Churu (Rajasthan): Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday made an emotional pitch among voters in poll-bound Rajasthan. "My grandmother was murdered. My father was murdered. Now I may also be killed one day. I don't care about it," said Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, making an emotional pitch for Rajasthan's ruling party at an election rally here. Gandhi accused the BJP of sparking communal tensions in the country for political benefits, and equated the plight of Uttar Pradesh's riot-ravaged Muzaffarnagar district's people with himself. He said he can understand their sorrow and grief as his grandmother and father were also murdered.
Gandhi, 43, was referring to the communal riots that took place in Muzaffarnagar that claimed over 40 lives and rendered thousands homeless. "My grandmother was murdered. My father was murdered. Now I may also be killed one day. But I don't fear being murdered. I don't care about it...I see my face in the plight of Muzaffarnagar's people," Rahul Gandhi said while addressing the mammoth rally in this Rajasthan town, 200 km from capital Jaipur. Gandhi referred to his speech as "dil ki baat" (A talk straight from the heart) and said he wanted to share his story with the people.
"I was in a classroom at my school when someone approached my teacher and whispered something in her ears. The teacher told me to go home immediately. I called up home from principal's office. I heard a scream from our housemaid. I was told something wrong has happened to my grandmother," recalled Gandhi. He said he and his sister Priyanka were taken home, hidden under the passenger seats of a car by bodyguards. "When I reached home, I saw blood of my grandmother on the road and the blood of two security guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, in a room. They had always been like my friends. The incident filled me with a rage. It took me 10-15 years to calm down my anger," said Gandhi.
Stating that his mother Sonia Gandhi asked him to narrate his own stories, rather than hers, Rahul Gandhi recalled how his grandmother Indira Gandhi would save him from a disciplinarian father that Rajiv Gandhi was. "My father would put spinach on my plate which I did not like. Under the cover of a newspaper my grandmother would remove the dish," he said. He also recounted how no one would visit Indira Gandhi, except for Sikhs, after she lost the polls in 1977. "But anger brewed against her in a few years," said Rahul who recounted how she was killed by her two Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Anger is seeded in people, he added.
"The legislator told me that had he met me 20 years ago, he would have murdered me. But now he wanted to hug me. The point I want to drive home is that nobody has in-built anger. Anger is instilled by political parties. It takes years to calm down the anger, but a minute to ignite it. That is why I am against BJP and its politics," said Gandhi. He accused the BJP of causing bloodshed for political benefits.
