DADDY’S GIRLS: (From top) Priya Dutt, Supriya Sule, Kanimozhi and Mehbooba Mufti have all stepped into the political limelight

It was a gesture that was as unconventional as it was poignant. On the 10th day after the death of his son, Surendra Singh, Haryana strongman Bansi Lal placed a turban on Singh’s only child — daughter Shruti Choudhary. Traditionally, the turban, symbolising the responsibilities of a father, is tied on a son or the closest male relative when there is no son.

Lal’s gesture of 2005 was significant not just for the patriarchal Haryana society but for Indian political families as well. The turban on his lawyer grand-daughter underlined that a father’s political mantle did not have to pass on to a son. Daughters were equal inheritors.

Smart, well-educated and aggressive, several political daughters are being anointed as their father’s political successors. When Kanimozhi, daughter of Tamil Nadu chief minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M. Karunanidhi, made her Rajya Sabha debut in August, it was clear that his political baton was being handed over to her. In Maharashtra, another daughter is making her mark — Poonam Mahajan Rao is seeking to take her late father, Pramod Mahajan’s political legacy forward.

In 2006, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule, joined her father’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and was inducted into the Rajya Sabha. Weeks later, Rao formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In 2005, Priya Dutt got elected to the Lok Sabha from the seat her father, Sunil Dutt, represented. And while Shruti Choudhary’s mother, Kiran Choudhary, is managing the family legacy for now, many believe that the daughter will — sooner rather than later — take the political plunge.

There are eight political daughters in Parliament now. Pure coincidence, says Sule but older women politicians are quietly cheering. “There is a change in the overall attitude to women,” says BJP leader Mridula Sinha. “Parents are encouraging women to join various professions. Politics is no different.”

Even a decade ago, political wives and daughters-in-law were more common than political daughters. Daughters, after all, got married and went to other homes. But now, with the growing clamour for quotas for women, political families, says Sinha, are realising the need to build up their daughters.

Old habits, though, die hard. The son is still the first choice, with the daughters being pulled in — either by the fathers or by the parties if the fathers are dead — if there is no son in the picture. “A lot depends on who is there to take the mantle,” agrees Najma Heptullah, former deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha.

Indira Gandhi was her father’s successor because she was an only child. Granddaughter Priyanka takes second place to her brother, Rahul, even though she’s widely acknowledged as the better politician.

Sule, too, is an only child and the natural heir to Pawar’s formidable legacy, much as she may try to deny it. “I have a brother, who’s been in politics for 20 years,” she states, rubbishing speculation that her entry was meant to counter cousin Ajit Pawar’s growing influence. Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and former petroleum minister Ram Naik had no sons, so it was natural for their daughters — Pranati and Vishakha, respectively — to be their fathers’ poll managers.

Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, was not the first choice of the Congress (to which her father then belonged) for elections in Bijebehara, the family’s hometown in 1996. Mufti was roped in only after her brother declined to contest.

Sunil Dutt’s and Pramod Mahajan’s sons — Sanjay Dutt and Rahul Mahajan — nixed whatever chances they may have had with their botched copybooks. Sanjay was an accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case and Rahul’s rounds of the party office after Mahajan’s death came to nought after he got embroiled in a drugs scandal.

Kanimozhi’s formal initiation came after a falling out between her family and Karunanidhi’s grandnephews — Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi Maran. The DMK needed a suave and trusted representative in Delhi to replace Dayanidhi and Kanimozhi got drafted as her step-brothers, Stalin and Azhagiri, were too involved in state politics.

Family name isn’t the only qualification these daughters have, barring minister of state for human resources development, D. Purandareswari, daughter of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo, the late N.T. Rama Rao. She was a low-profile home-maker till the Congress got her to contest the Bapatla seat in Andhra Pradesh in 2004, mainly because the constituency was the stronghold of her brother-in-law and TDP leader, D. Rama Naidu, and the party needed to use the NTR card to win the election. Her inclusion in the Cabinet too has to do entirely with caste and regional considerations — she represents the Kamma community from the coastal region of Andhra Pradesh.

“These girls haven’t led sequestered lives. They are well educated and aware of what’s happening in the world,” notes Heptulla. Dutt’s political initiation came when she accompanied her father on his padayatra through trouble-torn Punjab in 1987. She has worked with the 1993 Mumbai riots victims as well as those affected by the 2005 floods, besides being involved with various NGOs and helping her father look after his constituency.

Sule has been managing the various Pawar family education trusts and working in the areas of health, education and basic infrastructure for several years now. Kanimozhi may have formally entered politics now, but political observers in Tamil Nadu say she is hardly a reluctant politician. The former journalist is ideologically inclined and has taken public stances on several hot-button issues in Tamil Nadu.

But they don’t want to be known as Papa’s girls only. The legacy is just a foundation to build a career, according to Rao. “Pramod Mahajan’s legacy is not somebody’s rubber stamp,” she says. “I can only inherit my father’s property, not his political legacy,” echoes Sule, even as she concedes that “it would be foolish to think I would be in the Rajya Sabha without being my father’s daughter.”

And so they’re working hard in order not to be taken lightly. A hyperactive Sule has already tabled two bills — one on compulsory military training and another on providing employment to every family — and moved a motion on power supply. She has also been acquainting herself with social sector initiatives in other states and seeing how they can be replicated in Maharashtra. “A politician’s role is not just about politicking and power games,” she says.

Mufti started out as a reluctant politician — “I’m here because Papa asked me to”, she had famously said in one of her first interviews — but she has been responsible for scripting the PDP’s stupendous success in south Kashmir in 2002. “There was no legacy for her,” notes a political observer. “Mufti was no stalwart. But she has built up a legacy with her hard work.”

Within weeks of joining the party, Rao let the world know that she had tried to mediate between BJP and Shiv Sena leaders when the alliance her father helped script started showing signs of strain. And a month after being appointed general secretary of the Maharashtra unit of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in April, she was leading protests against the ban on coconuts and offerings at the Siddhivinayak Temple for security reasons. She’s busy most days travelling across Maharashtra and mobilising the youth. As preparations begin for Janmashtami celebrations, she is sponsoring a dahi handi (a popular Janmashtami community sport) in Worli. And like Sule, she is involved in charitable work and trusts that sponsor education in the backward districts of Osmanabad (where her father hailed from) and a charitable hospital in Amravati, which Mahajan senior helped set up.

Purandareswari has won grudging admiration, especially in the way she handles questions in Parliament, though she is the only daughter who doesn’t have the advantage of grooming and training since NTR wasn’t interested in promoting his children.

It’s an advantage her counterparts have. Mufti, Sule and Kanimozhi have learnt or are learning the ropes under the watchful eyes of their fathers — uncle (Maharashtra BJP leader Gopinath Munde) in Rao’s case. Even if they have not been formally trained, says Heptulla, they imbibe politics by virtue of growing up in political families which wives and daughters-in-law, who come from different families, don’t.

But it’s not going to be a cakewalk. “Politics is still not an easy place for women,” says Heptulla. Sinha is confident the new breed will deal with it ably. “We’re just like any other working woman,” says Sule.

With a huge advantage, of course.