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Good relations between brother-sister politicos hinge on the latter assuming the ‘trad’ lesser role; but that pact is disappearing
With Tej Pratap exiled by Lalu Prasad, Tejaswi has taken primacy for granted in a state (de)famed for being steeped in patriarchy. But have his sisters? (PTI)
Many unkind words have been bandied about the educational qualifications (or rather, the lack thereof) of the Rashtriya Janata Dal heir apparent and leader of the opposition in Bihar, Tejaswi Yadav. While such cries have possibly grown louder only because his ambition of becoming Chief Minister have been thwarted for the time being, but in light of the current “pari-war” or Yadav family feud, it does seem like Tejaswi is indeed not as sharp as his name indicates.
For, even as the nation is lauding the fact that women voters have powered the return of “Sushashan Babu” Nitish Kumar to the CM’s chair, four of Tejaswi’s sisters, daughters of the Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi brood, have allegedly been thrown out or walked off in a huff. And Tejaswi, the youngest of the nine children of Bihar’s first family of politics—how many scions can claim both their parents are former CMs as the Yadav siblings can?—is the focus of their ire.
It is admittedly not easy to be the youngest brother of seven sisters and also have a stroppy older brother, Tej Pratap. But it takes chutzpah (and parental approval) to stop short at junior high school in New Delhi when the sisters have sailed through medical, engineering and law schools in Bihar under the benevolent gaze of powerful parents and an obliging state machinery. Even Tej Pratap, widely known not to be of an academic bent of mind, cleared high school.
But a longer stint in the “college of life” may have done Tejaswi some good. It could have taught him some practical tips: such as (with apologies to Brad Pitt), The First Rule of Family (Fight) Club is “You do not fight with family.” And you definitely do not throw slippers at an older sister, no matter what she has to say about the reasons for the drubbing at the hustings.
Especially not when Bihar is rejoicing in the phenomenon of entrepreneurial ‘Lakhpati Didis”.
More so as any such impulsive acts of “kid brother” pique have led to the furious the Yadav Didi No2 leaving her ‘maike’ (maternal home) in tears and spilling the beans about the family feud to the media. The only part of her that remains in the Yadav abode, of course, is one of her kidneys, now ensconced in her father thanks to an altruistic donation in 2023. But metaphorically speaking, a bit of her heart may be there too, as she insists her parents retain her affection.
Indian political sagas tend to focus on fraternal rivalries—brothers and “cousin-brothers”—both overt and covert. There’s MK Alagiri and MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu, the Yadav brothers in UP, Akhilesh and Prateek, the Thackeray cousins Uddhav and Raj in Maharashtra and even Tej Pratap and Tejaswi in Bihar. With Tej Pratap exiled by Lalu Prasad, Tejaswi has taken primacy for granted in a state (de)famed for being steeped in patriarchy. But have his sisters?
Indeed, Tejaswi does not have to look far to see that times are changing: daughters of political families want a share of the legacy too. Like YS Sharmila, whose brother Jaganmohan Reddy has wrestled with political and financial tangles ever since they fell out in Andhra Pradesh. After briefly floating her own party, Sharmila joined the Indian National Congress and now heads the party’s Andhra unit while Jagan heads the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu (YSR) Congress.
Both accuse each other of besmirching their father and former CM YS Rajshekhar Reddy’s memory and are wrangling in the courts over hundreds of crores’ worth of assets. And in some measure due to their ongoing spat, neither sibling is in power, a situation which obviously would not appeal to any political scions. The Reddys’ plight should be a cautionary tale for Tejaswi Yadav then, particularly since Jagan has only one sister and he has all of seven.
Next door to the feuding Reddys is the family of the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), in which K Kavitha resigned in September after her father K Chandrashekar Rao suspended her for anti-party activities. She had been railing about the alleged corrupt actions of other relatives in the party although she has stopped short of naming her father or brother KT Rama Rao. But her brother’s stony silence on this and his status as the political heir apparent clearly irks Kavitha.
It cannot be a coincidence that the BRS has also suffered in the polls, but whether that was due to internal feuds or vice versa is moot. However, ever since the defeat in the assembly polls in 2023, Kavitha had stepped up her criticism of the way the BRS was functioning and mentioned “demons” and “coverts” around her father, the party patriarch. Spending time in jail due to the probe into the Delhi liquor scam may have heightened her feelings of being wronged.
Unless KCR and KTR deal with Kavitha’s issues carefully, a Sharmila Reddy-type situation may arise in Telangana too. This skewed brother-sister dynamics in both Telugu-speaking states should have alerted Tejaswi to the consequences of annoying sisters. His contemporary in Bihar and political rival Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party also has three older sisters, but they are not in politics; and the same goes for Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah’s three sisters.
Nine children with 13 years between the eldest and youngest—from Misa born in 1976 to Tejaswi in 1989—may have seemed a fitting reply by Lalu Prasad and Rabri to Sanjay Gandhi’s draconian sterilisation drive with its “Hum do, hamare do” slogan for “family planning” but this now spells trouble for the ex-CM couple. With women coming into their own in all spheres, including politics, managing the potential ambitions of all Yadav siblings will be tough.
A few brother-sister dynasts in politics have worked out a modus vivendi, such as MK Stalin and his sister Kanimozhi, and the Gandhi siblings. But that entente hinges on Kanimozhi and Priyanka Vadra doing the “trad” thing and always deferring to their big brothers. How long will that sort of sisterly forbearance prevail? After all, the Sharmila-Jagan, Kavitha-KTR and now Rohini-Tejaswi tensions indicate that daughter-dynasts are finding their voice.
Tejaswi should have really studied these dynastic dynamics intensively even if he decided to give a conventional education the go-by. Then he might not have riled Rohini, thereby triggering her dramatic exit from the family home and a consequent media and social media frenzy about the “pari-war” within the Lalu Yadav clan. Eventually she may be “wooed back” by her parents, with an eye to political perceptions but the incident shows daughters do matter.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
November 22, 2025, 13:45 IST
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