Emerging from the dust beneath his helicopter’s slowing blades, a young bespectacled man in white is greeted with the screaming of his name: “Rahul Gandhi! Rahul Gandhi! Rahul Gandhi!”
It is a rock-star reception for the 36-year-old, who briefly disappears from view as a mass of bodies surges towards the podium and the air is filled with rose petals. After being garlanded, Gandhi takes to the microphone to lament the lack of roads, water and electricity in this corner of India. Although the crowd has been kept waiting for hours and the speech is a familiar one, people listen spellbound to the heir apparent of India’s ruling political dynasty.
There’s little doubt that India’s next political star is being groomed on the campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh. The biggest cheers from the crowd come with the punchline: “Nobody has done anything more for the poor than my grandmother Indira Gandhi”.
The Gandhi brand has no peer in the world — a member of the family has been in charge of India for 40 of the 60 years since independence. The allure of India’s first family blends the right to rule of British monarchy with the tragic glamour of America’s Kennedy clan.
Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was India’s first prime minister. His grandmother, Indira, and father, Rajiv, also led the country. Both were assassinated. After winning the 2004 general election his mother, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, installed a prime minister of her choice. She remains Congress party president and the country’s most powerful politician — in charge but not in office.
For many rural folk in India, the Gandhis’ personal sacrifices appear enough. Mohammed Ismail Khan, a 52-year-old farmer in Nanpara, said he came just to catch a glimpse of “the boy whose family has made so many sacrifices in their life. I did not vote last time but this time he will get my vote.”
The coming state elections are key for the Congress party. Unless Gandhi can win over Uttar Pradesh’s 110-million voters, there will be doubts that the Congress can return to power in the 2009 general elections. The state polls are a difficult test for the young aspiring politician. Half of Uttar Pradesh’s population cannot read or write its name, three-quarters of all births are not supervised by a health professional and 70% of households have no toilet. By masterminding the campaign, Gandhi has shed his image as the reluctant dynast. Until last month he avoided the spotlight — Gandhi’s only memorable moments as a parliamentarian have been a speech on the plight of sugar farmers and a trip to Afghanistan.
A potential obstacle to his ambitions is the persistent rumour that Gandhi is still involved with a South American woman, with whom he fell in love while a student. The issue of marriage is an explosive one and further dilutions of the family’s Indian bloodline might revive the anti-foreigner backlash Sonia Gandhi endured.
Rasheed Kidwai, author of a biography of Sonia Gandhi, said: “Rahul is in his mid-thirties and there’s pressure on him to marry an Indian girl. Rahul’s grandmother, father, uncle and sister all married for love but got away with it. Rahul’s problem is bigger because marrying a foreigner could jeopardise rejuvenating the Congress Party.”
In Uttar Pradesh Gandhi has little time for anything but politics. He is attempting to rebuild the Congress Party in the state, which was once its base but where it now has just 23 of the state’s 403 seats. Voters have flocked to two parties, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, representing the lower castes in the state. Analysts say both have come to power by promoting narrow interests. Gandhi’s campaign revolves around the idea that the public has been “betrayed and divided” by such policies.
“The lower caste parties basically used land redistribution to entrench votes but that’s over now because there’s not much land left to give away.”
Things have got so bad for the Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh that Gandhi’s first words are meant to convince voters that his party has a future and therefore their votes will not be wasted. “Please don’t think that I am here for the elections. I am here for the long term and I am not going back,” he told the villagers in north-eastern Uttar Pradesh. The Gandhi family also drafted Rahul’s younger sister, Priyanka, seen as savvy and telegenic, to bolster key seats.
Educated at Harvard and with a background running internet companies, Gandhi appeared to take more eagerly to technology than to politics. One of his first set-piece speeches caused an international incident with an off-the-cuff remark that only someone from the Gandhi family could have led the country to freedom and then divided arch-rival Pakistan in 1971.
Since then Gandhi has stuck to his script and shied away from even the briefest interviews. “I have not been given permission to talk to the press,” Gandhi told the Guardian. “It is an order.” An idea of Gandhi’s world view can be garnered from his friends and confidants. His closest political aide is Kanishka Singh, a former Wall Street banker whose father was a top civil servant. His political allies often come from established political families. One such candidate is Yusuf Ansari (29) a graduate of the London School of Economics whose family has been in Congress politics for four generations. Hoping to be elected in the Muslim-dominated constituency of Mahmudabad, he has been cultivating the seat for two years.
“I could have stayed in Britain where I had a fancy life. But I am here involved in sorting out land issues, making sure forest fires don’t get out of control. It is basic stuff. But here life has a purpose.”
The making of a dynasty
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was founded by Motilal Nehru, a Western-educated lawyer who became an Indian nationalist and follower of Mahatma Gandhi. Motilal was elected president of the newly-formed Congress Party and handed over the role to his son, Jawaharlal, in 1929.
Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India in 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru never wanted a dynasty to prevail in a democracy and he never lived to see his daughter Indira become the first woman to lead the country in 1966.
Seen as tough and authoritarian, Indira gave the family the Gandhi name by marrying Feroze Gandhi, a firebrand leftwing MP. Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her guards after her government ordered a raid on the Sikh religion’s holiest temple.
Indira had groomed her eldest son Sanjay to take over but he died in a plane crash in 1980. Instead airline pilot Rajiv Gandhi became PM in 1984. He was blown up by suspected Tamil Tigers in 1991.
Rajiv’s widow, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, finally agreed to enter politics and save the Congress party in the 1990s. She confounded critics to win the 2004 elections. Her son Rahul was elected to the lower house in 2004. Her daughter Priyanka is a formidable campaigner. – Guardian Unlimited Â