NEW DELHI, MAY 23: In the dog-eat-dog milieu that prevails today, Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni, grand-daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, is pinning her hopes of making it to Rashtrapati Bhavan on one simple presumption -- that the era of heavyweights is past. The unexpected candidates have made it to the top simply because the heavyweights set out to cancel each other. This happened when H D Deve Gowda became Prime Minister and again when I K Gujral was anointed.

Since hope springs eternal, Kulkarni, and for that matter the other three ``lightweights'' in the race -- T N Seshan, Ram Jethmalani and Karan Singh -- hope that this might happen again in the forthcoming Presidential poll and that they may get the break they are looking for.

There are already indications of a counter pressure building up to K R Narayanan, though he still remains the most formidable candidate. It will be very difficult for parties to negate the claims of a Dalit candidate and that too, an incumbent Vice President in the post-Mandal phase the country has entered. But former Union Minister G Venkatswamy, who is chairperson of the SC-ST forum of MPs, has come out against Narayanan on the ground that the next incumbent of Rashtrapati Bhavan should be a freedom fighter.

Venkatswamy may not stand a chance himself but he can put road blocks in Narayanan's way. The other obstacle looming before him is the OBC lobby in the Janata Dal which is rooting for a backward class President (read Sitaram Kesri, though the Congress president has denied being in the race.) The other serious candidate is President Shankar Dayal Sharma, a freedom fighter. Not averse to a second term, he is believed to have told visitors that the President was required not so much to exercise his legs (referring to his difficulty in walking, which is cited as a reason for not giving him a second term) as his judgement!

He has a following in the Congress and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh was the first to come out openly in his favour. But he is no longer a hot favourite with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as he was at one time. Party president L K Advani has criticised his invitation to Gujral to form the government. The arithmetic of the Presidential poll requires the support of two out of the three major political groups -- the United Front, the Congress and the BJP -- for a candidate to be successful.

Besides Seshan, Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni is the only candidate who has officially thrown her hat in the ring. Why she has chosen to fight a seemingly losing battle is not clear. For, as Advani told her when she met him, while there were no two opinions about her impeccable credentials, the Presidential polls were not likely to be decided by emotion but by hard political considerations. She has met the who's who of virtually every party, including Gujral, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Sitaram Kesri, Sharad Pawar, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jyoti Basu, Indrajit Gupta, George Fernandes and G K Moopanar. Not unexpectedly, nobody has turned her down and no one has promised support either.

Sumitra Kulkarni says that she has decided to contest for the country's topmost position because of the need to restore moral values in public life. ``I know this language, I have practised it and I was born in those days when this was part of our second nature.'' And ``this message can be given more easily by the President.''Sixty seven-year-old Kulkarni is relying on her lineage to pitch for the Presidency but she seems to be positioning herself essentially to make a comeback into public life.

For she is no political novice. She was a Rajya Sabha MP between 1972-76 when she developed differences with Indira Gandhi over the imposition of the Emergency. After 1978, she went into hibernation, and ten years later, produced a three-volume work called Anmol Virasat on Gandhi's life and work, giving new insights into his relationships with his family members.

Her answers showed that she knows what she is doing. When asked why Nehru's family had made it big and Gandhi's family had not after Independence, Kulkarni was quick to reply, ``We are very happy that the Nehru family made it.'' Gandhi could have made his sons ministers but then he would not have been effective himself ``and maybe we would not have got Independence the way we did.'' ``It requires guts to go through without using the million dollar name,'' she remarked.

It is fascinating to listen to Kulkarni reminisce about her grandfather and her father Ramdas Gandhi, who was considered closest to Mahatma Gandhi ideologically. She recalls how Gandhi went on a day's fast when the Ashram inmates could not account for ``just one penny -- it was called dhabu -- of the money collected the previous day through donations.'' And then of what ``Bapu'' told her when as a schoolgirl, she asked for bangles to wear. ``Do you know what bangles and anklets stand for?'' he asked her. He told her they were symbols of the enshacklement of women and she did not ask for them again.

And then there was the day when Gopal Godse (brother of Nathuram Godse) walked into the hospital room in Bombay where her father lay dying. Having heard that he was ill, Godse had travelled all the way from Pune only to touch his feet because it was Ramdas Gandhi who had written to the Home Minister that Nathuram Godse should not be sent to the gallows.

He wrote that to penalise Gandhi's assassin in a violent way would negate the Mahatma's non-violent creed. That letter is part of the Home Ministry's records.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.