Rahul Gandhi has resigned as president of India's opposition Congress party, long led by his family, to take responsibility for its crushing defeat in recent elections.
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Gandhi's family, starting with his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, has produced three prime ministers. Two of them - his grandmother Indira Gandhi and father, Rajiv Gandhi - were assassinated in office.
Rahul Gandhi lost his own seat, long a Congress party bastion, in the recent elections, marking the end of an era for modern India's most powerful political dynasty.
He had been talking of quitting since the results of the elections were announced in May, but party officials urged him to stay.
In the elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won 303 out of 542 seats in the lower house of Parliament, well beyond the simple majority needed to form a government.
Gandhi said in his resignation letter that the BJP used state organisations to help it win the elections.
"We didn't fight a political party in the 2019 election. Rather, we fought the entire machinery of the Indian state, every institution of which was marshalled against the opposition," Gandhi said. "It is now crystal clear that our once cherished institutional neutrality no longer exists in India."
The BJP's victory was largely seen as a referendum on Modi's Hindu nationalist politics that many say have bred intolerance toward Muslims and other religious minorities.
Since Modi led the BJP to power in 2014, Hindu mobs have lynched dozens of Muslims and lower-caste dalits for allegedly consuming or slaughtering cows, which Hindus consider sacred.
Australian Associated Press
