V.D. Savarkar’s acrimonious dressing down of the Scindias in his early 20th century writings couldn’t foretell, and rather runs in sharp contrast to, Jyotiraditya joining BJP, a political outfit inspired by his Hindutva thought, a century later. By embracing the only member left out of the party for 18 years, the erstwhile royal family’s decades-old unmistakable link with the BJP has reached its denouement. His aunt Yashodhara, welcoming him, announced: “This is ghar wapsi (homecoming) for him.”
Savarkar’s view
In his 1909 text The Indian War of Independence , Savarkar is particularly miffed at Scindia ruler Jayaji of Gwalior for joining hands with the British during the 1857 revolt. At this, he wrote, people rose in fury. “If Scindia does not wish to fight, we shall fight...will run to liberate her [motherland] without you.” Describing him as a “traitor” and “coward” who betrayed Rani Laxmi Bai of Jhansi, he wrote: “If the Scindia is not for the country, drag him down from his throne.”
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Remarkably, Savarkar softens his rage towards the Scindias on the eve of the Independence, as Hindu Mahasabha, a political party influenced by Hindutva, begins gaining a toehold in the Madhya Bharat, composed of 25 erstwhile princely states that merged into Madhya Pradesh later. Incidentally, the Scindias were its chief patrons. Christophe Jaffrelot in Religion, Caste and Politics in India notes that Jivaji, grandfather of Jyotiraditya, had been “willing to patronise” a movement which invoked the Maratha empire with pride, as it could help counter Congress influence locally. In Royal to Public Life , Vijaya Raje Scindia wrote that her husband, Jivaji, had “strong faith in the politics and programs of Hindu Mahasabha.”
The socio-economic reforms, explains Jaffrelot, including the abolition of the jagirdari and the zamindari system, announced by the Congress after independence aroused anxieties among princes. “In organising resistance, they had already placed themselves within the confines of the Mahasabha, or resorted to it as a political mouthpiece,” a phenomenon which became evident especially in Madhya Bharat.
Ironically, the Scindia family’s initiation into electoral politics was with Vijaya Raje trouncing P.V.G. Deshpande, the Mahasabha’s president, on a Congress ticket by 60,000 votes on the Guna Lok Sabha seat during the 1957 election, a victory that, however, bruised her pride immensely. “I was thus responsible,” she wrote in her autobiography The Last Maharani of Gwalior , “for throttling a party with which I and my husband had much in common...so began my long pilgrimage in politics, against my will.” The contest was a necessity for Vijaya, eager to quell “rumours” of her husband’s association with the Mahasabha, but for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, her 10-year stint with the Congress was a probable means at clawing back at its base eroding to the Mahasabha.
But Hindutva inklings of the Scindias can be largely attributed to the Angre clan, whose Chandrojirao Angre, the second-most richest jagirdar in the Gwalior estate, aided and advised Jivaji; later his son Sambhajirao Angre became an associate of Vijaya Raje, and set up the local Hindu Sabha in Gwalior, which was visited by Savarkar in 1938. Jaffrelot points out that C. Angre, who was “a powerful patron of Mahasabha”, by October 1951 had assembled about 40 jagirdars and petty rulers to contest elections on Hindu Mahasabha ticket from Madhya Bharat, Bhopal, Vindhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Outside Central India, the Mahasabha was confronting an electoral rout in the 1950s.
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“The Sardar holds the Rajmata in an awe and respect which has not dimmed with time. She in turn looks to him for advice and guidance,” wrote William Dalrymple in The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters of S.Angre , “They make a good team: he is dry, sober and practical as she is mystical and quixotic.”
When Vijaya Raje joined the Jana Sangh in 1971, and later became a founding-member of the BJP, Angre provided her with the necessary ideological base, but he also became reason for the rift with her son, Madhavrao, who joined the Congress after leaving the Jana Sangh, never to look back, charting a different course from sisters Vasundhara and Yashodhara.
By now, taking to Angre’s moorings, Vijaya Raje at a meeting of the VHP in 1968 declared: “The greatest need of the time is to make our people understand the true meaning of Hindutva.” In addition, when M.S. Golwalkar, former RSS Sarsanghchalak died in 1973, Vijaya Raje stated he left when the nation needed him the most. “This is our country’s misfortune.”
Crucial link
Another crucial link with the BJP for Scindias is former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. To pursue higher studies in Kanpur, he was funded by the Scindias, “whom he naturally revered,” wrote Ullekh N.P. in The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox .
He worked with Jivaji after studies, as the Rs. 75-a-month scholarship was offered on the condition the beneficiaries would work with the erstwhile ruler for at least three years after studies.
In 1984, Vajpayee was “up against his own mentor’s son” Madhavrao in the Lok Sabha election from Gwalior, and defeated, switched to contesting from Lucknow thereafter.
In 1992, when the Babri Masjid was being torn down, wrote William Dalrymple in The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters , Vijaya Raje, who had earlier signed a written pledge to the High Court guaranteeing the mosque’s safety, “stood on the viewing platform, cheering an enthusiastically as if she was a football fan watching her team win the World Cup”. The Liberhan Commission report in 2009 named Vijaya Raje, who died in 2001, besides Vajpayee and 66 others, culpable for leading the country to the brink of communal discord after the mosque’s demolition.
Father’s legacy
Four-time MP Jyotiraditya Scindia bore his father’s legacy after his death in a plane crash in 2001, and had carried his resolve to stick to the Congress until now. The Mahasabha and the RSS have clung onto the Gwalior-Chambal belt, a Scindia stronghold.
Jaffrelot points out that the Jana Sangh, BJP’s predecessor, had discovered backing of princes had disadvantages, for once their privileges and purse had been abolished, “their interest in backing the opposition evaporated and they returned to where power lay”. Mr. Scindia, after switching over to the BJP, which is in power in the Centre, was made its Rajya Sabha nominee from the State, and is eyeing a portfolio at the Centre.
