Sri Perumbudur, India: Imitating India’s independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday began his “long march” to halt the seemingly inexorable slow decline of his once-powerful parliamentary party. The Grand Old Party, which has ruled India for decades after its independence from Britain in his 1947, has seen overwhelming elections of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shadows of former selves discredited and crushed under power.
The BJP has overwhelmed parliament in the last two elections, with Modi ridiculing Gandhi. Gandhi, not the Mahatma but descendant of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal his Nehru, was an untouchable spoiled prince and playboy. Before setting off on his trek, Gandhi prayed at a memorial in Sriperumbudur in his Nadu state in southern Tamil. This is where his father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991. Like his grandmother Indira seven years before him.
“I lost my father to politics of hate and division. I will not lose the country I love either,” Gandhi, 52, said on Twitter. We traversed 3,500 km and traversed India until ending in Kashmir.
The aim, he said, is to highlight rampant unemployment, soaring inflation and the growing polarization between the Hindu majority and religious minorities like Muslims under Modi’s government. It’s weakening the country,” Rahul said at a rally in New Delhi on Sunday ahead of the mass march. “On the other hand, the Congress Party unites the country.
Mahatma Gandhi famously trekked some 380 kilometers during the crucial period of the independence struggle to protest the salt tax imposed by the British rulers in 1930. But Rahul, dubbed “the sky suit” in his leaked 2005 US diplomatic telegram, is also the great-grandson, grandson and son of his three past prime ministers of the world’s largest democracies. Regardless, they are seen as reluctant leaders. Gandhi stepped down as his party leader after his 2019 election debacle and was provisionally replaced by Rajiv’s widow, his mother Sonia Gandhi, 75.
If he returns as president, it remains unclear, but he will face a major battle to revive the party. It misses the BJP’s rebuttal to politics, which is heavily infused with “Hindutva,” an ideology it believes will make it a Hindu state.
The march “is not a gimmick. Rahul Gandhi truly believes in religious harmony. But people are not interested. So it will fail,” said political analyst Partha Venkateshwar. Rao Jr. said. “Rahul and parliament will have to work hard on the ground and find out the problems people face in different parts of the country,” he told AFP. need.” – AFP
