But his household legacy has not geared up him to compete towards the electoral juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose celebration holds a near-monopoly on energy via nationalist appeals to the nation’s Hindu majority.

Modi has revelled in casting his chief opponent, dubbed an “empty suit” in leaked US embassy cables from 2005, as an out-of-touch princeling extra interested by luxurious and self-indulgence than preventing to helm the world’s greatest democracy.

His Congress celebration was a once-mighty pressure with a proud function in ending British colonial rule 75 years in the past, however below his stewardship it has turn into a shadow of its former self, tormented by infighting and defections.

Rahul was born in 1970 into India’s equal of the Kennedy clan within the United States, with its personal historical past of elite status, political energy and tragedy.

At the time his grandmother Indira Gandhi — daughter of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and no relation to fellow independence hero Mahatma Gandhi — was premier.

Indira was shot useless by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 in retaliation for ordering a navy assault on the Golden Temple, the religion’s holiest shrine, earlier that 12 months.

She was succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father. Rajiv was assassinated in 1991 by a Tamil suicide bomber when Rahul was 20.

Rahul was enrolled at Harvard however dropped out after a 12 months following his father’s dying. He later graduated from Rollins College, Florida and in 1994 earned a grasp’s diploma from Cambridge.

While in his 20s, he lived in London, the place he labored at a administration consultancy for a time as his mom Sonia, Rajiv’s widow, took cost of Congress.

She labored to groom her son for prime workplace however by the point he was prepared to guide, the political fortunes of the charismatic Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have been quick on the rise.

He steered Congress to 2 landslide election defeats, with Modi brazenly mocking his privileged upbringing at marketing campaign rallies and evaluating it to his personal humble origins as “a son of the soil”.

His exhortations of spiritual tolerance and India’s secular traditions additionally didn’t dent the BJP’s muscular advocacy for the Hindu majority, at a time of rising intolerance towards Muslims.

Gandhi stepped down as opposition chief in 2019 after the second loss and his mom additionally vacated the celebration presidency final 12 months.

But analysts say the household stay in de facto management of the celebration and are nonetheless its most recognised faces.

And Gandhi stays the more than likely candidate to defeat Modi in subsequent 12 months’s election, even when political consultants contemplate one other BJP landslide a close to certainty.

In 2019 Gandhi blamed his defeat on Modi’s celebration taking up and turning “the entire machinery of the Indian state” towards the opposition.

Modi’s authorities has been broadly accused of utilizing the legislation to focus on and silence critics, and Gandhi has been hit with a number of prosecutions together with the defamation case on Thursday that led to his disqualification from parliament.

Gandhi faces at the very least two different defamation instances and a cash laundering case that has been snaking its method via India’s glacial authorized system for greater than a decade.

He has additionally struggled in a media surroundings largely in thrall to the BJP’s agenda, with Indian press freedoms declining considerably since Modi took workplace in 2014, based on worldwide watchdogs.

Gandhi’s exploits largely fail to characteristic on cable tv except they solid him in a destructive mild, Zoya Hasan, an educational and political scientist primarily based in New Delhi, instructed AFP in January.

“Anything that undermines the opposition is prime news,” she added.

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