(Reuters)
17 April 2007
NEW DELHI - Rahul Gandhi, the heir of India's Nehru-Gandhi family, has sparked a political storm with a series of controversial remarks that analysts said showed the immaturity of a likely future national leader.
Rahul, 36, has been the mascot of the ruling Congress party, headed by his Italian-born mother Sonia, in the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and once a bastion of his family.
A first-time lawmaker, he has been on a barnstorming tour of the province and sought votes by trying to highlight the political contributions of his family, which has ruled the country for most of the last six decades.
However, his widely reported remarks have apparently ended up embarrassing his own party and government, as well as provoking a diplomatic spat with neighbouring Pakistan.
First, Rahul said that had his family been in power in 1992, it would have stopped Hindu mobs from razing a controversial mosque in Uttar Pradesh they say was built on the site believed to be the birthplace of Hindu god-king Ram.
The destruction of the ancient mosque, when veteran Congress leader P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister, triggered some of India's worst Hindu-Muslim violence.
Then last week, Rahul claimed family credit for India getting independence from Britain in 1947 and also for saying his family was responsible for the division of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Teething troubles
The first comment angered politicians who said Rahul was attacking a dead prime minister from his own party, while his claim over winning independence was seen as ignoring contributions by other members of India's freedom movement.
The comment on Bangladesh's creation annoyed Pakistan.
"This is something that we have known all along ... there have been efforts to destabilise Pakistan," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
"This is clear admission for the first time perhaps by a scion of a family that was ruling India at that time," she said.
Rahul's grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister when India and Pakistan fought their third war in 1971.
New Delhi has traditionally maintained that it was forced to intervene in what was then East Pakistan after a crisis created by a refugee influx.
But analysts said the comments were ill advised -- the creation of Bangladesh has long been a sore point in relations between India and Pakistan -- at a time when the South Asian rivals were pursuing a slow peace process.
"What they will want to hear from someone like Rahul is not about the bitter legacy of the past, but what lies ahead," the Hindustan Times, considered pro-Congress, said in an editorial.
"We can only hope that these are teething troubles..."
Rahul, a Cambridge-educated business consultant, surprised the country by joining politics and contesting parliamentary polls in 2004.
While he has since refused a larger role either in the party or in government saying he is not ready yet, the Uttar Pradesh campaign was seen as an attempt to groom him for a high-profile position.
On Tuesday, a cartoon in the Indian Express showed a Congress politician nervously holding a picture of Rahul and saying the young Gandhi was "rebuilding the party brick by brick" even as two bricks were falling from the skies behind.
Rahul was not available for comment. But Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi justified his comments.
"Viewed holistically in sum, substance, essence and spirit, Rahul Gandhi said and did nothing wrong," Singhvi said.
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This is a nice article which potrays the complications that may arise due to the statements of Baby Gandhi!
Cheers,
Mythili
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