Bhopal, November 23
The white tiger happens to be Rewa’s gift to the nation. It was Maharaja Martand Singh, the erstwhile ruler of Rewa in Madhya Pradesh, who bred the first white tiger in the early 1950s. Thanks to inbreeding, the white tiger is, today, fighting a grim battle for survival.

Ditto for the “White Tiger of Rewa,” as the octogenarian former MP assembly Speaker Sriniwas Tiwari is known in the area, courtesy his extra-thick white eyebrows. The 82-year-old leader is into his eighth electoral battle, only one of which he has lost, from the Sirmaur constituency in the Rewa district.

Overwhelming focus on caste considerations in electoral calculations set the Rewa-Satna region, known as Vindhya Pradesh, apart from other parts of Madhya Pradesh. Unlike UP and Bihar, caste affiliations matter little in the state as a whole but Vindhya Pradesh is an exception. If a candidate is a Brahmin, he can hope to garner the support of all Brahmins, irrespective of party loyalties. The caste factor in the politics of Vindhya Pradesh is attributed to its feudal past and proximity to Uttar Pradesh.

Bordering Allahabad in UP, the Vindhya Pradesh region has scripted many a story of the rise and fall of political parties. Till the early 1970s, it was a Socialist bastion. The Congress gained here in the 1970s and 1980s, at the cost of the Socialists.

The BSP, the next entrant, progressively demolished the Congress strongholds in the early and mid-1990s. Rewa gave the BSP its first Lok Sabha member in the country. In the 1998 assembly elections, the BJP (for the first time since Independence), opened its account in the district, winning two of the seven seats. In 2003, it strengthened itself further, cornering five of the seven seats. Among the losers was Sriniwas Tiwari.

The White Tiger of Rewa is once again girding his loins and is keen to win at any cost. He has even built bridges with his arch-rival of half-a-century vintage, the union HRD minister Arjun Singh. The photograph of the two veterans sharing a dais in Rewa made it to the front page of most local newspapers.

As a quid pro quo, Tiwari will do all he can to make things easy for Arjun Singh’s son, Ajay Singh, who is in the thick of a battle to win the Churhat assembly constituency in neighbouring Satna district.