SPECIAL REPORT
A DYNASTY AT CROSSROADS
Italian-born Sonia Gandhi heads the family that has dominated Indian
politics since independence from Britain in 1947. Her return from surgery
in the United States for an undisclosed illness has stoked speculation she
may be making way for her uninspiring son Rahul. Could the end be near
for the Nehru-Gandhi family dynasty?
SEPTEMBER 2011
FALTERING DYNASTY
By Paul de Bendern and Alistair Scrutton
NEW DELHI, SEPT 27
R
AHUL Gandhi, heir to the family
dynasty that has dominated politics
in the world’s biggest democracy
for generations, was trying to make himself
heard in the uproar of India’s parliament.
Looking nervous, he read haltingly from
a prepared statement, criticizing as “antidemocratic” a popular anti-corruption
campaign led by activist Anna Hazare,
whose hunger strike was aimed at getting
parliament to adopt a tough anti-graft bill.
With his voice drowning in the din of a
chamber where members are prone to “storm
out in fury” if they don’t like what they’re
hearing, senior members of his Congress
party beseeched him to “go on, go on” with
an address that was being televised live.
Rahul later called his speech a “game changer”
in the fight against corruption. Many thought he
was deluded -- the government backed down on
Hazare’s demands to end his fast.
Weeks before, his mother and Congress
party leader, an ailing Sonia Gandhi, had
handed over power to a quartet of party
leaders that included Rahul. But his long
silence had irked Indians. Congress needed
him to give the speech of his life.
As Rahul floundered, his younger sister
Priyanka watched from the visitors’ gallery.
She was wearing a sari and her short black
hair was swept back like her grandmother,
assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, a
style not lost on many Indians who thought
she, not Rahul, should have been the one
standing before parliament.
Nothing like the Gandhi family political
franchise exists in the world today. A member
of the family has essentially run India for twothirds of the period since independence from
Britain in 1947, melding the right to rule of an
English monarch with the tragic glamour of
the Kennedy clan.
Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, 64, has since
returned to India, after five weeks for surgery
in the United States for an undisclosed
illness. The India media says she underwent
treatment at New York’s Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Centre.
Her son’s apparent ascendancy, and
uncertain leadership qualities, have raised
questions about whether a family political
dynasty is compatible with a modern
democracy and a country carrying increased
economic and diplomatic clout.
Congress itself is a party in decline. Its
post-World War Two vision of democratic
socialism to uplift the rural masses, with big
SEPTEMBER 2011
NEHRU-GANDHI DYNASTY
Jawaharlal Nehru
(1889 - 1964)
India’s first prime minister
from 1947 to 1964
Married
1916
Kamala Nehru
(1889 - 1936)
Indira Gandhi
(1917 - 1984)
First female prime minister
(1966 - 77, 1980 - 84).
Assassinated by her
bodyguards
Married
1968
Sonia
Gandhi
(1912 - 1960)
Indian politician
and journalist
Married
1974
Rajiv Gandhi
Sanjay Gandhi
(1944 - 1991)
Prime minister
(1984-89)
Killed by a suicide
bomber in 1991
(b. 1946)
Head of
Congress
party 1998
Feroze Gandhi
Married
1942
(1946 - 1980)
Congress party
member. Died in
plane crash
Maneka
Gandhi
(b. 1956)
Environmentalist, animal
rights activist
Married
1997
Robert
Vadra
(b. 1969)
Businessman
Priyanka
Vadra
(b. 1970)
(b. 1972)
General
Joins Congress secretary of
Congress, 2007
in 2004
Raihan Vadra
Miraya Vadra
state-run companies and their public sector
unions dominating the economy, is looking
shopworn in a modern India where a dynamic
private sector is propelling growth.
While Congress began reforms in the 1990s
that
have helped
lead to an economic boom,
Graphic
INDIA-GANDHI/
its share of the vote has steadily fallen over
Story
INDIA-GANDHI/
the
years as regional
parties get stronger.
Size
Artist
Rahul Gandhi
10 x 16.5 cm
Kinyen Pong
Varun Gandhi
(b. 1980)
Joins Bharatiya
Janata Party in
2004
Photos: Reuters
Source: news reports
Sonia helped Congress win the last two
general elections, but the party faces a
more problematic challenge in the next one
due in 2014, as a rising urban middle class,
fed up with endemic corruption and poor
governance, flexes
Date its muscles.
07 / 09 / 11
Interviews with Congress party officials
Reporter
EDREF
and family friends, some
of whom have
Research K. Pong
Code
POL
© Copyright Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.
http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/media/media_products/graphics/
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FALTERING DYNASTY
talked to the media for the first time, reveal deep concerns
about the future of the Gandhi dynasty.
Doubts are being expressed in New Delhi’s corridors of power,
among businessmen in the financial capital Mumbai, by swathes
of the poor who feel left out by a decade-long economic boom,
and by a middle class angry at the unchecked corruption that
annual growth of around 8 percent has brought.
This modern India no longer holds the Gandhi family in the
same reverential awe; their tragedies that so traumatised the
nation now fading with time.
“I think the whole idea of a dynasty negates merit,” said Arun
Jaitley, a senior leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata
Party. “The real worth of India’s democracy will be realised
only when the charisma of so-called dynasties is smashed.
Aspirations are changing, people are becoming very harsh
judges, things are changing for the better in India.”
Rahul is putting his leadership credentials to the test by leading
the
Congress
campaign
for
local elections
next year in
Uttar Pradesh,
a poor and
caste-ridden
state with 200
million people,
equivalent
to
the world’s fifthmost populous
country and considered a political barometer for India as a
whole. Congress finished a poor fourth in the last state assembly
elections there in 2007.
SEPTEMBER 2011
IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY
“IT’S NOT A QUESTION
OF WHETHER HE
WILL PERFORM OR
HAS THE ABILITY. HE
WILL COME ON BOARD ”
A RELUCTANT LEADER
A teenage Rahul Gandhi once told his father, the prime minister
from 1984 to 1989, he wished they could go back to happier days
when Rajiv Gandhi was a pilot with Indian Airlines and had no
political aspirations.
“I can’t now, because now I have a belief in my people. There
is no going back,” former Cabinet minister and family confidante
Mani Shankar Aiyar recalled Rajiv Gandhi as telling his son.
“That,” said Aiyar at one of those leafy British colonial homes
in New Delhi reserved for India’s senior politicians, “is the ethos
of these kids growing up.”
Rahul is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first
prime minister and independence hero. His grandmother and
Nehru’s only child, Indira Gandhi, was shot by her Sikh bodyguards.
His worst fears were realised when his father was assassinated by a
Tamil suicide-bomber in 1991 on the campaign trail.
Rahul, who did not respond to an interview request, may
understandably be reluctant to take his spot in this pantheon,
but his destiny and duty, his dharma, is written, as far as
Congress is concerned.
“It’s not a question of whether he will perform or has the ability.
He will come on board,” a senior Congress party insider said.
“There may be rumblings (within Congress) but there are always
rumblings. There were rumblings with Indira, with Sonia.”
Photos from the top: Sonia and Rahul Gandhi wave to crowds in Rae Bareli,
back in 2008. Rahul with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a public meet in
Bundelkhand region in northern India, April, 2011, and with his sister Priyanka in
Rae Bareli, back in 2006. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar
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FALTERING DYNASTY
SEPTEMBER 2011
TIMELINE
FAMILY MATTERS: Sonia and Rahul Gandhi walk at Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial in New Delhi on the occasion of the
former prime minister’s 18th death anniversary, May 21, 2009. REUTERS/B Mathur
Rahul appears to be in search of an image
in a country that expects its politicians to be
larger than life -- movie stars are frequent
election candidates, for instance -- to
galvanise the poor majority who eke out lives
of subsistence and misery.
“Sonia is not intellectually brilliant, but she has
tenacity. She’s stuck it out,” said a source close to
the Gandhi family. “Rahul may be genuine. But
he is really just a very average guy.”
Rahul, a bachelor, does seem nice. Even
his detractors say he is genuine, committed
to grassroots politics. When a newly arrived
Reuters correspondent met him at a business
conference, he seemed more concerned
about the spouse and children of a visiting
foreigner than talking shop.
In 2007, U.S. diplomats noted the skepticism
about Rahul in diplomatic cables released by
the Wikileaks website (wikileaks.org)
“Veteran politics watchers cannot explain
Rahul’s apparent missteps, while Congress
insiders complain that he is a neophyte who
does not have what it takes to become Prime
Minister,” an April 2007 cable said.
Family sources say he is underestimated, his
reticence stemming from being a highly-educated
man who has studied and worked abroad and is
aware of the history on his shoulders.
“He’s quite intelligent and bright, but he
keeps his thoughts shrouded,” said a close
Delhi-based friend of Rahul.
“Remember one thing. Rahul is an amazing
chess player. Like any game of chess it’s
about who wins, why and the tactics.”
Rahul has refused government jobs,
preferring to rebuild the Congress youth
wing, seen as crucial for the long-term
“OUR FAMILIES FOR
GENERATIONS HAVE
BEEN VOTING FOR
CONGRESS. BUT NOW IT
HAS BECOME A FAMILY
PARTY AND SLOWLY
ITS VOTE MAGIC IS
FADING AWAY ”
survival of a party that relies on a rural vote
bank, but which is run by members now at
retirement age.
Congress officials say Rahul just needs time.
When Rajiv was thrust into the leadership of
the party and running the government after
the death of his younger but more politically
astute brother Sanjay in a plane crash, he
also faced opposition from party veterans
who stymied reform initiatives. Congress
will survive, they say, as it has before.
“It’s like a willow tree,” said Aiyar. “It may
bend but it won’t break.”
But the party is no longer the dominant
force it was for so many years. When Rajiv
Gandhi first became prime minister in
1984, Congress had a two-thirds majority in
parliament. Now it is a minority in parliament,
dependent on querulous coalition partners,
and most states are in the hands of regional
parties or the opposition.
1947 - Jawaharlal Nehru is elected by the
Indian National Congress as the first prime
minister of independent India.
1964 - Nehru dies after 17 years as prime
minister. His only child, Indira Gandhi, joins
cabinet
1966 - Indira Gandhi becomes the first
woman to hold prime minister’s office in
India 1975 - Following public unrest after a
high court finds Indira Gandhi guilty of
electoral corruption, she declares a state of
emergency on June 25.
1977 - Indira Gandhi loses election to
coalition led by Janata Party, comprising
nearly all of Indira’s opponents.
1980 - Indira Gandhi returns for her fourth
term as prime minister as Congress wins
elections with a landslide.
1984 - Indira Gandhi is assassinated by
two of her Sikh bodyguards after Indian
army attacks militants holed up in Golden
Temple.
1984 - Following the death of his younger
brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980 and
mother’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi
reluctantly takes the prime minister’s job at
the age of 40.
1989 - A corruption scandal surrounding
an arms deal taints image of Rajiv Gandhi,
resulting in Congress’s defeat in the 1989
elections.
1991 - Still holding post of Congress
President, Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated by
Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. He is survived
by his widow Sonia and a son, Rahul, and
daughter Priyanka.
1998 - Rajiv Gandhi’s widow Sonia Gandhi
elected as the president of the struggling
Congress party.
1999 - Sonia Gandhi defeated by Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in
general election.
2004 - Sonia Gandhi leads Congress
to victory election. She appoints former
finance minister Manmohan Singh as
prime minister. Her oldest child Rahul
Gandhi elected to parliament for first time.
2007 - Rahul Gandhi is appointed as a
general secretary to the Congress party in
charge of the Indian Youth Congress.
2009 - Under Sonia Gandhi’s guidance, the
Congress-led government is re-elected with
Manmohan Singh as prime minister.
2011 - Congress head Sonia Gandhi returns
to New Delhi on September 8 after a month
in the United States where she underwent
surgery for an undisclosed ailment.
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FALTERING DYNASTY
SEPTEMBER 2011
FAMILY HISTORY: An employee cleans a portrait of
former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inside the Swaraj
Bhawan museum, and (right) an official shows a book
with pictures of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, Indira, her husband Feroz Gandhi and their son
Rajiv at the Anand Bhawan museum, both in Allahabad,
September 8, 2011. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash
India’s traditional caste and religion-based
politics, while still a key factor in winning
elections, is becoming less relevant to a
growing urban middle class, who are also
less in awe of a famous surname.
GRASSROOTS RUMBLING
Rahul Gandhi’s home constituency of Amethi
in Uttar Pradesh has long been the seat of
power for the Nehru-Gandhi family.
As in much of India, modernity here is
seeping into this small town of 12,000 in fits
and starts and the family franchise is fading.
Posters depicting the Gandhi trio of Sonia,
Rahul and Priyanka are overwhelmed by
images of Hindu gods and advertisements
for mobile phone operators on the streets. A
dusty statue of Rajiv Gandhi at the city centre
is about the only monument to the dynasty.
Disillusionment has set in among the
youth here who are hard-pressed to find jobs
in offices and factories and are disinclined
to toil in the fields like their parents, the
traditional vote bank of Congress.
“Our families for generations have been
voting for Congress. They had faith in the
party,” said Mahi Khan, a 23-year-old arts
student, dressed in sports shoes and a pink
designer t-shirt. “But now it has become
a family party and slowly its vote magic is
fading away.”
The disgruntlement can also be felt in
nearby Rae Bareli constituency, another
family bastion once represented by Indira
and now by Sonia Gandhi. During Indira’s
rule, Indian Telephone Industries employed
Highlights of an Indian dynasty:
http://link.reuters.com/nur93s
more than 12,000 people here. Today, most
factories have closed or shifted elsewhere.
“There has been no development in the
city. Gandhi family members are winning on
their names,” said Santosh Atlanti, 34, as his
mother nudged him to keep quiet. “Even we
had been voting for Sonia so far, but this time
we need to think.”
The Atlanti family owns three shops along
the main road amounting to some 35-40 votes,
he said. “That should count for something.”
“The office of Sonia Gandhi is in front of my
house but we cannot see her face to face, the
way I am talking to you,” he added. “Meeting
her personally is beyond question as the
security is so tight.”
These rumblings of discontent may
be one reason why Rahul is focusing
on young voters, touring schools and
universities. He tried that in state
elections in neighboring Bihar state last
year, however, with little success.
“Rahul’s thinking is very good and the youth
relate to that,” said youth leader Rahul Bajpai
in Sonia’s constituency. “But many fossil-like
seniors in the party do not want smart and
clever youngsters to take prominent places in
the party.”
Even Rahul has been criticized for putting
forward young candidates from rich families
or with famous names for parliament.
“They come from well-known families.
Apart from a few smart ones, many make
parliament look like a college cafeteria,”
sniffed one senior opposition party member.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
When Sonia joined Congress in 1998 after a
seven-year absence from politics following
Rajiv’s death, she faced a rebellion from
Congress veterans worried about her Italian
origins. She had met Rajiv as a language
student at Cambridge.
Nevertheless, she was named party
leader. Congress promptly lost the 1999
general election in one of its worst electoral
performances to date to the Hindunationalists Bharatiya Janata Party. Since
then, she has consolidated power, her
popularity and mystique growing when she
turned down the prime minister’s job after
Congress’s 2004 election win and appointing
reformist technocrat Manmohan Singh to the
job instead.
For visiting dignitaries, her heavily-guarded
mansion in the wealthy centre of New Delhi is
the place to be, not the Prime Minister’s office
in South Block on the site of the old British
Viceroy’s mansion. Forbes magazine this
month named her the seventh most powerful
woman in the world, ahead of IMF managing
director Christine Lagarde.
At meetings, she may take down notes,
but usually says little, her serious expression
5
FALTERING DYNASTY
SEPTEMBER 2011
TRUMP CARD? Priyanka Gandhi waves to her supporters during an election campaign meeting for her mother Sonia
Gandhi in Rae Bareli district, April 22, 2009.. REUTERS/B Mathur
only occasionally breaking into a smile, party
workers say.
“She is a loner,” said Rasheed Kidwai,
author of a biography on Sonia Gandhi. Her
children are her closest advisers.
An art exhibition for renowned artist Anish
Kapoor in New Delhi last year highlighted her
almost regal isolation.
A museum official told guests they would
be able to see Sonia on a large TV screen
while Kapoor escorted her around the
exhibits. Delhi’s elegantly dressed elite were
only allowed in once Sonia had left.
No pictures of Sonia have been published
since she returned from her operation and she
has yet to make a public appearance, though
she has met party leaders and coalition
partners in private over the past few days.
The Gandhi family and the Congress party
have handled her illness as a “personal
matter” requiring no public explanation.
As Congress leader, she has quietly
squelched
dissent
and
sidelined
political
rivals.
With
79-year-old
Manmohan Singh expected to leave office by
2014, Congress now has almost no candidates
to replace him apart from Rahul.
When Rahul visited Uttar Pradesh to
mediate over a high-profile land dispute
earlier this year, Sonia ordered no other party
figures to follow him. That happens often on
his trips, Congress sources said.
“Sonia’s failure to ensure meritocracy in
the party may be fatal in modern India,” said
Inder Malhotra, a journalist and author on
the Gandhis.
That may have worked fine in her first term
from 2004 to 2009 as she consolidated
power in the party. But with the government
floundering in the face of corruption
scandals, the economy slowing and reforms
stuttering to a halt, Congress is searching
for leadership.
One senior Congress official acknowledged
Sonia has made some mistakes, including
approving the appointments of officials now
under investigation for corruption.
Others say her aloof leadership style is
holding back progress.
“Mrs. Gandhi never misses an opportunity
to miss an opportunity,” said one U.S.
diplomatic cable in November 2007
published by Wikileaks.
PRIYANKA A WILD CARD?
With Sonia seriously ill and her son struggling
to measure up to the high expectations of a
family scion, many Congress party eyes are
turning in the direction of the 39-year-old
Priyanka, who many think resembles her
steely-willed grandmother Indira Gandhi,
known as “India’s iron lady”.
“Priyanka has 50 percent of Indira’s qualities.
She has quick decision power, whereas Sonia and
Rahul dilly-dally,” said 87-year-old Uma Shankar
Mishra, a senior party official in Rae Bareli.
Apart from counseling her mother and
taking part in election campaigns, the
mother of two has avoided politics. In public,
Priyanka wears saris like her mother and
grandmother, but in private she prefers wears
jeans or skirts, the image of a modern mother.
“I think Priyanka is very knowledgeable
about politics,” said Aiyar, the family friend.
“Remember, there was no person more nonpolitical than her mother in the early days. But
she learnt. Her imitation (of Indira) does not lie
just in her hairstyle. It is more profound.”
Her ascension remains unlikely as Rahul’s
younger sister. While Indira chose her younger
son Sanjay over Rajiv, few think Sonia would
ignore Italian and Indian tradition and bypass
the older son.
The deeper worry is that neither Priyanka
nor Rahul will be able to control a political
system that demands strong national
figures to keep fractious coalitions together.
Congress also faces charismatic opposition
leaders who have risen without a family
name, such as the BJP’s controversial chief
minister in Gujarat state, Narendra Modi.
“I think Rahul can deal with the Congress
party. The loyalty is there,” said biographer
Kidwai. “It’s the second part that is tricky,
dealing with crafty political allies.”
The future of the family dynasty, along with
the fortunes of Congress, may well rest with
how Rahul plays the political end-game in
this chess match.
“The Gandhi family is the bonding adhesive
of Congress. The minute the family is not there,
the party will begin to fall apart,” said Aiyar.
As Rahul walked out from parliament
that August day, reporters asked why he
had taken so long to respond to the Hazare
hunger strike and the anti-corruption
protests it had inspired.
“I tell you why,” Rahul replied. “Because
I like to think about things and then decide
about things.”
He may be running out of time to do that.
Additional reporting by Alka Pande in
LUCKNOW, Annie Banerji and
Arup Roychoudhury; Paul de Bendern
reported from AMETHI
Editing by Bill Tarrant
COVER PHOTO: (R-L) Chief of India’s Congress party
Sonia Gandhi, her daughter Priyanka Vadera, son-in-law
Robert Vadera, and son Rahul Gandhi, walk at Rajiv
Gandhi’s memorial in New Delhi on the occasion of the
former prime minister’s 18th death anniversary, May 21,
2009. REUTERS/ B Mathur
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
BILL TARRANT,
ENTERPRISE EDITOR, ASIA
[email protected]
PAUL DE BENDERN,
INDIA BUREAU CHIEF
[email protected]
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