Varun Gandhi’s desire to bring back sterilization and his wish to follow in the footsteps of his father, Sanjay Gandhi, is surely one of the most curious turns in Indian politics. I can’t remember anything on such lines in the past. There will now be umpteen interpretations. It’s more than 30 years since Emergency and not many among the present GenX — to which Varun belongs — will understand the correlation that Varun was seeking to make.

Varun is back in the news but it’s the BJP — fondly nursing hopes of coming to power in just less than a week from now — that’s squirming in discomfort. The BJP promptly disassociated with its Pilibhit candidate’s remarks; and Varun himself, very late in the day, issued a denial.

One indication of the confusion that the remark has caused is the way media is being blamed for reading too much into Varun’s sterilization remark. Usually things go wrong, the media is quickly blamed — that’s the easiest option.

During the infamous Emergency — imposed on the nation by Indira Gandhi in 1975 — her son was widely discredited for championing a sterilization drive. Sanjay believed India’s runaway population growth was basic to the nation’s problems and compulsory sterilization was the only way out. There are still people, may not be Sanjay followers, but who believe population explosion is the root cause of all problems. Whatever be the merits of Sanjay’s reasoning, the method smacked of senseless authoritarianism. Not surprisingly this contributed in large measure to Indira Gandhi’s landmark defeat in 1977. Though we don’t know much of what Sanjay thought of Jan Sangh (predecessor of BJP then) we know what BJP thinks of Emergency and Sanjay.

The Varun remark will also resurrect Sanjay, who very ironically is a type of politician whose national pride jells well with what the BJP espouses. If you ask any staunch BJP man, he will privately concede that India needs a politician like Sanjay. Seeing the way Sanjay shaping up, it’s said, even his mom, Indira, felt insecure. Indira herself was autocratic, and he was more autocratic. What he lacked was a good political platform — in Congress he struggled for space with her domineering mother and the moderate political philosophy.

He was fiercely nationalistic. He was impatient to put India on the world map. He opened the Maruti car factory with the dream of providing the common man with a simple car. (It’s a different matter Maruti turned out to be a status symbol courted by the rich.) Tata’s Nano project actually reminds me of Sanjay’s Maruti project.

What we need to see in the coming days is how BJP resolves Varun’s Sanjay tag. This is not an issue that will easily go away, because Varun himself has said that he wants to model himself on the lines of his father as the nation lacks a strong leader.

Will BJP’s big bosses tell Varun: be a strong leader, but for heaven’s sake don’t invoke Sanjay’s name. Will Varun’s philosophy create a conflict of interest within the BJP? Or, will he continue to take Sanjay’s name and plough a different furrow?