IS GOPAL KRISHNA GANdHI ALSO A ‘CHATUR BANIA’?

You may call it strange twists of life. The united opposition has fielded Gopal Krishna Devdas Gandhi (71) —grandson of Mahatma Gandhi—for the prestigious post of Vice President. Once, he had served (1985-1987) as the secretary to the Vice President R. Venkataraman. And he worked as joint secretary to the President when Venkataraman moved to the Rashtrapati Bhawan (1987-1992). It would not have then occurred at all to this former Tamil Nadu cadre 1968 batch IAS officer that one day he would be contesting the Vice President’s election. The Congress and many opposition parties, including CPM, had earlier considered him for the Presidential race. But the NDA’s decision to field a Dalit, Ram Nath Kovind, forced them to go for Meira Kumar. Kovind was the Governor of Bihar, when he was chosen by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the NDA candidate for the Presidential election. Gandhi is also an ex-Governor; he served as the 22nd Governor of West Bengal, from 2004 to 2009. In political circles, it is being asked whether 18 opposition parties have picked up Gopal Krishna as their candidate merely because he carries the Gandhi tag. His opponents, especially from the BJP, are amusing themselves by asking whether Gandhi is also a “chatur Bania”. They have picked up a leaf from the recent comment by the BJP chief Amit Shah that “Mahatma Gandhi was a chatur Bania”. This had triggered sharp criticism from various quarters. Some BJP leaders have offered that “chatur” in Gujarat means an “intelligent person” and so it is a “compliment”. The opposition’s Gandhi is surely an intelligent man. A product of St Stephen’s College, Gandhi had served as a high commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka among other administrative and diplomatic posts. While his paternal grandfather was Mahatma Gandhi, his maternal grandfather was C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), India’s last GovernorGeneral. He is the son of Devadas Gandhi and Lakshmi Gandhi. Gopal Krishna Gandhi is the younger brother of Rajmohan Gandhi and the late Ramchandra Gandhi, and Tara Bhattacharjee (Gandhi), all of whom are distinguished in their own right. As Gandhi lives in Chennai, the opposition parties believe that this establishes him as “a candidate from the South”. They think that Gandhi’s Chennai connection will not go unnoticed in the AIADMK camp, though it is aligned with the NDA. Cutting across the party lines, Gandhi enjoys a good image. He is a prolific columnist and author. He is known for his frank views. While delivering the second Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer lecture in Thiruvananthapuram, in the wake of the ruling on national anthem, Gandhi had said: “I love my national anthem. It is among the greatest anthems in the world. And I will sing it with full heart…but to be asked to sing it under an order is to turn the passionate hymn into a humdrum chant of official lining.”