Freeing Rajiv's killers: Why Jaya's regional blinkers can end her PM dreams

Rahul Gandhi, a Congress spokesperson said on television, was not angry. Just sad. That is understandable. It is also understandable that Jayalalithaa felt she could score political points in Tamil Nadu by releasing the seven men facing life in prison for their involvement in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. The Supreme Court can block her as it has done, but she can claim to her political foes in the state that she has done her best. [caption id=“attachment_1400511” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Will Delhi be forever distant to the woman who set free a Prime Minister’s killers? PTI[/caption] What is incomprehensible is that she does not feel any need to justify an announcement as monumental and politically sensitive as this one. Her matter-of-fact tone was that of someone announcing a bureaucratic reshuffle. “Taking into account that they have spent nearly 23 years in prison, the state cabinet has resolved to release them, exercising the power of remission vested in it under section 432 of the CrPC,” Jayalalithaa told the Assembly. Then she outlined the mechanical steps. “To proceed with the consultation, the state cabinet’s decision to remit the sentences of the seven persons will be forwarded to the Centre immediately. If the Union government delays its response beyond three days, the state government will exercise its powers and will release Perarivalan, Sriharan, Santhan, Nalini, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran.” Forget a sobering acknowledgment of the gravity of the decision, it became another heroic Centre-state confrontation. “Whether the Centre responds to our recommendation or not, we will invoke the powers vested with the government and release them,” she said, while members, across partly lines thumped their desks in approval. There was no hint that the decision weighed heavily on her at all, that she had lost any sleep about the ramifications of the precedent she was setting. If Jayalalithaa remembered that Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning for an alliance with her party when he was killed in Sriperumbudur or that sympathy wave helped her come to power for the first time, she made no mention of it. In fact, the excerpts that appeared in newspapers and national television programmes of her statement have no mention of her invoking Rajiv Gandhi’s name or the others who were also killed that day. Congress leader A. Gopanna bitterly said “Jayalalithaa first came to power in 1991 benefiting from the brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Now she herself has buried his memory.” While the decision has evoked the expected howls of protest about playing politics with the death penalty, what is more baffling for the rest of the country is how non-controversial it seems to be for her in Tamil Nadu. Political parties including the CPI, PMK, MDMK, VCK, SDPI, DMK welcomed the decision. Karunanidhi has merely tried to claim credit for the idea. The Hindu quotes him as saying “When I proposed idea of commuting their death sentence in 2011, she ridiculed it. Now she has taken a decision in favour of it. I welcome her stand.” Karunanidhi has had his own twists and turns. He had once rejected mercy petitions for the convicts in 2000. Since then he has gone on record saying ““Had young leader Rajiv Gandhi been alive today, that noble man would have definitely come forward to save the lives of Santhan, Perarivalan and Murugan, responding to the voice of true Tamils and in accordance with the golden saying of Anna, forget and forgive.” Regional parties are far more powerful today and national parties have shrunk. Our political killers are no longer viewed through the lens of terrorism but through their regional affiliation. It’s not that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. It’s that one person’s terrorist is another person’s Tamilian or another person’s Sikh. When our politicians make naked appeals based on ethnicity and religion they make a mockery of the law and whittle it down for their short-term political gains by carving out exception. The exceptions will not prove the rule. Soon they will become the rule. It’s too late to say we should not politicize the issue. We have already politicized it whether by setting these convicts free or by hanging Afzal Guru with such alacrity. It’s too late to be wary of double standards. We are completely mired in them. Even the delay in the execution was a political act just as letting them go will be. Manmohan Singh might now say that the attack on Shri Rajiv Gandhi “our great leader” was an “attack on the soul of India” but as K. Raghothaman, a retired CBI officer who investigated the case, said to ABP: “The blame will lie entirely with the UPA government, which delayed the mercy petitions of the three from April 2000 to August 2011 and helped these convicts. UPA has betrayed Rajiv Gandhi’s soul.” And Jayalalithaa is clearly not alone in playing politics with the death penalty. In 2012 the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee were hailing Balwant Singh Rajoana who conspired to assassinate chief minister Beant Singh in 1995 as a “living Sikh martyr” and demanding clemency from the Prime Minister. Even Punjab Congress party leader Captain Amarinder Singh supported the clemency demand. As we had observed back then on Firstpost “All our politicians are tough on terrorism – except when their vote bank calculations dictate otherwise.” That is apparently the only thing a chief minister needs to care about. The rise of the power of regional parties has meant that a Jayalalithaa is so secure in how her decision will play out in Tamil Nadu she feels no need to even explain it to a baffled nation. How her decision reverberates on television screens and newspapers across the country seems to matter little in Poes Garden. But such nonchalance may prove expensive in the long run for a woman who is being projected by her party as an excellent prime ministerial candidate. Dilli door ast, indeed, when you are chief minister of Tamil Nadu. But will Delhi remain forever distant for a leader who sets free the killers of a former Prime Minister?