Sultan Modi’s Slave Dynasty is No Better than the Family Dynasties in Other Parties

From time immemorial, heredity has been the accepted principle for succession among kingships and monarchies. With the advent of democracy and the abolition of monarchies, rulers are born, as the saying goes, not from the womb of a queen but out of the ballot box.

Yet, there are many democracies, including our own, where political families have held sway and have provided leadership, generation after generation. One of the more famous examples of this in India is of the Nehru-Gandhi family, of which the fifth generation is now leading the Congress party, after having ruled it for four generations – three directly and one indirectly.

Today, the family and the principle of heredity in a democracy are directly under attack by no less a person than the prime minister of the country himself. He wants the people to reject the whole concept of dynasty in a democracy for good. I fully agree with him. But replace it with what? Let us examine this important issue in some detail.The Nehru-Gandhi family is not the only dynastic political family in India today. There are now many of them in various parts of the country. Some of them started as staunch opponents of the dynastic principle but fell prey to it when they themselves got the opportunity. Should the dynastic principle be opposed in a democracy? Certainly. But what if people bless a dynast and he wins elections? In the recent Bihar assembly elections, Tejashwi Yadav, son of Lalu Prasad Yadav, fought spiritedly and nearly caused an upset. He came in for praise from the people, specially the media, and nobody held his lineage against him, except the prime minister and his party.