Palace Intrigues
How the Scindias keep it all in the family
Campaigning for the Ater assembly bypolls on April 9, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan made some scathing references to the Scindia rulers’ purported collusion with the British in committing atrocities on the people of Bhind in 1857. It was ostensibly to target Jyotiraditya Scindia, who’s expected to be the Congress’s face in the 2018 assembly polls. But it’s stirred more than the usual summer storm within the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Now Chouhan must have been aware that there are more Scindia royals within the BJP than in the Congress. On cue, Yashodhara Raje, the youngest daughter of the late Vijayaraje Scindia and a minister in the Chouhan cabinet, retorted that the BJP in MP had been built with her mother’s “hard work and financial support”. To press her point, she also stayed away from the Ater campaign.
Among the handful of erstwhile royals who have managed to stay politically relevant after Independence, members of the Scindia clan have won most of the elections they have contested. In MP, besides Yashodhara, her maternal aunt Maya Singh too is a minister. Her husband, Vijayaraje’s brother Dhyanendra Singh, is an ex-minister. Then there’s also Jyotiraditya and the royal lineage in the Congress.
But more than the listing of royals in rival camps, CM Chouhan’s statement has put the focus on a rather unique kind of politics at play in what used to be the princely state of Gwalior. Politics where the divisions aren’t so much along party lines, but more about being for or against the
mahal (‘palace’ as the Gwalior royals are commonly referred to).
The BJP’s anti-mahal group is a powerful coterie including known Scindia baiter and higher education minister Jaibhan Singh Pawaiya, Union minister Narendra Singh
Tomar, state minister Narottam Mishra and Morena MP Anup Mishra (former PM A.B. Vajpayee’s nephew). Party insiders say the group has a common agenda—cut the Scindias down to size in the state. And they share this with Congressmen like MLA Govind Singh and former ministers Bhagwan Singh Yadav and Aidal Singh Kansana.
Evidence of the blurring party lines was recently visible in Gwalior when pro-mahal Congress leaders held forth on “Vijayaraje’s contributions to the Jan Sangh and BJP”, to counter the CM. Predictably, though, anti-mahal leaders in both parties were quick to point out that irrespective of their personal or political equations, the Scindias close ranks when it comes to safeguarding the mahal’s interests.
Former Congress MLA Veerendra Raghuvanshi, who lost the assembly polls in Shivpuri in 2013 to Yashodhara, alleges that “Congress workers were told not to work for me as my victory would weaken the Scindias in the region”. Raghuvanshi quit the Congress and is now firmly with the BJP’s formidable anti-mahal faction.
CM Chouhan would do well to choose his battles wisely if Jyotiraditya is indeed the chief ministerial face of the Congress in 2018, given the retinue of ‘royals’ in his own party.
THE SCINDIAS ‘CLOSE RANKS’ WHEN IT COMES TO THE INTERESTS OF THE PALACE