Nehru-Gandhis ‘cemented idea of leadership as birthright’: Tharoor attacks dynasty politics, Congress mum

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has again caused unease within his party, this time by writing an article on dynasty politics in which he says that the Nehru-Gandhi family “cemented the idea that political leadership can be a birthright”. Dynastic politics, he says, poses a “grave threat to Indian democracy” and it is time to trade “dynasty for meritocracy”.

In a column published by Project Syndicate on October 31, Tharoor writes, “For decades, one family has towered over Indian politics. The influence of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — including independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, and current opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — is bound up with the history of India’s struggle for freedom. But it h