During election campaigns, BJP veteran Vasundhara Raje keeps up a punishing schedule. When this columnist covered her campaign during the Rajasthan assembly polls of 2003 (which BJP won with 120 seats and Vasundhara became CM for the first time), she pointed to the rapturous crowds she attracted and declared: “My critics should see how lovingly the people receive me. Yet they persist in casting me as a chiffon-clad, polo-playing woman. First they stereotype you, then they condemn you.”
Among BJP leaders, Vasundhara remains an unusual figure and she’s not afraid to be different. Always immaculately dressed, she speaks fluent witty English and makes no bones about her glittering social life. In a ‘purush-pradhan’ (male-dominated) Rajasthan society, she has often crossed swords with the mostly male BJP old guard and patriarchs of the Sangh Parivar in Rajasthan. She has been accused of arrogance and displaying feudal airs because of her ‘royal’ lineage.
