Mother India, RELOADED

Like her grandmother Indira did in the 1960s, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is channelling her motherly instincts to win her electoral debut, in Wayanad

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

It was like a family reunion, only bigger. The entire forest village of Amarambalam, near Nilambur in Malappuram, seemed to have converged at Pookkottumpadam junction. The crowd had gathered an hour before Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s scheduled meeting at 2.30pm. It was a school day, but children filled the streets—some clutching their parents’ hands, others dashing about, laughing and playing with friends. Women occupied the plastic chairs in the front rows. As the meeting time neared, the crowd continued to swell, especially with more women arriving, prompting party workers to bring additional chairs. I stopped a young boy and asked him why he was there. “To see Priyanka Gandhi,” he replied.

“And, who is Priyanka Gandhi?” I quizzed, again.

“Rahul Gandhi’s sister,” he said, before darting back to his friends, who were busy running in circles.

In April, when Rahul Gandhi contested from Wayanad for the second time, there were restrictions on waving Congress and Indian Union Muslim League flags at campaign rallies. That was to avoid what had happened in 2019—political rivals had run a false propaganda using images of IUML flags to say that Pakistan flags were waved at Rahul’s rallies. Now with Priyanka contesting the bypolls—Rahul vacated the seat to retain Raebareli—no such restrictions applied. In Pookkottumpadam, the Congress and IUML flags, along with the blue flags of the Congress’s Kerala Students Union, fluttered in unison to the vibrant beats of a dholak.