King and Cong

The story of a man who combined the roles of a modern politician and a maharaja

The story of a man who combined the roles of a modern politician and a maharaja
When in september 2001,in the midst of a fiercely fought assembly election in the key state of Uttar Pradesh,a private plane crashed,it cruelly cut short the life of Madhavrao Scindia. A former maharaja of Gwalior who had successfully turned himself into a competent Congress minister at the Centre,Scindia had achieved much and almost certainly would have played an important role in the subsequent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. The book under review tells the life-story of this suave and secular man,who could effortlessly combine in himself the roles of a democratic and modern politician and a maharaja enjoying all the feudal pomp and trappings. Its co-authors,journalist and a close friend of Scindias,Vir Sanghvi,and his colleague,Namita Bhandare,have done a fine job. Their work is lucid and,by and large,objective.

In his early years,Scindia,like the scions of other princely families,was used to the privileged life,going to races and owning racehorses,taking frequent holidays in foreign lands and generally living it up. But all this changed when he joined politics,a penchant which he must have inherited from his mother Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia. However,their political paths were exactly the opposite. She began as a very influential Congresswoman in Madhya Pradesh but soon parted company with the once grand old party to become a virtual icon of the Jan Sangh,the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party. D.P. Mishra,the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh,told me that she had quit in a huff when he refused her imperious demand that Congress affairs in our riyasat should be left to her care.

Scindia started with the Jan Sangh (he was a Jan Sangh MP the day Emergency was declared and hurriedly left for Nepal to evade arrest) and later gravitated to the Congress,becoming a member of Rajiv Gandhis cabinet first and then,albeit painfully,of P.V. Narasimha Raos. The latter,in fact,hounded him,along with several other friends and foes,in the infamous hawala case. At this time,Scindia was at his lowest ebb. He left the Congress and returned to it only after he was cleared of all the charges against him and had avenged the injustice done to him his courtiers in Gwalior called it an insult by defeating the Congress candidate in the 1996 election.

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Political differences between mother and son need not have led to personal estrangement but they did. What actually happened was much worse. There was acrimony of great virulence and the two were not even on speaking terms. In the feudal order,property perhaps means even more than pride. Consequently,the court cases the mother and the son filed against each other survived both. However,when the Rajmata lay dying at New Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences,Madhavrao visited her regularly and was a source of comfort to her. According to him,the villain behind the tragic division in the family was his mothers adviser,Sardar Angre,on whom she relied completely. The authors apparently accept this,and also report that during Emergency when Scindia took shelter in Kathmandu (his parents-in-laws hometown,incidentally),his mother was to join him. But she changed her mind at the last minute on Rasputins advice and courted arrest.

In an otherwise comprehensive biography,in which the authors have deftly intertwined significant national events and Scindias career,there is one minor omission: his keen interest in the nuclear issue and problems of national security,which is more than can be said of most of his contemporaries. In all,the book does credit to the authors and,of course,to their subject.