I wrote this letter as part of a Coursera assignment. A day later, the former Japanese Prime Minister was assassinated… The coincidence/ timing was spooky!
Disclaimer – The post is neither intended to hurt anybody’s sentiments nor to condone violence.
Dear Miss Mukherji
For some reason, I got reminded of the day Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. It was the middle of summer but I believe it had rained that day. I was six years old then & wasn’t a history student yet. But this is my earliest memory of a ‘national’ event. As I remember this, who is a better person to write to than you, who taught me History a few years down the line & made me fall in love with it?
On that day in 1991, there was a sense of shock amongst the grownups in my family. The assassination was the only conversation topic for many days following the event. A few agreed with the PM Rajiv Gandhi’s policies, others didn’t. But seeing your young leader pass away like that left a dent on many minds.
I was too young to understand the causes & ramifications of this event, let alone pronounce the word ‘assassination’. However, I had realized that something of epic proportions had taken place. I would hear the adults launch into discussions regarding the cause of Prime Minister’s death.
I also remember the front page of the 22 May 1991 edition of The Times of India. ‘Rajiv Gandhi Assassinated’, the headline had screamed. A black & white photo of a sombre PM accompanied the news story.
Over the next few days, more graphic details had emerged. I remember the furor the very name of LTTE began to cause. My childish brain couldn’t comprehend the geopolitical complications at hand but the way Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated left an impression on my mind.
It was perhaps my first tryst with suicide bombing, something that became a norm in the years to come. I had wondered how a person could be so committed to a cause that to annihilate her/ his enemy, s/ he could end her/ his life too.
Over the years, with color print making its way into our lives, gory images of this deadly event came to the fore. I remember being fascinated with images of the bombing site – blood everywhere, bits & pieces of flesh, pandemonium in the background, security personnel looking at one out of a pair of sneakers.
This had cemented my amazement with the macabre. Even today, I don’t get put off by blood & gore. I, instead, find accident/ attack sites captivating. Hospitals scare a lot of people but not me. Blood is just something that exists, & not something that will make me faint.
Anyway, I digress. Over time, as I gained maturity & an interest in geopolitics, I understood the causes of PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Views & counter-views helped me in forming an opinion if the Prime Minister had been right in involving India in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
The Indian subcontinent wasn’t a particularly peaceful place in the 1990s. To add to it, playing Big Brother made India pay with its leader. Standing here today, in 2022, we have countless examples of how playing Big Brother hasn’t helped any country at all.
In 2019, I visited the Indira Gandhi Memorial. One of the displays there was the remains of clothing worn by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his assassination. His clothes, well, they can’t be counted as clothes anymore. The socks & shoes, surprisingly, remained largely intact.
Has this event made its way into history books? Are children taught how fundamentalism of any sort is dangerous? Or that we mustn’t bite off more than we can chew? Has India itself learnt her lessons from this?
I do agree that the security of leaders has undergone a massive change. Since PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, there’s been no harm to any elected Indian leader. (Touch-wood!) Geopolitics itself has undergone a transformation. Now, countries usually don’t attack each other militarily; they assail where it hurts most, i.e., financially!
