In the lush and captivating world of the Capital’s bedroom politics, of the mighty and powerful, it seems, three is company, two is a crowd. Delhi’s ‘Love Marg’ abounds with delicious tittle-tattle and enticing gossip about illicit love and enduring courtships in high office and power corridors, that has always made great box office. But the media has self-consciously refused to report it, even as whispers and murmurs swirl like a tornado and kick up a storm, yet bewitched by the politico-sexual rapture of this impossible, furtive love.
A very senior Cabinet minister’s devotion and duty to his Lady Love over the last few decades may invite a shrug today but everyone agrees he has been overly attentive and faithful to her every desire and demand. The minister has always ensured she is by his side by appointing her as his media advisor in every ministry he has headed (the lady in question is a senior bureaucrat and married to a senior official), sometimes even throwing caution to the winds when she has been present as his only aide in meetings outside office both in India and abroad.
Then there’s the other Cabinet minister, who was once a governor when the Congress was out of power, who happily moved into the state Raj Bhavan with his paramour, and she unabashedly accepted her status as the official spouse. Nobody cared to find out where the real Mrs *** lived, but today his daughter is also an MLA from his home state.
But no one can beat the former prime minister in the Love Aaj-Kal blockbuster sweepstakes, an eternal bachelor, but who adopted and nurtured a family for the last 50 years and more. Former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee’s everlasting dedication to the Kaul Family has given their bond a sanctity any spouse will kill for. Their story is enthralling — Vajpayee did not marry his college love-interest Rajkumari, but moved into her marital home, to live with her husband Prof Kaul and their two daughters, to become the third head member of the family. While their unconventional relationship was scrutinised by needless rumour mongering and ceaseless intrusion (Mrs Kaul was branded the mistress and her second daughter Namita, their love child) they were largely left alone in the media. “Both Atalji and I have never felt the need to offer apologetic explanations to my husband once the dirty rumours began,’’ Mrs Kaul had said in a Savvy magazine interview, “my husband and my relationship with him is far too strong for that…’’ Even the sanctimonious RSS, which would normally have taken a stern view of this unconventional relationship refrained from ordering its pracharak (follower) to move out.
Raunchy scandals, extra-marital affairs and sexcapades of politicians, the super-celebrities of the country, have never made a romping, juicy read in the media, and mercifully so. And it is not because our power-driven leaders are squeaky-clean and pristine — as we’ve seen they have their fantasies and can live it too, with all the fetishist delight for illicit love and passion for sexual conquest.
But unlike the West, in India it barely gets a raised eyebrow. Famous historian Ramachandra Guha wonders if the Indian’s seasoned and sophisticated attitude towards politicians and their peccadillos is a throwback to mythology. Says Guha, “It’s a very sensible attitude to keep politicians’ private lives out of the public domain, as long as it does not impinge on their public duties. Perhaps this acceptance comes from the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, where all the characters were embroiled in lots of relationships.”
It is also why a Mahatma Gandhi, the revered Father of the Nation, could so easily get away sleeping in the buff with naked young girls to engage with his so-called experiments with truth. If the women slept with Gandhi because they thought he was God, sociologist Shiv Vishwanath believes it is the tacit understanding between politicians and the media that prompts the tolerance of politicians and their private lives. “There is a social contract of silence between the two, and it is the logic of necessity as one feeds the other.”
However, both Guha and Vishwanath agree that the people are more punishing and brutal when it comes to public corruption, fraud, nepotism and profiteering, rather than their private affairs. It is equally spectacular that the slur of an illicit relationship, that too on a woman politician, has not been a hurdle in her way to the top. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has had to face persistent smirks and jeers about her alleged relationship with her mentor and founder of the BSP, the late Kanshi Ram, but it did not stop her from inheriting the party and swaying the people to become CM four times of the state. Similarly, former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, who was even flung out of the funeral cortege of her mentor, the late MGR, won the popular vote to lead her faction of the AIADMK, even as MGR’s wife, Janaki, had to concede defeat, barely getting 10 per cent of the mandate. The fiery sanyasin Uma Bharati braved sexual innuendo and slander about her relationship with the then party ideologue Govindacharya to become Madhya Pradesh CM. Satirist and journalist from Chennai, Cho Ramaswamy says that as long as private lives do not impinge on public policy, it does not matter. “The shenanigans of the DMK’s Karunanidhi family, of infighting and competition, with his three wives and their children, matters today, because it is wreaking havoc on the state. Otherwise no one would have cared.”
But the reasons for the gutter press to still emerge in the country are now clear to see — one, it’s the Gandhian candour and openness — the politicians’ image isn’t built on family values, he does not campaign on his personal chastity or puritanical image, piously condemning others’ sexual sins and boasting about his own righteousness, like in the West. Next, if two consenting adults agree to have sex, Indians have largely said it is their business. Three, if pillowtalk does not breach national security, there’s no problem.
Yet it’s pretty hard keeping track of the virtual parade of gay chief ministers, singleton CMs, naughty Congressmen and their paramours from across the border, philandering MPs, and unrepentant sadhvis. The top grosser in the coming months will be the fate of a senior Cabinet Minister who is so deeply embroiled in a financial scandal but who enjoys the protection of his party leader because of his alleged dalliance with his daughter, also an MP, thus testing the hands of the Prime Minister. Will love and kinship triumph and the minister survive, or will she give up her paramour in the interest of nation, integrity and uprightness?.
About the author:
Vrinda Gopinath is a freelance journalist