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21 May 1991: The night India lost Rajiv Gandhi
India Today
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5/21/2025
May 21, 1991. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a human bomb in Tamil Nadu.
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00:00
It was supposed to be a campaign stop, a garland, a speech, a walk towards the
00:10
dais in a small town called Sri Perambudur. But by 10.21 p.m. India's
00:14
youngest former prime minister lay dead, brought down by a human bomb. Rajiv Gandhi
00:20
was in Tamil Nadu stumping for Congress ahead of the 1991 general election. He
00:24
just arrived at the rally when a young woman walked up, a garland in hand. A
00:29
camera slung over her shoulder. She bent down as if to touch his feet and then a
00:34
flash, a roar and silence. She was Athenmori Rajaratnam, codename
00:40
Dhanu, a suicide bomber for the LGTE, the liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam. The LGTE
00:45
was fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. In 1987 Rajiv Gandhi sent
00:50
Indian peacekeeping forces also known as the IPKF to broker peace but it spiraled
00:56
into a war. Over 1,000 Indian soldiers died. The LTTE blamed Rajiv Gandhi for
01:01
betrayal and bloodshed. Their revenge was therefore personal and symbolic and
01:05
surgical. The assassination stunned India. This was the first time a political
01:10
leader had been assassinated with a suicide bomb. A new kind of terror. The
01:15
explosion killed 14 others and injured dozens more. It also introduced India to
01:19
something it had not seen before. Terrorism driven by foreign conflict executed
01:24
with chilling precision on home soil. Congress swept the sympathy vote. Narsimha
01:29
Rao took office. Sonia Gandhi withdrew from public life. The SIT inquiry eventually
01:33
convicted 26 people but key questions, who planned it, how India's security lapsed,
01:38
still echo in classified files and the mastermind LTTE chief Prabhakaran was killed
01:43
by Sri Lankan forces in 2009. Today Rajiv Gandhi's assassination marks anti-terrorism
01:48
day in India. School children take oaths. Leaders place reeds at Veer Bhoomi. But
01:53
beneath the ceremony lies a hard truth. The assassination did not just end a lie. It
01:58
changed how India thinks about its borders, its politics and its vulnerabilities.
02:03
Basically, what happened in Sri Perambudur is how history can sometimes turn with a
02:08
garland, a handshake and a heartbeat. I'm Manish Abhikari. Thank you for watching the
02:13
Culture Project On More.
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