Death robs one of belief. On Wednesday the 19th four friends got together for lunch. We rejected a popular restaurant for a quiet room so that we could be more convivial, perhaps more boisterous; it turned out to be a festive, laughter-driven holiday-eve lunch, as our host was off on a three-week holiday to the United States and Canada. Warm with happiness, we promised ourselves an evening when she returned. Who knew, that afternoon, that one of us would never return? Rajiv Gandhi. Rajesh Pilot. Madhavrao Scindia. A generation is whittled away in its prime. Why? The gods do not answer; we fool ourselves with comforting illusions, like believing that those whom the gods love die young. Those whom the gods love are also irreplaceable.
Human beings must die; that is written into our birth. But if gods must hunt, why do they pluck flowers in full bloom and ignore the gnarled trees that are wasting space in a tangled, unhealthy forest? Those who knew Madhavrao, those who loved him, those who were privileged to call him a friend, the many who admired him and the countless whose lives he affected with his personal reach: each one will be burdened today with a loss he or she cannot understand and will not forgive.
I came to know Madhavrao Scindia a little after his most famous political victory, when he switched his constituency at the last minute and filed his papers from a seat held by a man who towered over the Opposition ranks then as much as he towers over the government today, Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Gwalior was Mr Vajpayee’s constituency before Madhavrao made it his political base in addition to his personal home, and Rajiv Gandhi sent him there as part of his surprise package for selected stalwarts of the Opposition. There was of course a wave in 1984 which carried everyone to victory, but Madhavrao was hurtling against a rock called Vajpayee. His victory had an individual flavour.
Madhavrao Scindia became the ideal Rajiv minister: modern, secular, scientific, committed, utterly hardworking and as much at ease in the villages as in the English-speaking world of Oxford and Cambridge. As minister he inherited the railways of Old India and made it into an achievement of the New India that Rajiv Gandhi dreamt of. By the Nineties he had become too popular in the party and the country for anyone to ignore his claim to a natural place in the Cabinet, but inevitably he was at odds with the leadership when the old guard returned to the helm of the Congress. The one thing that hurt and angered him more than any other was the accusation of corruption.
The heir of Gwalior did not need to be sleazy, but that was not the point. There is no law in Indian politics that says that the rich do not take money. Madhavrao Scindia was just not that kind of politician. He was not compelled to enter public life.