Yes, Minister! The Deshmukh dynasty is alive and well

Barely had Congress leader and former Maharastra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh passed away than sycophants in the Congress came out swinging with embarrassing agility in defence of the perpetuation of another strand of another dynasty in politics.

Party leaders began a campaign to install Amit Deshmukh, 36, considered the inheritor of his father’s political legacy, as a Minister in Maharashtra, on the specious claim that this was a way of honouring Vilasrao Deshmukh’s memory.

And in their excessive eagerness, they are pushing for a Cabinet berth, not just a lowly Minister of State assignment, for Amit.

Of course, Amit is no political rookie, having been groomed for a career in politics for well on 12 years now - ever since his father took over as Maharashtra Chief Minister in 1999. In that sense, the seed of the Deshmukh dynasty had been planted a long while ago.  Amit had previously served as Maharashtra Youth Congress leader, and under Vilasrao’s tutelage, he took over the responsibility of the influential sugar cooperatives in the State.

Yet, every time it happens, the reflexive resort within the Congress to dynastic politics enfeebles both itself and, in a larger sense, the stirrings of democracy in India.  And, of course, while the Congress may have been the most egregious practitioner of dynastic politics, having been at it the longest, that  disease has now spread to virtually every single party except the Left parties and, to an extent, the BJP - although the inter-generational walls are beginning to be pulled down.

Where did the Congress’ dynastic inclinations spring from? In his book Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, one of India’s iconic editors Frank Moraes wrote that Nehru himself would never have favoured the perpetuation of family rule. “There is no question of Nehru’s attempting to create a dynasty of his own; it would be inconsistent with his character and career,” Moraes wrote.

Although it is true that Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi was elected president of the Congress in his  lifetime, Nehru pointedly refrained from appointing either her or anyone else as his successor. The Congress’ reflexes at that time were also not inclined towards dynastic perpetuation.

Which is why upon Nehru’s passing away in 1964, the party elected Lal Bahadur Shastri to be Prime Minister.   In any case, by then Indira Gandhi had virtually retreated from politics, for which she seemed at that time to have no particular flair.

But then, as now, Shastri felt it necessary to “honour” the departed leader’s memory (Nehru in 1964, Vilasrao Deshmukh in 2012) - by offering his legatee a post in government. In Shastri’s case, it manifested itself in his giving Indira Gandhi the Information & Broadcasting portfolio, even though she brought no particular merit to the job.

It was the moment when the course of history turned decisively - for the Congress, as well as for India. Since then, and particularly after Indira Gandhi seized control over the party in 1969 and emasculated it, politics has never been the same again. To this day, when the party continues to pine for the ascendance of Rahul Gandhi (or, given his abject failure to enthuse, Priyanka Gandhi), it shows in the systematic enfeeblement of the party given its unwillingness to look for talented outside the First Family of Indian politics.

Over time, parties across the political spectrum - from the NC in Jammu and Kashmir to DMK in Tamil Nadu to the Samajwadi  Party in UP to the NCP in Maharashtra - have themselves embraced dynastic politics, in many cases citing the Congress as their alibi. It is what led Patrick French to conclude , in his book, India: An Intimate Biography of 1.2 Billion People, that Indian national politics was becoming hereditary, with power passing to a few hundred families, even as the elections themselves were becoming more vibrant and open.

In a short story titled “The Sound of Thunder” (which you can read here ), science fiction writer Ray Bradbury narrated how a small action in the distant past can have profound changes in our time. It’s a variant of the Butterfly Effect  at work: in the story, a group of rich businessmen travel back in time for a “dinosaur safari”, but because one of them steps off the assigned path and accidentally kills a butterfly, it changes the course of history. When they return from their safari, they find that a fascist candidate has been elected President.

Much the same can be said of Shastri’s decision to appoint Indira Gandhi as a political gesture to honour Nehru’s memory. That was the “butterfly event” that has today reduced India to a princely state.  And even in science fiction, it’s very hard to turn the clock back on historical horrors.