New Delhi, Feb. 5: You look at the sturdy bloom of political dynasties all around and you’d think it’s all in a name. You could be right, or you could be very wrong. Look at Raj Thackeray.

He is by far the more political of the Shiv Sena’s successor cousins, by far the better known of the two. But when it came to tilting the scales in favour of son Uddhav, all it took was a little tap of Balasaheb’s finger and the realm was his. The nephew has been left today at the bayonet-end of armies that he once reared and commanded.

The irony is Raj is being pilloried by the Shiv Sena for espousing the very slogan that made Bal Thackeray a force to reckon with: Maharashtra for Maharashtrians. But, of course, this isn’t a policy battle, it’s about establishing patent, heirloom politics at its best and worst.

Long years ago, the favoured versus the forsaken game had a high-voltage run in the first family of Indian politics. Following Sanjay Gandhi’s sudden death, Maneka quickly began setting herself up as successor Gandhi. Rajiv loved his privacy, Sonia was disinterested in politics if not also disdainful of it. Maneka, the political one, probably thought she was the only Gandhi that should matter after Indira. She thought wrongly. It wasn’t long before Indira Gandhi threw Maneka out on the pavement, bag, baggage and ambition, and pulled Rajiv into the succession line.

Maneka bitterly disputed this disinheritance, taking her battle against Rajiv to the polling booths of Amethi; she was drubbed well enough never to recover as credible claimant of the Gandhi mantle.

Name is often a key arbiter in subcontinental politics — Zardari was just not good enough for Bilawal post-anointment, he had to double-barrel it to Zardari-Bhutto — but title doesn’t necessarily mean entitlement. Barring exceptions on the Left and the Right, most democratic parties are designed as fiefs; succession is either given or grabbed.

Having the right name might help, but not always; it’s a sword that can cut both ways. The late Sheikh was so mercilessly firm on Farooq Abdullah’s succession, the world didn’t even know there were two other Abdullah contenders — Tariq and Mustafa Kemal. Lalu Prasad pulled Rabri Devi out of the kitchen to become chief minister when he couldn’t be one any longer, and nobody so much as whimpered in his party. Sharad Pawar promoted daughter Supriya Sule and put paid to hopes nephew Ajit Pawar may have harboured. Karunanidhi sliced out Dayanidhi Maran in one stroke because he sensed a threat to M.K. Stalin, or, now, Kanimozhi. Akhilesh Yadav is probably just being set up to upstage Amar Singh in the Samajwadi Party when the time ripens.

But there has been the odd battle won against conventional odds. Though it was Janaki who bore MGR’s suffix, it was Jayalalithaa who showed greater gut for battle and carried the party. Lakshmi Parvathi perhaps put up a bolder bid than Janaki to succeed NTR but her claim as the star-politician’s widow was well overrun by the gritty son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu.

“Increasingly the succession trend in our parties is following the flat model of the business family,” says political analyst Yogendra Yadav. “That is not merely apparent from what is happening to Raj Thackeray, who is easily the much brighter and innovative politician. It is also apparent from the manner in which Sukhbir Badal has quietly been installed as chairman of the Akali Dal.”

Arguing that the Akali Dal came out of the gurdwara movement of the 1920s and has never had any history of one-family domination, Yadav said: “Dynasties are not new to us, families always gave you easy entry but somewhere you had to prove your worth in public life, that seems less and less the case now. Parkash Singh Badal is not supreme leader of the Akali Dal, in fact he has been thrown out in the past. But look at how easily he is able to enthrone a son who has very little to show for himself.”

Will anyone argue Sukhbir isn’t the only one of his kind around?