India’s Rahul Gandhi, whose grandmother and father were both assassinated when he was a child, has warned that he too could be slain, as he accused his election rivals of sparking “communal fire”.
The 43-year-old, expected to lead the ruling Congress party into next year’s polls, also told a rally on Wednesday of how he had been friends with the bodyguards who killed his grandmother Indira when she was premier.
“My grandmother and father were assassinated and tomorrow I also may get killed; but I just don’t care,” Rahul, who is vice-president of Congress, said in a strikingly personal speech in the northern state of Rajasthan.
Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her bodyguards in 1984 in revenge for an army assault, while Rahul’s father Rajiv was assassinated in 1991 by a suicide bombers.
“What does the BJP do? They spark communal fire .... Then we have to go to the people to put the fire out,” said Gandhi in excerpts shown on Indian television.
“It takes years to forget anger but it takes only minutes to ignite anger within someone.”
Opinion polls show that Congress — even with Rahul in charge — is likely to lose power in the elections due by next May with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opening up a commanding lead.
Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, a commentator for the Mumbai-based DNA newspaper, said Gandhi’s comments were intended to evoke the “martyr” status of India’s ruling family.
Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister immediately after Indira’s assassination, only to lose power in 1989.
The Gandhi family has dominated politics in post-independence India. Indira’s father Jawaharlal Nehru was the country’s first prime minister, holding power from 1947 to 1964.
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