Days after the Supreme Court of India ordered the release of 6 convicts, including S Nalini and her husband Murugan, in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress party tried to cover up its hypocrisy by blaming the “New India” under PM Modi.
Years after Sonia Gandhi reportedly wrote a letter seeking a pardon for the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi indulged in grandstanding over “forgiving” their father’s killers, Congress targeted the Modi government for the court’s decision on the remission of punishment to Rajiv Gandhi’s killers.
Senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala recently tweeted that terrorists convicted of assassinating a PM describing themselves as “freedom fighters” can only happen in Modi’s “New India”—the apparent dig at the Modi government over its definition of a new India unmistakable.
Surjewala also attacked the media saying that zero outrage and zero debate are the new norms in “New India”, notwithstanding the fact that media channels have discussed the implications of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers threadbare, with some political analysts condemning the court ruling that granted remission to the convicts responsible for the assassination of an Indian Prime Minister.
Earlier last week, Congress released a statement denouncing the release of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. “The Congress party criticises it and finds it wholly untenable,” a statement released by senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said.
While Surjewala seemed outraged and dismayed at the release of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers, he and the Congress party have rarely expressed disapproval, let alone condemnation of the Gandhi family, who sought pardon for the assassins and publicly called for forgiving them for their sins.
Congress outrages over granting remission to Rajiv Gandhi’s killers while the Gandhi family sought a pardon for them
Sonia Gandhi, the wife of Rajiv Gandhi and matriarch of the Congress party, had written a letter seeking a pardon for the killers of the former PM. In 1999, Sonia Gandhi, then Congress party president, wrote a letter to then-president, K R Narayanan, asking him to commute the capital punishment awarded to the three men and Murugan’s wife, Nalini.
“Our family does not contemplate that the four people should be hanged for the killing of my beloved husband. Myself as well as my son, my daughter does not want these four people should be hanged (sic),” Gandhi is quoted as saying in the letter that has been translated back into English.
The letter further adds that Sonia and her children were against the death penalty awarded to Nalini, who had an eight-year-old daughter at the time.
“My children suffered at the death of my beloved husband Rajiv Gandhi to a great extent, and therefore we do not favour that another child in the world should lose mother and father (sic),” Sonia Gandhi is quoted as saying in the letter.
Rahul Gandhi, too, has forgiven the killers of his father. In his interaction with the students of a state-run women’s college in Puducherry in 2019, Gandhi said that he had forgiven his father’s killer and had no feelings of “anger or hatred” against them.
In conformity to the content of a letter reportedly written by Sonia Gandhi seeking a pardon for the killers of Rajiv Gandhi, her daughter and Rahul’s sister, Priyanka Gandhi, too, had pardoned the assassins responsible for the death of her father and India’s then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
However, Randeep Surjewala and other Congress leaders outraged over the release of the killers had no qualms when the Gandhi family sought pardon for them.
Congress remains in alliance with DMK, which has openly hailed the SC decision of releasing the 6 convicts in Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination case
Moreover, MK Stalin, the chief of DMK, a political party in alliance with the Congress, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision to release the killers of Rajiv Gandhi.
In a statement, Stalin said the verdict ordering the release of six convicts, including S Nalini and her husband Murugan, was a victory to the “strong legal struggles” undertaken by the DMK government after assuming office in 2021. He said the victory can also be credited to those who believed in humanity and human rights.
“The Supreme Court verdict is proof that Governors who are appointed to the post cannot sit on decisions taken by governments democratically elected by the people. This judgement is also a historic foreword to democratic principles,” Stalin said.
Yet, Congress is still in alliance with the DMK and has not condemned Stalin for his remarks hailing the release of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. Instead, it criticised the Modi government when one of the convicts denied being a terrorist and characterised himself as a victim.
“People of North India should see us as victims instead of terrorists or killers. Time and power determine who’s a terrorist or a freedom fighter. Time will judge us as innocent, even if we bear the blame for being terrorists”: Rajiv Gandhi case convict Ravichandran told the media.
Quoting Ravichandran’s remarks in the media, Surjewala claimed that Modi’s new India is allowing Rajiv’s killers to be branded as ‘freedom fighters’, except that it is Congress’ ‘Idea of India’ that enables it.
How Congress’ ‘Idea of India’ entails perversion, distortion, and contortion of reality to suit their brand of appeasement politics
According to the Congress’ ‘Idea of India’, Kalashnikov-wielding terrorists in Kashmir become ‘misguided youth’. Their religious fanaticism and rabid belief in militant Islam are downplayed even as they are humanised and projected as victims of state-sponsored oppression that ultimately pushed them into terrorism. Those who work as over-ground supporters of the terrorists, such as the stone pelters, become the victims while the personnel of the Indian Army, who endure great personal risk to ensure peace and tranquillity in the valley, are demonised as oppressors using brute force to quell ‘peaceful protests’.
It is the Congress’ ‘Idea of India’ that legitimises rioters and rabble-rousers as protesters fighting for the lofty goal of safeguarding the democracy of India. Congress threw its weight behind the anti-CAA protests that saw violence erupt in several parts of the country as rioters went on a rampage to protest against the fast-tracking of citizenship for the persecuted minorities from neighbouring three countries.
India suffered losses of several crores as rioters indulged in vandalism, arson, ransacking, and destruction of public properties, causing a law and order situation and undermining the country’s internal security. The anti-CAA protests culminated in the bloodcurdling anti-Hindu riots in Delhi in 2020, leading to the death of 53 people in its wake. Yet, the Congress party continues to oppose CAA and provide ideological inspiration to the anti-CAA brigade.
The Congress party also stood in solidarity with the protesters who demonstrated against the three farm laws passed by the Centre in 2020. While Congress branded it as a farmer protest against the ‘tyranny of the Centre’, the tractor rally launched on 26 January 2021 in the national capital saw protesters resorting to violence, vandalism, and destroying vehicles on their march into Delhi.
Scores of rampaging demonstrators breached the police barricades around the capital and stormed the grounds of Delhi’s historic Red Fort as tumultuous and violent scenes cast a pal over the country’s Republic Day celebrations. The protesting demonstrators also waved a Sikh flag alongside the Indian flag at the iconic monument.
But for the Congress party, the violent rioters were ‘farmers’ opposing the three farm laws and not terrorists holding the country to ransom and creating anarchy in the national capital.
The Congress party has also endorsed and supported the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’, with PM Modi slamming it for being the leader of the gang that harbours Balkanisation of the country. Kanhaiya Kumar, a former JNU leader and infamous for his alleged association with the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’, is now one of the foremost Congress leaders if senior member Jairam Ramesh is to be believed. Ramesh had yesterday said that Kanhaiya Kumar is the second most popular leader in Congress after Rahul Gandhi.
Even Umar Khalid, accused of being the prime conspirator in the 2020 anti-Hindu riots in northeast Delhi, has been personified as a peacenik battling the ‘communal forces’ in the country. Congress leaders had extended support to Umar Khalid, who is charged under UAPA in the Delhi riots case, and pro-Congress media organisations and ‘intellectuals’ have written lengthy op-eds, projecting him as a victim and downplaying the allegations levelled against him.
The Congress party has even sided with the Urban Naxals, most strikingly after violence erupted in Bhima Koregaon in 2018. Pune Police had made several arrests in the case, including Varavara Rao, Sudha Bhardwaj, Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Mahesh Raut. But their arrests evoked sympathy from the Congress party, which expressed its commiserations with those accused of engineering violence in Bhima Koregaon.
For years now, the Congress’ ‘Idea of India’ entailed the perversion of branding terrorists as ‘misguided youth’, rabble-rousers and rioters as ‘protesters’, and secessionists as ‘activists’ safeguarding democracy. So when another bunch of group, this time from South India, convicted in the assassination of former PM Rajiv Gandhi projected themselves as ‘freedom fighters’, Congress could not blame anyone but itself for having set the template of perpetuating distortion and indulging in appeasement politics.
So while Congress and Randeep Surjewala wrongly blame the Modi government for branding terrorists as ‘freedom fighters’, it is them who have been doing exactly that and dishing out labels to people based on their political inclinations and their usability in reinforcing Congress’ narrative. With Congress remaining in alliance with DMK which has hailed the release of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers, projecting anti-CAA, anti-farm laws rioters as oppressed protesters, the Congress is running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, hoping that it arrests their inexorable political decline.