Of hate speeches and an 'unfinished dream'

An online interview quotes Varun Gandhi as saying he hopes to one day complete his "visionary" father's "unfinished dream" for India. After listening to his rousing, hate-filled speech in Pilibhit, one wonders whether that's Varun's idea of Sanjay Gandhi's dream. Or was it an impatient young man's brash attempt to short-circuit the electoral system by pitting one community against the other and power his way into the Lok Sabha?

There are two big obstacles in Varun's path to Parliament. One is a former loyalist of his mother Maneka, Riyaz Ahmed. This four-time MLA first won a seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly in 1983 as a candidate of an organisation that Maneka founded and named after her late husband, the Sanjay Vichar Manch.

Six years later, the two parted company on a bitter note and Ahmed eventually wound his way into the Samajwadi Party, which has given him a party ticket to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Pilibhit. By any standard, Ahmed is a formidable opponent because of his local connections. He is also helped by the fact that after the recent delimitation exercise, Pilibhit has a sizeable Muslim population. Some estimates put it at over 30%.

But Ahmed is not the only dragon Varun has to slay. There is another in the form of an aspirant for a Congress ticket from Pilibhit, VM Singh, who happens to be an estranged relative of his mother. Maneka and Singh have been embroiled in a protracted property battle and the latter is frequently seen loitering around the Congress headquarters in Delhi and regaling those who care to listen with stories about the "other" Gandhi daughter-in-law. Varun has told friends and sympathizers in the BJP parivar that he suspects Singh passed on the controversial CD (which he claims is doctored) to the authorities.

Crafting a campaign that aims at communal polarization must be a tempting ploy for a young man studying demographic figures on his laptop. On paper, it would certainly seem to be an easy way out of a difficult election in which he is pitted against powerful opponents with much better credentials to represent the constituency.

Varun is believed to have boasted that he has already succeeded in grabbing 73% of the Hindu vote by positioning himself as the community’s champion. The taste of the pudding will be in its eating, but, for the moment, Varun has succeeded in spooking his party into not disowning him. He will get the BJP nomination all right, and if his party leaders are to be believed, he will even win the seat. But like Advani and Narendra Modi before him, Varun may have boxed himself into an image he will find difficult to shake off, limiting his politics in the future.

TAILPIECE
No governor has ever done this, but someone had to be the first. Jharkhand governor Sibtey Razi sent shock waves through the system when he released advertisements in Ranchi newspapers recently boasting about the great strides the state has made under his administration.

Oops! It seems to have slipped Razi's mind that he is not the chief minister but the governor of a state that is currently under central administration through president's rule. The three advisers appointed by the home ministry to run the state during this period have complained to the central government that the governor has assumed all powers and responsibilities and left them with no work. Even P Chidambaram, who otherwise brooks no challenge to his authority, is finding it difficult to crack the whip. Razi seems to have declared autonomy from the home minister's orders.