For the longest time, the BJP couldn’t be more pleased than to have Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi in their saffron tent; pleased that it was two steps closer to break the Nehru-Gandhis. And Maneka Gandhi couldn’t be more pleased in return. She snared ministerial posts. Varun Gandhi made impressive interventions though not much of an impression. Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not find this young Gandhi talent fit for a ministerial post. Today, Varun is rebelling against the Modi cult.

And to outside observers—not the sycophants in the media—the BJP appears dissatisfied that it does not have “political dynasties” like the Nehru-Gandhi of the Congress and the ‘Yadavs’ of the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal. Minus a dynasty to hang as mascot at its headquarters, the BJP is an orphan lost in the ‘Mela’. And because most top BJP leaders in true RSS lore are confirmed bachelors—even the solitary self-exiled from familial ties—there is little or no likelihood that there will be a dynastic strain in the BJP though there’s more than a sneaking feeling that the BJP envies the Congress and the regional parties their firmly entrenched dynasties!

Besides the Mulayam Singh Yadav family in the Samajwadi Party, which looks like it will hold sway for at least another 100 years, there is the LaluYadav dynasty in Bihar. The Soren family is an emerging political dynasty in Jharkhand. There is the fledgling ‘Banerjee dynasty’ in West Bengal—the ‘Sangma dynasty’ in Meghalaya and an ‘on now, off now’ dynasty in Assam, too.

The BijuJanata Dal has a dynasty baked into its title. Ditto the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh. There is also the dynasty which controls the puppet strings in Telangana. And if Chandrababu Naidu failed to establish dynastic rule, it’s because he was too fixated on himself. CBN played dirty with the NTR dynasty and there will be payback one day from ‘RRR’ star Junior NTR.

Meanwhile, shorn of dynasties of its own and starving for outside dynasties to flaunt as trophies, the BJP is working hard to knock political dynasties of the opposition parties off their pedestals and impressing the Great Unwashed that it has the BJP's back. If the poaching done from dynastic parties—right, left and centre—is done at the outset of an election or multiple elections, it is all the more better.

It’s, therefore, no surprise that on the eve of the 2022 five-state assembly elections, the BJP is looking like it’s the cat that swallowed the canary after the Aparna Yadav catch. The media are talking of revenge served hot! Saying that Aparna Yadav’s induction into the BJP is sweet revenge for the political abduction of Swami Prasad Maurya by the Samajwadi Party.

Aparna Yadav is the ‘bahu’ of the Mulayam Singh Yadav dynasty—the wife of Mulayam’s younger son Prateek Yadav, whose mother happens to be Mulayam’s “second wife”. The BJP considers Aparna Yadav a prized catch. At her induction “ceremony” in BJP’s New Delhi headquarters, BJP leaders couldn’t stop congratulating themselves for Aparna Yadav’s acquisition—that Aparna happens to be “Mulayam Singh Yadav’s bahu”.

But for such small victories, the BJP wouldn’t have gotten over Swami Prasad Maurya’s “desertion”, allegedly because ‘SP’ sought a BJP ticket for his son and the BJP did not accede because it’s against dynasty and family rule. So, the BJP gets its back by wrecking the Yadav family. What Aparna brings to the BJP table is nothing but a weird sense of satisfaction for the BJP.

For the eternal bachelors of the Sangh Paivaar, political dynasties are anathema. These are men who have embraced asceticism and are most thrilled when bachelor politicians, like the mahant-chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, with only cow and calf for family, take pole position. If the citizens of India haven’t noticed, India’s future lies solely in the hands of the ‘sant’ and the ‘sanyasi’, those who hold ‘Dharam Sansads’ and chip away at democracy’s pillars. Most lethal of all, these are people who build cults around political ascetics. It's cult versus dynasty, and it’s yours to pick and choose. (IPA Service)