Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India's most famous political
dynasty, on Saturday took over as president of the main opposition
Congress while facing a stiff challenge from Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's ruling Hindu nationalists.
Gandhi took the mantle
from his mother Sonia Gandhi at a party function at a time when it's
losing power to Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party since 2014.
Gandhi's party has suffered humiliating defeats in recent state elections despite his active campaigning to win back support.
Sonia
Gandhi in her speech described her son as a new hope for the Congress
as the party workers danced, burst firecrackers and distributed Indian
sweets to celebrate the generational shift in the leadership.
Gandhi,
47, will be taking on Modi when the prime minister seeks a second
five-year term in 2019. Modi has vowed to create a Congress-free India
while working for the rise of Hindu nationalist forces.
Gandhi
in his speech described himself as an “idealist” and said Indian people
were getting disillusioned by policies pursued by the Modi government.
He
said the Congress party, which ruled India for decades, took the
country into the 21st century through modernisation and development. He
accused Modi of taking India “'to a medieval path where people are
butchered because who they are, beaten for what they believe in and
killed for what they eat.'” “The Congress will take on this challenge
and will never back down,” he said.
Gandhi was referring
to killings and attacks on minority groups, especially Muslims, since
the Bharatiya Janata Party swept national elections in 2014. Most of the
violence against Muslims has involved fringe Hindu vigilante groups
that have become active in small towns and cities across India. Muslims
make up about 14 percent of India's 1.3 billion people and Hindus about
80 percent.
Gandhi is the sixth member of the
Nehru-Gandhi family to lead Congress. His father Rajiv Gandhi,
grandmother Indira Gandhi and great- grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru have
served as prime ministers since India's independence from British
colonialists in 1947. Rahul Gandhi entered politics in 2004.
“Today,
the Congress faces a possibly existential crisis even as Sonia Gandhi
makes way for Rahul Gandhi to head the party,'” said Neerja Chowdhury, a
political commentator.
Gandhi was elevated as the
party's vice president in January 2013, serving as his mother's No. 2.
Sonia Gandhi, 71, stepped down on Saturday as the party's
longest-serving chief for 19 years. She has been keeping unwell in
recent years and pushing her son to the fore.
Asked what
role she would play after her son's elevation, she told the New Delhi
Television channel on Friday: “My role is to retire.” However, Randeep
Surejewala, a party spokesman, clarified that Sonia Gandhi retired as
party president and not from politics.
“Her blessings, wisdom and innate commitment to Congress ideology shall always be our guiding light,'” he tweeted.
The
Gandhi family and the Congress party have released little information
about Sonia Gandhi's health problems. She had surgery in the United
States for an undisclosed reason in 2011, and has returned to the US for
regular checkups since then.
