In India, Support Cools for a Gandhi in a Traditional Stronghold

Amethi: Naimesh Prasad Pandey, a 60-year-old farmer, can testify to the generations of love that people here have reserved for the Gandhi family.

He remembers, with painful clarity, that he was working in his fields when the news came over his transistor radio that Indira Gandhi had been shot by one of her bodyguards, an event that cast him into a state of despair that, he said, did not lift for more than a year. Seven years later, the same transistor radio - "my constant companion," the farmer called it - carried the news of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. After that "most heinous of crimes," he said, he felt a swelling of love and loyalty toward Rajiv's children, in particular the boy Rahul, who, as an adult, would run for Parliament from the Amethi constituency.

So it was noticeable this week, on the day voters went to the polls in Amethi, that Pandey's face set into a cold mask when asked whether he would be voting for Rahul Gandhi, who is running for the third time in this constituency. Pandey pointed at the pools of stagnant, trash-clogged water that stand on the city's main street, and the men gathered around him chimed in with their own complaints until it was difficult to hear anyone at all.

"Amethi - what it was 30 years back, it is stuck in a time warp, and remains the same," Pandey said. Asked about the political magic associated with the Nehru-Gandhi family, he grimaced. "We are just flowing along with the feeling that two of them have given their lives to the country, so we will give our votes back to them," he said. "We want a change."

With a week left before votes are counted in India's general election, the Indian National Congress is fighting to retain its hold on traditional strongholds - few of them more time-honored than Amethi, which has stood firmly behind the dynasty for all but a few years since India won independence in 1947.

Rahul Gandhi took the unusual step of visiting a series of polling stations around Amethi on Wednesday. He coolly told a reporter that winning his seat here was a "non-challenge," and most observers still expect him to win a majority of the votes here. But he is unlikely to win the commanding margin he received five years ago, and his reception was certainly not the worshipful one that visitors from the Gandhi family are used to. (Also read: In Amethi Visit On Polling Day, Rahul Gandhi Rebuts Modi On 'Neech Rajniti' Row)

At one stop, he was heckled by a young man who came up behind him and asked, "Sir, did you feel the bumps while coming here, on the roads? Any bump on the head?" Gandhi turned around, touched the man briefly on the wrist, and said, matter-of-factly, "You, brother, should go and work with the BJP," the party headed by his rival, Narendra Modi. As Gandhi strode away, a cluster of young men began chanting "Har har Modi," an echo of the prayerful verses used when bathing in the Ganges, a river considered holy by many Indians. (Also read: The Varanasi Rush. A-Listers Campaign One Last Time.)

For months, Modi has systematically stripped away at the aura of reverence that has surrounded the family, in speeches that are by turns sneering and booming. His increasingly pugnacious attacks culminated Monday, when he arranged a rally in Amethi, the family's historical bastion. One speaker went so far as to raise the long-verboten topic of Jawaharlal Nehru's rumored love affair with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of Britain's last viceroy to the Raj.

But the worst damage seemed to have come from Modi's promise to overhaul the country's infrastructure. A heavy rain had fallen the night before voting day, and as the temperature soared past 100 degrees, fetid water had collected on Amethi's rutted roads and alleyways, in some spots so deep that some shopkeepers put down walkways made out of empty crates. Shailesh Pandey, 34, said that Gandhi had been his representative in Parliament for 10 years, and should have managed to arrange for a drainage system to be built.

"I have to wade through knee-deep water to go to my shop, and I have waded through it for many years," he said. "This year was the point in time when change has to be brought about. I will not wade through knee-deep water anymore."

Of the Gandhis, he said only, "I won't vote for someone simply because he has that surname."
His complaint about drainage is not entirely fair; roads are a subject of the state government, and the state is currently headed by the Samajawadi Party, not the Indian National Congress. As a member of Parliament, Gandhi's ability to overhaul infrastructure is limited to allocating an annual fund amounting to about $833,000. But that logic had limited value this week. Voters here are feeling the full effect of the political phenomenon known in Hindi as "hawa," or wind - the growing realization that a winning side has now taken shape, drawing all those not firmly committed into its fold.

Of course, a vast number of people in Amethi - about half of those approached for interviews - weren't budging. Older voters were more likely to be loyal to Congress, as were women and Muslims. Rohit Karshal, 23, was among those who saw Modi's promises on development as illusory ones, but he acknowledged that that did not make them any less enticing.
"When a new sari shop opens next to an old one, everyone forgets about the old one," he said, with a sigh. "That's what is happening here."