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Where the Gandhis reign supreme

Vidya Subrahmaniam

Curiously, the “Congress or nothing” attitude, so dazzlingly evident when the candidate is an official member of the Gandhi clan, breaks down when the family sits out an election

Photo: PTI

Priyanka Gandhi campaigning at Amethi.

Amethi in east-central Uttar Pradesh is one place where the caste-religion arithmetic, the life force of Hindi heartland politics, does not work.

Visit a qasbah or tea stall in U.P. during a Lok Sabha election, and you are sure to have complicated “who will undercut who” calculations flung at you. The winner could be a Brahmin fighting two Thakurs or a Thakur figh ting two Brahmins or even a fourth Jat or a Kurmi edging past the rest.

Not in Amethi. In this Congress oasis, all you see is the party tricolour and all you hear is the Gandhi name. Visiting this special zone is like travelling backwards — to that forgotten era when the Congress ruled imperiously and its rivals were but blips on the India map.

Naturally, victory from here is a foregone conclusion for a candidate from the Gandhi clan.

If Priyanka Vadra frenetically criss-crosses Amethi seeking votes for brother Rahul Gandhi this season, it is not because she fears Amethi will spring a nasty surprise.

As she tells visiting journalists, “the campaign is to reconnect with the people,” adding a little self-consciously, “of course, it is also about the victory margin.”

Indeed, for the Gandhis the battle is not so much to retain the seat as it is to post an impressive victory margin. In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Rahul Gandhi polled 66.18 per cent of the total votes, defeating his nearest rival, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Chandra Prakash Mishra, by a margin of 2.90 lakh votes.

That year, the younger Gandhi’s arrival had caused Amethi to explode in a frenzy of celebration. Yet in 1999, his mother, Sonia Gandhi, polled not only a few thousand more votes but also won by a bigger margin of three lakh votes.

However, neither could break the record set by Rajiv Gandhi, who in 1984, coasted home with 83 per cent of the votes.

The defeated candidate was Maneka Gandhi, who polled a mere 11 per cent.

Clearly, in a Gandhi versus Gandhi fight, Amethi-ites know which Gandhi to back (in 1999, they chose Rajiv Gandhi over Rajmohan Gandhi).

Curiously, the “Congress or nothing” attitude, so dazzlingly evident when the candidate is an official member of the Gandhi clan, breaks down when the family sits out an election.

Amethi-ites are like stubborn children, fiercely attached to the first family and suspicious of usurpers. When there is no Nehru-Gandhi in the fray, the votes tend to divide along caste and sub-caste lines, resulting in a sharp erosion of the Congress’ vote share.

The fate suffered by family loyalist Satish Sharma bears this out. Mr. Sharma won the 1996 Lok Sabha election narrowly, polling only 38.8 per cent of the vote.

Two years later, he suffered a humiliating rout at the hands of local Raja and the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Sanjay Singh.

Even when the MP is a Gandhi, the Congress tends to fare poorly in the five Assembly segments forming Amethi. In the 2002 Assembly election, the Congress won two out of the five Assembly seats.

In 2007, with Mr. Rahul Gandhi representing the parliamentary seat and Ms. Vadra turning the State election into a fight to defend her family’s name and honour, the Congress notched up three out of five.

A fourth seat was lost by less than 500 votes.

In 2009, as Amethi gears up for another Lok Sabha poll, the burden is once again on Ms. Vadra.

She patiently listens to complaints against her brother, promises quick redressal, and finally uses her plentiful charm to extract a promise from the milling crowds: They will give Mr. Rahul Gandhi a victory margin his sister will be proud of.

If there is no buzz around his rivals, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Ashish Shukla and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Pradeep Kumar Singh, then blame it on the enduring charisma of the Gandhis.

Corrections and Clarifications

The eleventh paragraph of a report "Where the Gandhis reign supreme" ("Elections 2009" page, April 22, 2009) was "Clearly, in a Gandhi versus Gandhi fight, Amethi-ites know which Gandhi to back (in 1999, they chose Rajiv Gandhi over Rajmohan Gandhi)." It should have been 1989.

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