Digvijaya Singh has come out shaking his pom-poms enthusiastically for Rahul Gandhi. Evidently, Diggy Raja has two wishes for the putative Yuvaraja: first, that the standard bearer of India’s foremost political dynasty should take over as Prime Minister; and second, that the ‘Amul baby’, now grown to manhood, should get married this year.
The notion that Rahul Gandhi is prime ministerial material has been clinically analysed and trashed elsewhere on Firstpost. Even an additional word would be superfluous.
But Digvijaya Singh’s other suggestion for Rahul may actually have some merit to it.
Rahul today is 41. And although that puts him only in the median age range of “Youth Congress” politics in a party that prides itself as a gerontocracy, it is way past what Indians typically consider a viable marriageable age. Perhaps the bachelor beta has been deaf to his mother Sonia’s counsel to “settle down” in life and continue the Congress khandan lineage. Which perhaps explains why Digvijaya Singh has stepped up with some avuncular advice for Rahul.
Rahul’s status as “bachelor politician” may have, in a peculiarly Indian context, become something of a political liability. Although the world has come a long way since 1897, when the “bachelor politician” was derided as unworthy of trust, Rahul’s political adversaries have been taking potshots at his marital status.
Last year, for instance, Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray dismissed him as a “frustrated bachelor”. In response, a group of gushing girls in Mumbai drooled vacuously over their readiness to marry him in a trice.
India doesn’t exactly lack in politicians who have forsaken a life of matrimony. Atal Behari Vajpayee was wedded only to his politics; that’s also the case with Naveen Patnaik – and three women Chief Ministers: Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalithaa. (On the other hand, there are leaders like M Karunanidhi, who have overcompensated by marrying several times over.)
Yet, media attention has focused excessively on Rahul’s bachelorhood: earlier this year, an online poll of Mumbaikars by a matrimonial agency listed him as India’s “most eligible bachelor.” Precisely what qualities rendered Rahul so highly eligible as a matrimony candidate were not made clear.
“Will Rahul Gandhi ever marry?” wondered a national weekly magazine, breathlessly listing the grand-daughter of former Afghan king Zahir Shah as one of many candidates he has been dating.
Other journals confessed to a keenness to see “India’s own royal wedding” and speculated that Rahul’s choice of bride would probably be governed by political considerations – in the same way that the party’s electoral candidates are chosen on the basis of religious and caste considerations.
“An Islamic bride, for instance, may help seal Congress’s hold on voters among the 13% of so of India’s population that is Muslim. A devout Hindu bride, in contrast, may allow him to position himself as a secular leader but with his flank covered against attack by the Hindutva crowd. Then again, marriage to a woman connected to a regional political power may help strengthen the reach of Congress in an era when the body politic is increasingly fractured. Marrying a foreigner runs the risk of sending an awkward if unintentional signal that there aren’t women in India that fit with Gandhi men.”
From all accounts, Rahul himself confesses to enjoying the attention of women, and even his sister Priyanka says she looks forward to seeing him wed.
And although it is, in the final analysis, a personal decision for Rahul to make, it may have implications beyond just his personal domain. An American humorist famously said that US presidents do to the country what they ought to be doing to their wives. From that perspective, Rahul Gandhi, whom party sycophants want to see as Prime Minister, perhaps owes it to the India to get married before he assumes the man-on-top position…
