NEW DELHI: 5 months spent traversing his nation on foot helped the scion of India’s most well-known dynasty shed his playboy picture — however the highway to reviving his dismal political fortunes shall be a more durable journey.
Rahul Gandhi has for years struggled to problem the electoral juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP) holds a near-monopoly on energy by nationalist appeals to the nation’s Hindu majority.
Modi has revelled in casting his chief opponent, dubbed an “empty go well with” in leaked US embassy cables from 2005, as an out-of-touch princeling extra excited about luxurious and self-indulgence than combating to helm the world’s greatest democracy.
His Congress social gathering, a once-mighty drive with a proud function in ending British colonial rule 75 years in the past, is now a shadow of its former self, stricken by infighting and defections.
However a choice to invoke considered one of India’s best-known protest traditions, flanked by abnormal individuals, has given him an air of authority that had to date eluded him in public life.
“Rightly or wrongly, the BJP’s marketing campaign of him being an incompetent particular person was the dominant notion — he has managed to vary that,” impartial political analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Junior advised AFP.
Since his lengthy trek started on India’s southernmost tip final September, Gandhi has struck a chord with fiery speeches and affectionate interactions with the 1000’s of bystanders which have lined streets to observe his procession.
The marketing campaign harkens again to the well-known 1930 trek by Rahul’s unrelated namesake Mahatma Gandhi, whose march to protest a salt tax imposed by British rulers was a seminal second in India’s independence battle.
It has bypassed the nation’s conventional media in an effort to succeed in the general public instantly, with an in-house social media equipment and interviews with on-line influencers.
Footage of Gandhi on the highway reveals him with a newly commanding posture, sporting an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard grown throughout the march and trailed by smiling kids.
His 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) journey — not all by foot — concludes on Monday within the frosty Himalayan foothills of Kashmir, after months spent finessing each his frequent contact and a voter pitch capitalising on widespread financial insecurity.
“The job of the nation is to just remember to really feel protected,” he mentioned this month, whereas sharing kebabs and playfully joking about his candy tooth in a YouTube interview with a preferred meals blogger.
‘Unite India’
The “Bharat Joro Yatra” (“Unite India March”) has original Gandhi right into a extra credible inheritor to the legacy of his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, every one a former prime minister, starting with independence chief Jawaharlal Nehru.
However Gandhi has already steered Congress to 2 landslide election defeats towards the seemingly unconquerable BJP, whose victory in subsequent yr’s nationwide polls is nearly universally thought-about a foregone conclusion by specialists.
“He has managed to redefine his public picture,” Rao mentioned. “Whether or not it should translate into votes, I’m not very certain.”
Congress was dominant throughout the first half-century after Indian independence however now governs in simply three of India’s 28 states.
The social gathering weathered a messy and public inside brawl final yr over who would take workplace as its president after the resignation of Sonia Gandhi — Rahul’s mom, widowed when her husband Rajiv was assassinated in a suicide assault in 1991.
A number of leaders of different opposition events traditionally aligned with Congress spurned Rahul’s entreaties to hitch his countrywide trek, an uncharitable estimation of his prospects subsequent yr.
His exhortations of non secular tolerance and India’s secular traditions have prior to now didn’t dent the BJP’s muscular advocacy for the Hindu majority at a time of rising intolerance towards Muslims.
‘He had no selection’
However his resolution to undertake the march additionally displays his greatest hurdle: the enduring energy of Prime Minister Modi, whose ability in cultivating a populist public picture properly outclasses his personal.
“Rahul Gandhi himself has mentioned he had no selection however to go for the (march) to be able to join with individuals and report it by social media,” Zoya Hasan, an instructional and political scientist primarily based in New Delhi, advised AFP.
Modi is the beneficiary of a media setting largely in thrall to the BJP’s agenda, with Indian press freedoms declining considerably since he took workplace in 2014, in line with worldwide watchdogs.
Whereas the prime minister’s each day actions are reported on frantically by cable information broadcasters, Gandhi’s exploits have largely didn’t function until they solid him in a adverse gentle.
“Something that undermines the opposition is prime information,” Hasan added. “Something that’s optimistic which truly brings individuals collectively, because the Bharat Jodo Yatra is searching for to do, shouldn’t be.”
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