Word: varun
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...every twist and turn of the five weeks of voting that just ended in India, during which 415 million voters in megacities, small towns and tiny villages came together to elect a new government. I tagged along at one of Rahul Gandhi's campaign rallies, and watched his cousin Varun's inflammatory speeches on YouTube. I calculated the anti-incumbency factor and tracked the post-Mumbai-attacks backlash vote. Counting day - a holiday in India - was dramatic. By the afternoon of May 16, the alliance led by the Congress Party, which had been expected to squeak through to a majority...
...current political firestorm started as Varun was preparing to make his political debut in India's general elections, which are now less than three weeks away. The young man seemed to be consciously raising one of the most controversial episodes in modern India's history: Indira Gandhi's Emergency Rule from 1975-1977, when she - with Sanjay as her chief advisor - ran the country on authoritarian lines, ruling by decree. One of those edicts led to forced sterilization to deal with India's then huge population growth rate. Varun Gandhi allegedly referred to it in his virulent rallies...
...been confounded by the controversy. And there was some talk of fielding Maneka Gandhi as a candidate in her son's place during the elections. But the party finally decided to stand by the young man after India's Election Commission said in a 10-page report that Varun should be dropped as a candidate because of his "highly derogatory" remarks. The BJP shot back that the EC had no right to make that determination. The party may also have realized that they suddenly had a catalyst to bring supporters out to the election. At first, says Hyderabad-based political...
...political non-violence, who was Indira's godfather, allowing her fiance, a young Zoroastrian lawyer originally called Feroze Shah Ghandy, to restyle his surname as Gandhi, thus attaching prestige to a mixed marriage many Hindus would not have approved of. Priyanka Gandhi, Sonia's daughter, said that her cousin Varun's comments were against the traditions her family had "lived and died for." There might have been a bigger political spectacle if Priyanka's brother Rahul had been entered as a possible Congress candidate in the coming elections, but their mother nixed that suggestion. (See pictures of Sonia Gandhi...
...remains to be seen how the case of Varun Gandhi will affect the BJP's chances. In any case, his supporters have not been quiet. On Saturday, after he turned himself in, they fought a pitched battle with the police and laid siege to the jail. Police responded by firing tear gas shells and charging the demonstrators with canes, injuring 25 people. His mother Maneka further stoked the anger when she claimed a Muslim officer had led the charge. In India's often overheated politics, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty knows about playing with fire...