JAIPUR, India, (Reuters) – Rahul Gandhi embraced his role as a leading contender for India’s next prime minister in a speech yesterday that spoke of his family’s tragic history but yielded few clues about his views on politics and the economy.
Gandhi is heir to a dynasty that began with India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and is now headed by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party. His background and relative youth make him the party’s main hope for elections due next year in the world’s largest democracy.
His father Rajiv and grandmother Indira were both prime ministers and were both assasinated, which the 42-year-old Rahul suggested was a factor in his earlier reluctance to assume a big role in one of the world’s oldest and largest political parties.
Sharing a stage with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the finance minister and other leading members of the cabinet, Gandhi told a packed auditorium of party workers about playing badminton with the men who shot his grandmother when he was eight years old.
“I was taught how to play in my grandmother’s house by two policemen who protected my grandmother. They were my friends, then one day they killed my grandmother and took away the balance in my life,” Gandhi told the rapt audience.
