This was, I know, supposed to be an in-continuation piece but a month is a long while, and the mind wanders off to the point when you put pen to paper so many ideas are colliding that the blank sheet seems to be talking back to you…in an unruly queue wanting to be the one to be picked as the topic of the day! I do quite remember that last time I had spoken, rather extensively so, of our unassuming Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and so not one to break promises, despite a meandering mind, I start this strip with Shastriji.
I was, but of course, gladdened that at long last, a movie was made on our self-effacing Prime Minister—Tashkent Files. This film bringing to fore the intriguing question whether our second Prime Minister died a natural death or was a victim of a meticulously executed assassination in the Uzbek capital in the Year of the Lord, 1966. January 11th, methinks. And yes, before letting more ink rush across this page, I must say that this pen in hand, has at least temporarily so, changed its textural tone, and so be not nonplussed with the not-so-ancient archival timbre. Back for half a second to the film, Tashkent File; it comes at a time when our sense of recent history is at a worryingly low level. And maybe, our 30-somethings, who nowadays pass off as “Youth”, would in an attention-deficit state fleetingly know that after Nehru (Whoozehe?) was independent India’s next Prime Minister.
Shastri died under most mysterious circumstances soon after signing a Peace Accord with Pakistan’s Field Marshal Ayub Khan—senior Soviet functionaries were witness to this historic moment. Till she breathed her last, his widow, Lalita, repeatedly made it known that foul play was involved. Her husband had been poisoned. Does one need to be a Medical Practitioner to comprehend the meaning of blue patches blotting a body?! And why was no autopsy conducted despite ante-mortem cuts on the torso with blood splashes on his kurta?! (An aside: several decades have swept by, with no government having Shastri’s death papers declassified and released from the erstwhile Soviet Archives…)
More questions, asked not only by a shattered, broken-hearted wife, but a nation united: a matter of coincidental fate that the dead PM’s personal physician, Dr R.N.Chugh, along with his wife and two sons, meeting their end, in a road accident, shortly afterwards?! And how come there is no explanation why on that fateful night, this humble gentleman was served his spartan simple meal of Dal Roti, rinsed down by a thimble-thin tumbler of milk by not his own cook but by Indian Ambassador, T.N.Kaul’s chef, Jaan Mohammad ?I According to Anuj Dhar—who has done research of the find-your-needle-glistening-in-a-haystack genre on Shastri as well as Subhash Chandra Bose cases—the Soviets more than suspected that it was a clear case of poisoning…but for both political as well geographical reasons, had looked the other way—seeing the shards of truth within the “story” drawing unnecessary blood…
Speaking about cover-ups, one visualises the gory assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy; there are glaring loopholes in the investigations which point to serious doubts regarding the blood-splattered death of these two distinguished U.S. Presidents. During the course of the inquest a few hundred people—who were acquainted with what happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963—died in what could best be described as bizarre, baffling, inexplicable circumstances. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who was “officially” named as the “lone assassin” was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby, the owner of a dubious nightclub, eliminating any scope for any probe. (It seems that the head is reeling with history, with a pen playing parallel peer so have to follow the tenor.)
Till this day, U.S. investigators have been unable to state whether two bullets were fired at JFK as he rode in an open limousine. Initial reports suggested that the first bullet was fired from behind the white picket fence facing the Presidential Motorcade, the next from a high-rise building. Oliver Stone, in his movie, JFK, has drawn an unambiguously distinct link between the murders of JFK, his brother, Robert Kennedy and the Watergate scandal that cost Richard Nixon his Presidency. The common linkage highlighted that a special elite commando force raised to slay Fidel Castro could have acted at somebody’s behest. Was this “Somebody” an Invisible, Unseeable, Flat-Footed Ghost?! On 5 June 1968, Robert Kennedy was gunned down at a hotel in Los Angeles while campaigning for Presidency. Sirhan, a Palestinian, was believed to be the assassin. Till date he languishes in jail, 51 years on… Wherever went the couple that high-spiritedly glided down the hotel staircase boastfully chorusing that they had “got him”?! Crooning away, till today, in a gold-leafed nest?! No inquiry records preserved and the hotel, for no apparent reason, razed to the ground?!
Back home, Indira Gandhi was gunned down in cold blood by the very same bodyguards who were to protect her with their lives. Will someone step forth to enlighten the country why the ITBP commandoes riddled the two security guards with bullets after taking them into custody?! Beant Singh died on the spot, while his partner Satwant Singh, with a bullet lodged in his spine, was sent to hospital before being hanged unto death…Should there not have been an interrogation, to draw out, at whose bidding, the Prime Minister met this macabre death?! Rajiv Gandhi was blown to bits—identified by his trademark Lotto shoes. The “blame” was laid at the doorsteps of the LTTE.
Have to halt with this billowing thought: conspiracy theories shall forever be blowing in the wind since questions to the answers have been thrown up in the air…
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasipolitical matters and concerns that touch us all