New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech Monday cited “parivaarvaad” and “bhai bhatijaawaad” — a reference to dynastic politics and nepotism — as one of the two major challenges facing India.
Nepotism is hollowing out India’s institutions and “dynastic politics is only for the benefit of the dynasty, not the country”, the Prime Minister said in his Red Fort address.
However, soon after he concluded his speech, his close aide and union home minister Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah was trending on social media, with many users questioning the latter’s qualification to become the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary.
Narendra Modi has promised today on Independence day he will end Nepotism in Indian politics and institutions.
Hopefully he will soon remove Jay Shah , Piyush Goyal , Anurag Thakur , Dev Fadnavis and many more. pic.twitter.com/lp3GjWf39b
— Ravinder Kapur (@RavinderKapur2) August 15, 2022
Jay shah came to my mind. ?? https://t.co/k0epZYHPlq
— Vins (@vinayverma99) August 15, 2022
The opposition also took on PM Modi for his remarks, while pointing out that BJP too is “full of dynasts” and it is the people who choose and elect leaders.
“His talk on dynasty politics sounds hollow as there is a long list of dynasties within the BJP and others that the BJP has imported from other parties. When he talks about dynastic politics why does he forget about it’s own dynasties like Piyush Goyal, Anurag Thakur and even those like Suvendu Adhikari, who joined from other parties,” questioned Congress national spokesperson, Shama Mohamed.
She added: “This is nothing but diversionary politics. He wants to shift the focus away from real issues of price rise, unemployment, the promises that his government made and failed to deliver on. There are multiple issues facing the country and he is behaving like a stuck tape recorder who has been using dynasty narrative for the past several years to hide his own failure.”
Indeed, while PM Modi has consistently and persistently attacked opposition parties for “parivaarvaad“, his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has routinely inducted such dynasts from other parties and promoted them in the organisation and the government.
One such example is former Haryana Congress leader Kuldeep Bishnoi, son of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, and Kuldeep’s wife and ex-legislator, Renuka Bishnoi, who joined the BJP earlier this month.
A day before joining the BJP, Bishnoi declared that the people of his constituency wanted his son, Bhavya, to contest from the Adampur assembly seat that he was vacating, as a BJP nominee.
Union minister Rajnath Singh’s son, is an MLA from Noida and vice president of the BJP’s UP unit. Similarly, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s son, Dushyant Singh, is a BJP MP.
The list of BJP dynansts is long, and includes the likes of Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Punjab leader Sunil Jakhar and former minister of state in the union home affairs ministry, R.P.N. Singh
While Basavaraj’s father, S.R. Bommai, was the chief minister of Karnataka in 1988-89, making them the second father-son duo after H.D. Deve Gowda and H.D. Kumaraswamy to occupy the CM’s chair in the state, Jakhar — who joined the BJP in May this year — is the son of Balram Jakhar, an active member of the Congress, who was also the Speaker of the Lok Sabha between 1980 and 1989.
Meanwhile R.P.N. Singh, who joined the BJP in January, ahead of this year’s assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, is from the erstwhile Sainthwar royal family of Padrauna, Kushinagar. His father, Kunwar Chandra Pratap Narain Singh, was MP from the Padrauna Lok Sabha constituency, who served as the minister of state for defence in the Indira Gandhi cabinet in 1980.
PM Modi’s dislike for dynastic politics hasn’t come in the way of inducting such leaders either in the BJP or in his own team of ministers.
Many prominent faces in his own cabinet are members of political families — Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Anurag Thakur, Kiren Rijiju and Jyotiraditya Scindia, among others.
Ahead of the West Bengal assembly election last year, the party inducted Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s former aide, Suvendu Adhikari, and also his father, former union minister Sisir Adhikari into the BJP.
Suvendu went on to become the leader of opposition in the West Bengal assembly after the elections.
The BJP also inducted and made Jitin Prasada, son of prominent Congress leader Jitendra Prasada, a minister in the Yogi cabinet in Uttar Pradesh.
Devendra Fadnavis, who is the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra is the son of Gangadharpant Fadnavis, a former member of the Maharashtra legislative council. Devendra’s aunt, Shoba Fadnavis, was a state minister.
The BJP has also allied with both members of political families and parties led by such politicians, both at the Centre and in many states.
Still, it has managed to create a perception in people’s minds that it is not a part of dynastic politics.
“Politics is all about perception, which plays an important role in elections rather than facts. Even if there are dynasts in the BJP, the perception that gets created is that dynastic politics is all about the Congress and regional parties. Which is why the PM is still trying to use dynasty as a weapon to attack the opposition party,” said Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
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Dynasts as BJP allies
Many of the BJP’s allies, both at the Centre and in many states, are members of political families or parties led by such people.
One example is Jannayak Janta Party leader and Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala, a fourth generation leader from the Devi Lal-Om Prakash Chautala families.
BJP’s alliance partner in UP and at the Centre, Anupriya Patel, is another such leader — daughter of Apna Dal founder, Sone Lal Patel.
After Ram Vilas Paswan’s son Chirag got left out of the NDA at the behest of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Modi inducted Paswan’s uncle, Pashupati Paras, in the union cabinet.
Shiromani Akali Dal, Shiv Sena, TDP, are among many other parties led by dynasts which have allied with the Modi-led BJP at the Centre and in states, at some point or the other.
Talking about why Modi could still get away with targeting the opposition on the issue, Kumar said, “another important distinction is that in the case of Congress or the regional parties the power is in the hands of a particular family. So in the case of Congress it is the Gandhis, in case of RJD it is Lalu Prasad Yadav, in the Samajwadi Party it is Akhilesh Yadav, in case of NCP it is Sharad Yadav, in case of Akali Dal it is the Badal family and so on. Hence, if the party is headed by the same family or controlled by it then it becomes a different issue”.
This was not the case in the BJP, he said.
The party itself justified the PM’s remarks by saying that the BJP does not have any dynasty within the party system.
“A dynast is someone who inherits a position by virtue of being born into a particular family and you have the example of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family, the Gandhis, where the presidency has oscillated between Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi,” said senior BJP leader Amit Malviya.
He added: “At the same time you have regional parties including the TRS, DMK, Samajwadi Party, where also it is a particular family that has been in power or controlled the party. After Karunanidhi, Stalin is the leader of DMK, for instance.”
Claiming that dynastic succession precludes talent from rising and the BJP does not have any dynasties whatsoever, Malviya said, “We do have children of leaders, but they don’t inherit positions because of their family members. Arun Jaitley’s son is not in the BJP, Vajpayee ji’s extended family is another example. When Rajnath Singh was the president, it was not his son who then later on occupied the position, he rather became an MLA on merit. So what the PM is talking about is nepotism not only in politics, but other institutions too as it compromises merit”.
Meanwhile senior Congress leader Pawan Khera told the media Monday that the PM’s attack must be on the ‘bhai-bhatijawaad’ within his own party.
“He must have been attacking the nepotism going on inside his own party. PM has disappointed the whole country and his supporters today.. he should have given his report card today, should have talked about what he had promised,” added Khera.
Congress leader Alka Lamba too slammed the Modi government and the BJP for fighting the “one family”.
Lamba said the BJP was fighting only one family, which is fighting against inflation and unemployment in the country — a reference to the Gandhis.
वो सब मिलकर मात्र "एक #परिवार" से लड़ेंगे,
तुम सब भी मिलकर उस "एक परिवार को ताकत देते रहना,
ताकि वो" एक परिवार" 130 करोड़ के परिवार के लिए #महँगाई और #बेरोज़गारी की लड़ाई पूरी ताकत से लड़ता रहे,
अंत में जीत 130 करोड़ के परिवार के सदस्यों की होनी निश्चित है.#IndependenceDayIndia
— Alka Lamba (@LambaAlka) August 15, 2022
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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