The loneliness of being Varun Gandhi

Varun Gandhi, BJP's Sultanpur candidate, at a campaign rally in his constituency.

A Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana (Prime Minister's Village Roads Scheme) signboard mocks the potholed track that masquerades as a road in rural Sultanpur as BJP General Secretary Varun Gandhi, 34, and his team drive past it. The cavalcade of half-a-dozen SUVs and Jeeps is headed for Palia village from Sultanpur town for Varun's second campaign meeting of the day. This is the penultimate day of a five-day schedule in his new constituency, which goes to polls on May 7. By the end of the day, he would have completed 16 village meetings. The sitting Pilibhit MP has shifted base from the north-western fringe of what is politically India's most important state to the heart of Uttar Pradesh- closer to Lucknow and adjacent to the Nehru-Gandhi family bastions of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

The cavalcade meanders through the narrow lanes of Palia and halts some distance away from the makeshift stage. Varun steps out of the codriver's seat with folded hands and walks past a crowd of young men shouting "Varun Gandhi Zindabad" and "Bharatiya Janata Party Zindabad". They are wearing saffron Gandhi caps that bear 'Modi for PM' slogans. A saffron Gandhi cap with a Modi slogan seems like a contradiction in itself. But then, so does being Indira Gandhi's grandson and a leader of BJP. "I'm here not just to win this election, but to give you a new kind of politics. I'm not saying I will pave the roads with gold but I'm young and hardworking and I will do my best for you," he says to thunderous applause from the crowd. It is a short four-minute speech. "My slogan is 'Support me and take what is rightfully yours'... The politics of Hindu-Muslim and caste has not given India anything," he tells the people of Somnabhar in another meeting. In village after village, Varun makes no mention of what a government led by his party or its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will do for them.

He doesn't mention Modi at all. Ironically, while BJP is hoping to ride on the Modi wave and become the single largest party in the state, Varun seems to be swimming against the tide and banking on his family name: His father Sanjay Gandhi won his first election in 1980 from Amethi, which was then part of the Sultanpur district. "I talk about Modi and the BJP in the town meetings. In the villages, people want a durable relationship with their MP," he says later, on being asked. The sitting MP of Sultanpur, Sanjay Singh has taken the Rajya Sabha route to Parliament and secured the Congress ticket for his wife Amita Singh. As Varun travels to the next meeting, a local BJP office-bearer tells him about the caste combination of the approaching village, a ritual that is repeated before every stop: "This village has 60 per cent Pals and 40 per cent Muslims," he says. "I wanted a constituency with which I feel an emotional connect. Pilibhit is essentially my mother's seat," he says, explaining the rationale behind shifting from Pilibhit. In the 2009 elections, Varun had taken the communal shortcut and won comfortably after his two alleged hate speeches in March 2009-for which he was booked but later acquitted-polarised the vote. He was among the few (10 out of 80) BJP candidates who won in Uttar Pradesh. Though he denies ever making a hate speech, he does admit: "When I fought my first election, I was being pushed and pulled by many people and I was perhaps trying to please too many of them." But now he is trying hard for an image makeover. "For the first two years in Parliament, I remained low key and engrossed in clearing my name in the cases. Today I feel no matter what the cost, I will not defy my personal core," he adds.

Varun had followed his mother Maneka Gandhi into BJP in his early 20s. "I just wanted to be there for her," he says. For the party, a member of the Nehru-Gandhi clan's next generation was a prize catch and though it continued to bestow one party position after another upon him, it never completely trusted him. The mistrust was evident when he recently praised the working of Self Help Groups in cousin Rahul Gandhi's constituency, Amethi. BJP forced him to clarify that he was not praising Rahul or the Congress, but he hasn't been critical of the two either. On a day his aunt Sonia Gandhi was filing her nomination papers from Rae Bareli on April 2, Varun hogged the headlines with praise for Amethi. It would not have made news had he been in the Congress. Caught between the push and pull of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy and the Sangh Parivar, that is just another contradiction Varun will have to live with.

Follow the writer on Twitter @jatingandhi

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