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Vijayaraje Scindia, senior Bharatiya Janata Party politician and the rajmata (queen mother) of the erstwhile princely state of Gwalior.
Born Lekha Divyeshwari in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, in 1919, she was brought up by her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather was a Rana in exile from Nepal. Vijayaraje's mother died in childbirth and her father, Mahendra Thakur Singh, a deputy collector, had another wife and family to look after. The rajmata, educated at home initially, later studied in Vasantha College, Benares, and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow.
In 1941, she married Jiyajirao Scindia, the Maharaja of Gwalior, and took the name Vijayaraje. After her husband's death in 1960, Vijayaraje's cousin Sambhajirao Angre, better known as Sardar Angre, became her political mentor.
She was initiated into electoral politics in 1962 when she contested the Guna Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh on a Congress ticket. Five years later, she quit the Congress and joined the hindu nationalist Bharatiya Jan Sangh. She won the Kerera assembly seat as the party's candidate and plunged headlong in state politics. She went on to win seven consecutive parliamentary elections.She was jailed by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. In the 1970s Vijayraje and her son, Madhavrao Scindia were involved in a public dispute over property. Animosities heightened due to their differing political ideologies.
Vijayaraje came to the forefront of the BJP leadership in 1980 when she was made one of its vice-presidents. She played a key role in propagating the BJP's Ayodhya theme and was considered a hardliner. She remained a BJP vice-president till 1998 when she stepped down on health grounds and quit electoral politics.
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