THE LONELINESS OF THE GANDHIS

During an informal interaction with a group of citizens in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli city at the end of February, a teacher categorically told Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that he should assume charge as party president without any further delay. That’s the position the Gandhi scion relinquished in May 2019, following the Congress’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha election for the second time, consecutively. “Is that what you think? Do you think I should?” Rahul responded, with a nervous smile. His answer came as a surprise to many, as unlike in the past, he did not dismiss the possibility of his return to the top post in the party outright.

While his close associates in the party see it as a sign of a welcome change of mind—they have been trying to persuade him to formally take charge—it is perhaps also an acceptance of the inescapable reality that he better take decisive action before the Congress slips away from the Gandhi family’s control. While for the first time in Congress history, three Gandhis—Rahul, his mother Sonia Gandhi and sister Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra—are simultaneously active in politics, the family’s grip on the party has never been weaker. The trio is also getting increasingly isolated.

For the first time in two decades, a rebellion has been brewing against the party’s emblematic family—Rahul in particular. On February 27, seven senior Congress leaders—Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Manish Tewari, Vivek Tankha and Raj Babbar—assembled in Jammu in a show of strength and declared that the party was weakening and that they had come together to strengthen it. They are part of a group of 23 leaders, unofficially christened ‘G23’, who had written a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 seeking organisational overhaul and an “active and accountable leadership”. The last was a dig at Rahul, who had been functioning as de facto head of the party and yet was unaccountable for any decision taken in the name of