Amethi/Rae Bareli, India – Irfan*, a tea stall owner, is convinced that change is underway.
“There hasn’t been much traffic on this road from Rae Bareli to Amethi since the Congress lost power in 2014,” he says, referring to two cities and a party that for decades was synonymous with one family – the Nehru-Gandhis , or as they are better known, the Gandhis.
The first family of Indian politics has governed the country for almost half of its journey since independence in 1947, with three generations of prime ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and grandson Rajiv Gandhi. And through ups and downs, when the Congress was in power and out of it, Amethi and Rae Bareli, 62 km (38 miles) apart, stuck, for the most part, by their family’s side. They served as safe constituencies for India’s grand old party in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which is India’s biggest electoral prize: with 80 seats of the country’s total 543 in the lower house of parliament.
In 2019, this tradition received a dramatic jolt when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi – Rajiv’s son – lost Amethi by 55,000 votes to Smriti Irani, an aggressive minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. who is in power. nationally since 2014. Rahul’s mother and former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi retained Rae Bareli for the party, the only seat she won in Uttar Pradesh as the BJP swept the country, winning 303 seats in total.
Now, five years later, the cities are a tense microcosm of the national battle between the BJP and the opposition Congress; between Modi and the Gandhis. Rahul is replacing his 77-year-old mother Rae Bareli this time. BJP’s Irani seeks re-election from Amethi. Each is expected to face stiff competition from the other’s party. Amethi and Rae Bareli vote on May 20 in India’s massive elections.
At stake are more than two seats: if the BJP wins Rae Bareli and retains Amethi, it will have effectively eliminated the Gandhi family and the Congress from Uttar Pradesh. On the other hand, opposition leaders say, a Congress victory in both seats could sow an anti-BJP momentum in a state that often decides who governs at the national level.
Irfan, from his vantage point in the town of Tiloi, near Amethi and Rae Bareli, believes that the political winds are blowing in the direction of the Congress. “The storm is brewing in both cities, which will impact the entire state,” he says.
However, storms can be unpredictable – and Amethi and Rae Bareli know this.
Boost for the opposition?
In a video posted by the Congress Party on social platforms, Rahul and his mother Sonia are seen flipping through old photos of the family visiting and contesting Amethi and Rae Bareli, while reflecting on their family’s long association with the cities.
It’s a decades-long bond. Feroze Gandhi, Indira’s husband and Rahul’s grandfather, won Rae Bareli in 1952 – independent India’s first election. Indira and Sonia won this seat later, their stints interspersed with terms when their loyalists were nominated to run in the city.
Only thrice has the Congress lost Rae Bareli. In 1977, a national opposition coalition overthrew Indira’s government to come to power amid a wave of anger against Congress for imposing a national state of emergency in 1975, when civil liberties were suspended and thousands of her political opponents were arrested. In 1996 and 1998, when the BJP was growing nationally and came to power for the first time, it defeated the Congress here – although the Gandhi family was not in the race at those times.
In Amethi, Indira’s eldest son, Feroze Gandhi, lost the 1977 elections but won in 1980. The Congress has lost only once since then, in 1998, before Irani’s upset in 2019. Sonia and Rahul both won from Amethi.
After his defeat in 2019, many pundits wondered whether Rahul would ever contest in the familiar neighborhoods – or even in Uttar Pradesh – again. He won from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala in 2019, and this time contested again from there.
Insiders in the Congress party say that this time he was not convinced about contesting a second seat, but ended up being swayed by pressure from Sonia, who was against giving up her family strongholds without a fight. Rahul’s sister Priyanka, who is now also a Congress leader, decided not to contest.
With Rahul contesting from Rae Bareli, long-time family friend Kishori Lal Sharma is contesting against Irani from Amethi. It’s a scenario that could work for the opposition, some of its leaders say. In the days before Congress decided on its candidates for these seats, Ameeque Jamei, national spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party – the Congress’s biggest ally in Uttar Pradesh – told Al Jazeera that if Rahul or Priyanka contested, the “opposition’s fight against the BJP will gain greater significance”. He predicted that the Congress-led INDIA alliance challenging the BJP at the national level could win as many as 20 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats.
It’s easier said than done. Rahul faces a formidable challenger in BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh, who gave Sonia a tough fight in 2019, substantially reducing her margin of victory. Singh has been relentless in his criticism of the Gandhis’ treatment of his lineage. The party and family rarely mention Feroze Gandhi, Rahul’s grandfather, whose grave is 100 km (60 miles) from Rae Bareli.
“Someone who can’t be your grandfather’s person can be yours,” says Singh.
Barbershop policy
On the ground, Rahul and Priyanka are attacking the sleepy towns of Rae Bareli and Amethi in their own way.
Recently, Rahul walked into a local barbershop to get his beard trimmed. Videos of him sitting in the barbershop went viral. Priyanka divides her time between the two cities, holding road shows and street corner meetings.
The Congress has also brought in other strong leaders to strengthen their campaigns here with their experience and political astuteness. At Rae Bareli’s Shalimar Guest House, Bhupesh Baghel, former chief minister of the central state of Chhattisgarh, is gathering supporters. “Rahul has a lot of support in Rae Bareli. So, I don’t have to do much,” he says.
Ashok Gehlot, former chief minister of Rajasthan, is running the Congress’s campaign in Amethi against Smriti Irani, who has doubled down on her accusations that the Gandhi family neglected the city and Rae Bareli for decades, despite gaining from there.
Congress has the support of two important voting blocs. Muslims constitute 22 percent of the population of Uttar Pradesh. A Muslim leader from Amethi, Muhammad Alam, said many in his community might have considered voting for the BJP, but Modi’s recent attacks – including suggestions that the Congress would take Hindu wealth and give it to Muslims – have caused change their minds.
Gautam Rane, a Dalit activist in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow, says sections of the community, which sits at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy, are also flocking to the Congress. The community traditionally supports the regional Bahujan Samaj Party in the state. The Congress has used scattered comments from some BJP leaders to suggest that the party intends to change the constitution and strip Dalits of the benefits of caste-based affirmative action – a charge the BJP has denied.
“These are Rahul Gandhi’s elections,” says Rane. “Nobody [else] matters.”
* Name changed to protect identity
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
