A spiritual mantle came to be given to Nehruvian socialism that was not the economic or social policy of the Mahatma, who emphasized a Swadeshi movement or nationalist economics promoting cottage industries and development on a village level. The situation deteriorated further when Nehru's mantle fell on his daughter Indira, creating a dynasty that sought to justify its claim to power with the religious image of the Mahatma.

Indira ruled with less tolerance of opposition even than her father, and increased policies of central control, which in the emergency period of the late seventies bordered on dictatorship. The decline continued when Indira's son Rajiv Gandhi took the throne (more or less) when she was assassinated. Lacking his mother's will and courage, Rajiv became a figurehead for forces of corruption that he did not understand and which soon brought about his fall. This Nehru-Gandhi has dynasty dominated the first fifty years since India's independence, and lingers on with the possibility of a Sonia Gandhi entering politics, an Italian Catholic with no political credentials other than the name of her dead husband. 

So deep seated has been the clinging to this family by members of the Congress party that they seem to have no real agenda without someone with a Gandhi name to lead them. India has suffered in the shadow of this family, which has used the Mahatma's image and the slogans of secularism and democracy, though it has resembled more the royal families of the Middle Ages in its machinations and petty manipulations.

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