Here comes the son When small town boy Manoj Bajpai took on the role of the polo-playing playboy prince of Jodhpur in Khalid Mohammad's film, Zubeida, an interesting little debate broke out on just how suitable the very pleb-looking actor was for a royal portrayal. By that same token, 30-year-old Jyotiraditya's baby-face is pleb enough to be disappointingly unroyal. But that is about where the unroyalness ends. Though not quite cast in the typical polo-playing playboy princeling mould that much of the country's erstwhile royalty still favours, Scindia, who has been described by an old classmate as 'always more studious than sporty,' comes across as a lot like his father, Madhavrao Scindia. In other words, a rather subdued royal. 'He is a very balanced young man...and I've seen him from the time he was a very small boy. And yes, he is a lot like his father,' agrees Dr Karan Singh, Jyotiraditya's sister's - Chitrangada's - father-in-law. Some two months after he went through the traditional coronation ceremony that officially anointed him as 'king' of Gwalior following the death of his father, the very balanced young man now prepares for the next logical step in the ritual of dynastic succession: his indoctrination into the Congress party. And given that, 'politics was inevitable', as Dhiren Chauhan, member of the Congress party and Chitrangada's brother-in-law says, the young Scindia's initiation into that playing field began much before his father's death. 'As politics is a sort of family calling for the Scindias, Jyotiraditya was already preparing for it...though he didn't expect to be catapulted into it this early,' says a family friend. Fresh out of Stanford, armed with an MBA and some work experience at Morgan Stanley, Mumbai, what he was preparing for instead, was to take over the business interests of the Scindia family. Friends describe him as being far from a typical royal brat. Instead descriptions of the prince come tantalisingly close to the South Bombay prototype - the kind of kid who rounds off the right sort of schooling with an Ivy League business degree; gets an add-on of been-there-done-that cool; and an accented English that casually gives it all away. It is the sort of journey that Karan Singh describes as 'a good educational career'. For Jyotiraditya, the right sort of schooling meant a break with Scindia family tradition, as his father chose to send him to Doon instead of Scindia school in Gwalior, established by his grandfather Jivajirao in 1897. Madhavrao is said to have felt that the Scindia school would have been too much of a privileged environment for his impressionable young son. Much later as he studied business management at Stanford, Jyotiraditya lived a 'normal' student life once again, this time with his wife and young son in tow. The experience was to help round off still more royal corners. College was another break with tradition when the young Scindia chose Harvard over his father's alma mater, New College, Oxford, where his admission had been fixed by his father. According to Jyotiraditya's former housemaster at Doon, Sumer Singh: 'When he got into Harvard, his father called me up to say that he was delighted his son was taking his own decisions.' But that's about where the breaks with tradition ended. In 1994 the young prince returned to marry 19-year-old Priyadarshini, daughter of Sangram Sinhji Gaekwad of the Baroda royal family. Even Jyotiraditya's first semi-official brush with politics was orchestrated in the traditional way, with much help from his father. A fact which the BJP used to enjoy highlighting. According to a BJP activist in the Gwalior municipal corporation, Dr H.M. Purohit, when Jyotiraditya returned with his MBA from Stanford, Madhavrao had got in touch with local organisers close to the Congress to arrange a public felicitation for him. 'What is so great about getting an MBA degree and that too when you are 30-years-old? This was done just to create an atmosphere for him to contest from Gwalior,' said Purohit. Had fate not intervened, Madhavrao was planning a more formal political launch for his son on October 6 of this year. The plan was to organise a mammoth marathon run in Gwalior. Events like the marathon have always been popular in Gwalior and in fact had been instituted by the BJP two years ago as an annual event to commemorate the death anniversary of Rani Laxmibai, in an attempt to boost the party's ratings in Gwalior. Preparations were on for the Congress marathon, which included the setting up of stalls in every village where people could fill in the forms for participation in the race. In a sad twist of fate, posters and banners for the marathon which was to have launched Jyotiraditya were plastered all over Gwalior, even as Madhavrao's cortege drove into the town on October 2. 'Once his father died there was no putting off the inevitable entry into politics, and being his father's son the Congress party was a natural choice for him,' says Karan Singh. The personal and political rivalry between Madhavrao, his sisters and his mother is now well-documented. For the Congress, Jyotiraditya's political choice was not open to debate. 'By the time he was growing up the rift between Madhavrao and his mother was already wide, Jyotiraditya was not close to his grandmother or his aunts. As a result the BJP as a political choice did not exist,' Karan Singh adds. 'Given that the Scindias are a divided family, had Jyotiraditya not joined politics now, it would have been handing over Guna [Madhavrao's and earlier his late mother, Viajayraje's constituency] to his sister Yashodhara [with the BJP] on a platter,' says a friend. Along with his father's political mantle and the baggage of royal intrigue, Jyotiraditya has also inherited his father's years of political goodwill. Observers believe that the Guna by-election will testify to this. 'He is fated to win by a huge margin, whenever the by-election takes place. And if there is any opposition candidate, it will only be as a symbolic gesture,' says Dr Purohit. What he makes of his mixed inheritance remains to be seen.