By George, this is vilifying love

In the late 1970s, the picture of a chained George Fernandes behind bars became the symbol of the Opposition resistance to Indira’s Emergency. Three decades on, the image of the same George, wilted by Alzheimer’s and smothered by a mudslinging custody battle between the two women he loved most during the two time zones of his life, haunts us.

One may call it the irony of life or the anti-climax after an eventful chapter, but it certainly marks the latest instance of how the private greed for appropriating the legacy and spoils of public figures vilifies a carefully-nurtured sanctity.
    
For half a century, Fernandes has been many things for many people. The Mangalorean boy’s journey from a seminary through the struggles of Mumbai’s streets to become a self-made trade unionist and a leader was the stuff of dreams for a generation of idealists.

His maiden entry to Parliament as the ‘giant killer’ was breathtaking. His emergence as the charismatic and fearless rebel during Emergency made him the David against aGoliath, nationally.

From the heights of his idealist and romantic aura, the once-stormy petrel of the socialist movement travelled a long way down the line as a maverick, the master of polemic, compulsive party-wrecker, a skillful political matchmaker and an unabashed ideological pole-vaulter.
    
Understandably, Fernandes evoked extreme emotions, of enduring admiration and undying hostility. But it took the unseemly public conduct of the two warring women in his life and his siblings to reduce him to something that even his worst political adversary never did: a spectacle of public pity.
    
At least the Delhi High Court judge provided him the privacy of his chamber to deal with his present mental and physical helplessness. But those who claim to be the keepers of his emotions and well-being drag him, in full publicglare,through the avoidable and politically-incorrect tales of love, betrayal, revenge and scramble for money, furniture and even dogs.

For over 20 years, Fernandes maintained his 3, Krishna Menon Marg, residence as Delhi’s interesting and accessible political open house. But in a matter of months after their master’s fall, his closest family members and friends reduced it to absurd theatre.
    
The true intentions behind this messy possessionbattlemightremainshroudedinmystery. Just as the reasons that made Fernandes never snap the technicalities of his marriage with a wife he never lived with for nearly three decades or never institutionalised a relation with a companion who was his shadow for the last two decades. But then, the personal lives of towering leaders can have many mysterious and conflicting twists and turns.

The spectacle of the kith and kin and other insiders wrestling it out to corner the trappings of power and patent a legacy has been the flip private side of many leading public figures whose ability to manage tricky political matters failed when caught in the family crossfire.
    
Fernandes is not the first such leader, nor will he be the last. Even Indira Gandhi was at the centre of a national family soap opera when her young and ambitious daughter-inlaw Maneka realised that her PM mother-inlaw was not going to let her walk away with the legacy and line of succession of the Gandhi family after Sanjay Gandhi’s sudden death.
    
The acrimonious battle between ‘friend Jayalalitha’ and ‘wife Janaki Ramachandran’ that followed MGR’s death and the unkind cut N T Rama Rao suffered through his son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu were as melodramatic as the usual Tamil and Telugu movies.

It is precisely the prospects of an internecine succession battle between his impatientsons,daughterandcompanionsthathas forced Karunanidhi to delay his retirement even when he is quite unwell.

When caught between son and nephew, Bal Thackeray has been reduced to the caricature of a tiger just as KKarunakaran has become a prisoner of his blinding love for his children.
    
But none of these messy sagas will make our collective political class, barring a few honourable exceptions, to draw a clear dividing line between their private and public turf precisely because they have cleverly converted politics into a hugely enterprising and profit-raking public sector business.

And if greed fuels the creation of wealth, then trust political family trees and creepers to play by the rule.And their greedy love can really bevilifying for one and all.