Mohsina Kidwai’s long arc: Indira aide to stalwart, who led Congress revival in UP after Emergency

However, Kidwai stemmed the post-Emergency Janata tide in the Hindi heartland itself in 1978, when she defeated the Janata Party’s candidate Ram Bachan Yadav in the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll by about 36,000 votes – signalling that the Congress was down but not out even in North India after the JP movement. The election was necessitated because the 1977 winner from Azamgarh, Ram Naresh Yadav, took over as the UP chief minister, making the seat vacant.

Kidwai, who belonged to a conservative landholding Muslim family of Barabanki in UP, got married to Khalil Ur Rehman Kidwai in 1953. Her father-in-law, Congress leader Jameel Ur Rehman Kidwai, took her to meet India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954, she recalled in her 2022 autobiography, “My Life In Indian Politics”. As she waited at Teen Murti House, Indira Gandhi came to greet them. This was the first time the two women, who would develop a lasting bond, met.

Nehru then came and gave his blessings to her, Kidwai recalled, and asked her father-in-law, “When are you introducing her to the political world?” He replied that she was too young and just married, but the seed of a political innings had been sown in her mind.

Her plunge into politics came six years later, when Jameel Ur Rehman, a member of the UP Legislative Council, fell ill and was hospitalised. The Legislative Council polls were then due, and the Congress decided to field Mohsina Kidwai in place of her father-in-law. She was unsure but her father-in-law told her this was his decision. She thus became an MLC at the age of 28.

When she was fielded again in 1966, the Congress was a divided house and she had to face rival Congress candidate Muneshwar Dutt Upadhyay. She lost by 250 votes. Dejected, she poured out her anger to Indira Gandhi, who advised her to develop a thick skin in politics. She was fielded again in another election in August 1966 despite internal opposition, and became MLC for another six years.

In 1976, Kidwai, who was at this time a minister in the N D Tiwari-led Congress government in UP, was appointed the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president. She recalled in her book that she saw the popularity of the Congress plummet during the Emergency, as the family planning programme of Sanjay Gandhi became unpopular. In her own state, she as the UPCC chief had to face the ignominy of the party drawing a blank in the 1977 Lok Sabha polls. She offered her resignation, but Indira did not accept it.

Her next challenge was the UP Assembly elections in 1977, where she insisted that Indira be projected as the Congress leader amid discontent among a section of party leaders. She campaigned hard for the party, but the Congress lost the polls, winning just 48 of the 425 seats.

Kidwai recalled that Indira resumed campaigning with her in UP seven months after the 1977 debacle, had the windscreen of her car smashed in Ghaziabad, faced violence in different places, but public support for Indira gradually grew amid slogans like “Toofaan mein aur aandhi mein, vishwas hai Indira Gandhi mein”, with cracks appearing in the Janata Party.

The Congress’s gradual revival made Kidwai go through unexpected experiences, like two purported party activists Bhola Pandey and Devendra Pandey hijacking a plane in 1978 against legal action against Indira by the Janata regime, and saying they would let go only if Kidwai talked to them. She refused to do so, apprehensive that this would implicate the Congress in the plane hijacking case. They finally relented at the Varanasi airport when the father of one of the hijackers called them.

In 1980, when Indira returned to power after leading the Congress to a remarkable victory in the Lok Sabha polls, Kidwai won the election from the Meerut parliamentary seat. She became a Minister in Indira’s Cabinet from 1982 to 1984, first as Minister of State for Labour and then as the MoS Health and Family Welfare.

After Indira’s assassination in 1984, Kidwai won her seat again in the subsequent Lok Sabha election. Rajiv Gandhi inducted her into his Cabinet, allotting her at different points of time various portfolios including Rural Development, Health and Family Welfare, Transport, Urban Development and Tourism. Congress stalwarts Madhavrao Scindia, Rajesh Pilot and Jagdish Tytler had also served as her junior ministers.

Rajiv Gandhi was also said to have thought of nominating her for the Vice-President’s position in 1987, but she did not accept the offer, following which Shankar Dayal Sharma was chosen for the post.

In 2004, Kidwai was again elected to the Rajya Sabha, and also became a member of the Courts of AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia.

In her twilight years, with the Narendra Modi-led BJP being in power, Kidwai wrote in her autobiography, “We can’t do with a Congress-Mukt Bharat. The Congress is more than a political party – it is a movement that was started to end colonial rule and chart out a new future for India without any biases.”

She also recalled in her autobiography that she had just two regrets in life – she could not excel in academics despite going to AMU, and that she could not take care of her parents the way she would have wanted to. She added that apart from academics, she also loved badminton and singing.

During her stint with the Congress, Kidwai had also been a Congress Working Committee (CWC) member as well as an All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary.

Kidwai passed away at the age of 94 on Wednesday, with top Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, paying glowing tributes to her.