Forgiving to Forget!
By: Gigi (April 21st, 2008)The title caught my sleepy eye’s attention early morning as I was on the train from Mumbai. “My sins have been cleansed: Nalini”. Three consecutive ‘less-sleep’ nights and long days of work were taking a toll on me physically but I just could not quell my curiosity after seeing the title. I just waited for my co-passenger to finish reading the newspaper so that I can get a hold of it.
As I went through the article, I understood that it was about the visit which Ms. Priyanka Vadra (D/o late Indian Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi) paid to Ms. Nalini who is serving a life term for involvement in Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the seventh Prime Minister of India, took place in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, India on the 21st of May, 1991. When he reached the venue at Sriperumbudur, he got out of his car and began to walk inside towards the dais where he would deliver his speech. Along the way, he was garlanded by many well wishers, Congress party workers and school children. At 10:10 p.m., the assassin approached him and greeted the former Prime Minister. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated an RDX explosive laden belt tucked below her dress. The former Prime Minister along with many others was killed in the explosion that followed. I still remember the gruesome pictures of the tragedy that shocked the world that day. Pictures of strewn bodies and blood covered over the red carpet were flashed on the newspapers – it was numbing.
His two children Rahul and Priyanka were 21 and19 respectively when this horrible tragedy hit them.
During the course of the next few years, the assassins were traced and arrested and all 26 were sentenced to death.
The judicial system might have taken its due course and punished the accused. But none of these things can give back Rahul and Priyanka, their beloved father. No matter how much time goes by, the gruesome pictures in Sriperumbudur will never be erased from their memory. How much they might have been missing him all these years!
Nalini, the only surviving member of the killer squad, also had been sentenced to death. But after Sonia Gandhi pleaded for clemency for the sake of Nalini’s then five-year-old daughter, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
17 years have passed. Rahul and Priyanka are still trying to get in terms with the tragedy themselves. Finally, Priyanka decided to meet the lone survivor of the assassination squad – Nalini, behind the raised walls of the Vellore prison. Emotions were running high – tears swelled up in both of their eyes. Gifts were exchanged, questions asked, and answers given.
In Priyanka’s own words - “Meeting with Nalini was my way of coming to peace with violence and loss that I have experienced,” “I would like to say it was a purely personal visit that I undertook completely on my initiative,” Priyanka added. “I would be deeply grateful if this could be respected. I don’t believe in anger, hatred and violence and I refuse to allow it to overpower my life.” Soon after Priyanka issued the statement, her elder brother Rahul Gandhi stood by her actions and said he understood his sister’s sentiments.
After the meeting which lasted an hour, Nalini told her brother “I feel all my sins have been washed off by Priyanka’s visit…I feel she has pardoned me by calling on me at the prison…. I am indebted to her all my life,”
After going through such inhuman tragedy, it takes incredible grit and determination to meet the accused, let alone forgive. Is it humanly possible? I would say it is near to impossible!
Nalini’s brother said “In this world of tit for tat and blood for blood, we are really happy that Priyanka came to meet my sister.”
When we get into the shoes of Nalini and think on her behalf, she might be thinking “I am not worthy of this, I do not deserve it at all!” What a sense of awe this visit might have brought towards Priyanka in the mind of Nalini. This visit might not secure Nalini’s release from the prison but at least she might have gotten rid of some of the guilt that has been haunting her all these years.
At this time I would like to take your attention to another act of forgiveness that I came across. Jesus Christ offered it to the very people who crucified Him on the cross. After suffering inhumanely at the hands of the cruel soldiers for several hours, He cried out to His Father in heaven “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
I later came to know that no matter what kind of life I have been leading, this forgiveness was available to me too and it is available to you too today. None of us needs to run with a life burdened with guilt anymore. When God forgives, He forgets! God, the master planner of this great possibility, says “though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.” I got it. It can be yours for free!
April 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I really appreciate Priyanka’s move to meet Nalini. We should also consider the time she had taken to go and meet Nalini (after so many years). When you take forgiveness practically, its not an easy matter to forget just like that. Lord, has commanded us to forgive from the root. I feel when we tackle the issue from the root,analsye it, work on it, work it out with the person concern in humilty, its then taken out from the root, and the issue becomes a history. Also when we understand the forgiveness our Lord Jesus has given us, its easy for us for forgive and I’m positive we won’t wait or take time to forgive.