Gwalior grieves for Scindia

A pall of gloom fell over the central Indian city of Gwalior, as it received the dead body of its favourite son, the former ruling family scion and the country's leading opposition leader Madhavrao Scindia yesterday.

The mortal remains of Scindia were brought from the capital New Delhi to this former princely state in a special Indian Air Force aircraft just past midday.

The drive from the local airport to Scindia's Jaivilas Palace, the army gun carriage that carried his body took over two hours as opposed to the normal half hour, as thousands lined up on both sides of the road for their last glimpse of a man, who despite belonging to the royal family had the common touch.

Scindia's promising political career was cut short in an aircrash on Sunday afternoon near Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh while he was on his way to address a pre-election rally in the state.

Befittingly, his dead body was brought to the city wrapped in the Congress party's tricolour.
This is the second blow for people of Gwalior, as their Rajmata, the queen mother, Vijayaraje Scindia had died early this year after a prolonged illness.

The political differences within the Scindia family seem to have been buried in this time of grief.

His two politician sisters, both members of the rival Bharatiya Janata Party, Federal Minister Vasundhara Raje and state legislator Yashodhara Raje, accompanied the cortege as did their eldest sister Usha Raje, whose daughter Devyani was in the eye of a storm recently after the palace shootout in Nepal.

Scindia's widow Madhvi Raje followed the flower-decked gun carriage in a car and received greetings of the people raising "long live Maharaja (king)" slogans with grace and composure, along with her daughter Chitrangadha.

Scindia's son Jyotiraditya, better known as Yuvraj (prince), and now seen as political heir to his father, travelled in the gun carriage.

The royal family threw open the doors of Jai Vilas to the general public to pay their last respects to their beloved leader soon after Scindia's dead body was finally brought to his 19th century ancestral palace.

Seeing the long serpentine queue that had formed on all roads leading to the palace, the family decided to place the casket in the rear portico of the palace for the public to see their beloved leader better.

Security forces had a tough time in getting the large crowd keep moving, as the tearful mourners wailed and cried after touching Scindia's casket and some even refused to leave.

Scindia family members, however, were composed although the grief was writ large on their faces. Female members of the family sat to the left of the casket while male members, including colleague and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh, who flew in from London to accompany Scindia's body from New Delhi to Gwalior, sat on the right side.

A large framed and garlanded portrait of the departed leader was placed over it, since except son Jyotiraditya, no one else has been allowed to see his mutilated face so far.

"Although officially the timing for the general public to pay their homage was fixed for Wednesday, we had no option but to allow them seeing they had turned up in large numbers," Chief Minister Digvijay Singh told Gulf News. The state government, which had already announced a state mourning, has also decided to accord state funeral to Scindia.

Asked for reasons behind delaying the funeral from originally scheduled Wednesday to Thursday, Singh said that the family took the decision to this respect. "I am told they do not consider Wednesday as an auspicious day," he said.

Besides Singh, senior central leaders of the Congress party, including Pranab Mukherjee, Motilal Vora, Mohsina Kidwai and K. Natwar Singh also accompanied Scindia's body to the city.