evidence: Mahatma Gandhi has often been blamed for laying the foundation for the Congress party’s dynasty politics. Why he chose Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru over Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to lead India still provokes passions. Perhaps he feared incurring the wrath of Brahmins. Back then, Brahmin members in the top echelons of the party often held parallel meetings to push their agenda. Faizal Devji, an Oxford don who has written extensively on Gandhi, notes that the Father of the Nation "was a good Bania, and ended up choosing a Brahmin (Nehru) over another [relatively] ‘backward’ caste (Patel) as successor. He played the classic Bania role of mediator and connector". The Brahmin wrath that Gandhi perhaps feared has been tempered over the decades; from 25 per cent of MPs in 1952, Brahmins make up less than 10 per cent of Parliament now. The decline in the proportion of Brahmins in the Lok Sabha has been especially sharp since 1984, when it was 19.9 per cent; the figure fell to 12.44 per cent in 1998 and 11.3 per cent in 1999.