NEW DELHI—I am in the bedroom where the great man died 50 years ago.

Jawaharlal Nehru, after whom the great Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is named, was the first prime minister of independent India and chief architect of its democratic and secular foundations. Going against the grain of the times, he insisted on granting a vote to every citizen, however poor or illiterate. He abhorred sectarianism and epitomized the multicultural, multilingual and multi-religious polity that he wanted modern India to be.

His mansion, now a museum, has only a handful of visitors on the day after his family lost political control of the country and is facing growing calls that it should also relinquish control of the ruling Congress Party that he once headed.

India’s political royalty has been undone by Narendra Modi, a former chaiwallah, tea boy at a railway station. A Hindu populist, he has led the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide victory, toppling the Congress government and reducing the ruling party to less than 50 seats in parliament and forfeit official party status.

As the prime minister-elect made a triumphant entry into the capital Saturday, the thousands who cheered him and the hundreds of millions who voted for him have little or no idea of Nehru’s legacy. If they do, they may not want to be reminded of it.

Unfortunately, the same may be true of Nehru’s own family, even if periodically it invokes his name.

He died in 1964 and two years later his daughter Indira became prime minister, having earlier been president of Congress, as he had been.

She was a Gandhi by marriage, to Feroze Gandhi, a Zoroastrian, and no relation of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence who, with Nehru, had helped free India from British colonialism.

She was defeated in 1977 but made a comeback in 1980, only to be assassinated four years later (by militant Sikhs). By then she had inducted her reluctant son Rajiv into the family business as secretary of Congress, which dutifully named him prime minister.

He lost an election four years later and was himself assassinated (by Tamil terrorists).

His widow, Sonia — the Italian Antonia Maino, a waitress whom he had met in England — took over Congress in 1998 and led the party to victory in 2004. She declined to become prime minister to avoid a nasty BJP campaign that “an Italian Christian” should not lead Hindu majority India. She named Manmohan Singh, a respected former World Bank economist, to the job. But she remained the power behind the throne.

The arrangement worked well and the government was re-elected in 2009. But it has been downhill since. He could not take decisions without her approval. She would endlessly calculate the political ramifications of each move. What power he did have, he would not exercise. Economic liberalization, which he himself had initiated as finance minister in the 1990s, stalled. When corruption scandals broke, he did not fire the implicated ministers and officials. A man of great integrity himself, he lost credibility.

So did Sonia Gandhi, who was by now grooming her reluctant son, Rahul and, to a lesser degree, his older sister, Priyanka.

The more he was pushed up in Congress hierarchy — general secretary, then vice-president — the more Singh seemed a benchwarmer and a family munshi, factotum. On the eve of the election, he made for a sad sight when announcing that he would be stepping down but that Rahul would make a fine prime minister.

Rahul, 43, was duly named Congress’ prime ministerial candidate, even though he had proven inept at attracting votes in several state elections. He had zero charisma. His speeches were pedantic, his command of the issues shaky, his answers a recall of memorized clichés unconnected to the questions posed. Worse, he seemed disinterested.

Singh and Sonia could not pitch in, either. Both read their speeches, stiffly. Her efforts in Hindi, the national language, were counterproductive, as she still mispronounces words and comes across as a parody of British colonial officers straining to communicate with the locals.

Modi, by contrast, has a commanding presence on stage. He speaks extempore, banters with audiences, entertains them with biting put-downs of the Gandhis — “Mother-son-raj,” with the shehzadah, crown prince, waiting in the wings; dynastic dinosaurs, out of touch with the increasingly meritorious India, of which he, from a poor low-caste family, is a shining specimen.

The Gandhis had no answer, except to invoke the principles of secularism and the legacy of Nehru, which not too many voters relate to, especially the young, 150 million of whom entered the electoral rolls for the first time. Modi was promising them jobs, the Gandhis some abstract principles, badly articulated.

The election results were so devastating that Sonia and Rahul barely held their adjoining ridings, the ones they had inherited from Indira and Rajiv.

But deification of rulers, a longstanding Indian tradition, is not quite dead yet. At the funereal headquarters of Congress – 24 Akbar Road, named after the great 16th century Mughal king but better known as a storied contemporary locale — a handful of workers were trying, hard, to raise the slogan, “We want Priyanka, we want Priyanka.”

Then came Sonia and Rahul to face the cameras and say, as briefly as possible, that they took “moral responsibility” for the debacle. They took no questions.

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On dozens of TV channels in dozens of languages, excited anchors and interviewers were haranguing Congress spokespeople — shouldn’t the Gandhis go?

But no one in any official capacity would take the bait. They have careers to protect.

It took political pundits and intellectuals to say the obvious. Ramachandra Guha, historian and author of India After Gandhi (the mahatma, that is) said that Rahul is “not cut out for politics,” indeed “incompetent” and should resign. So should Sonia. “The Congress Party cannot be saved by the Gandhis.”

Earlier, he had told me that the rightwing BJP’s win would open up space for a left-of-centre party. “There are many talented people in Congress but they would emerge only if the dynasty departs.”

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