[In a sharply worded four-page letter posted
on Twitter, Mr. Gandhi took responsibility for the Congress party’s weak
performance in May’s elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s populist
Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., eviscerated the opposition. The B.J.P. won a
historic majority in the lower house of Parliament, cementing its place as
India’s most formidable political force in decades.]
By
Kai Schultz and Hari Kumar
 |
|
Rahul Gandhi, shown in
May, is the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister.
His grandmother and his
father also held the post.
Credit Altaf
Qadri/Associated Press
|
NEW
DELHI — Rahul Gandhi
publicly resigned as president of India’s ailing Indian National Congress party
on Wednesday, weeks after a crushing general-election defeat, plunging the
party of Mohandas K. Gandhi into fresh turmoil over its future leadership.
In a sharply worded four-page letter posted
on Twitter, Mr. Gandhi took responsibility for the Congress party’s weak
performance in May’s elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s populist
Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., eviscerated the opposition. The B.J.P. won a
historic majority in the lower house of Parliament, cementing its place as
India’s most formidable political force in decades.
The resignation of Mr. Gandhi — who is the
great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the son
and grandson of two others — is unlikely to end his family’s long history of
primacy in the Congress party, even if an outsider is chosen to succeed him.
His mother, Sonia Gandhi, from whom he took over as party president in 2017,
retains a leadership position, as does his sister, Priyanka Gandhi.
But Mr. Gandhi’s letter went much further
than simply announcing his decision to step down. In pointed language, he
painted a dark picture of India’s future, accusing Mr. Modi’s party of
“crushing the voice of the Indian people” by undermining democratic
institutions and pulling apart India’s secular fabric by spreading a violent
form of Hindu nationalism.
“Where they see differences, I see
similarity. Where they see hatred, I see love. What they fear, I embrace,” Mr.
Gandhi wrote. “The attack on our country and our cherished Constitution that is
taking place is designed to destroy the fabric of our nation.”
Critics of Mr. Modi say his party has spread
an us-versus-them philosophy that has allowed right-wing extremists to make
villains of India’s minorities, quash dissent, and chip away at the
impartiality of the country’s news media, judiciary and election commission.
Since Mr. Modi rose to power in 2014, hate
crimes have spiked. Dozens of Muslims and lower-caste Dalits have been lynched
on suspicion of killing cows, a sacred animal for Hindus. And though Mr. Modi
has condemned religious vigilantism at points, activists found that in some
cases, the perpetrators went unpunished or were celebrated by other senior
officials in his party.
But in this year’s general elections, Mr.
Gandhi struggled to steer Congress away from a reputation for elitism and
corruption that has eroded its reputation over the years. He could not compete
with the brawny patriotism espoused by Mr. Modi, whose narrative as an
anti-establishment politician and the charismatic son of a tea seller
overwhelmingly won over India’s 900 million eligible voters.
The result was a thundering second-term
victory for Mr. Modi and his party, which promised to give India a larger role
on the global stage by staying tough on Pakistan and encouraging investment and
development in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Mr. Modi’s party won 303 seats in the Lok
Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament, compared with 52 for Congress,
which failed to reach even the minimum 10 percent of seats required to lead the
opposition. The defeat was so crushing that Mr. Gandhi lost his seat in the
district of Amethi, which his family had held for decades. (He won, however, in
a second seat in the southern state of Kerala.)
Immediately after the votes were tallied, Mr.
Gandhi, 49, offered to resign, but party leaders urged him to stay on, with
crowds of supporters gathering outside of his house in New Delhi, shouting, “Rahul,
don’t quit!”
In his resignation letter, Mr. Gandhi said he
had ultimately stepped down because he felt responsible for the election loss,
though he made it clear he would still play a role in the party. He urged
restoration of India’s “once cherished institutional neutrality” and warned of
“unimaginable levels of violence and pain” against minorities if the country’s
democracy was not protected.
“My fight has never been a simple battle for
political power,” he wrote. “I have no hatred or anger toward the B.J.P. but
every living cell in my body instinctively resists their idea of India.”
For now, analysts say the future looks
challenging for Congress, the party that played a leading role in India’s
struggle to break away from Britain and then governed the country for most of
its post-independence history.
It has been led by four generations of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which takes the Gandhi name not from the independence
leader but from the marriage of Nehru’s daughter Indira to another Congress
activist with that surname.
Neerja Chowdhury, a columnist and political
analyst in New Delhi, said Congress was facing “a real crisis” of leadership,
with no obvious front-runner to succeed Mr. Gandhi.
The real test for the Congress party, she
said, was whether it would find a suitable replacement to compete against Mr.
Modi, whose sheer cult of personality propelled him to become the first prime
minister in nearly 50 years to win a majority in successive parliamentary
elections.
“As long as Narendra Modi enjoys the good
will he has today,” Ms. Chowdhury said, “it will be hard work for the
Congress.”
