[For his part, Mr. Modi seems eager
to campaign against Mr. Gandhi, casting himself, the son of a tea stall owner,
as a self-made man and Mr. Gandhi as a privileged “shehjada,” or prince. After
Friday’s announcement, members of Bharatiya Janata gloated, saying Congress was
afraid to thrust Mr. Gandhi into the ring with Mr. Modi.]
By Ellen Barry
 |
Rahul Gandhi, vice president of the Congress party, spoke at
the All India Congress
Committee meeting in New Delhi on Friday. Altaf
Qadri/Associated Press
|
NEW
DELHI — At a major gathering of the Indian National Congress party
on Friday, Sonia Gandhi, the party’s president, announced that her son, Rahul,
would not be formally nominated for the post of prime minister ahead of general
elections, a decision made after prolonged deliberation within a party braced
for a punishing race.
“We took a decision on Rahul
yesterday, and the decision is final,” she said.
Mr. Gandhi, 43, will lead
Congress’s coming campaign, and he made clear in a speech a few hours later
that he was open to serving as prime minister after the elections, if Congress
legislators choose him.Analysts said the decision not to nominate him on Friday
was mainly a tactical one, aimed to insulate him from a presidential-style,
head-to-head campaign against Narendra Modi, head of the opposition Bharatiya
Janata Party. Mrs. Gandhi said the decision had little significance because the
party has not traditionally named prime ministerial candidates before
elections.
For his part, Mr. Modi seems eager
to campaign against Mr. Gandhi, casting himself, the son of a tea stall owner,
as a self-made man and Mr. Gandhi as a privileged “shehjada,” or prince. After
Friday’s announcement, members of Bharatiya Janata gloated, saying Congress was
afraid to thrust Mr. Gandhi into the ring with Mr. Modi.
“The nervousness is palpable
now,” Arun Jaitley, an opposition party leader, wrote in a statement published
on social media. “Why puncture your card in an adverse political environment?
There is no fire in the belly left to fight adversity.”
Damaged by a series of
corruption scandals and a flagging economy, Congress looks unlikely to retain
control over the next Parliament, especially after poor results in four state
assembly elections held in December.
At the televised gathering on
Friday, Mrs. Gandhi cast the national elections, scheduled for May, as a
“battle for the preservation of our age-old secular traditions,” warning that a
victory by Bharatiya Janata, a Hindu nationalist party, could introduce a dangerous
religious divide.
Mr. Gandhi took the podium a
few hours later and delivered a long, passionate speech. He mocked the
marketing used by his adversaries as slick but dishonest, saying they could
“sell combs” and “give haircuts to bald people.” His toughest lines were aimed
at the opposition party, whose campaign is increasingly focused around the
charismatic, divisive figure of Mr. Modi.
“Democracy cannot be ruled by
dictatorship, it cannot be ruled by one man,” he said. “We don’t respond by
turning against each other, nor by lighting communal fire.”
Mrs. Gandhi seemed relieved at
the warm reception her son received, saying at the close of the event: “For the
last few days, we got ourselves worried, but there is no need of that. The
energy and excitement which I am seeing in this call is proof that when we
decide, we can do anything.”
Not naming Mr. Gandhi the prime
ministerial candidate means sacrificing some of his star power in a country
where many revere his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, who all served
as prime minister.
Mr. Gandhi has at times
projected reluctance about his public role, refusing offers of a cabinet-level
post and rarely speaking at parliamentary sessions or expressing a stance in
national debates. In an interview published in a Hindi newspaper on Tuesday, he
sidestepped a series of questions about whether he intended — or even wanted —
to become prime minister.
“I will follow whatever orders
the party asks me to follow,” he said. “I am only concerned about why the
entire argument comes to a standstill over the issue of a ‘post.’ Why is it
being debated on a national level? Why don’t people debate about steps to clean
politics?”
Siddharth Varadarajan, a
prominent journalist, called the decision not to nominate Mr. Gandhi “an
insurance policy, an exit strategy, a safety valve,” allowing him to escape damage
if Congress performs badly.
Congress leaders are braced to
become the minority party in May, he said, but may see an opportunity to bounce
back in several years if the newly formed government proves fragile and
collapses. And in that event, he said, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty will continue —
if not through Rahul, then through his sister, Priyanka, who is widely viewed
as a talented politician.
He added that in his view, the
family would be wise to gradually untether itself from the party.
“The way to do it would be to
say, ‘We recuse ourselves, and we will keep a distant watch,' ” he said. “If they had the best future of the Congress Party in their
mind, they would realize that the dynasty has to end, and it has to end in an
orderly fashion. I don’t think
it’s going to happen.”
