Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, mocked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his supporters for a decade as an entitled dynast, marked a stunning comeback on Tuesday, emerging at the centre of an alliance that made deep inroads into ruling party strongholds.
The scion of India’s fabled Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, he embarked on two cross-country marches against what he called Mr Modi’s politics of hate and fear, giving a jolt of enthusiasm to his Congress party and rehabilitating his own image.
Though it might have to sit another term out of power, Congress will have the loudest voice in a much stronger opposition, with Mr Gandhi at its core.
As the opposition’s most prominent face, Mr Gandhi has been a target of attacks from Modi and other BJP leaders, who often call him “the prince”. Mr Gandhi’s father, grandmother and great-grandfather have all been prime ministers.
During the campaign, Mr Gandhi, with close-cropped black hair and a scruffy salt-and-pepper stubble, cris-crossed the country as his party’s main face, even though the Congress is led by family loyalist Mallikarjun Kharge.
“I think Rahul Gandhi will get credit, not just for mobilisation, for his marches, but also for continuously clarifying the Congress’s ideological pitch against the BJP,” said Mr Rahul Verma, political analyst at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. “If there was a moment when Gandhi really emerged, it is now,” he said.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr Gandhi pulled out a red-jacketed, pocket-sized version of the country’s constitution that he has referred to continuously during the campaign, and said his alliance’s performance was the “first step” in preventing Mr Modi from attempting to change it.
Changing the constitution requires a two-third majority in Parliament.
The Cambridge-educated Mr Gandhi has often said he is battling Mr Modi’s BJP not just to wrest power, but to defeat the party’s and its parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Hindu-first character, which goes against India’s secular roots enshrined in the constitution.
“My fight is with the ideology of RSS and BJP which is a threat to our country. The hatred these people spread, they spread violence, I fight against it... This is the battle of my life for me,” he said at a party event two years ago.
Reuters
