Lok Sabha election 2024: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka see history come alive
Next-Gen of erstwhile Royal Families are hitting the campaign trails for new roles to play. In the process, India's princely legacy is invoked with passion.
Stepping out from their turreted and domed palaces, set in fairy-tale surroundings along lakes and hills, a new generation of former Royal family members is braving the heat, sweating it out in campaign trails in heritage towns of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka.
In searing-hot Jodhpur, the blue city of Marwar in western Rajasthan, serving Union Minister of Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had Maharaj Kumar Dr Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar of Udaipur pillion-riding with him on a motorcycle through streets filled with BJP workers and supporters, colourful buntings and flags.
“History is repeating itself,” said Shekhawat, who hailed Maharaj Kumar Lakshyaraj’s presence in Marwar as historic. Shekhawat, a two-time MP from Jodhpur, was elected by over 2,75,000 votes in the 2019 elections.
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Addressing a large rally, Maharaj Kumar Lakshyaraj said, "I have made the journey from Mewar to Marwar not just to help my 'elder brother' retain this seat and remain in Delhi but to make history in Rajasthan. We need to make this nation stronger only then will I consider my journey to Marwar to be a meaningful and successful one.”
Dressed in austere kurta-pyjama, quite like the campaigning Minister himself, Maharaj Kumar Lakshyaraj reminded audiences of royal legacies. "We are a fortunate generation who hail from families where promises made 500 years ago are honoured,” he said, adding a touch of spirituality, “we were never rulers of our land. Our supreme rulers are Lord Shiva and Shree Eklingji.”
In Rajsamand the heart of the Mewar region in south Rajasthan, where once the present Deputy Chief Minister Diya Kumari was Member of Parliament from 2019 to 2023, now the daughter-in-law of Mewar family, Mahima Visheshwar Singh is the chosen candidate. Diya Kumari had secured 70 per cent of the vote share (over 860,000 votes) in the landslide 2019 Lok Sabha elections, despite a strong Congress presence in Rajsamand.
Dressed in her traditional 'poshak' or royal costume, Mahima Visheshwar Singh ensures stories of legendary history are not forgotten in her rallies. Rajsamand is named after Maharana Raj Singh of Mewar who, in the 17th century, built the largest lake; it today borders Nathdwara district from where her husband, Vishwaraj Singh Mewar, is the sitting MLA.
As she drums up support for the BJP, with brass bands playing in the background, Mahima Visheshwar Singh is accompanied by an entourage comprising her husband, family elders and cavalcade of cars, jeeps, and tractors, stopping along the streets to meet people and carrying forth the party message of 'Modi ki Guarantee'. The BJP political bandwagon has brought the former Royals into the election arena where they are joining hands with commoners, forging modern-day identities and new linkages.
‘Jaipur ki Beti’
Hailed as ‘Jaipur ki Beti’ (daughter of Jaipur) Deputy Chief Minister Diya Kumari, is managing a high-profile campaign through dusty villages, towns of Rajasthan. Her debonair son, Sawai Padmanabh Singh, 26-year-old head of the erstwhile Royal Family of Jaipur, is staying away from active campaigning.
Padmanabh, a distinguished polo player, is adorning covers of glossy magazines, carving out a separate distinct identity in corporate and business circles. Having become the brand ambassador of US Polo Assn, he is linking his centuries-old legacy with heritage global brands in the Indian marketplace.
In the otherwise serene and placid Mysore, (or Mysuru to be politically correct), BJP and Congress are pitted in an electoral battle with Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, scion of the Mysore Royal Family, face to face with M Lakshman, an engineer-turned-politician, who is only too happy to flaunt commonplace credentials and strike a chord with voters.
It is almost two decades since the erstwhile Royal Family stepped out to contest elections; quite naturally the media has gone to town terming it a ‘Royalty versus Commoner’ battle.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mysore had shocked the political world when the then-ruling head of the Royal Family, His Highness Srikantadataa Narasimharaja Wadiyar decided to contest elections as a Congress candidate, even though his interest in fashion design was better known than his grasp of local or national politics. Nonetheless, for four terms, he represented the Mysore Lok Sabha seat as a Congress representative.
Vikram Sampath, in the obituary for the former Mysore Royal, traced the political journey from 1984, when His Highness defeated K P Shantamurthy, an independent. “His switch to the BJP in 1991 cost him dearly and he lost to the Congress’ Chandraprabha Urs,” he commented. Adding when Wadiyar moved back to the Congress, “he won successively in 1996 and 1999, but trailed a poor third in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. His critics assailed him for being completely aloof from the people.”
In 2024, the young bespectacled Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar is bracing for a tough electoral contest. His Rajasthan and BJP connections will give him a boost: his wife Trishika Kumari hails from Dungarpur royal family; her father, Harshavardhan Singh, was a BJP Rajya Sabha MP.
New Innings: Safe in the Rajya Sabha has been Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia, the serving Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel, whose family ruled over Gwalior, one of the richest and most powerful princely states of India. Scindia's flight into the BJP in 2020, after his defeat in the 2019 general election (by over 120,000 votes) also brought to fore the infighting among loyalists in Madhya Pradesh.
Currently Jyotiraditya Scindia is pitted against Rao Yadvendra Singh Yadav of the Congress in the forthcoming elections. Though he remains the quintessential suave, well-informed politician, he is battling hard to win back Guna, the family's constituency which he represented for 17 years; earlier his father, Madhavrao Scindia nurtured it for nine long terms from 1971 till his untimely death in 2001 in an airplane crash.
In fact, Jyotiraditya’s grandmother Rajmata Vijaye Raje Scindia was the first to represent Guna in Parliament. Rajmata is remembered as one of the founders of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) in 1951 along with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya and Balraj Madhok.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, as a political party, was born out of the BJS: Jyotiraditya Scindia has a precious legacy to preserve in an age where history faces the threat of being forgotten, or worse, erased.
In peril is also the legacy of Major Jaswant Singh, another towering figure and founder-member of BJP, who hailed from Jasol, a prominent thikaana of state of Jodhpur. Jaswant Singh was a nine-time member of Parliament, a highly-respected former Union Minister of Finance, Defence and External Affairs; he passed away in 2020 after a long confinement.
His son Manvendra Singh has been in and out of the BJP, and currently been overlooked for the Barmer-Jaisalmer constituency, which he once represented from 2004-2009. BJP's Kailash Choudhary is the sitting MP who is facing Umeda Ram Beniwal of the Congress, and a popular youth leader Ravindra Singh Bhati contesting as an independent.
Says Raghvendra Singh, former Union Secretary, Government of India, who worked with Jaswant Singh for several years, “Jaswant Singh ji had a tremendous grasp on global politics and diplomacy, parliamentary procedures, and was a prodigious writer who left behind a shelf-full of brilliantly authored books,” he said, adding, “he brought to Indian politics and parliamentary protocols a sense of dignity and unmistakable grace, truly Rajasthani and regal in his bearing.”
At age 77, Digvijay Singh – popularly known as ‘Diggi Raja’ – is contesting Rajgarh seat in 2024, conducting padyatras and reaching out to people, especially during auspicious days of Chaitra Navratras. The elections of 2019 were a stinging defeat for this two-time chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, who lost to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur by over 350,000 votes.
The electoral defeat prompted political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot to comment that Sadhvi Pragya became the 'symbol' of the 2019 election, ‘in which nebulous fringe elements of the Hindutva ideology have become part of the mainstream’.
Hailing from the erstwhile royal family of Rajgarh, Digvijay Singh will be up against BJP candidate and two-term sitting MP, Rodmal Nagar. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Diggi Raja had a strong hold over Rajgarh; it was his brother Lakshman Singh who won the seat in 1994 and then joined the BJP. He later quit the BJP and re-joined the Congress: the party-hopping has added little to the credibility of the erstwhile Rajgarh Royals.
As summer peaks with the former Royals out on the roads, general elections have become a colourful collage where our country’s historic past is overwhelmed by a volatile present.