NEW DELHI: It is being billed as the war of the Gandhis, as India moves into electoral mode. Varun Gandhi, son of family black sheep Maneka Gandhi and one of the heirs to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has supplied India with three Congress party prime ministers
, declared his support last week for the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He nailed his colours to the BJP mast just a month after his cousins, brother-and-sister duo Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, were mobbed as they campaigned for the main opposition Congress party which dominated India's first half-century of independence.
The "Gen Next" family political soap opera looks like providing the main drama in elections due in around two months that appear for the moment as though they will be a walkover for the BJP and its allies against the secular Congress.
Asked if he would campaign directly against his cousins, seen as more photogenic and politically savvy than himself, the 24-year-old Varun said, "I will try hard not to campaign against Rahul and Priyanka because family and party are separate. But I will follow my party's ideals."
For political watchers, the move raises the tantalizing possibility of a BJP Gandhi one day battling a Congress Gandhi for India's leadership. After months of deriding Congress for seeking to exploit the Gandhis' dynastic appeal, analysts say the BJP may use Varun in pivotal states such Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where the Gandhi name still has magic.
"The BJP's clever political managers think they have found a potent antidote" to Priyanka and Rahul, said political analyst Harish Khare. Three generations of the family - Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi - served as prime ministers of India since the country's independence from Britain in 1947.
Both Indira and Rajiv were assassinated, which makes many liken the family to the tragedy-scarred Kennedy clan in the United States and a gossip-hungry press devours every titbit about them.
The two Gandhi branches have been estranged since a tearful Maneka was ejected from, or stormed from, according to varying accounts, Indira's home in 1982 with a young Varun in her arms under the glare of TV cameras after being shut out of politics when her husband died in a flying stunt.
Maneka's husband Sanjay was being groomed as Indira's successor but after his death his mother turned to her pilot son, Rajiv, later killed by a suicide bomber while campaigning in 1991.
Now, Rajivs widow, Italian-born Sonia, heads a Congress that commentators say is drifting and may have one foot in the political grave. After her exit from the Gandhi joint family home, Maneka, best known now in India as an animal rights champion, ran - and was badly trounced - against Rajiv in mid-80s.
She later served as an independent minister in the BJP-led government in the late 1990s. Now the move by her and her son to join the BJP deepens the family's political schism. For the moment, though, both sides are maintaining decorum, sending each other best wishes for the campaign.
Varun, who describes himself as "basically a poet and a writer," already has a book of published poems under his belt. He said his move did not mean he was not proud of his family's role in freeing India from British rule. -AFP
