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Dooned if you do, damned if...
By RESHMI R DASGUPTA
NEW DELHI: The last time round, they were derisively dubbed as the “Babalog”. Try as they might, the Doon School mates of Rajiv Gandhi could not shake off that tag from their well-bred shoulders and India’s Camelot crumbled under the onslaught of the caste-based masses.
Twenty years on, the public school boys have returned to the political spotlight in Election ’04, but will the public give them a second chance?
When Rajiv Gandhi frittered away the most historic mandate ever given to the Congress between 1984 and 1989, much of the blame was put on his Dosco friends. Well-meaning fellows maybe, was the refrain, but political novices all the same.
So conventional political wisdom decreed that Doscos were a no-no, if not all public school grads. Only when Jyotiraditya Scindia made his emphatic entry into the Parliament in ’01, was Doon School brought back into focus for the first time since Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic and sudden exit from the political arena in 1991.
In the intervening years, Kamal Nath and Mani Shankar Aiyar were the “face” of what is arguably India ’s most celebrated boarding school.
The school’s other alumni include parliamentarians Karan Singh, Piloo Mody, CPN Singh, Dinesh Singh, Digvijay Singh and Vishvjeet Singh, besides, Sanjay Gandhi. Mayo College Ajmer and Scindia School Gwalior have also had their share of politicians from Jaswant Singh and Natwar Singh to Madhavrao Scindia in these very same years. The centre stage through the nineties, however, belonged to a very different lot, far removed from the rarefied campuses of India ’s public schools.
But much before this second band of boys made their bid for places in the 14th Lok Sabha in ’04, Doon School staged a quiet comeback, with two Old Boys making it to the chief minister’s chair — Naveen Patnaik in Orissa and Amarinder Singh in Punjab. Even if Singh is facing flak in his state, the rise and rise of Patnaik has finally put paid to the old belief that Doscos lack the acumen and stamina for the long haul in politics. And in doing so, Patnaik has probably set the stage for the GeNext of Doscos to enthusiastically throw their hats into the ring.
The first among those (presumed) Doon School equals is, naturally, Rahul Gandhi, even if a school senior is also in the fray. And old school ties are indeed stronger than party considerations.
So even if other Congressmen have cribbed that the Gandhi siblings didn’t come to their UP constituencies to bolster their fortunes, Gandhi made it a point to go to the places where fellow Doscos were the candidates — Padrauna and Shahjehanpur.
In the first, RPN Singh, Gandhi’s senior and sitting Congress MLA, got the benefit of the large crowds that the Gandhi scion invariably draws and was upbeat about his chances.
And in the second, the beneficiary was Jitin Prasada, also a political inheritor like the other two. Younger than Gandhi, Prasada was counting a lot on the Congress’ star campaigner to tip the balance in Shahjehanpur. The Scindia scion, however, (Gandhi’s school contemporary, but a political senior) did not need any boost for his second shy at his pocket borough, Guna.
Interestingly, the BJP in Rajasthan has two public school boys in the limelight. Chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s son and Gandhi’s Doon contemporary, Dushyant Singh, is a shoo-in for his mother’s seat Jhalawar, while Mayo College alumnus, Manvendra Singh, is battling to wrest Barmer from the Congress for the first time ever.
In fact, the latter, perhaps, is the best manifestation of the public school boys’ fervent desire to merge with the masses. Even though he lost the last time round, Singh’s taken root in Barmer, wears the Rajasthani style dhoti everywhere (including his rare social evenings in Delhi ) and speaks the local lingo.
The others may not be so fanatical, but more than one Dosco at least, believes that his stint in a premier public school has equipped him well for politics.
Forget TV shots of Gandhi eating from a hamper during a roadshow pitstop, his fellow Doscos are apparently made of sterner stuff. “Eating whatever I can get while on the move is not a problem for me,” says Scindia, dismissive of any allowances for royal indisposition. “At Doon , we all ate tough chapatis and vegetables and made do with whatever we got. It made us pretty tough so we can handle anything.”
Jitin Prasada, echoing Scindia’s line of public school rough-and-ready-ness, says, “We were all taught to look after ourselves.” But Prasada sees his Dosco stint becoming more handy once he actually reaches the Lok Sabha. “The people we all have grown up with in school will help me to serve my constituency even better. What we learnt then and the links we established will certainly put me in a better position to deliver.”
Prasada’s assertion of the fabled Doon School network cannot be overstated. Only one other network is comparable, across as many spheres — that of the Capital’s St Stephen’s College. But that’s another story.