NEW DELHI // For more than a month there has been speculation about the whereabouts of Rahul Gandhi during his self-imposed sabbatical, and the reasons for it. Now, the imminent reappearance of the beleaguered Congress party’s vice president has raised another question: what will he do next?
Mr Gandhi’s “leave of absence” was announced in late February, two weeks after the Congress failed to win any seats in the Delhi assembly elections. It was the latest electoral debacle for the party after losing power in the national election last May to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
A Congress spokesman said Mr Gandhi had asked his mother Sonia, the party president, for time off “to reflect on recent events and the future course of the party”.
Mr Gandhi disappeared just before the crucial budget session of parliament, drawing criticism from the BJP. “It is for him and the party to decide what their priorities are,” Anurag Thakur, a BJP spokesman, said at the time. “They were missing for a long time. That is why they got 44 seats in the last [national] election.”
Mr Gandhi was to have returned to Delhi by March 10. When he failed to make an appearance, a Congress spokesman said he would be back later that week. In mid-March the party said the 44-year-old leader had extended his sabbatical until the end of the month.
The Congress did not reveal where Mr Gandhi had gone, saying only that he was “abroad for introspection and soul-searching before starting a new journey in his life”.
Indian media outlets and social media have been filled with speculation on his whereabouts, and periodic reports of sightings.
Last week, “missing” posters for Mr Gandhi appeared on walls around Amethi, the constituency he represents in parliament. The local Congress unit blamed the BJP, and on Friday Sonia Gandhi visited Amethi to assure residents that her son would return soon.
“I am here on his behalf,” she said.
On Twitter, a Congress member posted photos in February of Mr Gandhi purportedly vacationing in a tent on the banks of the Ganges in Uttarakhand state. Another Twitter user said he had flown to Bangkok on Thai Airways.
The Calcutta-based Telegraph newspaper listed sightings in other places: Uruguay; the international terminal of New Delhi airport; Greece; and Laos.
“Is he sulking? Over what?” Rasheed Kidwai, author of 24 Akbar Road, a book about the Gandhi family and the Congress party, wrote in The Telegraph last week. “Are the mother and son at loggerheads over the way 24 Akbar Road, the Congress headquarters, should or shouldn’t be functioning?”
Digvijay Singh, a senior Congress politician, has ruled out disagreements between Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. But during a television interview soon after Mr Gandhi began his sabbatical, Mr Singh admitted: “Both of them are from different generations. Obviously every generation has a mindset.”
A former member of Mr Gandhi’s political team, who quit soon after the national election last year, told The National Mr Gandhi had gone to Myanmar. “I think, 99 per cent, I’m sure about that,” he said with a laugh.
He said tension had built up in the party “between factions who want Rahul to take over the presidency from his mother and those that want Sonia to stay”.
Mr Kidwai, who arrived at a similar analysis, said Mr Gandhi could not be blamed for feeling disillusioned. “He wants to make some changes in the way the party is run, and get its house in order,” he told The National. “He feels there’s no accountability, and that it’s the same set of people and the same perceived hierarchies that are driving the party.”
He likened the situation to the transition of power in a medieval monarchy, in which a new king, or a king-in-waiting, sought first to remove all the nobles loyal to the previous ruler. “That’s a very natural thing to happen,” Mr Kidwai said.
“So all these changes he wants to make, they’re not happening, and he’s feeling frustrated,” he added. “Many Congress people want Sonia to stay on, and he sees that as a lack of confidence in him.”
The Press Trust of India news agency last week quoted sources as saying the Congress would decide when Mr Gandhi should be anointed party president soon after his return. Mr Gandhi’s mother, who has been the Congress president for 17 years, is 68 years old and has been in poor health over the past two years.
But the Congress has also had to fend off questions about whether Mr Gandhi wants to be president, or if his heart is in politics at all.
Mr Singh, in his television interview, clarified: “There is no question of Rahul Gandhi running away. I absolutely rule it out ... He will continue not only as an MP but he also has a larger role in the Congress at the national level.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
