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Bhutto, Rajiv shared a common past and tragic end
Published on Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 08:16, Updated on Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 09:11 in World section
Tags: Benazir Bhutto, Rajiv Gandhi , New Delhi
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New Delhi: Bhutto's death has brought back tragic memories for India, the memory of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. However, that is not the only similarity between the Bhuttos and the Gandhis.
Relatively inexperienced in politics together they shared the promise of living up to their hallowed past. Benazir and Rajiv shared much in common. Both of them were the children of former Prime Ministers and ironically both of them lost their parents under tragic circumstances.
Rajiv's mother Indira Gandhi swept people's mandate in many elections, similarly Benazir's father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won a landslide victory in 1973.
Incidentally when the two leaders met in Shimla for signing the peace agreement, Benazir Bhutto had come with her father to India.
While Zulfikar was hanged under the orders of a dictator in 1979, Rajiv's mother Indira Gandhi was killed by her own bodyguards. However, the tragic parallels do not end there. Rajiv lost his politically ambitious brother Sanjay Gandhi in an air crash. While Benazir's brother, the hot-blooded revolutionary, Murtaza Bhutto, fell prey to a police encounter.
Gandhis and Bhuttos, the two families who have ruled their countries like no other, have also seen tragedies unparalleled in the history of the subcontinent.
Their story that started before Independence reads like an epic and the saddest part comes at its end, when in 1991 Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a suicide attack during an election campaign and sixteen years later, Benazir Bhutto, also campaigning for national elections, met a similar end.
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yesterday was a black day for democracy
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