Gandhi has been at the forefront of steering India back to its secular polity, yet the path ahead is fraught with treacherous obstacles. Here’s a deeper look at his political evolution.
Rahul Gandhi is the fifth-generation scion of India's Nehru-Gandhi family, which is the equivalent of America’s Kennedys, Clintons and Bushes, all rolled into one. Photo: Reutersfeaturing Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi getting a haircut in a rundown barbershop in Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli constituency shows the two opposite sides of the 53-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has ruled the country for a significant part of its post-independence years starting from 1947.
Nehru’s daughter, Indira, married a Gujarati politician of Parsi origin named Feroze Gandhi and took her husband’s surname. She went on to serve as prime minister for a total of 15 years. In 1984, she was killed by her Sikh bodyguards, who were seething with anger over the military storming into the Golden Temple – a spiritual centre for Sikhism – to kill Sikh insurgents in Punjab.
He won a seat in Lok Sabha, lower house of parliament, by a wide margin in the 2004 election. His mother led Congress to victory in the same election, but chose not to become premier herself. She nominated Manmohan Singh, an experienced technocrat with a proven track record in finance, to lead the coalition government consisting of centre-left political parties.The Nehru-Gandhi family has long been accused of nepotism and promoting hereditary politics.
On his part, Gandhi has made a real effort in the last two decades to wash away the charge of hereditary politics. That Gandhi is an important figure in Congress by dint of his inheritance is a no-brainer. But to what extent his politics determines the politics of today’s Congress is a different question altogether.
Dasgupta says Gandhi is trying to resuscitate Congress by promising income sustenance as welfare as opposed to the ruling BJP, which aims to create the welfare architecture in India as a form of empowerment. “He hasn't been able to link with an aspirational India. India that his grandmother built, his great-grandfather built, that India is fast eroding. India that was defined by poverty and backwardness, where you had to be kind or have a certain sense of noblesse oblige, that India is fast fading. It's being replaced by an India with a tremendous desire to get on with the world. Gandhi hasn't been able to find that pulse,” he says.
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