India's "Lost" Royal Son Fights On
September 25, 1999 - 0:0
GWALIOR, India Sitting in his palace, peacocks strutting on the lawns, Congress Party politician Madhavrao Scindia regrets the price his illustrious family has paid for its divided political loyalties. The heir to the former princely state of Gwalior is fighting a rearguard action in India's general elections to hold back the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) drive into the central state of Madhya Pradesh. Amongst his foes: His own mother and two younger sisters, committed members of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP. "There is a common belief that the BJP represents a very dangerous fringe of the Indian polity," Scindia told Reuters in his office in the sprawling, Indo-Baroque, 19th century Jai Vilas Palace. "We still want to put up some sort of resistance." Scindia, 55, may still be regarded as a king by many in this part of central India where feudal attitudes die hard, but to his mother, the dowager queen, he is a lost cause.
His younger sister Yashodhara says politics "cost a mother her son". More at Home With the Gandhis Vijayaraje, the Rajmata or queen mother, was a vice president of the ultra-right Vishwa Hindu Parishad and a stalwart of the Jan Sangh the forerunner of the BJP. Now 80, she is the grande dame of today's BJP. Back then, dressed in widow's white, she traveled India spreading the BJP gospel, and was better recognized than Vajpayee. Indira Gandhi threw her in Delhi's infamous Tihar jail, during the "emergency", the suspension of democracy in the mid-1970s.
By 1980, Scindia, after dramatically renouncing his mother's ideology and a stint as an independent, crossed over to the Gandhi dynasty, supporting first Indira and then her son Rajiv. Today, the urbane aristocrat is a close confidant of Rajiv's Italian-born widow Sonia, who leads Congress into the election, spread out over five consecutive weekends. A clash with former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao caused him to quit Congress in the early 1990s, but his star has risen again and as a party general secretary he has responsibility for its campaign in several key states.
That extra burden, some say, persuaded him to forsake the prestigious Gwalior seat, where he oversaw major improvements in infrastructure and industrial development. But three elections in three years diverted his energies away from the constituency, while the opposition has gained in strength. He won Gwalior 15 years ago trouncing Vajpayee in the historical fort city where the BJP leader was born and where the Scindias ruled for 200 years, until independence from Britain in 1947 rang the death knell for the princely states.
Scindia fought this election at Guna, retracing decades of family history in a three-hour journey by road. Guna was his seat in the 1970s, his mother's in the 1960s and 1990s. Stop Calling Me Maharajah "The princes are dead, the only thing is, no one allows us to bury them," he says in his cultured, Oxford-educated voice. But in Guna the Scindia name matters more than the party.
Old retainers buzz around the royal household. During his campaign, voters referred to him simply as the Maharajah. His Nepali princess wife Madhvi Raje toured Guna villages to draw the female vote, where for the past decade his mother and sister, Yashodhara, have been more familiar faces. "The family name overrides every other emotion in Guna," says Yashodhara, who had expected to launch her career in the Lok Sabha (Lower House) with the BJP from there.
She has stepped aside rather than deepen the family rift. Scindia now espouses a left of center, liberal, democratic political creed and fiercely opposes the religious zealotry he sees in the BJP, and which Yashodhara denies exists. "I had grown up. That's where our ways parted," he says. Family friends say palace factions and disputes over property and funding of the Hindu parties stopped the healing process.
Vijayaraje's influence on her daughters was more lasting. "My mother instilled enough of the Jan Sangh idealism in us," says Convent-educated Yashodhara, who won election to the Madhya Pradesh state assembly for the BJP last year. His other sister, Vasundhara Raje, the Maharani of Dholpur, is a minister in Vajpayee's government. "We get along famously on a personal level though we have constant arguments on an ideological level," says Scindia. Some sceptics say the Scindias are keeping a foot in both camps in order to protect their family legacy.
"If people think that it's an arrangement, then we must deserve an Oscar," says Scindia. "I don't think I would knowingly participate in this tragedy just to succeed in politics." (Reuter)
His younger sister Yashodhara says politics "cost a mother her son". More at Home With the Gandhis Vijayaraje, the Rajmata or queen mother, was a vice president of the ultra-right Vishwa Hindu Parishad and a stalwart of the Jan Sangh the forerunner of the BJP. Now 80, she is the grande dame of today's BJP. Back then, dressed in widow's white, she traveled India spreading the BJP gospel, and was better recognized than Vajpayee. Indira Gandhi threw her in Delhi's infamous Tihar jail, during the "emergency", the suspension of democracy in the mid-1970s.
By 1980, Scindia, after dramatically renouncing his mother's ideology and a stint as an independent, crossed over to the Gandhi dynasty, supporting first Indira and then her son Rajiv. Today, the urbane aristocrat is a close confidant of Rajiv's Italian-born widow Sonia, who leads Congress into the election, spread out over five consecutive weekends. A clash with former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao caused him to quit Congress in the early 1990s, but his star has risen again and as a party general secretary he has responsibility for its campaign in several key states.
That extra burden, some say, persuaded him to forsake the prestigious Gwalior seat, where he oversaw major improvements in infrastructure and industrial development. But three elections in three years diverted his energies away from the constituency, while the opposition has gained in strength. He won Gwalior 15 years ago trouncing Vajpayee in the historical fort city where the BJP leader was born and where the Scindias ruled for 200 years, until independence from Britain in 1947 rang the death knell for the princely states.
Scindia fought this election at Guna, retracing decades of family history in a three-hour journey by road. Guna was his seat in the 1970s, his mother's in the 1960s and 1990s. Stop Calling Me Maharajah "The princes are dead, the only thing is, no one allows us to bury them," he says in his cultured, Oxford-educated voice. But in Guna the Scindia name matters more than the party.
Old retainers buzz around the royal household. During his campaign, voters referred to him simply as the Maharajah. His Nepali princess wife Madhvi Raje toured Guna villages to draw the female vote, where for the past decade his mother and sister, Yashodhara, have been more familiar faces. "The family name overrides every other emotion in Guna," says Yashodhara, who had expected to launch her career in the Lok Sabha (Lower House) with the BJP from there.
She has stepped aside rather than deepen the family rift. Scindia now espouses a left of center, liberal, democratic political creed and fiercely opposes the religious zealotry he sees in the BJP, and which Yashodhara denies exists. "I had grown up. That's where our ways parted," he says. Family friends say palace factions and disputes over property and funding of the Hindu parties stopped the healing process.
Vijayaraje's influence on her daughters was more lasting. "My mother instilled enough of the Jan Sangh idealism in us," says Convent-educated Yashodhara, who won election to the Madhya Pradesh state assembly for the BJP last year. His other sister, Vasundhara Raje, the Maharani of Dholpur, is a minister in Vajpayee's government. "We get along famously on a personal level though we have constant arguments on an ideological level," says Scindia. Some sceptics say the Scindias are keeping a foot in both camps in order to protect their family legacy.
"If people think that it's an arrangement, then we must deserve an Oscar," says Scindia. "I don't think I would knowingly participate in this tragedy just to succeed in politics." (Reuter)