Depending on how badly you have been behaving on the internet, you will have been served the Rahul Gandhi edits by now. One, which has been viewed 3.5 million times, begins with a simple caption, “Things I like about BJP,” before offering the big reveal: “Their Opposition”. One after another, photos of Rahul Gandhi – from his public life during his twenties to a bearded shot from his Bharat Jodo Yatra to the famous white shirt clinging to his defined abs – form a carousel set to an earwormy Guru Randhawa track.
A similar one is set to Boney M’s Rasputin, a song about “Russia’s greatest love machine”, a classic firmly lodged in the fancam lexicon. Yet another thirst-trap is labelled “The only propaganda I fall for” and has clocked 1.5 million views. Populating the comment section of these videos are young women – and a great many young men – none of whom is pretending to be talking about politics. Zaddy, they call him, and my favourite, “the Indian Christian Grey.”Gandhi might have always been in the public eye, but rarely has he been rewarded with people’s attention. However, something has shifted over the last month, and for the first time, we are not automatically scrolling past him. Of course, he is also one of the only men in Indian politics who can lose this consistently and still be around to be rediscovered.
