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Journalism of Courage
BJP LEADER Varun Gandhi has been in the news lately for the wrong reasons, but for what he sees as the “right” causes – of agitating farmers, protesting youths and the middle class – often putting him at cross-purposes with the BJP.
Now, the 42-year-old finds himself back in the news – this time, for no reason of his own doing. Earlier this week, addressing a press conference on the sidelines of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi was asked what would be his reaction if cousin Varun, given his messaging lately, wanted to join the march.
While not committing himself either way, Rahul said Varun’s and the Congress’s ideologies did not match, that it was “impossible” for him to accept the RSS ideology Varun seemed to have adopted, and that Varun too could find himself in trouble if he took such a decision.
Sources close to Varun, a three-term BJP MP and former party general secretary, say nothing more should be read into Rahul’s statement. “Just because Varun has expressed his views freely and those views happen to be a bit contradictory to that of the BJP, you cannot say he is keen to join the Congress. He has chosen to be different and express what he thinks is right. As far as I remember he has not made any public statement in favour of the Congress nor expressed his desire to join it,” a BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh says.
The leader adds that, importantly, Varun’s criticism of BJP leaders is based on policy issues, and he has not made any personal or ideological attacks.
However, sources say the BJP doesn’t take as lenient a view of Varun constantly pushing the envelope. “Being in a party like the BJP which gives a lot of importance to discipline, Varun Gandhi cannot act as an independent institution,” a BJP office-bearer says. “No party can tolerate repeated statements that seem to criticise decisions taken by its governments. If Varun has apprehensions or reservations, he should communicate the same to the authority concerned. You cannot write letters to the Prime Minister or party president and release them on Twitter before they reach them. It is indiscipline.”
In October 2021, both Varun and his mother Maneka Gandhi, an eight-time MP and former Union minister who also finds herself out of favour with the Modi dispensation, lost their places in the reconstituted national executive.
Varun won for the first time as MP from his mother’s constituency Pilibhit in 2009 with a huge margin. He fought and won the next two elections from Sultanpur (2014, 2019), again with good margins. He is also the author of two books – The Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future Through Her Villages, on Indian rural economy; and the forthcoming The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces, releasing next month.
The issues where he has deviated from the party line include those dealing with the Rohingya Muslims, the controversial farm Bills and the government’s ambitious Agnipath scheme. While Rohingya often find themselves the target of the BJP’s campaign against “infiltrators”, Varun advocates asylum for them as they have fled religious persecution in Myanmar. On Agnipath, he has said he is opposed to the Armed Forces taking in people on contract as a defence job is “a sacred commitment to the nation”.
In 2011, before the BJP came to power at the Centre, he was one of the few MPs who publicly backed Anna Hazare’s protest demanding a Jan Lokpal. He even moved a private member’s Bill on the same.
In 2015, Varun was the only BJP MP who voted in favour of the private member’s Bill by Shashi Tharoor to decriminalise homosexuality. In 2017, he ruffled many feathers when, speaking in the Lok Sabha, he objected to MPs deciding their own salaries, adding this had seen them get a 400% pay hike in a decade. Later, then finance minister Arun Jaitley had proposed a law for automatic revision of salaries for parliamentarians every five years, indexed to inflation.
During the agitation against the Centre’s controversial farm Bills – which were later withdrawn – Varun supported the farmers, defying the party. Once the Bills were withdrawn, he wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking Rs 1 crore each as compensation for families of those who had died protesting, withdrawal of “politically motivated false FIRs” against the protesters, and making minimum support price (MSP) legally binding.
After the Lakhimpur Kheri episode, in which protesting farmers came under the wheels of a vehicle belonging to the son of the Union Minister of State, Home, Ajay Mishra, Varun was the first BJP leader to seek action against the latter.
In the past, the BJP MP has also spoken against the Centre’s move to increase GST rates on packaged products, saying that amidst unemployment, this would be a big burden for middle-class families.
Recently, Varun brought a private member’s Bill – Bharatiya Rozgar Samhita (Bharosa) – asking the government to fill one crore job vacancies in its ranks.
A leader close to the BJP says the issues Varun has been taking up are “pro-youth, pro-farmer and pro-poor. “Some of them, like farm Bills, were later accepted by the government.” The source points out that Varun has also helped many of these causes monetarily.
Apart from the discomfort his remarks cause the BJP, the party also harbours a suspicion that Varun might be trying to further his career through them and that it only shows that he is not able to work in a team.
“Varun Gandhi wants the BJP to give him special treatment because of his surname. But the BJP is opposed to dynasty politics and being a Gandhi scion is not an advantage at all in this party. He has to realise that he is one of the around 400 MPs of the BJP. His rebellion is mainly because of his discontent over not getting the positions he wanted,” a senior party leader says.
Many BJP leaders also think Varun wants to provoke the BJP enough into taking disciplinary action against him. “That would give him the image of a fighter, and help him prepare his future course outside the BJP,” a leader says.
