Ashok Tanwar’s “home coming” must be a sweet music for both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi who have had special and personal bonding with the former Haryana Congress chief.
Five years ago, Tanwar’s exit had pained and rattled the Gandhis. Sonia shares an emotional bond with Tanwar’s wife Avantika, that goes back some three decades.
In 2014, Tanwar was hand-picked by Rahul Gandhi to lead the party’s Haryana unit despite the debacle in the 2014 Assembly polls which brought the BJP to power in the state for the first time.
Tanwar is married to Avantika, the grand-daughter of former President Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, who lost her parents in an assassination carried out by Sikh militants when she was barely six years old. The personal tragedy brought her close to Sonia Gandhi, then the apolitical wife of the country’s youngest Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Lalit Maken, Avantika’s father, the 35-year-old Congress MP from South Delhi and mother Geetanjali were gunned down on July 31, 1985 barely nine months after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. It was said the Gandhis mourned the Makens for days and Sonia became Sonia aunty for Avantika, always a call away. After her first marriage failed, Avantika tied the knot with Tanwar, with the blessings of Sonia aunty.
Avantika’s decision in 2008 to support the mercy petition of Ranjit Singh Gill alias Kukki, allegedly involved in the murder of her parents, endeared her further to the Congress matriarch, as it was similar to what her daughter Priyanka did when she met Nalini Murugan one of the four on death row in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
By this time Tanwar had risen through the ranks from helming the JNU students’ union to taking charge of the students’ organisation, NSUI and later the Indian Youth Congress. A Dalit with a PhD in Indian medieval history, Tanwar clicked all the right boxes with Rahul Gandhi, Rahul’s decision to let Tanwar head the state unit irked the Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The bitterness remained throughout.
The division of loyalties in Haryana Congressmen during 2018-19 had found an expression in the choice of turbans as “pugree” politics came into play. While Hooda’s supporters attended rallies with a pink turban tied around their heads, Tanwar’s followers sported the red ones. In 2018, Hooda went on a rathyatra, while Tanwar set to tour Haryana on a cycle yatra. At the end of the day, the ancient but grandiose chariot trumped the humble cycle.
Tanwar’s departure had come at a time when the party’s Jharkhand leader Dr. Ajoy Kumar had walked out of the Congress fold and Sanjay Nirupam was sulking. Ajoy is now an AICC office bearer while Nirupam has joined Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Interestingly, when Tanwar had left the Congress five years ago, a mushaira was on at the residence of a senior Congress leader. When someone recited a sher, “Aag lagi hai is burj ko jalne lage hain paat Urhte kyun nahin panchhi jab ke pankh lage hain saath (This tree has caught fire and the leaves are burning, why don’t the birds fly using their wings),” the host had promptly countered, “Phal khaaye hain is burj ke gande kiye hain paat, urhna hamara dharm nahin jal jaayenge is ke saath (We ate the fruits and soiled the leaves; not our way to fly, we will burn with the tree).”