minister and state president of the party, while the nonagenarian father remains party president since 1999 and is member of Rajya Sabha. Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil Gowda made several unsuccessful bids to become an MP and and MLA.
Apna Dal (Sone Lal): The party was established by Sone Lal Patel in 1995 and his daughter Anupriya Patel is a Union minister and president of the party. She took charge of the party’s leadership when her father died in 2009. She had barely entered politics then and was elected to the UP Vidhan Sabha later, in 2012.
Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK): Established by S Ramadoss in 1989 and now run by his ‘estranged’ son, Anbumani Ramadoss, who was previously a Union minister.
Family rule in NCP
The above list does not include the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), even though it is also a dynastic party. The party was established by Sharad Pawar in 1999, but nearly two decades earlier he initiated his nephew Ajit Pawar into politics and encouraged him to take his first steps in the field.
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Initially, Ajit Pawar was thought of as the successor, but when scales began tilting in towards Supriya Sule, Sharad Pawar’s daughter, the younger Pawar split the party.
The BJP remains conspicuously silent about its allies, which are also dynastic in the same way that the accusation is hurled at the Congress – that leadership remains in the hands of ‘a family’.
Even after his death, the party remains dynastic, because the leadership has passed to his wife, Sunetra Pawar, despite the presence of several senior leaders.
The BJP’s campaign on only Opposition parties being principally dynastic falls flat for two reasons. One, as listed, the BJP has a healthy pack of dynastic parties as allies across India. Two, more importantly, it has recently chosen a dynast as its new party president.
Certainly, Nitin Nabin would not have become a legislator in April 2006 had his father, the incumbent MLA in the Patna West seat, not died suddenly.
Dynasts in BJP
It is not that the new BJP president is the only dynast in the party. Besides Union ministers previously named, the BJP has more dynasts among the Council of Ministers:
♦ Piyush Goyal (father VP Goyal was BJP treasurer for several years), Jyotiraditya Scindia (inducted from Congress and part of both a political and former royal family — his father, aunts and grandmother were all political leaders and held numerous positions in states and at the Centre)
♦ Rao Inderjit (son of former Haryana Chief Minister, Rao Birender Singh)
♦ Jitin Prasada (also an import from the Congress and son of Jitendra Prasada, former Union minister who contested against Sonia Gandhi for the Congress president post in 1998. In 2024, the BJP replaced another dynast, Varun Gandhi, and nominated Jitin Prasada from Pilibhit constituency in UP)
♦ Kirti Vardhan Singh (import from Samajwadi Party and son of a former Lok Sabha MP and a royal scion)
♦ Raksha Khadse (daughter-in-law of former BJP leader Eknath Khadse and front runner for the position of Maharashtra Chief Minister in 2014)
Dynastism in Indian politics is nothing new; children of many nationalists followed in their footsteps from even before Independence — Jawaharlal Nehru being the most well-known. After Independence too, especially when princely states merged into the Union of India, scions of several royal families, like the Scindias, entered politics.
Study of dynasticism
Dynasticism in Indian politics fascinated political scientists. Considerable understanding of Indian political dynasties has evolved from the works of academics like the late Patrick French, Kanchan Chandra and Romain Carlevan.
French and Chandra, in a study they undertook, demonstrated that roughly 30 per cent of the members of the 15th Lok Sabha (2009-14) had a family member elected before them, and were thus classified as ‘dynasts’. Carlevan’s perusal of family backgrounds of LS members from northern India revealed that 33.6 per cent of all MPs elected from this region in 2009-14 were political heirs.
Also read: Rhetoric vs reality: BJP's dynasty politics in Maharashtra, Jharkhand
Modi’s 2014 campaign against the Congress was dishonest; the party may have lost nearly 80% of its seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014, but the total number of dynasts in the House declined by less than 10 percentage points — from 33.6% in the 15th LS to 27% in the 16th House. More importantly, the BJP accounted for 44.4% of these dynastic MPs. The party thereby had more dynasts in the House than any other party.
This established that in India, political dynasticism and dynasties are resilient. For instance, Khadse may have moved to the NCP, but the widowed daughter-in-law stayed with the BJP.
'Family' in RSS
Dynasticism is existent even within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Mohan Bhagwat, strictly speaking, can be placed under the category of dynast — his father was a senior Sangh functionary till he chose to become grihast and establish a family. In one of his books, Modi has written about Bhagwat Sr as one of his mentors.
Till a few years ago, RSS functionary Manmohan Vaidya was a Sah Sarkaryavah (joint general secretary). His father MG Vaidya had been a senior functionary and was its Baudhik Pramukh ('intellectual head') in the late 1990s.
More examples may be unearthed, but that is not the purpose of this article. I am merely highlighting a trend.
Dynasticism, according to Modi
Amid the campaign for the 2024 parliamentary polls, Modi delineated his definition of dynasticism. He contended that there were two kinds of parties — one which were led by leaders belonging to one family, and those which comprised parties in which “more than one person from a family” are members after having “made progress in politics on their own merit and not due to family backing”.
Watch/Read: After Ajit Pawar’s death, can NCP factions reunite or will succession reshape party?
So, are we to assume that Nitin Nabin had registered considerable advancement in political participation when at the age of 26 he was nominated to contest a by-election for a seat that was previously held by his father? Numerous other questions can be put to the BJP leadership to challenge its claim of being a non-dynastic party.
The widow of a deceased leader being asked to take over the position held by her late husband is not recognition of her political astuteness and grasp of policy issues.
If we turn to the developments within the NCP after Ajit Pawar’s demise, Sunetra Pawar’s sudden turn of fortunes, too, points to a discomforting fact of Indian polity — the continuing hegemony of the patriarchal system.
Quite clearly, after Ajit Pawar’s unexpected departure from the political theatre, leaders of his faction of the NCP did not want to get dwarfed by the other faction in the event of a merger that was in the offing. Instead of any of these leaders making a bid to take over the mantle of leadership, they jointly decided to elevate Sunetra Pawar because this had been the past practice — even Sonia Gandhi had been offered the Congress leadership and the prime ministership after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
Proxies in patriarchy
The widow of a deceased leader being asked to take over the position held by her late husband is not recognition of her political astuteness and grasp of policy issues, if the position also entailed a role in government.
It is unfortunate that despite significant participation of women in the national movement, the majority of women leaders in post-Independence politics owed their positions not to recognition of their skills and personal popularity, but to them being proxies of male members of their family, who were unable to take up the position for various reasons, including their unfortunate permanent absence, as in the case of Ajit Pawar.
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In the 1990s, after the passage of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, which mandated at least one-third (33 per cent) of seats and chairperson posts in India's Panchayati Raj Institutions, a large number of women who won the elections were being put up by men who could no longer contest the seat because it had been set apart as a seat reserved for women. In most case, the elected woman remained a dummy with the control mostly being in the hands of their husband or other male family members.
Pots and kettles
The BJP may run down the Congress for the fact that Sonia Gandhi is the party’s leader, a position she owes principally to the fact of having been married to Rajiv Gandhi. But the BJP too went by the dynastic principle when it nominated Bansuri Swaraj to contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 from the New Delhi constituency, solely because she was daughter of Sushma Swaraj. Till that point, she had not entered the political field in any capacity and had not even part of student politics for having studied abroad.
Likewise, there are numerous other women political leaders across parties. True, there are women politicians like Mamata Banerjee, for instance, who have risen from the grassroots by sheer dint of hard work, which made them popular among the masses.
The BJP is not just a political party but is part of an ideological brigade. The Sangh Parivar has numerous people who are part of patriarchal families that have more than one person engaged in politics. There are numerous instances when these family connections eventually result in political appointments or nominations.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of The Federal.)
