Indira Gandhi: Death in the Garden

Indira Gandhi's assassination sparks a fearful round of sectarian violence

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Mrs. Gandhi's dynastic ambitions for her son were thus fulfilled with astonishing ease. President Zail Singh, a Sikh, swore in Rajiv as the head of a small, five-member Cabinet with the full support of the Congress (I) Party. Mrs. Gandhi had been grooming Rajiv for leadership ever since the death four years ago of her younger son Sanjay. At that time, Rajiv, who had been a pilot for Indian Airlines, the country's domestic carrier, reluctantly took on the task of becoming his mother's heir apparent. Even before he returned to New Delhi, party leaders, including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, had signed a formal resolution endorsing his candidacy for the Prime Minister's job. All wanted to avoid an open fight among the party's various factions, which include Rajiv's followers as well as those of his late brother. In the interest of party harmony, Rajiv's quick victory became inevitable.

On the evening he was sworn in as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi called on his countrymen to exercise "maximum restraint," and that night they appeared to be following his advice. But by Thursday night, fires of vengeance were burning everywhere. While police looked the other way, vigilante bands attacked Sikhs, burned their beards, destroyed their homes or shops, then moved on to look for more. "You know how I feel," said a Hindu armed with an iron stave on a Delhi street. "I want to kill Sikhs. I want to see Sikh blood on the streets." Whole blocks of Sikh dwellings were gutted. In one slum area of the capital, a Hindu mob was reported to have slaughtered 94 Sikhs with knives and iron bars. Said a civil servant: "The backlash is terrible. It reminds me of the days of partition." Indeed, the trains arriving in Delhi last week with the battered bodies of murdered Sikhs were reminiscent of the "trains of death" that rolled through Punjab in those fearful times. Finally, the government canceled train service between Delhi and the north after learning that 56 bodies had been found aboard trains arriving in the capital. Hundreds of frightened Sikhs took refuge in the Delhi railway terminal, unable to take trains home and afraid even to leave the building. By week's end the nationwide death toll had passed 1,000.

If Rajiv's first challenge was the aftershock of his mother's murder, the second was the need to avoid a sudden flare-up between India and Pakistan. In recent weeks Mrs. Gandhi had said repeatedly that she feared an attack by Pakistan, supplied with U.S. arms. She also accused Pakistan of supporting Sikh extremists with arms, money and training. Only a few days before her death, Indian paramilitary forces had arrested inside Punjab what they claimed was a Sikh "hit team" charged with assassinating Mrs. Gandhi. According to the Indians, the terrorists were armed with automatic weapons, silencers, money and passports provided by the Pakistani intelligence service. Pakistan had dismissed the charges as "flagrantly absurd."

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