Bihar Elections: Tejashwi Yadav, RJD, and the Inheritance of Political Capital

We Indians seem to love our political dynasties as much as we hate them. Dynastic politics in India presents a paradox — deeply understood, and even appreciated by the masses, yet largely dismissed by the intellectual elite. It endures as much as it is reviled — increasingly at the regional level. The ascent of Tejashwi Yadav as the chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the murmurs around Nitish Kumar’s son entering politics have once again reignited debates on dynastic succession. Ironically, Nitish Kumar has previously criticised Lalu Yadav for “promoting dynastic politics.”Just as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vehemently criticised dynasties only to later fall in line quietly, the Janata Dal (United) now finds itself falling in line. Sukhbir Singh Badal once claimed that there is no such thing as dynastic politics in India, as all politicians are tested by the fire of elections. Badal’s statement was a response to the BJP’s targeting of the Badal family. But Badal is wrong nonetheless — there are indeed dynasties in politics and elsewhere.An elected dynasty, despite its democratic mandate, remains a dynasty. The key, however, is to grasp the unique characteristics and diverse nature of political dynasties in India.Not all dynasties are alike; as with all things Indian, caste profoundly shapes both their existence and the perceptions surrounding them.Politics, like many other domains in India, operates within the logic of casteist genealogy. But only political families from Bahujan communities are singled out to be vilified for being dynastic — apart from occasional outbursts at nepotism in Bollywood.'Modi Never Had Children': Lalu Yadav in Response to 'Dynasty Politics' RemarkAmong the dynasties that get away with little more than gentle admonishment are the remnants of royal families, especially from the erstwhile princely states. Royal families are deeply involved in politics in independent India and are often criticised if their members have not achieved high ranks in government. One can readily think of Punjab, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh as places where erstwhile royals continue to play a significant role in politics.Even the descendants of landed elites in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra escape the branding of ‘dynasty’. Sashi Tharoor, for instance, is far more privileged than Tejashwi Yadav by any measure. But one hardly hears him being disparaged in the same manner as the Yadav family is. Even more strange is the case of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). The IUML is controlled by the Thangal family, and the Owaisi family is directly associated with the royal dynasty by allegiance as well as marriage. The AIMIM was even founded as a royalist party. Yet, their politics is repeatedly tagged as ‘Muslim’ or disparagingly as ‘communal’, but never as ‘dynastic’.The Communist parties have been vocally resistant to dynastic politics. But the Communist Party of India (Marxist) fielded Somnath Chatterjee as their candidate repeatedly — Chatterjee’s father was an elite lawyer, one of the founders of the Hindu Mahasabha, and an elected parliamentarian. Even if one goes by strict standards, Chatterjee has to be regarded as a dynast. Just like the communists, the BJP is ideologically against dynasties, but one can reel off dynastic names among them too — Vasundhara Raje, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Vishwajit Rane, and Basavaraj Bommai spring to mind.Even as the Congress is dominated by the Gandhi family nationally, political families have been a significant factor at the regional level — the Pilot family, Oommen Chandy and his son Chandy Oommen, Mallikarjun and Priyank Kharge et al can attest to this. Not to mention the various dynasts who have switched from the Congress to the BJP, such as Kuldeep Bishnoi.The Shiv Sena, under Uddhav Thackeray, exemplifies both the strengths and vulnerabilities of dynastic politics. While the family name retains voter loyalty, internal party splits have shown its fragility. Both Thackeray and Sharad Pawar have been victims of intra-family rivalries, which inevitably rise in successful families.Modi 3.0 Cabinet Reflects the Power of Caste and Dynasty in Indian PoliticsNot all dynasties work. If dynasty were the only factor, every politician’s son or daughter would have inherited power with ease. But history shows otherwise.The key to a successful dynastic transition lies in ensuring that the inheritor does not merely inherit power, but also political legitimacy. The latter is a slippery asset — its ingredients cannot be listed easily. But, in general, we can say that good successors have to pass through a period of education by serving in the party and be cushioned into their leadership positions.This is what sets Tejashwi Yadav’s rise from other unsuccessful dynastic transfers apart. He did not get power on a silver platter.He had to prove himself electorally, especially after the RJD’s electoral decline post-2014. In the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, he emerged as the central opposition figure, carrying forward his father’s legacy while shaping his own political identity and significantly rebranding the RJD. His whirlwind campaign almost swung the election in RJD’s favour. This balance – between continuity and change – is one factor that determines whether a dynastic successor can sustain their political capital.Criticism of dynastic politics often mirrors the arguments against reservations. Emerging leaders from political dynasties are perceived as lacking merit compared to those who enter politics independently. However, proving that dynasts possess fewer political capabilities than their non-dynastic counterparts is challenging.In fact, dynasts often benefit from more rigorous political socialisation, having been immersed in the political environment from an early age — an advantage rarely available to those from non-political backgrounds. Politics, as a vocation, requires the intergenerational transmission of skills, a process that naturally occurs within political families.Dynastic politicians are frequently dismissed as part of an undeserving "creamy layer" whose exclusion is deemed necessary to make way for the more deserving and meritorious. The problem, however, is that if this so-called creamy layer is excluded from backward caste politics, few, if any, would remain with the resources and political acumen needed to represent their communities effectively.Tejashwi Yadav Interview: 'Bihar Will Defeat BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha Elections'The House of Yadavs is one of the most vilified political families in India. It has been portrayed as the germinating ground of ‘Jungle Raj’ and a citadel of corruption.The general environment of critiquing privilege has led to mindless criticism of all that can be termed as privilege; thus, Tejashwi Yadav, too, is seen as privileged, the creamy layer in politics, which forgets that Yadavs are still a backward community and that he is one of the few backward caste leaders with an independent standing. The Lalu family is a rare exception, having failed to translate its political capital into privilege in other spheres of life.Delhi Public School, where Yadav dropped out before completing 10th grade, is neither the Eton of India nor even the Doon School, the country’s “premier incubator for the sons of the ruling class”, as noted by The Washington Post. Notably, Tej Pratap Yadav, the eldest son of Lalu, too has not passed 12th grade. How many elite families have their sons failing to go to college?Moreover, not all privileges are equal. Privilege, at times, even can be a burden. Inheriting an anti-upper caste party in a BJP-dominant India is not a privilege by any measure. Unlike elite political dynasties, where succession is often about expanding power, Shudra dynasties are about prolonging survival. The RJD, for all its historical influence, is not an immortal entity. Political parties decay, their identities shift, and their relevance diminishes over time. Jeff Bezos believes that even Amazon will eventually fail; the same logic applies to political parties.The real test for a dynast like Tejashwi Yadav is not whether he can take the party to new heights, but whether he can delay its decline for as long as possible.Tejashwi's RJD is not the RJD he inherited from Lalu, it is the party that is trying to make it, against all odds. He led the party in times of trouble, including when his father was in jail and dozens of criminal charges were heaped upon his close family members.If Lalu’s RJD was a socialist revolutionary party, Tejashwi’s RJD has the thankless task of surviving as a regional Bahujan party in the times of preponderant Hindutva hegemony that scholars have termed as the 'BJP System'.His challenge is to keep the RJD relevant even as political conditions change, even as new caste alliances emerge, and Bihar’s electorate evolves. His youthfulness will be expected to bring in a new generation of voters, possibly by expanding the Yadav-Muslim base of the RJD to include new castes, and indeed, he has pitched the RJD as a party of “A to Z castes”. But he will remain bound to the foundational structure of his party. Unlike the Gandhi dynasty, which operates on a national scale and is able to detach and re-attach itself to different social bases depending on the conditions, regional dynasties like the Yadavs remain chained to their local caste base. They are only as powerful as the social coalition that supports them.Ram Vilas Paswan’s True Legacy? Changing Dominant Caste PoliticsThis social base sometimes even requires a dependable political family for its own sustenance.Far-left and far-right parties tend to have fewer dynastic successions, as their politics is often driven by ideological or movement-based mobilisation rather than caste-based networks. Centrist parties, on the other hand, have more room for dynastic politics because they rely on electoral stability and long-term social bases. The key issue is not dynasties themselves, but the structural conditions that make dynasties viable in some cases and irrelevant in others.Take the example of regional parties like the AIADMK. After Jayalalithaa’s passing, the party splintered, unable to produce a natural successor within a dynastic framework. Contrast this with the DMK, where Stalin successfully took over from Karunanidhi, the Samajwadi Party, where Akhilesh Yadav transitioned into power despite initial internal resistance, or the Janata Dal (Secular), which has given high posts to both HD Deve Gowda and his son HD Kumaraswamy. Dynastic politics in India can be seen as a symptom instead of a disease. It is an adaptation of politics to a political economy where caste structures shape leadership pathways, where family networks provide stability in a volatile system, and the inheritance of political capital is one of the few ways for lower-caste leaders to sustain long-term influence. Tejashwi Yadav’s rise is not just the continuation of a family legacy — it is a case study of how political power in India is transferred, consolidated, and preserved in a democracy that is still deeply structured by caste.His success or failure will not be determined by his lineage alone, but by how well he navigates the constraints, expectations and responsibilities that come with it.One can do a thought exercise and imagine the consequences of the defeat of Tejashwi Yadav, which would also likely mean the defeat of the RJD. The Yadavs would en masse have to shift either to the JD(U) or the BJP, a choice that would depend on who the immediate rivals of each Yadav voter-family are.The Muslims would have to seek shelter under the JD(U) alone and hope that its leadership adheres to secular principles and protects them from Hindutva rage.Lower-caste political dynasties are required for the inter-generational reproduction of political power. The problem is that we have too few, not too many, political dynasties of the lower castes. (Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Kuriakose Mathew teaches politics and international relations at the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies, PP Savani University, Surat. His research focuses on democratic forces in transitional polities. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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Topics: Lalu Prasad Yadav Bihar Bihar Elections