Rahul Gandhi’s interaction with college students in Puduchery took a bizarre and weird turn today when a question was asked regarding the assassination of his father, Late PM Rajiv Gandhi. Speaking to students at the Bharathidasan College for Women in Puducherry, a student asked Mr. Gandhi, “You father was killed by the LTTE. What are your feelings about these people?’
Mr. Gandhi then proceeded to give the same old Gandhi family answer to any question regarding PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination by the LTTE. Mr. Gandhi solemnly recited the obligatory Gandhi family answer, saying that there is no anger or hatred in his heart, with the feeling of forgiveness oozing through his words. It may be noted that earlier Rahul Gandhi had said that he had forgiven the killers of his father. His sister Priyanka Gandhi had even met one of the convicts in the case, Nalini Sriharan, in jail.
However, the bizarre portion came after Rahul’s memorized line, when Rahul Gandhi, presumably in order to connect with the audience, asked the student whether her father was alive or not. After that, Rahul Gandhi says, “I am sure many girls here have lost their father’. In its most charitable interpretation, this was Rahul Gandhi trying to connect with any student he could possibly find who had lost their father. Presumably, Rahul Gandhi feels that the only way he can get the pain of his father’s death across to the students is by pointing to one of the students present who had lost their father. But the bizarre manner in which he says it comes across as very awkward, resulting in many confused looks from the audience.
Rahul Gandhi’s father, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on 21 May 1991 in Tamil Nadu by the LTTE, a group of radical Tamil extremists. The Gandhi family has famously forgiven the perpetrators behind this assassination because of the false and insulting notion that there Indian Tamil sympathizers for Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Frankly, the Gandhi family has no right to forgive the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi, seeing as 14 other Indians were killed in that bombing.