Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s Rebuttal to Rahul Gandhi

Delhi, Punjab: An Akali Dal MP from Punjab, Harsimrat Kaur slammed Rahul Gandhi for his remarks about the killing of his grandmother by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

A day after Rahul Gandhi shared an emotional account of his grandmother Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards, a senior Akali Dal leader has struck back with a controversial rebuttal.

“What was Mrs Gandhi doing at that time when she was killing other people’s sons and husbands? What was she thinking? … a place of worship which is worshipped by every Sikh…she goes, gives orders to demolish that place and kill people there. What did she think? She would get away with it scot- free?” asked Harsimrat Kaur Badal, referring to Mrs Gandhi’s controversial decision to order the army to enter the Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out militants holed up in the Sikhs’ most revered place of worship.

Harsimrat Kaur is an MP from the Akali Dal, which rules Punjab with the BJP. Her father-in-law Parkash Singh Badal is Chief Minister of Punjab and her husband, the deputy chief minister.

“I wish he had gone a little deeper to figure out the reasons as to why his family members met with the fate that they did,” said Harsimrat Kaur. “You paid (the) price for your deeds,” she charged.

On Wednesday, at a rally in Rajasthan, Mr Gandhi said the communalism and the politics of hatred, which he attributed to the BJP, had cost his family heavily.  “Hatred killed my grandmother, my father, maybe it’ll kill me. I don’t care,” he said. Mr Gandhi also re-offered the memory of being taught badminton by the bodyguards who would assassinate Mrs Gandhi.

Nearly 5000 Sikhs were killed in the riots that followed Mrs Gandhi’s assassination . Senior Congress leaders like Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar who are being tried for allegedly inciting mobs to attack Sikhs have not been penalized by the party.

In an interview to Indian News TV station, Harsimrat who is also the wife of Punjab’s Deputy chief minister, gave a rebuttal to Rahul’s emotional account of his grandmother’s assassination which he shared at an election rally yesterday.

An unedited transcript of the interview:

•     It is there for anybody to tell you that the entire youth of Punjab was wiped out in the name of terrorism. What was Mrs. Gandhi doing at that time when she was killing other people’s sons and husbands?
•     What was she thinking when in a place of worship, a place which is worshipped by every Sikh, when she gives orders to demolish that place, to kill people there, what did she think? She’d get away scott free?
•     And then when Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s father, when his mother paid the price for her deeds, he targettedly gives instructions to finish off every Sikh and then he says that the earth shakes when a big tree falls. What was he indicating?
•     And then his goons like the likes of Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler and all the others, in a targetted manner pulled out Sikhs from their homes, in front of the eyes of young children, young mothers, old women, their husbands, their sons and their grandsons are slaughtered, murdered, burnt in front of their eyes, and in thousands, not just one or two.
•     So Rahul Gandhi doesn’t feel their pain when for 30 years he shields the perpetrators of these crimes?
•     When he talks about Gujarat, he talks about Muzaffarnagar, he talks about Jammu and Kashmir, why does his tongue shake when talking about ’84 riots? When he cannot mention the mother of all these where thousands people lost their lives and it’s for the whole world to know. He doesn’t mention that but he mentions the others and he doesn’t mention the fact that how are the others, like if you talk about Gujarat, there is a Supreme Court monitored team which looked into this, which is still looking into it. May have gone to jail. Which of the Congress leaders have gone to jail today? Who doesn’t know the role that Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler played?