The grapevine is that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is moving to a house whose balcony faces Humayun’s tomb. More than the archaeological heritage, it was the character of the second Mughal emperor which was a great inspiration for the flat’s late owner Sheila Dikshit.
Gandhi is moving to the first floor three-bedroom apartment now belonging to former MP Sandeep Dikshit, son of late Delhi chief minister. Hedged into a quiet neighbourhood of Nizamuddin East, the three-bedroom apartment shot into prominence when Sheila Dhikshit was nominated as Congress candidate from the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat in 1998.
Later in the year, she was appointed Delhi Congress president and brought the party out of the wilderness leading it to power in the national capital winning three consecutive assembly elections in 1998, 2003 and 2008. During this one-year period in 1998, this place remained the nerve centre of the party’s local unit, which also gave an opportunity to the party cadres to differentiate Sheila culturally from the existing leadership, which was anyway on the decline.
On becoming chief minister Dikshit moved to a bungalow on Mathura Road, now occupied by former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia and then to a sprawling bungalow at Motilal Nehru Place, which is now occupied by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On losing office, Dikshit for a few months went to Thiruvananthapuram as Governor but returned to Delhi following the defeat of the Congress government in 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Thereafter she settled down at her Nizamuddin flat and spent time there till her death on July 20, 2019. During the retirement years, she would often sit in the hallway, which opened into the balcony which overlooked the tomb. “After Rajiv Gandhi’s death, it was years of wilderness for us. During those days, Humayun, who on losing his empire, went into wilderness but regrouped his forces and regained the empire by defeating the rivals, was used to be a great source of inspiration,” Dikshit, who early in her career Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, once told this writer.
During that interview when was asked, how did she get the idea of buying a flat in Delhi when her husband, a bureaucrat, was located in Lucknow. She said that she had taken a lesson from her political mentor and father-in-law, Uma Shankar Dikshit. “Dadda (that’s how older Dikshit was called) never thought of building a house for himself. When he lost all his official assignments, there was no place where he could live. That gave us a lesson, and we decided to buy a house early with Vinod (her husband) being in government service, we managed a loan and bought this place,” she had said.
Uma Shankar Dikshit was Health and later Home Minister in the Indira Gandhi cabinet. He lived in a government bungalow on Chanakayapuri’s Circular Road, which was later renamed Uma Shankar Dikshit Marg when Sheila Dikshit was chief minister.
On a lighter note, the balcony facing the tomb was once booked for building law violations by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. This was at the peak of dissidence against Sheila Dikshit, when then Delhi Congress president Rambabu Sharma was also heading the MCD. He forced officials to ‘book’ the flat to embarrass Dikshit.
Now that the house is likely to be occupied by Rahul Gandhi, on another lighter note, the road to the house passes past the house of former RajyaSabha MP Dr Subramanian Swamy. The scholarly lawyer with a visceral tongue has been one of the severest critiques of Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, though of late he has turned critical about the Modi government too. Will the view of the tomb be able to inspire Rahul, now debarred from electoral politics, to end his political wilderness? Only time would tell.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice