Want to Stay Single in India Run for Office

NEW DELHI â€" It was always clear that this might be the best way to end the hold of dynasties on Indian politics, though no one had even hinted at it until a few days ago. Last week, Rahul Gandhi â€" the vice president of the governing Indian National Congress party, great-grandson of the late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, grandson of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi and son of the party president, Sonia Gandhi â€" said he was choosing bachelorhood.

In a chat with the members of Parliament from his party, Mr. Gandhi, 42, said that for the sake of the nation he would never marry.

“If I get married and have children, I will be status-quoist and will like my children to take my place,” he said.

In a sign that the times are changing, none of the Congress workers who heard this besieged him with protests.

That Mr. Gandhi has been an unfair beneficiary of his family background has been a favorite grouse of the urban middle class, even though the fact in plain sight is that the young of the Indian elite are as blessed by their families as Mr. Gandhi is by his. Across the social rungs in India, the family serves its own well. And in return it exerts such a powerful influence over the individual that a baffled former coach of the Indian national cricket team, an Australian, accused the Indian family system in one of his memoirs of creating weak men and thus emasculating Indian cricket. (Indians think that he was the real problem.)

In a country where having a family is a sign of normality, where even trees are still ritually married off to humans in some places, one would imagine that the politicians would consider it important that they display an amiable spouse and two adorable children who wave at people. But the fact is that many of India’s top politicians are single or of uncertain marital status. Mr. Gandhi’s pledge of bachelorhood will not diminish him in any way as the Congress party heads for elections next year or sooner.

His archrival, Narendra Modi, is also single but in a more complicated way. Mr. Modi, 62, the most popular leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, is expected to be his party’s prime ministerial candidate. Mr. Modi lives alone. On Monday, when he went to watch the 3-D version of the film “Titanic,” he was accompanied by several members of the Gujarat legislative assembly. That has to be the very definition of being single. However, there is an impoverished woman in a small village of Gujarat who is widely believed to be his wife. Mr. Modi has never spoken about his marriage, nor has he denied journalistic accounts that portray the woman as his wife.

There is a difference in the singlehood of Mr. Gandhi and that of Mr. Modi. Mr. Gandhi dates women. Mr. Modi does not. His cultural background is such that his followers claim or imagine that he has taken a vow of celibacy, something a particular kind of married Indian man does, usually without the permission of his wife.

The last time the B.J.P. was in power, the prime minister was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was also single.

Among the most important political figures in the country are three unmarried women. Mayawati, the most influential leader of what were once considered the “low” castes, used to declare to the crowds these words in Hindi that once had magic: “Chamari hoon, kunwari hoon, tumhari hoon.” (“I am a cobbler’s daughter, I am single, I am yours.”) Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal and one of the many nightmares of the Congress party, has also often conveyed that her singlehood is a sacrifice for her people.

The chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha Jayaram, was a Tamil actress, who was widely perceived by masses of the state as the lover of M.G. Ramachandran, Tamil cinema’s most popular actor ever, who eventually wore a fur cap and dark glasses, and ruled the state as chief minister.

When Mr. Ramachandran died in 1987, Ms. Jayalalitha climbed onto the vehicle where his body lay in state, but she was beaten and kicked in full public view by several men and removed from the scene. Mr. Ramachandran’s legitimate wife took over as chief minister of the state, but she lasted at the helm for just 24 days. Ms. Jayalalitha eventually took control of his party, and among the things she encouraged was the ritual of men standing in line to fall at her feet.

Everything that Indians hold dear, including the importance of family life, the pre-eminence of men and contempt for strong unmarried women, appears to collapse when they judge their politicians. It is as if Indians expected their politicians to be different from them. When they sit in public, it is on the largest chair around. When they are feted, it is with the largest garland there is. They land in helicopters and travel in large convoys. Considering how bizarre they are allowed, even expected, to be, they know that their marital status is inconsequential.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 14, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.