India: Politics in India is literally skin deep as hundreds of ruling party Congress Party members have tattooed on their forearms - as a mark of loyalty - the name and form of Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty that has ruled the country for nearly 40 years since independence in 1947.
"Once you tattoo your leader's name on your forearm, it remains for life," Vishnu Prasad, Congress Party head in southern Tamil Nadu state said in the state capital Madras last week.
Mr Prasad was proudly displaying his Rahul Gandhi tattoo as part of the growing nationwide Congress Party campaign to propel the MP into the national political spotlight.
Political analysts and Congress insiders said the party's eventual aim was to thrust India's leadership upon the young Gandhi as part of what the media is calling the "first family's divine right".
Rahul Gandhi (35) is the son of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who heads India's Congress Party in the federal administration.
In political circles, "Madam" - as the Italian-born widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is reverentially called - is widely considered India's de facto ruler, and is increasingly acquiring the image of a leader keeping the top political seat warm for her son by stoking his image as a "dynamic" politician.
Rahul Gandhi's father Rajiv, assassinated in 1991, succeeded his mother Indira Gandhi as prime minister, who in turn had replaced her father Jawaharlal Nehru. Sonia Gandhi is part of India's novel dyarchic system of government that she introduced after last year's elections in which the political buck stops not with prime minister Manmohan Singh, but with her.
After leading her Congress Party to a surprise victory over the Hindu nationalist-led coalition, Mrs Gandhi evolved this unique arrangement under which she heads the disparate coalition, cuts political deals and plans electoral strategies, while the economist Mr Singh, with no political standing or electoral muscle, concentrates on administration.
Now Mrs Gandhi, who brooks no dissent or criticism, is furthering her shy, reticent and somewhat lacklustre son's political career via congressmen who question her actions and motives only at their peril.
Political analysts claim the influence of "the family" - as the Gandhis are known in political circles - is all-pervasive in the obsequious Congress Party.