The atypical fellowship of Gandhi siblings

The brother-sister bonhomie between Rahul & Priyanka is rare, matched only by the one between Jawaharlal & Vijaya Lakshmi. They don’t preclude the view that dynasties erode democracy
The atypical fellowship of Gandhi siblings
Express Illustration: Mandar Pardikar
Updated on
4 min read

All reports emanating from the Wayanad parliamentary bypoll campaign suggest Priyanka Vadra Gandhi will win the seat vacated by her brother, Rahul Gandhi, hands down. They say the only discussion, or bet, is about the margin of victory she would be able to pull off. The question being framed in public chatter is as follows: will Priyanka cross her brother’s May 2024 figure of nearly 60 percent of the votes polled, or will she touch the high of his 2019 figure, an astonishing 65 percent? When elections become such one-sided affairs, they become boring. They also construct their own complex messages that are not exactly positive for a democracy.

Anyway, the Wayanad seat and the victory most likely to come look like a gift of the brother to his younger sister, who comes across as his emotional anchor. The remarkable chemistry between them, their affection for each other, has been registered in media and social media commentaries in the past few years. No rumours or imaginations of rivalry and competition between them has been allowed to persist beyond the wink of an eye. Over the years, the brother and sister have learnt to complement each other’s sensitivity and empathy.

The brother-sister ideal and bonhomie in Indian politics is a rare one, almost nonexistent. Priyanka has come across more as her brother’s sister than her mother’s daughter. The recent videos of their conversation too, including the one in the bus on October 23 when Priyanka filed her nomination, stand witness to this.

In the bus video, the brother offers a rationale as to why his sister, more than anybody else, is suited to represent Wayanad in parliament. In the past couple of years, the duo often drift into an informal conversation in public meetings as well. There is humour, leg-pulling and gentle teasing that creates a convivial drawing room on the stage before thousands.

This happened as recently as Sunday at a public meeting, when Rahul went to Wayanad to campaign for his sister. The two summoned memories of a camera their father gifted them and had held a competition between them for the best picture. The sister told the brother, who was not sure as to who had won that competition, that he really had. One is not sure if the brother had genuinely forgotten or if he did not want to make his sister look small in public, but she jumped to reassure his effort and excellence.

There is a sadness of loss and grief to the memories they constantly evoke of either their father or grandmother. That has come to be called their emotional card with the electorate in the absence of a serious cultural game to counter the BJP.

These sensitivities between brother and sister that have played out in public in recent times have tried to portray the dynasty, which had looked frayed not long ago, with a reasonable new energy and in a new garment. The mother is there in the backdrop, always looking determined to save the legacy she inherited. But it is the children who have communicated more than the mere idea of dynasty while paradoxically representing the dynasty.

The family huddle of the three that always reminds one of the missing fourth, has come to represent the Congress party more than anything else. The personal is political here. The family is the party. The huddle is symbolic of the fact that everything converges. It suggests that there is no divergence of views between the three. Even if there is, the assurance is that the huddle resolves everything. It is the strength in a storm they face.

This huddle of the dynasty is a picture Sonia Gandhi painted when she became in-charge—me and my two children that the world is conspiring against. Indira Gandhi looked lonely in power. Sanjay Gandhi, the disruptive force gone too soon, created a dissonance. He was too distracted to be in a huddle.

Nehru had his daughter as his hostess, but she looked vulnerable and in need of constant support in those early images. Rajiv Gandhi left memories of a huddle. It was a flowering huddle that was violently torn apart. The reason why the children have never been able to overcome it. They keep returning to that point of disruption.

If there was any other brother-sister combination in Indian politics, it was that between Jawaharlal Nehru and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. He had given her the best public assignments. She was spoken of as vice-president of India and potential prime minister too. When Nehru passed away, Vijay Lakshmi looked like his inheritor. She won the bypoll for Nehru’s Phulpur seat in 1964.

She won again in 1967 but bowed out in 1968 to surrender the brother’s legacy to the daughter. The sister had remained loyal to the brother. When she quit, she said she felt “out of tune” with what was happening in the government with her niece at the helm. The party, the government, the family had all suddenly changed without the brother. Although Nehru wanted the sister to have free access to their family home in Allahabad, Indira Gandhi who had inherited it never made her feel welcome.

True, the fifth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi family holds the dynasty together, but has the family been able to hold the party together is a larger question. A popular weave is the party will disintegrate without the family. But in reality, the party has shrunk under the family. It has not been able to deliver big victories and a majority after 1984. The slide of the Congress’ vote share that started then has not recovered. India changed long ago, and the family virtually gave up dreams of a majority.

In the liberal imagination, the family represents democracy today; but that liberal embrace of the Nehru-Gandhi family could be an embrace of fear, not independent thinking. Liberal discourse in India is afraid to discuss dynasties.

Dynasties erode democracy. They imitate caste structures in which somebody is permanently at the top and others have to perennially labour. Soon, three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family may be in parliament, for the very first time. This has an implication beyond the cosy brother-sister conversation or the family huddle.

(Views are personal)

(sugata@sugataraju.in)

Sugata Srinivasaraju | Senior journalist and author of Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul Gandhi

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