Over years of ineffectual challenges to Narendra Modi, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was ruthlessly mocked by the prime minister’s party as a “shehzada” or “pappu” — Hindi for a princeling and a na?f.
But the 53-year-old scion of the Indian National Congress party this week enjoyed the biggest breakthrough of his career. Congress and its opposition alliance, known by the acronym INDIA, pulled off a shock result in India’s general election by doubling their seat count and robbing Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party of its majority.
Gandhi and INDIA, apparently weakened by a decade of Modi’s rule and all but written off by pollsters before the vote, proved unexpectedly deft electoral strategists and are now in a position to seriously challenge the BJP’s dominance over the country of 1.4bn people.