GETTING an opportunity to watch Rahul Gandhi’s style of campaigning and politics in Amethi and New Delhi, Editor of The Day After Sunil Dang posed some questions to him in a conversation in Amethi and outside Parliament House in New Delhi.

While filing his nomination papers from the Amethi constituency, which had once elected his grandmother Indira Gandhi and later his father Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul had given the impression of a shy, introvert and straight young man of few words. Rajiv Gandhi too, in his first days in politics, was often seen as a reluctant politician and whose speeches seldom exceeded three or four minutes.

Like Rajiv preferred to do most of his own work with his own hands, Rahul too drove his sister Priyanka’s car during the campaign trail all on his own without behaving like a celebrity child.

One recalls an occasion when Rahul was seen changing a wheel of his car at 10, Janpath with a couple of Seva Dal workers standing nearby and watching. When asked why they could not help him, the workers replied with respect, "You see Bhaiya likes to do his own work and does not like others treating him as someone too big and different from him."

That episode gave one the feeling that Rahul was unlike the other celebrity children and star-candidates in the fray in poll 2004. The celebrity children often get spoiled and are intolerant and are a drag for the common-folk. Even when they are small, the political children convey the feeling of being audience-conscious and often contrived. But while Priyanka was sharp and somewhat grown-up in thinking, Rahul was quite cool, who preferred the protection and company of his mother and sister. While campaigning for his Lok Sabha poll and also for other candidates of the Congress along with his mother and sister, he clearly showed that he had grown into an impressive yet unassuming young man who would work hard rather than take short-cuts and serve rather than overlord over others. During the poll campaign, he worked for the Congress and his one poll campaign round-the-clock. It was of course a very consuming but of political work. Asked if Sonia Gandhi declined to accept the post of prime ministership because her children did not want to lose their mother’, implying that there was a threat to their lives, Rahul said , "No. When I won the poll and talked to my mother over phone, she said the same thing, which she had been saying for the last six years. She had come to the political field to serve Congress and the country and not to seek the office of the Prime Minister. I was hurt when they carried on a personal campaign of vilification against her. But now I’m proud of my mother for having taken a historic decision of refusing the prime ministership, listening to her inner voice and setting a new precedent in Indian politics."

When asked whether his mother being compared with Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, he said, "I do not want to compare my mother with anybody, howsoever great. Everyone has an identity and a personality. I want people to identity her and respect her for what she is really and how different she is from those who go on saying all kinds of things about her out of malice and pointless prejudice".

Replying another question, Rahul said, "I did not fight the election to become a minister. I entered politics to strengthen the hands of my mother and the Congress Party. I would like to spend the maximum time in Amethi and serve the people of my constituency."