The decline of the Gandhi political dynasty in India – The Post

The centre-left Congress Party has governed for decades, but now risks losing not only the next elections but also its role as India’s main opposition party

Next week in India the long electoral process to completely renew the country’s parliament will begin: it will be structured in seven phases and will last until the beginning of June. The result is not in question: all the polls give the governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a large lead, and leave the INDIA coalition which unites 26 opposition parties far behind. The opposition’s difficulties depend largely on the crisis of those who should have led it, i.e. the Indian National Congress, the historic center-left party led for generations by the Nehru-Gandhi family.

The Congress, as the party is usually called in India, will not only almost certainly lose the elections, but also risks losing its role as the main alternative to the BJP. In fact, it is very likely that in several states it will be overtaken by regional parties and smaller political formations: the Indian electoral system, which is a pure majoritarian system, could in fact favor these parties over the “traditional” opposition.

The Gandhi family continues to be at the center of the Congress. Although he has no longer been president of the party since 2019, Rahul Gandhi is its recognized leader. Sonia Gandhi, the mother, is still considered a central figure, Priyanka, Rahul’s sister, is general secretary (a recently created role) and could be a candidate for the first time, at 52, in this election.

Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, in Kashmir during the “march for democracy” (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

That of Rahul and Priyanka is the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi “political dynasty”, who ruled India for decades. Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s first prime minister and ruled between 1947 and 1964. His daughter Indira was prime minister for a total of 16 years in various terms between 1966 and 1984: she took her husband’s surname, Feroze Gandhi, who was initially Gandhy but it was changed by the latter in honor of Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he had no relation. After her Indira came her son Rajiv Gandhi, killed in 1991 and replaced at the helm of the party by Sonia, his wife, born and raised in Italy (she went to live permanently in India at the age of 21). About ten years ago Sonia formally gave way to Rahul, but remained relevant within the party.

The last generation of the Gandhis is also the weakest: Rahul’s personal charisma has always been considered limited, the political history of the Congress has been complicated by scandals and a certain political immobility, and Modi’s authoritarian turn has greatly limited the spaces for the opposition. The repressive action, also implemented through the courts, has often focused on the main opposition party: in August 2023, Rahul was sentenced to two years in prison for defaming Modi (a sentence later suspended by the Supreme Court).

The reduction of democratic spaces has been compounded by problems in the management of the party. They were rehired at the agency Reuters from Chunni Lal Sahu, MP from the state of Chhattisgarh who switched from the Congress to the ruling BJP party in 2023: «Instead of investigating the reasons for the defeats, it was decided to ignore them. There is a group of people who run the party as if it were a private limited liability company.”

Sahu is not the only one to have left the Congress: the BJP says that from 2014 to today, Congress members who have joined the governing party have been a few thousand. However, the opposition claims that some of these steps occurred after the initiation of legal actions against the politicians in question, actions which were then dropped after these politicians had changed parties.

In the center, President Mallikarjun Kharge, between Sonia and Rahul Gandhi (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

In 2022 the Congress chose its new president: Mallikarjun Kharge, then eighty years old, very close to the Gandhi family, won rather easily among the members against Shashi Tharoor, a former UN official and supported by the most progressive and young component of the party. That election once again confirmed the centrality of the Gandhi family in the party.

In September, Rahul Gandhi launched a long “march for democracy”, walking over 3,500 kilometers across India: the operation was repeated last month, but despite some temporary enthusiasm it does not appear to have significantly increased support for the party. The Congress risks losing even in states that were considered safe electoral areas, such as Uttar Pradesh. In others, where the so-called regional parties are stronger, it has tried to build alliances: in recent months, however, there have been important defections, caused above all by the difficulty of agreeing on candidacies and the distribution of constituencies and seats.

India is a federal and parliamentary republic: the Lok Sabha, the House of the People, is the most important branch of parliament, while the Council of States de facto regulates relations between the federal government and the states. The 543 members of the Lok Sabha are elected in as many districts, with majority elections: size, population and internal differences in India have favored the birth of regional parties. In a political landscape dominated by the BJP, even with practices that are not totally democratic, this type of political formation is often the main or only obstacle to the governing party, being able to count on strong support at the local level.

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Two of the major regional parties, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), have left the INDIA alliance and decided to field their own independent candidates. The BSP risks further complicating things for the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, while the Trinamool Congress is the majority party in West Bengal, also supported by the Muslim population, which reaches 30 percent of the total in the state. In the 2019 elections, 21 deputies were elected to the Indian parliament against the Congress’ 52.

Three other parties obtained similar results: the DMK (Progressive Dravidian Federation) is currently the major ally of the Congress, the majority in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and representative of the Tamil ethnic group (23 deputies in 2019). The YSR (Youth, Workers and Farmers Congress Party) is rooted in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, is centre-left but outside the INDIA alliance (22 deputies in 2019); the Shiv Sena has governed Maharashtra (a central-western state) since 2019 from right-wing and Hindu nationalist positions and is allied with the BJP.

Preparations for a Congress rally in Delhi (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

There are at least fifty regional parties: in recent years some have entered into agreements with Modi’s party, while others are a problem for the government but only at a local level, such as the Everyman Party (AAP) in the capital Delhi. AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal was arrested in late March following a judicial investigation that the opposition considers politically motivated.

The results of these regional parties will define the dimensions of the government party’s victory and risk worsening the crisis of the Congress: a further downsizing could also mark the end of the political dynasty of the Gandhi family. It is a hypothesis that had already been put forward in the past: however, attempts to recover the ancient status seem less and less effective. Greater political fragmentation is instead welcomed by Modi’s party, which would thus become the only truly large national party.

– Read also: There is a crime problem in the Indian parliament

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