Last week, coinciding with Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to Gwalior, posters sprung up across the city targeting the Scindia family, particularly Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Congress leader who crossed over to the BJP in 2020. Accusing the Scindia family of “gaddari (betrayal)”, the poster read: “1857, betrayed Rani Laxmibai; 1967, betrayed Congress CM D P Mishra; 2020, betrayed Congress CM Kamal Nath.”
Beyond the mudslinging, the poster revived political memories of the circumstances in which Vijaya Raje, “rajmata” of Gwalior’s erstwhile royal family, and her son Madhavrao (Jyotiraditya’s father) joined the Congress in the years following the annexation of their kingdom into Independent India.
After Independence, Madhya Bharat came into being on May 28, 1948, with Vijaya Raje’s husband Jivajirao Scindia as its “rajpramukh” or governor. Based on the State Reorganisation Commission headed by Fazl Ali, Madhya Bharat was merged into Madhya Pradesh on November 1, 1956, and Jivajirao lost his status and his “praja (subjects)” became citizens of India.
Those days, with the Congress led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the dominant political force across the country, the Opposition parties were very weak. Jivajirao, who had very little interest in politics, was known to have a soft corner for the Hindu Mahasabha, a party that was among those active in the Opposition and was popular in the Gwalior-Guna region, and patronised it. In ‘Raajpath Se Lokpath Par’, Vijaya Raje’s autobiography edited by Mridula Sinha, the former governor of Goa, the “rajmata” writes: “He (Jivaji) never considered the Congress as being friendly to common people. Therefore, his attachment to the party that stood against the Congress was obvious.” Jivaji’s (pro-Hindu Mahasabha) approach, however, “irked” PM Nehru.
But the more politically astute Vijaya Raje knew it wasn’t prudent to oppose the Congress. In the book, she mentions the consequences that Pratap Singh, the erstwhile maharaja of Baroda, faced for opposing the Congress. Singh had formed an association of erstwhile maharajas, following which his Privy Purse was stopped and all his privileges snatched. Vijaya Raje, fearful that her husband’s support for the Hindu Mahasabha could invite a similar wrath from the government, decided to reach out to the government. The Congress’s interest in the royal family was limited to the eight Lok Sabha seats and 60 Assembly seats that were part of the erstwhile Gwalior estate.
Amid these apprehensions, in 1956, when the ‘maharaja’ was in Bombay, she sought an appointment with Nehru and his daughter Indira. Of her meeting in Delhi’s Teen Murti, then the PM’s residence, Vijaya Raje writes that she assured Nehru and Indira that Jivajirao had no interest in politics and that he did not support or finance the Hindu Mahasabha. “Pandit ji, you have some misunderstanding, but I have come here to clarify that neither my husband nor I have any interest in politics. Maharaj will never oppose the Congress,” she says in the book.
Vijaya Raje says that Nehru wasn’t quite convinced. “Even if I believe that your husband is not anti-Congress, this doesn’t mean that he is with the Congress. Please go to Pant ji (Govind Ballabh Pant, then union Home Minister) and Shashtri ji (Lal Bahadur Shashtri, then Minister of Railway and Transport) with Indira (Gandhi) and tell them everything,” she writes, quoting Nehru.
That it turned out to be a difficult conversation is obvious from what Vijaya Raje writes. “They (Pant, Shastri) listened to me and asked me to tell Jivajirao to contest the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket (in 1957). But when I told them repeatedly that he was not interested in politics, they asked me to contest. I told them that I, too, have no interest in politics, but they kept pressuring me.”
Vijaya Raje says that back in Gwalior, Jivajirao and she realised that if they refused to contest the polls, they may end up paying a price. That is how Vijaya Raje agreed to join the Congress and got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1957 from Guna.
But even as MP, Vijaya Raje was least interested in political activities and proceedings of the House. “My husband didn’t want me to sit among politicians so I often did not go to Delhi (for Parliament proceedings).” But the ‘rajmata’ caught the political bug soon enough. In 1962, she again contested from Gwalior on a Congress ticket, and won. Meanwhile, the ailing Maharaja Jivajirao passed away in 1961.
But it was Nehru’s death in 1964 that brought about a political churn in the country. The Opposition came together led by leaders such as Ram Manohar Lohia (of Samyukta Socialist Party), Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay (of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the frontrunner of the BJP) and others. In Madhya Pradesh, Vijaya Raje’s relationship with Congress leader and then CM Dwarka Prasad Mishra (his son Brajesh Mishra later became Principal Secretary to PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee) soured and she left the Congress in 1966. In the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections of 1967, she contested from the Karera Assembly seat in Gwalior on a BJS ticket, and from the Guna Lok Sabha seat as a candidate of the Swatantra Party (founded by Chakrawarty Rajgopalachari).
She won both the elections and resigned her seat in the Lok Sabha to become Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. It was around this time that her son Madhavrao Scindia too entered politics, but unlike his mother, eventually went in the opposite direction – from the BJS to the Congress.
In the 1971 Lok Sabha election, Vijaya Raje contested – and won – from Bhind on a BJS ticket, leaving Guna for her 26-year-old son, Madhavrao, who won as an Independent candidate supported by the BJS. The Gwalior seat was won by another BJS stalwart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
When Emergency was imposed on the night of June 25-26, 1975, Vijaya Raje was put in jail. She was later released on parole, and Madhavrao returned to India from Nepal after the Indira Gandhi government assured him that he would not be arrested. “Bhaiya (Madhavrao) told me that if he refused to join the Congress, I would be put back in jail,” Vijaya Raje writes. Post-Emergency, when elections were announced, Madhavrao decided to switch over to the Congress. In the book, Vijaya Raje quotes her son as telling her, “I will now take my own decisions. I don’t need your advice.”
In the 1977 elections, Madhavrao contested as an Independent from Guna and Congress did not put a candidate against him. He was able to overcome the Janata Party wave sweeping the country after Vijaya Raje, even as she was in a rival party, appealed to the people of Guna to vote for her son. Their relationship, however, worsened in the following years.
When the BJS was reborn as the BJP in April 1980, Vijaya Raje was one of its founder-members and remained among its prominent leaders until her death in January 2001. Madhaorao stayed on in the Congress until his death in September 2001 in a plane crash. Jyotiraditya, who as Congress candidate lost his Lok Sabha seat to his former assistant K P Yadav in 2019, joined the BJP the following year and was sent to the Rajya Sabha and sworn in as Union Minister.
