Point of no return

Congress caught between the family and the hard place

The revolt in the Congress as represented by the letter written by 23 senior leaders to interim President Sonia Gandhi is by no means the first but it comes at a time when the 135-year-old party is at its lowest point in post-independence history, a performance roughly synchronous with Rahul Gandhi’s rise within the party to, first, vice-president-ship (in 2013) and then president-ship (2017). The unacknowledged fact is that Mr Gandhi, 50, lies at the heart of the rebels’ dilemma. He stepped down over a year ago, owning responsibility for the election debacle, and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, 73, took