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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Former US President Barack Obama in his memoirs has compared Indian opposition figure Rahul Gandhi to a hapless student, in a scathing comment about the dynastic scion who twice led his party to crushing defeats.
In the book, A Promised Land, to be published next Tuesday (November 17), Obama writes that Gandhi has “a nervous and reportable quality about him, as if he were a student who has done coursework and is anxious impress the teacher but deep down lacked the aptitude or passion to master the subject, ”according to a review in The New York Times.
Gandhi led the Indian National Congress party in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, which resulted in decisive victories for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party.
Gandhi, 50, has long struggled to combat perceptions that he is not interested in becoming prime minister, a position held by his grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi, both of whom were assassinated.
He spent his younger years studying and working in the United States and Great Britain before returning to India with the expectation of leading Congress, the party that has led India for most of its years since independence.
Gandhi has aggressively attacked Modi’s government on accusations of stoking communalism and favoring business interests, but commentators have often described him as an unnatural politician.
He resigned as head of the Congress party after the latest electoral debacle, but his mother, Sonia Gandhi, remains its president.
In his book, Obama offered a more positive assessment of another figure in Congress, former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a mild-mannered economist whom Obama has also publicly praised.
Gandhi is not the only international figure to receive Obama’s colorful prose, according to the review.
He describes the striking former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, as “with his chest stretched out like that of a rooster.”
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