Ramachandra Guha: How the Gandhi family has helped Modi consolidate power

Soon after the general elections of 2024, I met a young Congress legislator. He asked me for five pieces of advice for his leader, Rahul Gandhi. I said I had only one; that Priyanka Gandhi should not run for the Lok Sabha from Wayanad. I added that I was certain the advice would be disregarded.

There is little doubt that Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra helped in enhancing his credibility, in portraying him as being a man of the people. Yet the Yatra’s gains were frittered away by the reassertion, after the elections, of the Congress as a family firm.

Priyanka Gandhi won the Wayanad seat (as safe for her as Gandhinagar is for Amit Shah), and spoke grandiosely about how she and her brother were uniting the country, her representing the South and he the North. Then, for a parliamentary debate on the Constitution’s 75th anniversary, the Congress chose Priyanka as the lead speaker, even though it was her own grandmother who sabotaged the Constitution by imposing the Emergency.

Meanwhile, the Congress winning 99 seats in the general elections encouraged the coterie of sycophants around Rahul Gandhi to proclaim that he was now a prime minister-in-waiting. These claims were amplified by intellectuals and journalists in...

Read more