Varun, now 29, was too young to stand in India’s last elections. But for the forthcoming elections Maneka has vacated her long-held seat of Pilibhit in northern Uttar Pradesh state, where Varun is the BJP candidate and already being talked about as a future state chief minister and Indian prime minister.
Across the state in the seat of Amethi, meanwhile, his cousin Rahul is recontesting the election for Congress. Rahul is the son of the late Rajiv Gandhi.
Now 38, Rahul is a handsome and personable figurehead for Congress, with old family retainers like the Foreign Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, pushing him as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, now that its current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is recovering from a heart operation and may not be fit enough for another term.
Now India has two great-grandsons of its independence leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, using versions of dynastic charisma to promote rival political agendas, the secular inclusiveness and social welfarism professed by Congress versus the capitalism and religious-nationalism of the BJP.
On paper, Varun is the smarter, a graduate in law and economics from the London School of Economics with a master’s degree from London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. Rahul went to a minor US university, and got a master of philosophy degree at Cambridge.
Yet Varun may have inherited too much of his father’s hot-headedness and his mother’s shrillness in the animal rights cause. He’s in deep trouble, this week having to take out “anticipatory bail” – an Indian legal innovation – in case of arrest over remarks against Muslims and “cow slaughter” at an election rally that were caught on video. Varun claims the video was doctored.
Voting takes place over nearly a month from April 16, as four million civil staff and 2.5 million security personnel are involved in a rotating exercise around the country to collect the votes of some 700 million potential voters. When the results are known after the last poll closes on May 13, both cousins may have to sit out their apprenticeships on the opposition benches.
Thanks: Sydney Morning Herald
