Democracy is the catalyst of rediscovery. Elections are opportunities for reinvention. Chief Minister of Gujarat until 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rediscovered himself as India’s invincible imperator of the development dream. In 2019, he reinvented himself as the fearless nationalist. Rahul Gandhi is experiencing a catharsis of rediscovery—about his leadership, his party’s ideology and his family’s destiny. Is the confusion over the party presidency an acceptance of his fallibility or abrogation of responsibility? Rahul’s great grandfather’s Discovery of India is an elegant tutorial of mistakes and pop philosophy. His own journey covering thousands of miles through many campaigns has led to the discovery that except for Indira Gandhi, there are no mass leaders in his family.
Jawaharlal Nehru was not one. Mahatma Gandhi saw him as the best bet to steward free India’s transition—educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and called to the London Bar, Nehru understood the bureaucracy’s inbred colonial upbringing, as well that as of the police and the Army. India’s first prime minister had little in common with the great unwashed; he grew up in a powerfully exclusive, obnoxiously wealthy milieu. With Savile Row suits, posh accent and onyx cigarette holders, Nehru’s was a cosmopolitan persona detested by homespun detractors who accused him of sending his laundry to Paris while India’s per capita annual income was Rs 11,570. Indira Gandhi’s ambition to preserve her father’s legacy and create a subservient power structure depended on her connect with the rural masses. Writing on Nehru’s visit to famine-struck Maharashtra, the revolutionary artist Chittaprosad described him posing “like a dancer” for the cameras. Indira’s son Rajiv was not a mass leader either, but the recipient of his murdered mother’s postmortem gift that delivered a sympathy wave and gave the Congress the largest ever majority in Parliament.
Now, Rahul, who carries the burden of this stormy inheritance, has been divested of the illusion of Gandhi magic. The loss of family borough Amethi was the final blow and the win in safe Wayanad the final humiliation. Now, he chooses silence and renunciation, accepting the inevitable truth that the dynasty is not mass currency. His own redemption lies in approaching India not as an entitled scion but as a politician trying to make sense of its complex matrix of deprivation and joy, anger and acceptance and fierce independence. With aggressive nationalism, Narendra Modi has returned lost pride to Indians. To rediscover its own lost pride and avoid extinction, the Congress must reinvent itself as an independent Gandhi-mukt party. Unless Rahul’s vanvas is a power trip by another name.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com