Casting coup

Newsmaker/Feroze Varun Gandhi

Feroze Varun Gandhi, 24, is a man in a hurry. The son of Sanjay and Maneka Gandhi took a plunge into politics at a time when there is much speculation about his cousins, Priyanka and Rahul, joining the fray in this Lok Sabha elections. But, Varun will have to wait his turn to contest: he is not yet of age.

A lasting image of Varun is a picture of Priyanka holding her four-year-old cousin as her father Rajiv lights Indira Gandhi's pyre. That was 1984. Twenty years on, Varun is desperately trying to come into his own "" with some help, of course, from obliging "political uncles".

When BJP President M Venkaiah Naidu introduced Varun and his mother Maneka to the media as new converts to Hindutva earlier this week, there was little surprise.

For some time now, the political grapevine had it that although Maneka was reluctant, Varun was pushing to join the Sangh Parivar. Maneka's hesitance is understandable "" Vajpayee dumped her from his ministry in June 2002.

For the BJP strategists, Varun is a countervailing force to Congress President Sonia Gandhi's children. But the BJP cadre is nowhere as enamoured of the Gandhi dynasty as the average Congressman.

For the record, Varun's resume is impressive: He has degrees in law and financial administration from the London School of Economics. A compilation of his poetry, The otherness of self, was published three years ago. Two more are on their way.

Like a true Nehru-Gandhi, Varun considers politics his natural habitat, though he is clear on one point: politics does not involve his turning on his aunt or cousins.

But politics in today's context is a different ball game. This reality must have dawned on Varun when he was campaigning for his mother's party, the Sanjay Vichar Manch, during the Jammu and Kashmir elections, where he could not draw the crowds.

This lesson will not be lost on the BJP, whose strategists want to project Varun as the real inheritor of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy.

By all indications, Varun Gandhi's utility for the BJP is confined to this election only unless he imbibes the Sangh Parivar's political culture.