When the BJP was locked in a battle against the Congress to save its 15-year-old government in Madhya Pradesh in November 2018, its main slogan was: “Maaf Karo Maharaj”.
This was an allusion to Jyotiraditya Scindia, the titular head of the royal dynasty of Gwalior, who had emerged as the face of the political challenge posed to the incumbent Shivraj Singh Chouhan government. The BJP sensed his popularity more than the Congress and built its campaign on this slogan: “Hamara neta Shivraj, Maaf karo Maharaj”.
The implicit political message was that the then chief minister Shivraj was the leader of the poor and the toiling masses who will not accept a king’s hegemony in a democracy. But this was also an acknowledgement that the threat emanated from Scindia, not from Kamal Nath or Digvijaya Singh. The Congress later reposed faith in Kamal Nath to manage the pulls and pressures that any government surviving on a wafer-thin majority has to grapple with.
The BJP was kicked out of power but it never reconciled to the shock of being kept away from the majority mark by just eight seats.
Several attempts to steal the crown from the Congress failed but, ironically, the same Maharaj, the BJP’s pet aversion, is now helping it snatch what it couldn’t steal. He has not only resigned from the Congress to join the BJP, he is also using his clout over Gwalior-Chambal MLAs to wreck the Kamal Nath government.
Scindia’s somersault is a sordid saga of betrayal at the personal level, he was very close to the Nehru-Gandhi family, as well as a brazen advertisement of ambition overriding ideological proclivities at the political level.
But there is no denying the fact that the Congress not only mishandled the crisis but also aggravated his sense of hurt by using slights and snubs instead of assuaging his feelings. The final provocation came when he threatened to hit the road to protest against non-fulfilment of promises made to the people and Kamal Nath bluntly responded with a “let-him-do-that” dare.
Those who know Scindia well reveal he was shaken by the high command’s decision to opt for Kamal Nath after the election victory, which he believed was an act of deceit.
Although Rahul Gandhi tried to accommodate him by making him the general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh, along with Priyanka Gandhi who had to look after the eastern part, Scindia’s heart was not in this compensatory assignment at all. He demonstrated his displeasure by removing Congress symbols from his Twitter handle; he described himself as a public servant and cricket enthusiast.
If the Congress failed to measure the extent of his anguish from this loud and clear message — that a politician is preferring to be a cricket enthusiast rather and hide his association with his party — it can only be read as a sign of conceit or stupidity on the part of the party.
The high command as well as the state leaders convinced themselves that the sulking “maharaj” had nowhere to go as joining the BJP would be absolutely unpalatable to a secular young leader.
Vijaya Raje Scindia,Yashodhara Raje, Vasundhara Raje, Madhavrao Scindia and Jyotiraditya Scindia Telegraph file pictures
The Congress forgot that his entire family is in the BJP and has been traditionally a supporter of RSS ideology. Scindia’s grandmother, Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia, was one of the pillars of the BJP while his two aunts, Yashodhara Raje and Vasundhara Raje, are also in the same party.
His father Madhavrao Scindia, who joined the Congress because of his personal rapport with Rajiv Gandhi, had entered Parliament in 1971 as a Jan Sangh member. He later contested 1977 Lok Sabha election as an Independent and then joined the Congress in 1980, much to the inconvenience of his mother. Although Madhavrao died in a plane crash in 2001 as a Congressman, he had quit the party once to form the Madhya Pradesh Vikas Congress after rebelling against the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
The 49-year-old Jyotiraditya, who studied at Harvard and Stanford, is himself a four-term MP and was the first of the young brigade to become a minister in the Manmohan Singh government’s first term.
He was part of Rahul Gandhi’s inner circle and hence his defection to the BJP must be a shock to the family. This will also send out a message to other disgruntled elements in the party that wasting time in the sinking ship is a futile exercise.
Surprisingly, many leaders felt that Scindia was ill-treated.
One of the leaders contended: “He should have been made the chief minister or given a categorical assurance that he will take over after two years. Then there was resistance to his becoming the Madhya Pradesh Congress chief; we heard that the chief minister threatened to resign. When it came to the Rajya Sabha nomination, the party was dithering. He wanted to be made the first candidate but there was no assurance. Kamal Nath used to ignore him; his government is run by officials and sycophants.”
Complaints against the Kamal Nath government were indeed pouring in, and most MLAs felt the chief minister had disconnected himself from the party, leaving the reins of the state in the hands of bureaucrats.
Senior leaders were repeatedly told over the past few months that MLAs and party leaders were insulted by officials and the chief minister’s personal aides. They felt that Kamal Nath failed to carry out political management, the task he was chosen for and instead relied heavily on the bureaucracy.
But there was no monitoring. Rahul’s exit from leadership created a command crisis in the party as Sonia Gandhi acted more as a ceremonial head than a leader.
There is a contrarian view, too. Some leaders believe the crisis at the top is temporary and senior leaders cannot desert the ship, which needs to be steered with greater care in these difficult times.
A former minister summed it up: “The crisis in the party is grave, Rahul inflicted deeper wounds on the organisation by his exit than the 2019 defeat did. But those who have been in a critical role cannot escape. And joining the BJP at this juncture, when Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are destroying the secular fabric of the country, is absolutely despicable.”