Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that he still carries his father Rajiv Gandhi inside him. Interacting with a group of students in Puducherry, Gandhi said that violence cannot take anything from you.
The response came after a student asked Gandhi how he feels about LTTE members who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi.
"I don’t have anger towards anybody. Of course, I lost my father and for me it was a difficult time. It's like someone has cut your heart out. I felt tremendous pain. But I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel any hatred. I forgive," the former Congress president said at the Bharathidasan College for Women.
"I still carry my father with me. Understand something - violence cannot take away anything from you. It doesn't have that power. You can give up something but violence cannot take anything from you. My father is alive. A lot of things you have heard today, they came to me from my father. So my father is talking through me. So it’s not that my father is not here today," Gandhi added.
Rajiv Gandhi took over the charge of the Congress in 1984 following the assassination of his mother and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He became India’s youngest Prime Minister at the age of 40.
{{/usCountry}}Rajiv Gandhi took over the charge of the Congress in 1984 following the assassination of his mother and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He became India’s youngest Prime Minister at the age of 40.
{{/usCountry}}Rajiv Gandhi served as the sixth PM of India. He was assassinated during an election rally in Tamil Nadu by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber in 1991.
The suicide attack was carried out by Dhanu at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on the fateful night of May 21, 1991 killing Rajiv Gandhi and 15 others on the spot. Dhanu perished in the bomb attack.
During the course of investigations, pictures clicked by S Haribabu, an LTTE photographer who was also killed in the blast, exposed the role of Nalini Srihatan - a key team member in the LTTE plot to assassinate Gandhi - and others.
Sriharan, along with six other people - her husband V Sriharan, Perarivalan, Santhan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas and P Ravichandran - were convicted in the case. They have been in prison for close to three decades.
Though most parties supported the release of seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) had opposed it.
Rahul Gandhi is in Puducherry amid a crisis where Congress party's government has come in minority. He earlier interacted with the fishermen community.