Rahul Gandhi’s decision to take a break from politics has revived memories of similar gestures by two of his ancestors.
Except that great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru and grandmother Indira Gandhi had contemplated not sabbaticals but an exit from politics altogether.
Both were persuaded to stay on by an alarmed party and went on to change the course of Indian history as Prime Minister – an accomplishment that would appear a daunting challenge for Rahul at the moment.
Another key difference is that both Nehru and Indira had thought of quitting from positions of strength unlike Rahul, whose abilities and style of functioning have come under severe questioning inside and outside the Congress following serial electoral disasters.
Nehru had twice sought permission from the Congress Working Committee and party parliamentary board to retire.
In 1950, he had been upset when Purushottam Das Tandon, a protégé of Vallabhbhai Patel, defeated Acharya Kripalani in the election for party president. A few months after Nehru’s walkout threat, Tandon had to resign.
In 1958, Nehru told President Rajendra Prasad he wanted freedom from the pressures of politics to live a quiet life amid books and friends and go on a “slow pilgrimage” to various parts of the country. Again, the party prevailed on him to drop the idea.
Indira too voiced her “dream of escape” twice when she was the official hostess for her father at the Prime Minister’s residence.
She wrote to her friend Dorothy Norman, an American photographer and writer, in 1958 that she felt unsettled and trapped.
“Ever since I was a small girl, there seemed to be some force driving me on, as if there were a debt to repay,” she wrote.
“But suddenly the debt seems to be paid – anyway I get a tremendous urge to leave everything and retire to a far place in the mountains. Not caring if I ever did a stroke of work again.”
In the next few months, though, Indira chose to become Congress president to the surprise of many in the party.