India’s Congress party seems determined to prove its critics right

IT seemed like a test in a hero’s journey, that ancient Indo-European narrative form. On October 2nd Rahul Gandhi was delivering a message of love and brotherhood to his countryfolk in the state of Karnataka when the heavens opened. Unperturbed, the sodden princeling of the country’s main opposition party, the Congress, carried on. He was on only the 25th day of his five-month, 3,570km Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India march), a bid to revive his struggling party as the counterweight to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi, the prime minister. “Neither rain, heat, nor storms can stop this yatra,” he extemporised.