05 February 2004	Thursday	13 Zilhaj 1424

NEW DELHI: Republican India consigned hereditary monarchy to history more than 50 years ago. But it has yet to free itself from the spell of political dynasties , judging by the heated exchanges between major political parties ahead of general elections expected in late April or early May.

The exchanges centre around the Nehru-Gandhi family and the serious possibility of Rahul and his sister Priyanka, both in their early 30s and representing the fourth generation of the family, contesting the elections and laying claim to the prime minister's job.

Neither of the Gandhi siblings have indicated they would contest. But their January visit to Amethi in northern Uttar Pradesh state, the parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi, their mother and chief of the main opposition Congress party, has sparked passionate reactions from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Pramod Mahajan, general secretary of the BJP and the ruling party's main election strategist, was provoked enough to call a press conference and declare that any aspirant to the prime minister's job must be "born of Indian parents - father and mother must both be Indians".

The allusion was to the fact that while Rahul and Priyanka are descendants of a family of Congress party politicians, several of whom were jailed by the colonial British during India's independence movement, their mother happens to be Italian by birth.

Sonia Gandhi inherited the Nehru-Gandhi political mantle after her charismatic husband and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a suicide bomber sent by the Sri Lankan militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Rajiv Gandhi's mother and predecessor in office, Indira Gandhi, ruled India with an iron hand through the late 60s and most of the 70s and was assassinated in harness by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984. She was herself groomed for the job by her father and independent India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sonia Gandhi's claim to be prime minister appears to have been successfully thwarted by a sustained campaign mounted by the BJP harping on the supposed unsuitability of a person of foreign origin ruling the country during key provincial elections in November.

The BJP scored spectacular victories against the Congress party in western Rajasthan and central Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh states. Encouraged by the tide, the ruling party called for dissolution of Parliament on Feb 6 so that general elections can be held six months ahead of when it is actually due in September.

Mahajan, the main architect of the BJP victories, has since then stressed repeatedly that Sonia Gandhi's foreign origins and dynastic rule by the Congress party would be the main issues over which the general elections would be fought.

"It hurts my national pride to think that someone born outside the country should be foisted as candidate for prime minister," Mahajan said, referring to Sonia Gandhi, who is never seen in public except in Indian traditional costume and speaks halting but correct Hindi.

Sensing vulnerability, the Congress party has been testing the political waters with Rahul and Priyanka. Its managers have dismissed the BJP's sharp, rather racial-sounding reactions as betraying nervousness at the prospect of the political dynasty's comeback.

Asked for a reaction to Mahajan's revised genetic specifications for the prime minister's job, Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said: "It is a shame that the general secretary of the ruling party is unnerved by a mere visit of Rahul and Priyanka to Amethi and shows their lack of confidence."

With the popular appeal of the Gandhi siblings apparent, the BJP seems ready to fall back on their original plank of opposing dynastic rule. The BJP's own candidate for the top job and present incumbent Atal Bihari Vajpayee claims no great political lineage and is an octogenarian bachelor.

Still, political scientists think that the BJP may not find it easy trying to sway voters against the Gandhi clan or even the dynastic principle itself.

According to Dipankar Gupta, who teaches sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Indian society lives in a "family first, citizenship later" mode. "Singling out one or the other family, that too, in a poll-time debate is hypocritical."

Mahajan's views have also been criticized as "smacking of intolerance" by Omar Abdullah, the outspoken leader of the pro- India National Conference political party in Kashmir and a former minister in Vajpayee's BJP-led coalition government.

Like Rahul and Priyanka, Omar comes from a political family and both his father and grandfather have had long innings as chief ministers in Kashmir. Like the Gandhi siblings he also has "foreign origins" in that his mother happens to be British.

"There is no constitutional bar on Sonia Gandhi or Rahul or Priyanka becoming prime minister - the only bar is the wishes of the voters of India," said Omar, whose pedigree failed him and the NC in the 2002 elections held in Kashmir.

Both the BJP and the Congress party are guilty of seeking support from powerful political families that hold sway in the provinces - the Patnaiks in eastern Orissa, the Karunanidhis in southern Tamil Nadu, and the Thackerays who run the Shiv Sena party in western Maharashtra state.

In some provinces, genuine blue blooded royalty disgraced in the past for collaborating with the British Raj have resurfaced as chief ministers.

Amrinder Singh, a scion of the Patiala royal family and Congress party leader, now rules Punjab state and Vasundhra Raje Scindia, a princess from the Scindia family, was installed as Rajasthan's BJP chief minister after winning in the November elections.

According to Ashis Nandy, one of India's best known sociologists the principle of dynasty is alive working not only in politics but pervades, for example, the country's immensely popular film industry.-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.