Gandhi family scion elected leader of India’s Congress Party
INDIA - He is the scion of India’s most influential political dynasty -- the son, grandson and great-grandson of former Prime Ministers, who has often been described as a reluctant inheritor of a storied legacy.
But on Saturday, Rahul Gandhi will finally be sworn in as the next president of the country’s main opposition Congress Party, replacing his mother, Sonia, just days before the results of a closely watched election that has become a critical political test for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, are fighting to retain control of the local assembly in Gujarat, the western Indian state that was ruled by Modi for more than a decade before he became India’s leader. If the December 18 results of a recently concluded election in that state show big losses for the right-wing BJP, it could give a major boost to the Congress -- and to Gandhi’s reputation.
A big win for Modi’s BJP, on the other hand, could damage Gandhi’s image just as he formally takes the reins of a political party that has become synonymous with his family. Born in 1970, Gandhi is the son of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. His grandmother Indira was India’s first female leader, and his grandfather, Jawarhlal Nehru, was the country’s founding Prime Minister. Both Indira and Rajiv were assassinated while in office. Gandhi entered politics in 2004, when he was elected to the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, from the Amethi constituency in northern Uttar Pradesh state -- a seat once held by his father and his mother. In subsequent years, he moved up the Congress Party’s hierarchy, becoming vice president in 2013.
But he has been slow to take the top job, even though he was the face of the Congress Party’s campaign during the 2014 national elections. The results were a blow to the party, which suffered its worst ever electoral loss, ceding power in Delhi to Modi, who promised to usher in an era of economic revival. The BJP campaign also targeted Gandhi, portraying him as entitled and out of touch. It worked. The Congress Party won just 44 Parliamentary seats to the BJP’s 282.
“The most powerful barb that Modi used to make about him was ‘shahzada,’ which is the Urdu word for prince,” said Tavleen Singh, a New Delhi based columnist and longtime political observer. “He (Modi) would taunt him for being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, (and that) he didn’t understand India.”
(CNN.COM)