Why Priyanka146;s Vellore visit is personal

A daughter8217;s search for closure cannot be made the stuff of politics.

Sudheendra Kulkarni would never be able to understand the pain and grief of a young adult who loses a parent to the assailant8217;s bullet or bomb. Unfortunately, you have to experience it to understand it. One moment the parent is there, and the next moment gone forever. While Kulkarni in his article, 8216;Why Priyanka8217;s Vellore visit is not personal8217; The Sunday Express, April 20, condescendingly points out that 8220;time is the greatest healer in all tragedies8221;, he does not realise that while the passage of time may numb the pain and help internalise the tragedy, it does not bring about a closure. The mind keeps trying to make sense of the senseless, to find a rationale for irrationality. Even many years after the incident, the question 8216;why did it happen8217; comes back to haunt the near and dear ones, at the unlikeliest places and at the most random times.

It is indeed a quixotic logic that Kulkarni espouses when he writes that the visit cannot be treated as personal merely because 8220;some newspapers reported that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra apparently wanted to know from Nalini Sriharan as to who were the conspirators responsible for the assassination8221;. Presuming for a moment that what the newspapers reported is correct, it is a sad reflection of the way the Indian state functions that even 17 years after the assassination of a former prime minister, the establishment cannot provide answers to his family. Is it the responsibility of the family to inform the nation or is it the nation8217;s job to tell the family the identity of the conspirators responsible for this macabre act of terrorism? His argument amounts to turning criminal jurisprudence on its head. The proper investigation of all crimes is the responsibility of the state, not of the next of kin.

In fact, Sonia Gandhi and her family have been more than restrained and dignified in not taking the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency and its earlier avatars to task for not finding the most rudimentary answers that a criminal investigation is supposed to uncover: 8216;Who were the masterminds?8217;

Investigating agencies and their apologists belabour the point that conspiracies behind the assassinations of political leaders right from Abraham Lincoln, Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jr., Solomon Bandaranaike and Zia-ul-Haq to Benazir Bhutto have not, and may never be, fully unraveled. But historical parallels and banalities are hardly an excuse for not getting to the bottom of the matter and enough has been documented over the past 17 years to put a profound question mark on the seriousness of that effort.

Kulkarni implicitly suggests that Rajiv Gandhi almost invited an assassination by sending the IPKF to Sri Lanka. Since he has served in the prime minister8217;s office during Atal Bihari Vajpayee8217;s reign, it can safely be presumed that he is well acquainted with the processes that go into the making of a strategic decision of this nature. There are inputs from intelligence agencies, ministries and other independent sources, and extensive deliberations involving the highest echelons of the defence establishment. It is almost naive to insinuate that the decision to send the IPKF to Sri Lanka was taken by Rajiv Gandhi alone. Many of those who had advised the then prime minister on the Sri Lanka policy are distinguished commentators on security issues today. By extending Kulkarni8217;s argument to its logical conclusion, can it then be said that every Indian leader who takes a tough line on geo-strategic issues does so at his own peril? Strange logic, this, from an activist of an ideological strain that tom-toms itself as being tough on questions of national security.

It is not the assassins and their hidden masters who alone are responsible for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The then government and the mandarins of the security establishment are equally culpable. Knowing fully well that he was under great threat, they left him virtually unprotected after he demitted office as prime minister and especially throughout the long campaign for the 1991 parliamentary elections. I vividly recall that Rajiv Gandhi spent the night of May 20 1991 8212; the night before the tragedy in Sriperumbudur 8212; at the state guest house in Bhubaneswar. There was not even a single constable armed with a rusty 303 rifle on duty that night at that guest house. It is the Indian state that owes the family a collective apology for its failure to provide the former PM with the security he was entitled to.

There cannot be a more cynical way of looking at a national tragedy than portraying it as an attempt to 8220;gain public sympathy over private grief8221;. I do not wish to join issue with Kulkarni by even attempting to respond to the web of politicisation that he has tried to spin around a personal matter except to draw his attention again to the press statement of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

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Responding to a report that made her meeting with Nalini Sriharan public she succinctly explained the reasons for the meeting and also urged that her privacy be respected. Unfortunately partisan combativeness so defines our political culture that we are insensitive enough not to allow a member of a family in public life a little private space to come to terms with an irreparable loss. Let us try and change this. Let us endeavour to keep some matters beyond the pale of politics.

The writer is national spokesperson of Congress and a lawyer in Supreme Court. Views are personal