Ma, I don't want to get married: Rahul, Modi's new character certificate

The first and last bachelor to be elected the President of the United States was James Buchanan. That was all the way back in 1857. Since then every serious candidate for the American presidency has had to flourish his “perfect family” like a trophy. Whether it’s  Barack Obama sending out doe-eyed love notes to his wife in his big convention speeches, or the Romneys crowding on stage around Mitt like the Church of the Latter Day Family Von Trapp singers,  a well-groomed photogenic family is the first item on any ambitious politician’s checklist. It’s so iron-clad a requirement, that even when Gov. Jim McGreevey of New Jersey owned up to a homosexual affair, his poor wife had to stand next to him in some bizarre gesture of silent smiling support. “You have to be my Jackie Kennedy today,” he told her. Rahul Gandhi’s statement about not wanting to get married because it would lead to swarth and dynasty provoked some titters here. But in the American political landscape it would have been tantamount to committing hara-kiri in full public view. [caption id=“attachment_651913” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Agencies.[/caption] Over there the first measure of a politician’s devotion to country is his devotion to his family, whether it’s real or staged. They are directly proportional. Over here, the two seem inversely proportional. So a Narendra Modi has made a great virtue out of his lack of family ties. At the recent BJP national meet, when Modi was in full flow, laying it into the Congress as a party where sons, daughters, nieces and nephews of leaders take commissions, someone shouted, “What about the son-in-law?” “Ah, the son-in-law. Look I am not a family man. So, sometimes such relationships do not readily occur to me,” Modi shot back. In India, one’s distance from family, rather than one’s closeness to it, has become the measure of a politician’s probity. And Rahul Gandhi seemed to be trying to get himself a piece of that Sannyasi Raja halo by turning down marriage for now. Once upon a time the classic line used by gays and lesbians to come out to their parents was “Mummy, Papa, I don’t want to get married.” Who would have thought that old coming out line would turn into a politician’s character certificate? Perhaps it’s only to be expected in an age where gays and lesbians are busy getting married and having children, where gay rights have become all about marriage equality, and the Conservative prime minister of Britain thinks it’s the civic duty of homosexuals to now get married and lead decent upstanding lives. In a country that’s obsessed with making sure our children are “settled” we seem  happy to make an exception for  the singleness of politicians. As I have written before no one made an issue of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s bachelorhood or minded Nehru’s widower status. Naveen Patnaik became chief minister of Odisha without a wife in sight and a shaky grasp of his own language. Abdul Kalam became president without a First Lady to cut ribbons. While Sushma Swaraj brandishes her mangalsutra like some kind of weapon of the Auntie-jis, Mayawati, Mamata and Jayalalithaa have turned their single-hood into an asset instead of a handicap. Given our long history of freedom fighters who considered themselves “married” to the country, and were admired for it, it’s tempting to think that we are actually refreshingly evolved in our separation of hearth and state. Singleton-status does not necessarily spawn rumours about sexuality, at least not career-felling ones. Alas, our distaste for the family in politics is really because we have been so burned by the whole experience. The First Family hangs over its party like a malaise -  a Delhi smog that allows no one else in the Congress to really take off and find his or her wings. A Morarji Desai might have been rigidly upright. His son Kanti Desai’s business dealings were far murkier. Whether its Laloo Prasad Yadav’s brood or  Babu Jagjivan Ram’s son’s sex scandal, we are just sick of family ties in politics. For us, family in politics means getting inside deals on prime pieces of land, slapping policemen in broad daylight, and being Mr. 10 percent. And the nepotism epidemic is now reaching pandemic proportions. As Patrick French has documented  two-thirds of national legislators under the age of 40 are “hereditary MPs”, where their seats have become pretty much family property. In these circumstances, Mamata Banerjee might have the most radical proposition out there. A Trinamool vice president has said that Didi herself has taken the decision that Trinamool leaders shouldn’t nominate their kith and kin for the upcoming panchayat polls in West Bengal. It remains to be seen whether they can stick to that stand but the agriculture minister told a meeting in Burdwan that he wants to “make it clear that wives, sisters-in-law and other relatives of Trinamool leaders will not get nominations in the rural polls. Those who truly work for the party in rural areas will be given nominations". That might be easier said than done, given the choices are often between so-and-so’s son versus so-and-so’s nephew, especially as one goes up the political ladder. Even while Rahul, despite being the poster child of dynastic privilege, makes noises about inner-party democracy and meritocracy, none of that means anything when push comes to ballot. As Aarthi Ramachandran shows in her book Decoding Rahul Gandhi,  Rahul’s efforts to bring fresh faces into the IYC ran smack dab into reality when one looks at the winners –Ajay Singh Yadav’s son in Haryana, Beant Singh’s grandson in Punjab,  A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s niece in West Bengal, Patangrao Kadam’s son versus Balasaheb Thorat’s nephew in Maharashtra. We would like to think we are more mature than the US when it comes to the need to wrap our politicians with the family values flag. But the lack of family ties has become a virtue in politics for us not because we don’t care about family. It’s because we fear our politicians care a little too much about families. Just their own ones.