Sonia Gandhi, president of India’s ruling Congress party, on Friday launched a vituperative attack on what she called the unchecked greed of bankers and businessmen, recalling the glory days of her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi who began nationalising commercial banks in the late 1960s.

Mrs Gandhi said the global financial crisis would force India to put aside its ambitions for the new century while Asia’s third largest economy grappled with the cataclysm thrust upon it by “the hubris of the rich”.