Priyanka's Benign Gesture to a Repentant Nalini Sriharan

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/I_met_my_fathers_assassin_Priyanka/articleshow/2952959.cms

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Thenmuli Rajaratnam alias Dhanu, a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Siriperumbudur near Chennai in a conspiracy hatched by Velupillai Prabhakaran and his intelligence Chief Pottu Amman on 21 May 1991. Anton Balasingham, LTTE's chief ideologue, was to later declare to NDTV that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was a monumental historical tragedy which the LTTE regrets. He tried to justify the senseless and brutal act by saying that “We were not very happy with the political solution proposed by India in 1987 because it did not satisfy the political aspirations of our people”. That, in LTTE’s view, was reason enough to extinguish a bright Indian leader along with 17 other innocent lives. The horrific mentality of the LTTE was revealed in the fact that it had entrusted the task of filming the physical liquidation of Rajiv Gandhi to Haribabu, a local photographer who also perished in the blast at Siriperumbudur. Anton Balasingham even had the temerity to call upon the Government of India and the people of India to be magnanimous and put the past behind and to approach the Sri Lankan ethnic question in a different perspective. He did not specify what that perspective might be.

During the investigation into Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, 25 LTTE cadres, including Sivarasan, the one eyed jack, Subha and others committed suicide in order to block the progress of investigation. While LTTE has a proven record of mindless violence, murder and thirst for blood, and may have forgotten its own cadres who committed suicide to conceal its sordid role in Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the terrorist organisation expected India to forget and forgive the event and promote its cause in Sri Lanka.

S Nalini Sriharan, then 33, was arrested on 14 June 1991 along with her husband Sriharan alias Murugan, a hardcore LTTE militant. A local girl, and the only living member of the five-member assassination squad at the blast site, she faced maximum number of charges including providing cover to belt-bomb assassin Dhanu and her standby Subha, accompanying the duo to a textile shop to purchase the churidar which Dhanu wore to conceal the bomb. She was convicted in 1997 and sentenced to death. An appeal against the sentence was turned down by the Supreme Court. While in custody she gave birth to a female child who now lives in London. It was a compassionate Sonia Gandhi who appealed to the President for clemency and got the sentence reduced to a life term.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi’s daughter, visited the assassin Nalini Sriharan to come to terms with a tragedy which affected the family deeply. It was her way of coming to peace with the violence and loss that she had experienced. Though there might be different perceptions on the issue since the person involved was one of the brightest stars on the Indian political scene of that time and the nation may not be as forgiving, it was a daughter’s poignant attempt to see life on a much larger canvass and comprehend the motivations that drove Nalini Sriharan to participate in the macabre plot to eliminate her father. By all accounts, the grand gesture has helped both, the daughter as well as the assassin. Priyanka has forgiven Nalini for her father’s murder and the latter has felt cleansed of all her sins.

Priyanka’s visit to Nalini Sriharan must only be seen in that light and no other meaning attached to it. Rajiv Gandhi’s brutal assassination was a colossal national loss; it was a much greater tragedy that befell his daughter too. Rajiv Gandhi's daughter should have the right to come to terms with her personal loss and her method for it must be respected.