Nehru and the Gandhis - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 154

The family's history has been laced with tragedy and the premonition of death. Sanjay
Gandhi was killed in a plane crash. Indira Gandhi then unwittingly sowed the seeds for
more catastrophes when she encouraged a militant Sikh leader to become a political act-
ivist in Punjab in the late 1970s, and condoned separatist Tamil activity in Sri Lanka in
the early 1980s. That led to her assassination by her Sikh guards in 1984, and indirectly
to her son Rajiv's killing by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991. Indira had a premonition of
her own death, and Sonia has said the family feared for Rajiv's life: 'After my mother-in-
law (Indira) was killed, I knew that he too would be killed... all of us, my children and me,
knew that it was just a question of when,' she said in a television interview in 2004. 24 She
pleaded with her husband not to become prime minister but he held her hands, hugged her,
and said he 'had no choice', adding, 'he would be killed anyway'. 25 Indira Gandhi said

earlier that Sonia had threatened to leave him if he entered politics. 26
Rahul Gandhi spelt out the trauma of assassination - and how it lives on in the minds of
his family - when he accepted his appointment as vice president of the Congress in January
2013. In an unexpectedly emotional speech, he referred to Indira Gandhi's killing by her
Sikh security guards: 'When I was a little boy I loved to play badminton. I loved it because
it gave me balance in a complicated world. I was taught how to play, in my grandmother's
house, by two of the policemen who protected my grandmother. They were my friends.
Then one day they killed my grandmother and took away the balance in my life. I felt pain
like I had never felt before. My father was in Bengal and he came back. The hospital was
dark, green and dirty. There was a huge screaming crowd outside as I entered. It was the
first time in my life that I saw my father crying. He was the bravest person I knew and yet
I saw him cry. I could see that he too was broken.' 27
Later in 2013, explaining the sacrifices made by his family, he said during a political
campaign speech, 'Communal forces killed my grandmother, my father and will probably
kill me too. But I don't care.' He went on to expand what he had said earlier, explaining
how Beant Singh (one of his grandmother's assassins) had asked him where his grandmoth-
er slept and if her security was adequate. 'He told me how to lie down if somebody throws
a grenade at me. At that time, I did not understand what he meant. Years later, I understood
that Satwant Singh and Beant Singh were planning to throw a grenade at her during Di-
wali... I saw my grandmother's blood. I also saw the blood of her killers Beant Singh and
Satwant Singh. I used to play with those who killed her. I was angry with them for a long
time... It took me 15 years to control my anger against them. I understand the pain of losing
someone very close. I lost both my grandmother and my father to acts of terror.' 28
Members of the family have not usually been accepted by many of their peers at the
start of their political dominance, and have had to fight to keep their positions. Indira
Gandhi had to face down powerful regional leaders, which led her to split the Congress
and win support with socialist economic programmes and with a 1971 war that turned East