Today, after an inordinately long 23 years, the Indian Supreme court has commuted the Death penalty of a few convicts who were serving their time for the brutal murder of India's former Prime Minister and a beacon of hope for the younger generation then. And wasting no time, this killer抯 parent state's chief minister thundered from the dais that 'She has decided to free them and if the center doesn't respond within 3 days, she will release them!".
What would you do to a person, who has killed scores of innocent people along with a political leader, who was the only hope of a maddeningly stagnant India? These people have conspired to kill a Prime Minister, alongwith him dozens of other civilians and Police officers, and actually took part in the exercise knowingly. Doesn't this qualify as rarest of rare case? Why there was this long delay in executing them, where an Ajmal Kasab & Afzal Guru was executed swiftly? Is it that only people with Muslim names have to face the gallows, whereas others get a different treatment?
I have many Tamil friends and this is not an attempt to tarnish them, but I feel as Indians they score very low on many of my indexes. I had this friend who was a well-educated and well behaved gentleman, with whom I used to chat during our time together in the company cafeteria. And the Civil War in Sri Lanka has reached its zenith. One day we all woke up to the news of the capture & subsequent death of V. Prabhakaran, a terrorist by all means. My friend, when we met at the cafeteria, was boiling. He was angry because India didn't do anything to save the LTTE chief as well as the Cadres.
I asked him why we should try to save them, when they have killed our Prime Minister. I got the shocking reply. Rajeev Gandhi would have been YOUR prime minister, not mine. And his usual verbal diarrhea about Arya-Dravidian conflicts and how we should be the leader of the world, how the North-Dominated Indian government stifles us etc....
Since that day, I either delayed my trip to cafeteria or dropped it, just to avoid this guy. As an Indian, whatever I hold close to my heart was questioned, and that too, by a person who enjoys all the benefits of being an Indian, but refuses to believe that he is part of this country. For him whatever happened before some 5000 years is more important, the conflict of his ancestors and such crap!
Regional polity has come a long way! It has reached such a level that even the killers of a nation's leader can be set free, just to gain few votes. Everything has become vote-bank politics. If someone makes a reference to a leader's Chai history, next day both parties strategize to cash in on it. One sells tea with the leader抯 photo, where the opposition tries to set up tea shop within Loksabha premises. A bridge collapses and few dozen dies, but parties run to media to claim that it was the other who built it. Pakistan-based terrorists attack our institutions with such frequency and alacrity, but our leaders are scrambling to buy VIP-choppers that has price-tags equivalent to the GDP of some of the neighboring nations! A communal riot happens and parties trying to woo each section of society by making inflammatory speeches rather than consiliation and rehabilitation.
Two thing they all agree upon is Not to bring the black money stashed in Swiss banks, and increase the legislator's pay!
As things normally happen in this part of the world, these killers will get a heroes� welcome as was the case with the 2G Raja & Kanimozhi. They will be invited to join politics by all and sundry, become legislators for Tamilnadu and , god forbid, for Loksabha. If that happens, they will rub shoulders with Rahul, whose father they killed. It will be a moment of shame for entire India, as we will be openly displaying what a moral-less country we are!
