Is Rahul Gandhi ambitious?

Why This Matters

Key context: <p>MILLIONS of Indians evidently see Rahul Gandhi as their candidate to steer the country out of its deep mess driven by hate-filled divisive politics and a K-shaped economic trajectory plying unprecedented inequality. That seemed to be the unspoken sentiment, if not consensus, at the massive Sunday <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/2041368">rally of opposition parties</a> in Delhi against vote theft.</p> <p>The issue has brought out angry youth on the streets. Rigging of polls betrays, however, an inability to secure popular support through clean elections, which is a blessing.</p> <p>India is not alone in subverting democracy. Narendra Modi’s ride-or-die friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu reveals a shared scorn for secular democracy and minority rights. Netanyahu hopes to disenfranchise Palestinian MPs (strategically called Arabs by a clever political fiat) even as they mock him in turn by holding the balance of power, principally against him, after last week’s elections.</p> <figure class='media w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/2037754'> <div class='media__item media__item--newskitlink '> <iframe class="nk-iframe" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="height:250px;position:relative" src="https://www.dawn.com/news/card/2037754" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms"></iframe></div> </figure> <p>Likewise with Modi, whose <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1955069">controversial victories in Bihar</a> and West Bengal recently benefited enormously as his handpicked election commission disenfranchised millions of Muslim voters and other potential opponents of the regime. Netanyahu rewarded Modi’s friendship by giving his government the Pegasus spyware among other contraptions to undermine democracy.</p> <p>One would readily go along with the view that Gandhi makes for a great candidate to don the mantle of prime minister and also restore its prestige. He has displayed the drive to nurse Indian democracy back to health. But is he as equipped as, say, streetfighters like Priyank Kharge or M.K. Stalin or Akhilesh Yadav to deal frontally with the push which will inevitably arrive in the process of dismantling entrenched fascism?</p> <p>That Sonia Gandhi and both her children — Rahul as the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Priyanka Gandhi as an outspoken and gritty parliamentarian — called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while major parties other than the left looked away is cause to celebrate the family — and also something to worry about as it puts them in the crosshairs of many a foreign and domestic interloper. The fact that the RSS chief hosted an Israeli diplomat as chief guest at the Hindutva body’s annual day on Dussehra is troubling.</p> <blockquote class="blockquote-level-1"> <p>Has anyone bothered to ask Rahul Gandhi if he was himself interested in the job that so many appear keen to award him?</p> </blockquote> <p>A pivotal question needs to be flagged here about widespread faux expertise over a future prime minister from the opposition. Has anyone bothered to ask Rahul Gandhi if he was himself interested in the job that so many appear keen to award him? A fair guess based on history and Nehru-Gandhi genealogy is that Rahul Gandhi harbours no such ambitions. We could perhaps glean the truth of this hunch from Sonia Gandhi’s soon-to-be released memoirs.</p> <p>The BJP routinely accuses Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter of political ambition. No Indian prime minister with a clear majority in parliament has offered to resign other than Nehru. In February 1950, Nehru offered to resign as prime minister over the refugee crisis after Partition. Sardar Patel persuaded him to withdraw the offer. Again, in 1958, Nehru announced his desire to step down and take a break from office, citing severe mental fatigue, fading idealism, and deteriorating public standards in Indian politics. A public outcry broke out, and the Congress begged him to stay on.</p> <p>Did Nehru want his daughter to succeed him? On the contrary, there’s plenty of evidence that he desired young socialist leader Jai Prakash Narayan as his deputy in 1952, which JP refused. There was not even a remote hint that he wanted his daughter in his cabinet or to succeed him.</p> <p>Nehru was wary of Morarji Desai from the right-wing of the party. He engineered a plan for senior cabinet ministers to resign to work at the grassroots with the party. He inducted Lal Bahadur Shastri as a minister without portfolio in the prime minister’s office, a clear signal who he was tapping as successor.</p> <p>Shastri’s demise in Tashkent set off another round of worry about Desai manoeuvring. Powerful regional satraps countered the move and promoted Indira Gandhi believing she could be manipulated. Mrs Gandhi favoured supporting Gulzari Lal Nanda.</p> <p>The ‘Syndicate’ supporting her was essentially conservative, pro-business, and staunchly anti-socialist. Mrs Gandhi turned the tables on them in 1969 by staging a split with the support of the communist bloc. When the left abandoned her after the emergency — one of their defining errors — she was swamped by the conservatives including religious revivalists who were largely seen as devising her fateful Punjab policy that would eventually lay her low.</p> <figure class='media w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/1960049'> <div class='media__item media__item--newskitlink '> <iframe class="nk-iframe" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="height:250px;position:relative" src="https://www.dawn.com/news/card/1960049" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms"></iframe></div> </figure> <p>Rajiv Gandhi was a scrupulously private family man until Sanjay Gandhi’s death in a plane crash required him to stand with his mother. Her assassination set him up as prime minister. There’s no dearth of recorded evidence of Sonia Gandhi opposing his entry into politics. In an emotional showdown, she forbade him from becoming prime minister, presciently fearing he, too, would be killed. Rajiv’s response was: “I am her son … if I don’t do it, who will?” Ambition?</p> <p>Did Sonia Gandhi try to be prime minister in 1999 when she met the president with a list of 272 supporters? The world knows that she backed Manmohan Singh as prime minister in 2004. But a 2014 book by R.D. Pradhan, a civil servant close to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, described how Sonia Gandhi had Manmohan Singh in mind as early as 1999.</p> <p>On her part, Sonia Gandhi did one better. She set up a very effective advisory council to informally but crucially advise the Singh government on progressive issues ranging from poverty alleviation, right to information, right to education, halting disinvestment in public sector undertakings — everything that Nehru and Indira Gandhi would approve of.</p> <p>Rahul Gandhi would in all likelihood follow the precepts. His politically correct upbringing could struggle against the ugliness of right-wing politics that prompted Nehru to offer to resign. There are many more roughly hewn leaders in the progressive pack to confront an ugly pushback that would come from a cornered fascist order.</p> <p><em>The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.</em></p> <p><a href="mailto:jawednaqvi@gmail.com"><strong>jawednaqvi@gmail.com</strong></a></p> <p><em>Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2026</em></p> This development from dawn.com highlights ongoing changes in the sector.