The obvious question as you see Priyanka Gandhi rousing the family’s old electoral heirloom in Amethi is, why did she confine herself to just one constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
Or maybe one and a half, given her brief, but withering ambush of uncle Arun Nehru in the neighbouring Rae Bareli last Wednesday.
If all this support is as genuine and spontaneous as the Congress people claim, why this self denial?
“No, this isn’t self-denial. I had told my mother I will only campaign for her,” she says.
“But why confine yourself to two constituencies if you could have won your party a few more seats in Uttar Pradesh?”
“Why for a few more seats? The Congress is reviving in UP now. In the next election, we will get a lot of seats,” she says.
“But next election? That is five years away,” I prod.
“Five years? No, I don’t think so. It won’t be five years. It will be a lot sooner,” she said and thereby we have the first, perhaps too innocent, admission from one who matters in the Congress that the party is not really hoping to best the BJP at least this time around.
But it is also evident that when the next round comes, whether in Uttar Pradesh assembly, or after another coalition falters and loses its way, she will be ready, a formidable, charismatic, young player on the political stage.
At 27, you could think of Priyanka Gandhi as one more in a long succession of young women in the subcontinent, wives and daughters, driven by vengeance more than ambition. Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumaratunge, Sheikh Hasina Wajed and Khaleda Zia have built a formidable tradition.
In fact if Bollywood suddenly discovered one day that political themes do well at the box office, the mother-daughter team out to take revenge could become a formula that lasts longer than the old lost-and-found variety.
Except that in the subcontinent’s history this has an interesting twist. The daughter, it seems, always emerges as the leader, holding the mother’s hand and then handing her out a sinecure.
Prime Minister Benazir foundmother Nusrat an innovative title in her cabinet: “Senior Minister.” President Chandrika Kumaratunge appointed mother Sirimavo Bandarnaike prime minister, a titular position in Sri Lanka.
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This election will not bring the new Gandhis within reach of power and it is too early to say what happens in the future. But there is no denying that the emotion that drives this young Gandhi is no different from what fired her political cousins in the neigbourhood.
She talks glowingly of the response she got in Rae Bareli, her only foray outside her mother’s constituencies.
“If you think you can make such a difference, why didn’t you go there earlier?” I ask.
“Actually my mother had told me not to go there. Then I thought let me go and do something about my uncle, I wanted to …” she paused, searching for words.
“Cook his goose?” I prompt.
“Yes, absolutely. Cook his goose.” She was already rubbing her palms in glee.
“Cooked how? Rare, medium, well done?”
“Well done, I’d rather hope.” There was nothing childlike about that. It was pure vengeance.
“But all this business of my uncle, my mother, how does it feel to be caught up in a family blood feud, taking revenge on your uncles, father’s friends?” I try to bring some seriousness back into our short roadside conversation.
“What family? In no other family would people claim to be cousins just because my great grandfather was related to your great grandfather through some cousin or something. Here, just because we are a political family so many people discovered they were cousins or uncles…” The bitterness now shows.
Sanjay Singh, she doesn’t have such a problem with. He is a political rival. But Arun Nehru is special. “He was so close to my father. His advisor. And then he was so vicious to him. He withdrew his SPG.”
So special that she did not mind defying her mother to spend just one day in his constituency. It may not defeat him. But it has ruined his blood pressure.
It’s funny how the BJP people fail to understand why the Priyanka charm works. As is their wont, they tend to blame it on the media which is now allegedly building her into yet another dynastic monster.
The real answer lies closer home, and in the success of their own young, relatively fresher and more modern woman campaigner, Sushma Swaraj.
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Hours after Vajpayee addressed a sizeable rally in Rae Bareli, I ask several people how impressive it had been. The answer was unanimous: “It was very impressive, but unnees (lesser) compared to Sushma’s.” Even in Amethi, the one person the Gandhi family and its supporters dread is Sushma.
Ameeta, Sanjay Singh’s wife who has been nursing the constituency for two years and now slogging through 20-hour days, also acknowledges who is the one campaigner that matters. “You think Sonia’s rally was big? It wasn’t half as big as Sushma’s,” she says.
Mind you, this is a constituency that has already been visited by the greatest of the NDA’s orators and rhetoricians. Why is it that Sushma’s appeal works more than that of a Pramod Mahajanor George Fernandes?
The answer quite simply is that she tries to make sense with dignity. As Indira’s bahu, Sonia deserves our affection; as Rajiv’s widow, she must get protection; as Congress President, we owe her respect.
But as an Italian-born, she had better not ask for the prime ministership of a country of a hundred crores. Contrast this, quite rational argument, with the muck that flies from the Swadeshi Jagran Manch loudspeakers.
Sonia converted Rajiv to Christianity. Her daughter has now married a Christian. Her son is now engaged to a Christian studying B.Com in Sri Lanka. And so on.
What’s the problem with people marrying Christians if they happen to be Indian, I ask Ved Ratna Srivastav, a Lucknow University student in the Videshi bhagao, swadeshi apnao vest.
“Christians are all foreigners,” he says and then grabs the microphone.
“Bhaiyyon, for a fair-skinned Indian Brahmin boy, Sonia left Italy and came to India. Tomorrow, if Bill Clinton’s son propositions her, she will probably leave India,” he screams, red in the face. No point telling him that the Clintons have only produced a daughter yet.
But look at some other straws in the sullied winds of this boring election, rather like a five-day cricket test match that goes into 15 while the result is known on day one.
Who are the crowd-catchers of Election ’99? Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi from the Congress, Sushma and Pramod Mahajan from the BJP, Chandrababu Naidu and Jayalalitha in the south, Mamata, Laloo, Nitish and Paswan in the east. All of a sudden, do we see the old order changing in our politics?
Why do the long marchers no longer draw crowds? Why are the voters so bored with almost anybody, except Vajpayee, born before 1947? This generational shift is the real lesson,and gain,of this election campaign.
It is a lesson for all, but particularly for the BJP which may in the long run find that while it is consumed by its obsession with the Gandhi family, its Thakres, Keshubhai Patels and Bhairon Singh Shekhawats may not be such amatch for the Digvijay Singhs, Ashok Gehlots, Kamal Naths and Rajesh Pilots.
Even before the last vote is cast and the first is counted, here is the only prediction you can safely make. The era of the 75-year-old grandfatherly politician is now over and the party that understands this better will win the final when it is played, whether it comes after five years, as Vajpayee hopes.
Or sooner, as Priyanka predicts.
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