Newsmaker: Varun Gandhi

The world should have known what to expect. Varun Gandhi’s book of poems — his first declaratory statement to the world about who he is and what he believes in — is entitled ‘The Otherness of Self’. Hardly surprising, then, that he should say it is not he, but someone else, who is speaking in the CD that records offensive and abusive references to a minority.

His associates say he is a charming, intelligent young man, but they would say just as easily that few know the real Varun Gandhi.

Granted, at 29, your personality is still developing. But to want to be a Gandhi, as well as a Hindu nationalist, does represent a kind of clash of civilisations that takes your breath away.

 

He could have done many things with his life, but chose to plunge into politics. Initially, for one so young, his knowledge of political history — not just of his mother’s constituency, Pilibhit, but also of the country generally, including Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi — and his powers of articulation impressed those he came in contact with. Especially impressed was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General-Secretary Pramod Mahajan. Mahajan used him extensively in the Maharashtra Assembly elections campaign in 2004. Soon Varun Gandhi became one of the BJP’s youngest National Executive members. The party promoted him: What better way to get at the Nehru-Gandhi family than through a member of the royalty? When L K Advani became the President of BJP, he offered to make Gandhi the party secretary. Gandhi refused.

Sundry elections came along. Gandhi told friends he didn’t think BJP could afford not to field him. There was a chance of fighting the by-election for the Vidisha constituency in 2006. But by now the party was getting a little tired of his recitation of the Varun Gandhi stotra: It was all too much otherness of self.

His next action was to get his mother Menaka to stand down from Pilibhit — which she has represented five times — and seek to contest the seat himself.

Let us make no mistake here: There is a section of BJP that is applauding him for speaking like this. But there are also people in the party who say that abusive language cannot be a substitute for politics, and view his rise as representing a new comprador BJP within the party: Those who see BJP as a vehicle of their ambition, rather than a house of values.