Rahul Gandhi, left, rides atop a car during a rally in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh on April 12. (Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times)
The question, asked in a pre-election review meeting two years ago by a party worker unhappy with Gandhi's lackadaisical attitude toward politics, led Gandhi to shrug and admit that he could not name anyone, said a flabbergasted Shakeel Ahmad, 60, a second-generation Indian National Congress party leader in the politically vital state of Uttar Pradesh who was at the meeting. (Watch: From Amethi - Has Priyanka eclipsed Rahul?)
Gandhi has represented the area since 2004, "and he does not know a single name?" Ahmad asked. Politics is the Gandhi family's business. The clan has produced three prime ministers, including India's first, Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi, long groomed for high office, seems to have inherited few of the political skills for which his forbears were renowned, Ahmad said.
"Can you teach a fish to swim?" he asked.
The question is being asked with increasing urgency among members of the Indian National Congress, the political party that Gandhi's family has led since India's independence in 1947. The party is staring down what recent polls have predicted will be a landslide for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist organization led by Narendra Modi, one of the most controversial political figures in Indian history.
The results of the six-week election process are scheduled to be announced on May 16. The odds of Gandhi's becoming the next prime minister have dropped so low that Mumbai bookies have stopped taking bets on him.
Gandhi appears poised to preside over the most devastating defeat in the history of the Congress party, which has governed India for much of the past six decades. Analysts who have watched Gandhi struggle against a vast political tide as well as his own seeming ambivalence find themselves comparing him to characters in works by Shakespeare and Vyasa, the great Hindu sage.
"It is a tragic drama just like 'Hamlet,'" said Inder Malhotra, a political columnist. "It is the end of a dynasty because this fellow cannot make up his mind. He can't even decide whether to be clean-shaven or have a beard."
Gandhi, 43, was for years India's absentee crown prince, a member of Parliament who rarely spoke in public, disappeared from public view for long stretches and had a reputation for partying. He was expected to replace Manmohan Singh as prime minister, but his own ennui and poor political skills led to repeated delays in his elevation, said Sanjaya Baru, a former media adviser to Singh, echoing the comments of many others. (In midst of election, another insider's book deals blow for Congress)
In a recent memoir, Baru said that Singh ultimately failed as a prime minister because he allowed himself to be viewed as a seat warmer for Gandhi, even though Gandhi played almost no role in the government.
"I was at the center of power for 4 1/2 years, and Rahul was a no-show," Baru said in an interview. "He was not a presence."
Then last year, Gandhi became the vice president and official prime ministerial candidate of the Congress party. His mother, Sonia Gandhi, has said at rallies that she offered up her son to the nation's service.
But Gandhi has appeared reluctant to embrace political life. He refused to call himself a candidate for prime minister, and when pressed he suggested that the reason was the assassinations of his father and grandmother. (Rahul Gandhi in charge of 2014 elections for Congress)
"In my life I have seen my grandmother die, I have seen my father die, I have seen my grandmother go to jail, and I have actually been through a tremendous amount of pain as a child," he said in a televised interview.
Those sympathetic to Gandhi say that he will not be unhappy if his party loses the election. Rasheed Kidwai, who wrote a biography of Sonia Gandhi, said that Gandhi believed that his own father, Rajiv, became prime minister too early in life and made terrible mistakes as a result.
"From Rahul's point of view, he is not in a great deal of hurry to become prime minister," Kidwai said. "I think in the back of his mind, the example of his father is always there."
The Gandhi family's latest decadelong reign atop India's government was bound to create some anti-incumbency feelings, Gandhi said in another TV interview. But the governing coalition also gave voters plenty of other reasons to want change, including a sputtering economy, a host of corruption scandals, and a weak prime minister.
Congress party insiders said in interviews that to win, the party needed to tar the opposition as an unacceptable and even dangerous alternative.
With Modi as the principal opponent, this strategy should have been fairly easy to execute, they said. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, a state in western India, when more than 1,000 people died in riots in 2002, and he has been linked through a top aide to murders of Muslims by a police assassination squad.
But Gandhi has until recently shied away from mounting a frontal attack on Modi's record. He scolded Congress party leaders when they criticized Modi too sharply, and in an interview he avoided discussing the 2002 riots despite being prompted several times.
Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party can scarcely believe their good fortune.
"We thought he was the natural inheritor," Arun Jaitley, the leader of the opposition in Parliament's upper house, said laughingly of Gandhi in a televised interview. "But I don't think that's how things are working out to be."
In recent days, with most of the nation's voting already completed, Gandhi and his mother changed tack and finally started attacking Modi directly. But many analysts say the change has come far too late.
© 2014, The New York Times News Service
Story First Published: May 01, 2014 11:16 IST
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It is a tragic drama just like Hamlet, said Inder Malhotra, a political columnist. It is the end of a dynasty because this fellow cannot
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Political Stumbling Leaves an Indian Heir Less Apparent. Gardiner Harris, The New York Times | Updated: May 01, 2014 11:16 IST
Political Stumbling Leaves an Indian Heir Less Apparent
Questions are growing in the Indian National Congress party as Rahul Gandhi, the scion of a political dynasty, appears poised to preside over a devastating defeat.
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