Fashions come and go. To declare that the personal is political was fashionable till quite recently. The phrase may have referred to the double dimension in women's struggles, but Indian politicians have given the phrase a whole new meaning. Or an old meaning - Indians are nothing if not traditional. The land of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat possibly grows bored with politics without high family drama. The personal blossoms into the political, and this distinction does not belong only to the family at the heart of the Congress. That family may boast of dynastic succession and internal rifts shaping up into party rivalries, but it is not the only one.

Even at this moment three familial - and familiar - changes are shifting the political sand in their states. In Tamil Nadu, the possibility of Sasikala, the chinnamma or 'maternal aunt', receiving the whole of Amma's mantle - not just the leadership of the party but the chief minister's chair too - is causing an almost familiar controversy. Earlier, a fierce battle for supremacy was fought between J. Jayalalithaa and M.G. Ramachandran's wife, Janaki, in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. (Jayalalithaa won, of course.) Again, the children of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief, M. Karunanidhi, have been at daggers drawn over his legacy, while the father himself refused to budge when, in the last assembly elections, it was suggested that his son, M.K. Stalin, take over. Mr Stalin has, now that the father is in hospital. The south also has Andhra Pradesh's Telugu Desam Party, where a war was fought over N.T. Rama Rao's legacy between his wife, Lakshmi Parvathi, and his son-in-law, N. Chandrababu Naidu. Mr Naidu had staged what amounted to a coup against his father-in-law in 1995. Closer to the Vindhyas, in Maharashtra, a disgruntled Raj Thackeray broke away from the Shiv Sena after his uncle, Bal Thackeray, appointed his son, Uddhav, to succeed him. In 2006, Raj Thackeray formed the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which rivals the Shiv Sena in disruption.

The north does not lack in family theatrics either. In Jammu and Kashmir, after the National Conference head, Sheikh Abdullah, picked his son, Farooq, instead of his son-in-law, Ghulam Mohammad Shah, as successor, the latter overthrew Farooq's government and became chief minister for a couple of years by aligning with the Congress. Other states have their own tales to tell. But now, the latest family feud to have taken Indian politics by storm is being played out in Uttar Pradesh, as the chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, and his father and the former Samajwadi Party supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav, take turns at unseating each other as state party chief. There is a quality of recklessness in this tussle, a sense of risking all just before the elections, that, perhaps, takes it closest to the legends. Only the heroes may not quite match the dimensions of the great fighters of yore.