Long before Rahul Gandhi, there was Feroze Gandhi. In a recent debate in Parliament, BJP attacked Congress on Jawaharlal Nehru, saying if Nehru was indeed such a great leader why did the current Gandhi family not bear his name, and why did they instead choose to call themselves ‘Gandhi’. The answer is of course simple: Rahul and Priyanka, as is the near-universal norm, bear the surname of their paternal grandfather Feroze Gandhi, husband of Indira, their grandmother.
Ironically, Feroze himself had no political pedigree. He wasn’t a dynast. He was an entirely self-made yet stellar parliamentarian. His family may today be accused of nepotism and dynasticism, cast as Lutyensland “naamdaars”, in the seeming culture war of “naamdaar” vs “kaamdaar”.
