Congress recently shared a video on Twitter, which features Rahul Gandhi in conversation with the alumni of Indian Institute of Management in Singapore on March 9. In between his conversation, he said that he knew that his grandmother and father would be killed for taking a stand. Rahul Gandhi in Singapore
“We knew that Papa [father] was going to die. We knew that Dadi [paternal grandmother] was going to die. My grandmother told me that she was going to die and my father … I told him that he is going to die. In politics, when you mess with the wrong forces, and if you stand for something, you will die,” he said.
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The message was loud and clear: His family had known that his grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv would be killed for having taken a stand.
The media later asked if he and his sister Priyanka had been able to forgive his father’s killers. To this question, Mr. Gandhi said, “We were very upset and hurt, and for many years we were quite angry. But, somehow, we both have completely … in fact, completely forgiven them.”
RaGa continues and tried to recollect his feelings from the moment when he saw Mr. Prabhakaran died on TV. He said, “There is a history that when one realizes that when these events take place, it’s a collision of ideas, forces, confusion. That’s where you get caught. I remember when I saw Mr. Prabhakaran [former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief] on TV lying dead, I got two feelings — one was why they are humiliating this man in this way.”
“And second was that I felt really bad for him and for his kids and I did that because I understood deeply what it meant to be on the other side of that thing. So to me, when I see violence, regardless of who it is, I know that there is a human being behind that, there is a family behind that, a kid crying behind that,” he added.
Later, he threw light on how he feels the current political environment is. He said, “I was 14 when my grandmother was assassinated. I used to play badminton with those who killed my grandmother. After that, my father was killed. So you live in a particular environment … surrounded by 15 guys from the morning, noon to night, I don’t think that’s a privilege. I think that is quite a hard thing to deal with.”
