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Driven polls apart

POLITICS NOT only makes strange bedfellows, it also creates strange enemies. And this is manifest most conspicuously during election time in India when poll vaults bring enemies together but set family against family.

The Gandhi family, who have been ruling India’s Congress party for nearly four generations, bore it out when the families of the siblings Rajiv and Sanjay parted ways, becoming archrivals. The ershwhile ruling family of Gwalior followed the Gandhis, with the matriarch Vijayaraje Scindia and her two daughters Vasundhara and Yashodhara becoming front-ranking leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Vijayaraje’s son Madhav Rao however was a Congress party stalwart with his son following in his father’s footsteps. Now the same saga is repeating itself among the major national and regional parties.

Former defence, finance and external affairs minister Jaswant Singh is the latest to create shock waves after he decided to leave the BJP, terminating a three-decade association. Singh’s departure came after his party passed him over for another. The veteran, like other BJP stalwarts, had been smarting when the party chose Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate over other senior members. Now he will be going it alone, fighting the election as an independent contestant. To hit the headlines next is the former chief minister of Bihar, Rabri Devi, who was elevated to the power seat after her husband and Bihar strong man Lalu Prasad Yadav was jailed for corruption. During Yadav’s days behind bars, Rabri Devi’s hand was strengthened by her brother, Sadhu Yadav, who has a long list of criminal and corruption cases against him. The husband-and-wife duo’s stints in power were weakened by their refusal to rein him in and now the act has boomeranged with Sadhu Yadav taking on his sister from Bihar’s Saran consttuency.

Asked for her reaction, Rabri Devi told the media there were no brothers or sisters in election battles, only rivals. The matron from Bihar reportedly did not finish school and preferred the kitchen to ruling the state. But her statement ironically echoes classic Indian philosophy. This philosophy was formulated when the five Pandav brothers were pitted in an annihilating war against their cousins the Kauravs. At the battlefield, when Pandav hero Arjun saw he would have to slay relatives and friends, he weakened and thought of laying down his arms. However, he was motivated by his mentor Krishna, who explained that man was simply an instrument. What befell him was the sum total of the actions he had taken in his life. Indian politicians would do well to remember that precept when they go to battle. They are mere instruments and what unfolds later will be the fruit of what they sowed. If they do good deeds, they will be rewarded at the next election. If not, voters who decide politicians’ fate will inexorably turn their thumbs down.