Murdered People

"Henri IV was a gifted commander who saw more potential in mounted troops than any other captain of his day and was able to derive most advantage from them in combat, despite his limited resources. His special genius for new ways of employing his mounted troops both in armament and deployment forced even recognized military figures, such as the duke of Parma, to be respectful or even fearful of his skill. The king's contribution to the tactical development of the mounted arm was not unique, for he borrowed widely from the ideas of Gaspard de Coligny, Francois de La Noue, and other soldiers of his day; yet he was innovative in the way he modified and further developed these ideas to make his mounted troops a formidable tactical force. Indeed, he had a special talent for recognizing in the military theories and practices of other commanders what would work or not work on the battlefield, and what had promise but needed some alteration to become effective. This ability, when combined with Henri's imaginative leadership, made his cavalry the envy of late sixteenth-century Europe."

"When the duke of Savoy came to France, the king invited him to play tennis at the faubourg Saint Germain. After the game, the duke looked out of a window towards a street and, seeing a large crowd, told the king that he could never sufficiently wonder at the beauty and wealth of France and asked him what the royal revenues were worth. This generous prince, deft at handling such questions, replied, "It is worth what I want." The duke, finding this reply too vague, asked him to be more specific. The king replied, "Yes, what I want, for I have the confidence of my people and I can take what I like for, if God grant me life, I will ensure that there is not a peasant in the kingdom without a chicken in the stewpot" and added "yet I will not neglect to maintain enough soldiers to bring to reason those who challenge my authority.""

"Throughout the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), Henri IV enjoyed a unique status in contemporary popular culture. Personification of royal authority, military hero, gallant lover, friend to the common man, this historical figure charmed many factions of the Restoration public. The widespread fascination with the monarch was manifest in virtually every form of creative production during this period, including the decorative arts. Henri IV was portrayed frequently and in a variety of media, ranging from ceramics and clocks to tapestries and printed textiles. Such diversity is indicative of the popularity of the first Bourbon as well as the range of his appeal."

"The site where the Statue of Good Henri had been located, belongs unquestionably to this people of the French, whom he called his children, who still cherish him as their father: they wish to raise again this fine monument; I have no doubt, I am convinced that you can all be assured that such an honorable plan will receive the support of every heart, and of all the authorities, by consequence, that of the superior authority."

"Si Dieu me donne encore de la vie je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon Royaume qui n’ait moyen d’avoir une poule dans son pot."

"Paris vaut bien une messe."

"I rule with my arse in the saddle and my gun in my fist."

"I must tell you this much: Rajiv Gandhi and I were very, very close friends, extremely close friends. In Parliament when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister, he used to sit next to me along the aisle. After he lost office, he and I used to meet at 2 am everyday for two hours. So I know almost everything about the circumstances in which he got married, and what the relationship between the two (Rajiv and Sonia) was... I thought well of Rajiv. He was a great patriot, thought he would make a great Prime Minister if he came back for the second time around, and I supported him. Openly, on the floor of Parliament, (I said) he didn’t get the Bofors money, (Ottavio) Quattrocchi (Sonia’s close friend) got it, and these were proved quite later, too late."

"In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi lost the election because he was seen as corrupt by ordinary, rural Indians who made up ditties about the ‘son-in-law of Italy’. The Congress party has never explained why the best friends of Rajiv and his wife, Mr and Mrs Quattrocchi, were bribed in this deal. Nor has there been a credible explanation for why Rajiv did not make public the names of those bribed in this deal, even after Bofors officials came to Delhi and offered to give them.... whoever advised the Congress president (Rahul Gandhi) to continue charging Modi with corruption should have reminded him that the ghost of Bofors still lurks in the shadows of 10 Janpath."

"I don't appreciate this comparison at all. My father was a martyr. He sacrificed his life for the country. And in my heart he can never be compared to any other person."

"Rajiv Gandhi was not a great Prime Minister by any yardstick. He had his high points and his low points. He did try hard in some ways, but history will judge him not as a man who left behind a great legacy, but as someone who squandered the greatest opportunity India provided to any Prime Minister in living memory to take the country to new heights. He left the country in chaos and in self-doubt, and the economy in the dust."

"He was campaigning for the Congress Party on the second day of voting in the world's largest democratic election when a powerful bomb, hidden in a basket of flowers, exploded killing him instantly. It later emerged that a female Tamil Tiger (LTTE) suicide bomber had assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. In 1987 Mr Gandhi, then Prime Minister, had sent Indian Peace Keeping Forces to Sri Lanka in a disastrous attempt to impose peace in the country. The move proved unpopular both at home and abroad and his troops pulled out in 1990."

"As Rajiv Gandhi was going past me, I got a thought in my head. I thought of how India was helping the terrorists with money, arms and military training. As these thoughts came into my head, when Gandhi was about two or three feet away from me. Yes, I felt an emotion. I despised the Indian Prime Minister. I aimed a blow with my rifle at Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi�s back, below the shoulder."

"The Bofors scandal was a key issue in Gandhi's 1989 election defeat. He was assassinated while campaigning in 1991."

"Rajiv was implicated in a triple scandal – Fairfax, Bofors, and the West German Submarine payoff by ambitious V.P.Singh and Arun Nehru, They suddenly turned hostile and established a Jan Morcha to unmask Rajiv Gandhi's Government that according to them was saddled with non-performance, corruption and inner dissension. Few world leaders could have experienced a transition from a hero to villain in such precipitate fashion. Rajiv, as Russi Karanjia, Editor of Blitz, described was a gentlemen thrown among thieves."

"Some months ago when I was at Metheran, Masi [aunt] wrote saying that she had heard from some Parsis that it was written in their ancient book that a Hindu of high family would marry into a Parsi family [here, a 'Hindu of high family' is Indira and 'Parsi' is Firoz, son of sunni Nawab Khan] and their son would do great things - religious reform and so on. Masi asked me to inquire into the matter but it quite slipped my mind. Last evening my mother in law [meaning Nawab Khan's so called Parsi wife, converted to islam at the time of her nikaah] came in a state of great excitement. She had also heard something of the sort, a slightly different version. According to her, the son was the reincarnation of the Shah Behram of Persia. Baby's [meaning Rajiv Gandhi's] patri [horoscope] has arrived. I am enclosing it. It is written in Gujarati but I suppose you will be able to get it read. I am enclosing an English translation of the jyotishi's remarks. I am sending all this registered - please do the same when you return it. The good thing about it is supposed to be that there are five planets in one house."

"On New Year’s eve, Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister by President Zail Singh – for the second time in two months – on 31 October 31 1984 fateful day of shock and grief he took over as Prime minister in a depressing atmosphere... But now the prize was his –in his own right earned in a national contest."

"Twenty five years ago on 29 July 1987, when the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Sri Lanka President J. R. Jayawardene signed the Indo-Lanka accord, it was a day of mourning in the South of Sri Lanka, a day of confusion in the North and East and a miraculous day for India, especially for the Gandhi family. In the South, half of Colombo was on fire. The majority of the people, politicians, the then Prime Minister, many cabinet Ministers and the present President were angered by India. The people of the North and East were in the dark, knowing nothing about the Indo-Lanka accord. At the same time, it was a miraculous escape for the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi who was attacked by a Sri Lankan Navy soldier with a rifle in an attempted assassination. Fortunately the heavy blow which landed on Gandhi only injured his shoulder, while he was inspecting the guard of honour in Colombo. If the Navy soldier’s strike had hit as planned, today’s history of Sri Lanka would have been very different."

"The mass of enthusiasm and euphoria of early 1985 is on a gradual wane....the frequent reshuffle of the Union Cabinet, Chief Ministers, part executives and bureaucratic slots has generated a sense of instability and the people perceive it as a situation of flux and continuing adhocism in the decision making process at the highest level. As the replacements have not often proved better, the very wisdom of the change-mechanism is now being increasingly questioned."

"On 31 October 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi was being sworn in as Prime Minister...it looked as if a student of sixth standard had been given a question paper of twelfth standard to solve. What a look of wonderment mixed with worry could be seen on Rajiv Gandhi’s face at that time! What a misfortune it was of Rajiv that he could not even smile and acknowledge the greetings that people were extending him on becoming the Prime Minister of India."

"Rajiv Gandhi had limited qualities whereas the problems of the country were unlimited."

"His brother’s tragic death made him a politician and the second tragedy made him the unopposed Prime Minister of India."

"By 1984 he had taken over for his assassinated mother as the Prime Minister, elected in a sympathetic landslide which secured 80 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, a greater majority than any previous Prime Minister of India had received."

"Within four or five hours of taking over the responsibility of the Congress President, Rajiv Gandhi announced the formation of the new Working Committee and the Parliamentary Board. It is proved by this that Rajiv Gandhi believed in taking quick decisions."

"As far as that event is concerned, I would say it is a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret. We call upon the Government of India and the people of India to be magnanimous, to put the past behind and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective."

"Since his childhood he was of a gentle and peaceful nature."

"The person who offers himself to God, God looks after that person Himself. Our scriptures say that if after the service to God, there is any great service to humanity, it is the service to one's motherland. The person who dedicated himself to the nation, God looks after that person Himself. It is my belief that Rajiv should dedicate himself to the service of the nation."

"On 30 April 1981, the National Committee of the Indian National Youth Congress unanimously passed a resolution requesting Rajiv Gandhi to contest the elections."

"Since I have been here from my country I have not played a nicer day than this."

"Rajeev’s name was kept after his maternal grandmother‘s [Kamla Nehru] name. Although the meaning of ‘Kamala’ is ‘Goddess Lakshmi’ and the meaning of Rajiv is ‘lotus’, at that time it was thought that the child’s name was kept after his grandmother’s name."

"Rajeev used to play with Gandhiji in the same way in which his mother, Indira used to play with Gandhiji in Sabaramati ashram when she was four years old. One day, Rajeev plucked some flowers and kept them at Gandhiji’s feet. Gandhiji laughed and said – Rajeev! Don’t you know that flowers are not kept at the feet of a person who is alive?"

"The Indian and Western elite did not regard any of Nehru’s successors as ‘thinking’ leaders. Indira Gandhi tried hard to win over India’s intellectual elite, but the Emergency broke a nascent link. When men like P.N. Haksar and P.N. Dhar were hounded out of her inner circle, India’s intellectuals deserted her. Rajiv Gandhi was never taken seriously by this elite. Narasimha Rao may have been a scholar in his own right, but he was an ‘outsider’ to India’s metropolitan elite. In Andhra Pradesh, among the Telugu-speaking elite he was known as an ashtavadhani, a literary master. But Delhi’s elite tended to conflate his intellectual achievements with the fact that he was fluent in many languages. Vajpayee too was a highly regarded poet. Indeed, Rao and Vajpayee enjoyed the company of intellectuals and could count many professors among their friends. But in the snobbish world of the metropolitan elite, an Oxbridge type like Dr Singh was regarded as a class apart from these home-grown politician-intellectuals."

"Their strategy was simple. Moral domination. Nehru was a thinker. But Rajiv, Sonia, and Rahul are no intellectuals. They took a different route. They redefined morality. Secularism included. Anti-Congress was new immoral. Pro-Hindu became anti-Muslim. India was morally polarized. Morality is subjective. No one can say with guarantee what is pure morality. Masses were forced to choose between moral standards (Secularism, unity in diversity, inclusive etc.) and quality of life (development). People who wanted quality of life were made to feel guilty. Hindus who wanted to celebrate their religious freedom were made to feel guilty. Muslims who wanted to be part of mainstream India were made to feel guilty. They filled India’s psyche with fear, hate and guilt. They hated all indigenous, grassroots thinkers. They hated Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and now Modi. They are the land grabbers of Sainik Farms and Adarsh Societies of India. They run NGOs. They run media. They coin useless and irrelevant jargon to confuse the masses. They have designations but no real jobs. They are irrelevant NRIs who want us to see a reality which doesn’t exist. They want a plebiscite in Kashmir. They defend stone-pelters. They want Maoists to participate in mainstream politics. They want Tejpal to be freed. Yaqub to be pardoned. But they want Modi to be hanged. They are the hijackers of national morality. Secularism included. They are the robbers of Indian treasury. They are the brokers of power. They are the pimps of secularism. They are the Intellectual Mafia."

"If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India. But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers."

"The fight against communal forces must be fought unitedly. We are the heirs to Gandhiji’s heritage of communal harmony; to Panditji’s scientific outlook; and to Indiraji’s struggle against the forces of destabilization – terrorists, separatists, and communalists. We cannot fail them. Communalism must not be used as a political tool. If I may read a sentence from the secret Will of Babar to his son, Humayun: It is incumbent on thee to wipe all religious prejudices of the tablet of thy heart."

"Thinking of this University [Ambedkar University] today, we are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi because if there was anyone who fought for the weak in India, the first one to raise his voice for Scheduled Castes, that was Gandhiji. There were social workers before him but not any people who raised this matter in the political arena as he did."

"It is compartmentalization of India into rigidly separated rural and urban settlements that has been the worst legacy of the colonial system of local-self government."

"One such secularist, a modern man ready to deal with the matter pragmatically, was Rajiv Gandhi. He allowed the Hindus to prepare for the construction of a new temple with the ceremonial laying of a foundation stone (shilanyas) on November 9, 1989. He pressured the Chandra Shekhar government, which was dependent on Congress support, into organizing the scholars’ debate about the historical evidence, in the full knowledge that the temple party would win such a debate hands down. The thrust of his Ayodhya policy was to buy off Muslim acquiescence with some of the usual currency of the Congress culture: maybe nominating a few more Mians as ministers, banning a few Islam-unfriendly books (hence the Satanic Verses affair), raising the Hajj subsidy, providing cheap loans to the Shahi Imam’s constituency, donating government land for some Islamic purpose, things like that. Meanwhile, Hindus would get their temple. Muslims would have scolded their leaders for selling out, Hindus would have lambasted theirs for cheapening a noble cause with such horse-trading, but in the end, everybody would have accepted it....Whatever may be said about and against Rajiv Gandhi, he had the calibre and the cool secular distance from religious passions to see such a policy through....But in 1991 India’s top pilot was killed, and worse, in his years as India’s most important politician, dark forces had started fighting his reasonable and pragmatic policy tooth and nail."

"India missed the Industrial Revolution; it cannot afford to miss the Computer Revolution."

"Our plan cannot be hard and dogmatic. They must change with the times and move with the development of our country. Every year brings new compulsions, new circumstances, and with each Plan these must be taken into consideration."

"Development is not about factories, dams and roads. Development is about people."

"The world is changing much too fast for us to have a moribund system which is not flexible, which cannot evolve and develop with changes in our society, in our country, as they come about in the world."

"A responsive administration is tested most at the point of interface between the administration and the people."

"A right value system must be built into our education system. We must be very clear that religion and politics must be separated and there must be a very clear definition of the difference between spirituality of the religion and its rituals and dogmas. We must be clear that secularism as we understand it is not only anti-religion or non-religion; it is only the separation of government from religion. Religion has a great role to play in the development process of our nation and we should do nothing to undermine it."

"Political Independence was only the first step. Sending the British home was only the first step. The struggle still continues. In the last 40-42 years since the advent of Independence, there has been a lot of development, a lot of progress but much more still needs to be done."

"Our party is for the building of the temple to Lord Ram, and we should, if possible, work towards an amicable settlement which, while upholding the principles of secularism, enables the construction of the temple to start, with the approval and support of all concerned. ... The key issue appears to be whether or not there was a temple erected to Lord Ram at the site where the Babri Masjid stands today. This question of historical fact would appear to hold the key to a resolution of the problem to the satisfaction of all reasonable, secular-minded persons of all communities."

"Nothing is more important than the unity and integrity of our nation. India is indivisible. Secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood. It implies more than tolerance. It involves an active effort for harmony. No religion preaches hatred and intolerance. Vested interests, both external and internal, are inciting and exploiting communal passions and violence to divide India."

"We must see that regional imbalances in the growth of various parties of the country are removed and all the states progress evenly. We shall ensure that all citizens of the country get full opportunity to contribute their might towards India’s progress."

"For nation-building, the first requisite is peace— peace with our neighbours and peace in the world. Our security environment has been vitiated."

"Thereby, we have weakened ourselves and fallen prey to the ills that the loss of invigorating mass contact brings. Millions of ordinary Congress workers throughout the country are full of enthusiasm for the Congress policies and programmes. But they are handicapped, for on their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy.. They are self-perpetuating cliques who thrive by involving the slogans of caste and religion and by enmeshing the living body of the congress in their net of avarice."