The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

18 The Sunday Times May 29, 2022

WORLD NEWS

strongly discriminates against Muslims,

who make up 15 per cent of the popula-

tion; and he provocatively set the corner-

stone for a new Hindu temple on the site

of a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya

whose destruction by a Hindu mob in

1992 unleashed sectarian violence that

killed thousands. In recent months, he

has chosen not to condemn waves of fresh

attacks on Muslims across the country.

Some argue that the Congress party’s

fixation with one family is holding the

entire country back. “You cannot restore

democracy to India if there is no democ-

racy in the party that founded India,”

says the historian Kapil Komireddi,

author of Malevolent Republic: A Short

History of New India. “As long as this

dynasty survives, Modi cements his

power.” If you speak to voters, he adds,

the mere “mention of the dynasty”

brings something hostile out of them.

Rahul Gandhi once implied that he

shared this view. Following the disaster of

the 2019 elections, in which even he lost

his seat, in the family stronghold of Ame-

thi, he quit as Congress’s president, blam-

ing himself for the party’s failures.

“My fight has never been a simple bat-

tle for political power,” he wrote in a pub-

lic letter, urging the party to select its new

leader without his intervention. To con-

tain the BJP, he argued, “the Congress

party must radically transform itself”.

His resignation caused despair in Con-

gress. The party’s top brass begged him

to return. Party workers in Delhi

launched a hunger strike outside his

house, and according to one news report,

a man even attempted suicide in protest.

The cord was never cut.

Though Gandhi no longer officially

holds any senior position, he remains its

de facto leader. Aides say he is making

concerted efforts to restructure the party

and enable new voices to emerge.

At a party conference earlier this

month, he laid out proposals to revitalise

Congress through a mass grassroots out-

reach programme, an end to multiple

family members running on the party

ballot, and an allocation of seats reserved

for young members. “This is the battle of

my life,” he said. “I’m not prepared to

accept that so much hate, anger and vio-

lence can spread in my beloved country.”

Loyalists insist that the Gandhis do not

need Congress as much as Congress

needs the Gandhis.

The family — who, despite their sur-

name are not related to the Mahatma —

are political royalty. Aside from the three

former prime ministers in his family tree,

Gandhi’s Italian-born mother, Sonia,

played a behind-the-scenes role in gov-

erning India between 2004 and 2014, and

continues to hold sway as the party’s

interim president. His younger sister, Pri-

yanka, had stayed out of politics until

2019, but has since joined her brother on

the election trail and was described by

one Congress leader last weekend as “the

most popular face in the country”.

However, the multiple blunders and

scandals associated with the dynasty’s

decades in power loom over its present.

The Emergency, when Indira Gandhi

declared a state of emergency in 1975 and

ruled by decree for almost two years, and

a series of corruption scandals, such as a

weapons deal involving the Swedish

All it took was a glimpse of a shoe. After
waiting for hours in the hot sun, more
than a hundred thousand farmers stood
in unison to catch sight of the heir to
India’s most powerful political dynasty.
Confetti guns showered them with the
green, white and orange colours of the
national flag and music exploded from
loudspeakers. Rahul Gandhi had landed
in Warangal.
Son of Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of
Indira Gandhi, great-grandson of the
country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, the headline act slid out of his hel-
icopter onto a football field on the vast,
arid Deccan Plateau, almost 900 miles
south of Delhi, tucking away his phone
into the white folds of his cotton trousers.
For miles in every direction, members
of his Indian National Congress party had
tied posters to trees and lampposts with
their own faces photoshopped next to
his, with captions that read: “Rahul Gan-
dhi, hope of the nation.” Widows of farm-
ers who had killed themselves, holding
photographs of their deceased husbands,
were being paraded on stage to showcase
the sitting government’s failures. Above
them, fireworks lit up the sky.
But no amount of stagecraft and pyro-
technics could hide the uncomfortable
truth: the party Gandhi inherited — the
party that led the fight for independence
and dominated the first half-century of
modern India’s existence — is crumbling.
At stake is the country’s future as a sec-
ular nation. What no one can agree on is
whether Rahul Gandhi, 51, is the problem
or the solution.
Congress has been out of national
power for eight years, and fresh defeats in
key state elections last month did little to
suggest it is poised for a comeback at the
next general election in two years’ time.
Eviction notices are piling up in party
offices in Delhi, where the party’s prop-
erty allocation of government bungalows
has shrunk to reflect its diminished rep-
resentation in parliament. Infighting
between factions, accusations of bribery
and prominent defections cause frequent
press scandals. Even loyalists say Con-
gress may be finished for good.
Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) all but wiped
Congress off the political map in the 2019
national elections, leaving it only 52 of
543 parliamentary seats, too few even to
retain the title of the official opposition.
As prime minister, Modi has destabil-
ised the delicate balance between Hindus
and India’s 200 million Muslims and
begun to change the fabric of the country.
He stripped autonomy from the disputed
Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir; he
pushed through a citizenship law that

Vidhi Doshi Warangal, India

Sex massages and ‘hush money’ — a rather too enlightened Buddhist monk

has been left trying to make

ends meet by promoting

traditional snacks online and

hoping for a record contract.

“I accept the mistakes of

my past, but am now just

asking for the chance to make

a living,” he said.

His disgrace is the latest in

a string of episodes that have

shaken the Thais’ faith in

their supposedly celibate

clergy’s willingness to remain

aloof from worldly

distractions.

All Thai men are supposed

to spend some time as monks

and there are 300,000 clergy

at any given time.

Unsurprisingly, not all

display the highest moral

rectitude. In the upper

echelons of Thai society and

business, it is not uncommon

for men accused of

wrongdoing to seek to escape

attention and display

penance by entering the

monkhood and making

appropriate donations.

Pongsakorn, 23, worked as

a singer and puppeteer as a

teenager before caring for his

ill mother and taking

monastic orders at 18 to

honour her wishes after her

death. He never lost his

performing zeal.

Known by the religious title

Phra (Venerable) Kato, he

quickly built a national profile

with his TikTok preaching,

amusing demeanour, digital

savvy and good looks.

He became a money-

raising machine in a country

where donations to monks

and temples are seen as part

of the Buddhist concept of

merit-making and treated by

some Thais as down-

payments for the afterlife.

Despite his youth in an

institution dominated by

elders, he was fast-tracked to

acting abbot at a southern

Thai temple and was on the

verge of being permanently

appointed to the position,

which would have given him

full legal control of the

institution’s finances.

But this month he was

summoned to a police station

where he acknowledged a

charge of removing £14,

from temple funds to secure

the silence of an embittered

former lover and a journalist

aware of their liaisons.

Baitong Primvalin, 37, an

actress and model, first

contacted Phra Kato via social

media to seek his pastoral

advice. Earlier this year she

travelled from Bangkok to his

temple with her mother.

The two remained in

contact and their relationship

grew closer. On one visit, the

monk apparently suggested a

late-night trip to go star-

gazing near a local dam.

There, in her car, she said

he asked her for a shoulder

massage to deal with his

exhaustion. By her account

he assured her that laying

hands on a monk in this

context was acceptable. He

has said she seduced him.

Following what has been

reported as “two hours of

intimate conversation” they

had sex. There was at least

one more encounter but after

two months the ardour

turned to acrimony.

After recordings of their

intimate moments were

leaked to the media, senior

monks tried to close ranks to

protect their rising star, but

as public indignation

mounted he left the

monkhood on April 30.

The dam where the couple

had their sexual encounters is

now a tourist spot attracting

droves of visitors.

In response to the Phra

Kato furore, the National

Office of Buddhism, a

government agency reporting

to the prime minister, has

announced that breaking

celibacy vows will become a

criminal offence, punishable

with up to five years in jail for

the monk and sexual partner.

Opponents of the plan say

sexual liaisons should not be

criminalised and that the

move fails to address a much

deeper problem — the lack of

transparency over temple

funds. The sums involved are

often huge and donations are

impossible to track as abbots

and their assistants oversee

the books. Research in 2012

estimated that 30,

temples received £2.8 billion

a year in donations.

@PhilipSherwell

The handsome Buddhist
monk had a huge social
media following, a prodigious
gift for fundraising and a clear
path to becoming Thailand’s
youngest abbot.
But he also had a fateful
secret plan to go star-gazing
with a beautiful older
woman.
The subsequent implosion
of Pongsakorn Chankaew’s
spiritual career amid lurid
reports of sexual encounters
and embezzled hush money
is now a national scandal.
It has fuelled calls this
month for the reform of the
country’s “rotten” clerical
system as Thais have flocked
to temples to celebrate the
birth, enlightenment and
death of Buddha on one of
their religion’s holiest days.
The recently disrobed monk

Philip Sherwell Bangkok

Phra Kato was set to be made abbot of his monastery when

details of his affair with Baitong Primvalin became public

Rahul Gandhi,

seen speaking at

a rally, is the

grandson of

Indira, above,

India’s only

female prime

minister, who

was assassinated

in 1984

manufacturer Bofors that implicated her

son Rajiv, are among the long list of blem-

ishes tainting the Gandhi name.

Rahul Gandhi’s princelike upbringing

also alienates voters in aspirational India,

and contrasts uncomfortably with Modi’s

rags-to-riches ascent to the highest office

from an allegedly impoverished child-

hood as a railway station chai seller.

Born in Delhi, Gandhi attended the

elite Doon School in the foothills of the

Himalayas until his grandmother’s assas-

sination by her own bodyguards in 1984.

Seven years later his father was killed by a

suicide bomber.

Much of his early life was spent in a

close protection bubble. Prahlad Kakkar

used to go on yearly scuba-diving trips

with Gandhi in the remote islands of Lak-

shadweep in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“His security felt they had to protect him

even underwater,” Kakkar said.

After stints of further education and

private-sector work in the US and UK,

Gandhi returned to India in 2004 and

joined the Congress party as its favoured

heir. It was led at the time by his mother

Sonia, Rajiv’s widow.

He was easily pigeonholed as a dilet-

tante, prone to political gaffes and lofty

musings that made him look out of touch.

Gandhi compensates for his closeted

existence through education and sur-

rounding himself with a team of highly

educated technocrats, academics and

professionals. He reads a lot, according to

multiple aides. Over time, they say, his

speeches and political judgments have

improved. “He runs his office like a CEO.

But he doesn’t have that hardened politi-

cal instinct,” a Delhi reporter observes.

Unmarried and childless, Gandhi is

persecuted by the press for maintaining

any semblance of a work-life balance. A

leaked video of him attending a friend’s

wedding in Nepal this month led to a cir-

cus of accusations.

In contrast, Modi’s single-minded

obsession with politics is well docu-

mented — he rises at dawn, works tire-

lessly and never takes holidays.

At a time when the prime minister’s

party is threatening democratic norms,

Congress has arguably never been

weaker. Multiple party cadres say there

are too many big egos vying for power.

“This party has only leaders and more

leaders,” one official told me. “All of them

think they should be the one.”

And when clashes occur, only the Gan-

dhis have the clout to mediate. “It is not a

party that follows any rigid structural

principles,” a political reporter in Delhi

explained. “Everything and anything

lands at the doors of the Gandhis.”

At the farmers’ rally in Warangal, cas-

cades of fawning party officials

approached to greet him personally by

placing their scarves around his neck.

Gandhi returned polite namastes, dis-

carding scarves in every direction.

“Farmers are the foundation of this

land,” he said, announcing that the Con-

gress party would guarantee farmers a

fair price for their paddy crops and write

off their debts.

“It’s good that [Gandhi] has chosen to

highlight farmers as a centrepiece of his

campaign,” said Kiran Kumar Vissa, the

co-founder of a politically independent

farmers’ organisation, Rythu Swarajya

Vedika. “It’s an opening gambit for the

next elections.”

The morning after the rally, party

workers hustled for access to meet and

get selfies with the leader. They clam-

oured outside his hotel for hours, holding

gifts and bouquets of roses. They climbed

over each other, pushing and shoving to

get videos as he walked past.

“The Congress party is not a political

party,” says Komireddi, the historian. “It is

a cult. It exists not to win elections. It exists

to provide subsistence to one dynasty.”

India has a habit of mythologising its

leaders, but as a result they become

tough acts to follow. Questions of succes-

sion plague the BJP too. None of its lead-

ers rival Modi in stature and influence.

Gandhi appears to have only two paths

open to him. Either he rises to the ranks

of the immortals, or he watches from the

driving seat, as the behemoth built by his

forefathers falls.

Rahul Gandhi’s bid to become the dynasty’s

fourth-generation PM may destroy his ailing

party and cement Narendra Modi’s power

Is it

game

over

for the

Gandhis?

Everything

lands at the

doors of the

Gandhis

GERRARD HERBERT “BILL” WARHURST/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

THE GANDHI

DYNASTY

STAINED

WITH

TRAGEDY

Husband: Feroze Gandhi

PM 1966 and 1980-

Assassinated

Indira Gandhi

Congress party

member

Killed in

plane crash,

1980

Sanjay Gandhi

Independent MP

1996-

Joined Bharatiya

Janata party (BJP)

in 2004

Maneka Gandhi

Congress party

president

2017-

Rahul Gandhi

PM 1984-

Assassinated

Rajiv Gandhi

Congress party

president

1998-2017, 2019-

Sonia Gandhi

Husband:

Robert Vadra

India’s first PM

PM 1947-

Wife: Kamala Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru

Joined BJP in 2004

Varun Gandhi

Congress party

poliitician

since 2019

Priyanka

Gandhi