Family politics, democracy's fixture

A few weeks after her party was badly drubbed in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati made her brother Anand Kumar its national vice president, on the eve of the birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar. A week later, in another party meeting, Mayawati announced the induction of her foreign-educated nephew, Akash, to look into party affairs.

In a democracy where political dynasties — from Congress to all the regional players — have long dominated the scene, this should not be news. However, the BSP case comes as a surprise because ‘Behenji’ had several times not only taken a jibe at the Congress leadership but also at her fiercest political rival, the Samajwadi Party, for promoting family members in politics.

The fact that she herself has joined the league calls for an investigation into the matter. Though she made it clear that her brother’s role as the party VP was subject to the condition that he will not contest in an election for MP or MLA and neither will he hold any ministerial post, only future will prove the veracity of the claim.

Mayawati’s rise to the centre stage of politics in UP, a state with the highest number of Lok Sabha seats, has been phenomenal. Her remarkable feat in politics and eventual swearing in as the chief minister of UP for the first time in a patriarchal, caste-ridden society was referred to as a ‘miracle of democracy’ by former prime minister Narasimha Rao.

The person who brought Mayawati, a school teacher and a civil services aspirant, into politics was BSP founder Kanshi Ram. However, akin to a monarchy, it appears that the tradition of naming a political successor had become a convention in Indian democracy as well.

In December 2001, Kanshi Ram named Mayawati as his successor and eventually, in September 2003, she became the national president of BSP. Since then, she has been in full control of the party and has snubbed the issue of naming her successor. She had often publicly stated that family rule was against the spirit of democracy. 

So what made her induct family members to manage affairs of the party suddenly? Was it due to a series of failures, culminating in the unexpected defeat in the 2017 Assembly polls, after the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle? Or was she cautioned by the fate of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, that witnessed an infighting and subsequent split in the absence of any successor named by late J Jayalalithaa? 
Jayalalithaa, too, had a trajectory similar to that of Mayawati, though she had to battle it tougher on certain parameters. While Kanshi Ram did not have his family stake claim over his legacy, actor and AIADMK party founder M G Ramachandran’s wife Janaki Ramachandran gave a hard-hitting challenge to Jayalalithaa as the true inheritor of MGR’s legacy. 

Jayalalithaa did not relent to the tormenting trials by the supporters of Janaki after MGR’s death and displayed her political acumen by establishing herself as the worthy successor of MGR without the latter anointing her so.

No successor Jayalalithaa did not name a successor either; rather, she relied on a loyal party worker, O Paneerselvam, in times of crisis. Just as Sonia Gandhi found it safe to trust Manmohan Singh as the de-jure leader in 2004 while she remained the de-facto ruler, Jayalalithaa, too, chose OPS to head a puppet government on two occasions — in 2001 and 2014 — when she was convicted in corruption cases. She was also cautious enough not to announce her close aide Sasikala (with whom she had a love-hate relationship) as her successor, despite the fact that the latter had a pre-eminent presence at Poes’ Garden.

What followed Jayalalithaa’s untimely demise in Tamil Nadu politics, especially in the AIADMK, appeared like a re-play of the events after MGR’s death. The subdued followers of Amma declined to prostrate before ‘Chinnama’ Sasikala, resulting in an infighting and subsequent split in the party. 

The two powerful female leaders who displayed acute political acumen amid prejudices in a North Indian and a South Indian state, never felt the need to anoint a successor from within their family. Behenji and Amma had always held a tight control over the party machinery and have been known as strong decision-makers.

Nevertheless, Mayawati’s decision appears to have been stirred by the state of affairs in TN post Jayalalithaa’s exit from the scene. It may also have to do with the repeated failure of her party to perform in electoral democracy in recent times.

Whatever be the logic behind the move, one thing is certain: Indian democracy seems to thrive very much on the idea of ‘inheritance,’ whether it be of consanguinity or of ‘anointment’ based on loyalty, trust or mere sycophancy. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, too, had been not only a spiritual/religious successor of his mentor at the Goraknath Math but also of his Lok Sabha constituency for a record number of times. Commonsensical hunch suggests that despite the defeat of the SP-Congress combine in the UP polls, political dynasties and family politics are here to stay though in diverse forms and at different levels.

(The writer is a PhD Scholar, Centre for Political studies, JNU, New Delhi)