Amethi: Gandhi family feud continues

As the country's premier constituency, Amethi has always been special. But as a hotly contested home ground for three members of the Gandhi family, it looks like no other constituency in the country.An appallingly neglected and impoverished backwater till the late Sanjay Gandhi zeroed in to fight and lose his first election there in 1977, Amethi could have slid back into obscurity for its resounding rejection of the younger of the Gandhi brothers. But Sanjay sought to return to Amethi - and in the 1980 general election was equally resoundingly returned by its people. Amethi's star was on the ascendant - and has gone on ascending despite the strange and tragic fate of the Gandhi family.Sanjay died six months after his successful election; and exactly a year later, in June 1981, his brother Rajiv made Amethi his own constituency. A year later, after a bitter family row, Sanjay's widow Menaka arrived there to dispute his claim - declaring it her rightful political home and resolving to fight her brother-in-law tooth and nail. In the last two years, she has made no less than 22 trips to Amethi to instigate its people and deride the unbridled development Rajiv has unleashed to propel it into the "twenty first century". Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi holding court in Amethi: Foregone conclusionThe Rajiv-Menaka contest was all along slated as the most thrilling and daring trapeze act of the Indian election circus, with the routing of Rajiv a not altogether incomprehensible possibility.Mrs Gandhi's assassination has changed all that. "Menaka's fight," as one of her supporters in the Muslim pocket of Jais put it, "is no longer against an MP. It's against the PM." And though she has calculatedly put in over a week of intensive, village-to-village campaigning as well as planning to camp out in Amethi for the last three days of electioneering, the might of the prime minister has quite rapidly become clearly unassailable in the last two weeks.The first impact pre-election Amethi makes on the senses is visual: the Congress party's special publicity programme for Amethi is an unprecedented blitz, designed to sock the most apolitical creature squarely between the eyes. Every inch of mud wall, brick wall, and cement wall is stencilled with vast Rajiv slogans: Aapka dahina haath Rajiv (Rajiv, your right "hand), Amethi ka naam Vikas, Vikas ka naam Rajiv (Amethi means progress, progress means Rajiv) and Tarakki ke saath chalo, Rajiv ke saath badho (Move ahead for prosperity, move ahead with Rajiv). In addition to these relentless assurances for development are the posters, some half-dozen full-colour blow-ups of Rajiv and Mrs Gandhi indiscriminately sprayed to transform Amethi into a Rajiv wonderland. Then there are the cloth banners, flags and glossy calendars of Rajiv and Sonia imperiously posing like some self-assured monarchical couple; and while a mind-boggling assortment of promotional geegaws like stickers, bindis, badges are hurled from spanking new jeeps to eager armies of children, six-feet-high metal dye-cut and spray-painted hands stick out of the rural landscape giving it an impossibly surrealistic air.Menaka Gandhi on her campaign trail: Maintaining an artful pitchWhen Rajiv arrived last week on a day-and-a-half tour, thebandobast accompanying him was even more elaborate. Wooden stockades lined the entire route to his five meetings in each of Amethi's five assembly segments.He spoke from specially-erected, identically-designed canopied rostrums so that the crowds got a clear view of him. The meeting in Tiloi, with absurd embellishments like rows of potted chrysanthemums placed around the podium, looked more like the YWCA flower show. "I want to tell all of you here that nothing has changed in my relationship with Amethi, although I am coming here for the first time after becoming prime minister. I will continue to travel here and meet you - and I hope you will do the same in Delhi - as in the old days."The special thrust of his speech to his constituents was about continued development in Amethi, "so that in a few years' time Amethi can compete with the best constituencies of the world."In keeping with his new belligerent mood, he did not refrain from attacking Menaka by name. "Has she said what she can do for Amethi's progress? All she has managed to achieve so far is to bring in workers from outside to influence you. And who are these workers? If you go to the areas they come from, you'll find most of their names on the police records."Menaka's attack against Rajiv was considerably sharper and sustained. "Progress?" she sniffed, facing small gatherings of a couple of hundred villagers under the shade of a tree. "Is this progress I see around me? The same dilapidated village huts, the same children with swollen stomachs, the same kuccha village roads?"A villager flaunts his support for Rajiv GandhiWhen Sanjay represented the people of Amethi, she claimed, he had a much more realistic dream for Amethi. "Instead of heavy industry factories, he envisioned cottage industries for villages, schools and polytechnics that would train village youth for gainful employment in factories, small dispensaries instead of mammoth hospitals."Shrewdly contrasting their respective values, she draws an effective comparison between the party symbols. "Mine is an ordinary, harmless bicycle which the villager can use: it can carry you to the hospital, to the children's school or take your family to the mela. This is not the Congress Party hand that can hurt you, or pick your pocket."In striking contrast to Rajiv's long, security-bound cavalcade Menaka's procession is both lonely and ramshackle. She travels alone in an open jeep and her speech is an artful compound of manipulation and smooth talk. One of her points against Rajiv is that, as prime minister in charge of running the country, he won't have any time to spare for Amethi. "Remember Mrs Gandhi? When she was widowed, she went to the people of her husband's constituency in Rae Bareli. They voted for her and Rae Bareli saw great progress. But once she became prime minister, Rae Bareli began to go downhill. It will be the same here. So I say, Rajivji you look after the rest of the country but you leave Amethi to Menaka's care." Referring to herself - always in the third person - her posters that claim Menaka naam nahin andolan hai (Menaka is not just a name but a movement) echo this - she enticingly woos audiences by telling them allegorical tales and throws in an emotional line for special effect. "I first came here as a young bride. Then I came as a wife. Now I come as a daughter-in-law. This is my home, and I never intend to leave it, for the next 50 years if necessary. Bahu jaye to kahanjaye apna ghar chhodke?" (Where can a daughter-in-law go if she leaves home?)Her determination to fight in Amethi against all odds can be construed as both foolhardy and courageous; but her determination to carry on fighting betrays her intention of making it difficult for Rajiv in Amethi. And though she has a clear inkling that her chances in this election are remote, she is eager to swoop upon any grievance to store up sympathy for future use. Arriving at the Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) factory in Jagdishpur where some local villagers were on hunger strike for not being given jobs, she made full political capital. "Just give me one month off to fight this election, then I'll be back right here to fight for your rights," she said.What must also be galling to Menaka's spirit is the fact that Amethi's other daughter-in-law, Rajiv's wife Sonia, is leaving no stone unturned to make her presence felt. While Rajiv was away on his nation-wide tour, Sonia camped solidly in Amethi with Arun Singh's wife Nina; and when he arrived to campaign there she also emerged, head covered demurely in a handloom sari, wearing red bindi and red bangles. Although she made no speeches, she chaffed party workers in chaste Hindi, was accessible to volunters and independently met women voters.Although no one was taking any bets on who was to be the victor of Amethi - from the outset the result of the contest seemed a foregone conclusion - what was notable in the peculiarity of the election exercise was the extent of overkill: the ostentation, vulgarity and waste of the Congress Party promotional effort all but matched the hitting-beneath-the-belt unpleasantness of Menaka's earlier speeches in which she repeatedly called Rajiv a "jackal" and luridly attacked his mother's three-day-long lying-in-state. Amethi may one day, indeed, be transformed into one of the world's model constituencies but not before its campaigners can take a few lessons in restraint and tell the difference between good and bad taste.TALES OF MENAKA An original aspect of Menaka's hectic Amethi campaign is her speeches, histrionically peppered with little stories drawn from mythological epics and fairy-tales to highlight the poignancy of her fight against Congress and Rajiv rule.Translated in rustic metaphor, Menaka's tales go down well with local villagers, especially groups of children who applaud loudly. Two samples:All of you remember the story of Mahabharata, and if you do, you will remember how the five brave Pandava brothers fought the huge army of the Kauravas. This fight in Amethi is also a bit like that. On the one side there is the prime minister and his vast army of jeeps and loudspeakers, his goondas, his arrogance and his guns. And on the other there is Menaka, alone, small and ordinary. Like the five Pandavas she stands for the five segments of the Amethi constituency. But she stands for the truth. And it is you who must decide whether you want to be one of the Pandavas or Kauravas. Once there was a terrible rakshas who would not die. He was imperishable and the people were fed up of him. Then one day someone asked him what the secret of his immortality was. The rakshas said: you see no one can kill me till they capture my heart. And I do not keep my heart in my body. For safekeeping I have kept it far away in a well. In the well is a blue lotus, inside the lotus is a bhawra. And guarding the bhawra is a naag. To kill me, someone will have to first kill the naag, then open the blue lotus and catch the bhawra which contains my heart.The demon of our times is the Congress Party which has given no protection to people. It has only allowed poverty, sickness, deceit and corruption to grow. And while the imperishable demon stands for the Congress Party, the blue lotus is Amethi.And the black serpent upon the blue lotus stands for the police, the goondas and the guns of the Government. The entire nation is now watching whether the people of Amethi will be able to kill the naag, and blossom like the blue lotus.The whole of the nation is watching whether all of you can catch the bhawra who is your candidate Rajiv that is the heart of the Congress rakshas or will you let it fly away. If you can catch it, then the black clouds that obscure the sun will unfurl to let the light shine upon Amethi.And if you let the bhawra go then the whole nation will mourn and weep and destruction and chaos will set in. Your fight therefore is extremely crucial because it is not just a simple matter of a fight to save Menaka but to save the country. OPINION POLLAMETHI: A CAKEWALKClick here to EnlargeBefore Mrs Gandhi's assassination, the Manch had shown enough electoral clout in by-elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly to suggest that the battle for Amethi might be a walkover.But Rajiv is now the prime minister and that is bound to have some impact on his chances of re-election. To gauge the prospects of the two in-laws, India Today commissioned MARG to conduct an opinion poll in Amethi. Between December 11 and 14 MARG interviewers conducted 592 interviews at 31 locations in this overwhelmingly rural constituency.If the findings of the MARG poll are any guide, Menaka's first electoral contest is going to be an unmitigated disaster. Rajiv Gandhi is expected to annihilate his sister-in-law with ease. In fact, Menaka will have to fight desperately over the next few days if she is to save her deposit.Amethi has traditionally been a Congress stronghold, the party having been defeated there only once - in 1977 when Sanjay Gandhi lost over 75,000 votes. According to the poll, Rajiv enjoys an unassailable majority in Amethi with 91 per cent supporting him; just 6 per cent of the voters are with Menaka. Rajiv's careful nursing of his constituency and his becoming prime minister have furthered his prospects at the hustings.96 per cent of his supporters said that Rajiv's being the prime minister had significantly influenced their voting for him. 70 per cent of Menaka's backers, on the other hand, said that the candidature of a potential prime minister from their constituency had no influence on their voting intention.In Amethi, the electorate is already very strongly committed. Almost all backers of both candidates said that there was absolutely no chance of their changing their minds during the run-up to the elections.There is little that Menaka can do to reverse the landslide. If the findings of this poll are applied to the 1980 turnout, Menaka would sink without a trace losing by around 3 lakh votes. She needs more than a massive upheaval to salvage the situation in 1984. Published By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 31, 1984 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Amethi: Gandhi family feud continues

As the country's premier constituency, Amethi has always been special. But as a hotly contested home ground for three members of the Gandhi family, it looks like no other constituency in the country.

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