The crowd surged towards the white Land Cruiser, fists pumping the air, necks craning for a glimpse of the man who embodies India’s bloody political past and its uncertain future.

“Long live Rahul!” they shouted, tossing marigold petals in the air as security guards heaved them back to allow the vehicle’s doors to open. Suddenly there he was — Rahul Gandhi, the 36-year-old son of Sonia and the late Rajiv, making his symbolic debut as heir to one of the world’s great political dynasties.

Wearing a white tunic — and apparently no body armour — he hoisted himself on the side of the car with a shy, yet winning, smile. He waved and touched a few outstretched hands.

Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he climbed back behind the wheel and sped off towards the next cluster of curious farmers.

Such was the scene as Mr Gandhi embarked on a three-day road show this week before crucial state elections in Uttar Pradesh on April 7.

They may not have been his first public appearances — he has been an MP since 2004 — but they were without doubt his most significant.

Over the past three years he has avoided the media, made only two speeches in Parliament and confined his political work to his constituency of Amethi in this northern state.

Now he is spearheading the Congress Party’s election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 166 million people, and a bellwether for national elections in 2009.

Mr Gandhi’s first significant responsibility in the party is seen as confirmation that he is being groomed to take over as Congress leader and the next Prime Minister of India.

It is also a key element of the party’s drive to rejuvenate itself after defeats in two local elections and criticism of its failure to extend India’s economic boom to the rural poor.

“Rahul is a young man . . . and young people feel he has charisma,” Akhilesh Singh, a local Congress official, said. “And naturally if you’re from his family, and you’re in politics, people hope you’ll be prime minister.”

Mr Gandhi’s family has been synonymous with Indian politics since before the country won independence from Britain in 1947.

His great-grandfather, Jawa-harlal Nehru, was India’s first Prime Minister.

His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was Prime Minister until she was assassinated in 1984.

His father, Rajiv Gandhi, was also Prime Minister — and was also assassinated in 1991.

His mother, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, is the current Congress leader.

She and other party bigwigs hope that Mr Gandhi, who studied at Harvard and Cambridge, can win new support among the 70 per cent of Indians who are under 35. But, as this week’s road show illustrated, his popularity and political acumen are still a matter of debate. His pedigree guarantees him the devotion of hard-core Congress supporters, such as Radhey Upadhyaya, a 50-year-old postal worker, who says that he walked eight miles (13km) barefoot to hear Nehru speak in 1956.

This week he was among 2,000 people at a scheduled rally for Mr Gandhi in the city of Bareilly. “There are no other people who’ve made sacrifices for this country like them,” Mr Upadhyaya said of the Gandhis. “In terms of intellect and money they are the best.”

The problem is that few people feel the same way in Uttar Pradesh, which Congress has not controlled for 15 years. In the last state elections it won 8.8 per cent of the vote.

Politics here is dominated by the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, both of which campaign along caste lines. It is also highly criminalised, with 200 of the 403 members of the state assembly facing charges — 93 for murder or kidnapping.

Mr Gandhi used his road show to call for an end to the violent caste-based politics that have turned Uttar Pradesh into one of India’s poorest and most lawless states.

“In the last 15 years these parties have broken up along caste and religious lines,” he told several hundred supporters in a village near Bareilly.

“If you want to progress from where you were 15 years ago, the youth must come and support us. Give me that chance.”

But turnout at Mr Gandhi’s rallies was thin compared with those of his mother and even his younger sister, Priyanka.

Congress officials said that 100,000 people attended one of his rallies in Muzaffarnagar. Witnesses said that there were more like 10,000. The Bareilly rally was supposed to attract 50,000, but was cancelled after 2,000 showed up.

Mr Gandhi’s political instincts were also cast into doubt by a remark about a mosque that was destroyed by Hindu nationalists in 1992, triggering weeks of communal violence.

In an apparent effort to win Muslim votes, he said that if a Gandhi had been in power the mosque would not have been razed. Opponents from all sides condemned the comment, pointing out that Rajiv Gandhi had opened the mosque to Hindu worshippers in 1989.

Few expect Congress to perform well in the election, but it has at least thrust the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to the forefront of Indian politics.

“They’re dipping his toes in the swimming pool to see if he can swim,” said Inder Malhotra, a political analyst and author of Dynasties of India and Beyond. “The party needs him because, apart from the first family, there’s nothing else to it.”

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