VARUN, THE OTHER GANDHI, PLOUGHS A LONELY FURROW

THE other scion of the Gandhi family, Feroze Varun Gandhi, was back in the news this week with his cousin and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launching an unprovoked attack on him. Rahul said there was no place for Varun in the Congress because he had accepted the RSS ideology, which is antithetical to what the party stands for.

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Rahul’s vituperative outburst surprised many because Varun had been increasingly distancing himself from the Sangh Parivar and the BJP by consistently taking anti-government and anti-Sangh positions. He has been speaking against hate speech and attempts to divide people on the basis of religion. This is the same Varun who spent three weeks in jail in 2009 when he was booked under the NSA for giving a hate speech against Muslims. However, the Supreme Court quashed the charges due to lack of evidence.

Varun has been a maverick. A London School of Economics graduate who became the first Asian-origin president of its students’ union, he was the youngest Member of Parliament of the BJP when he was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009. He quickly climbed the political ladder and became the BJP’s youngest-ever general secretary at 32 in 2012.