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Article: India's trials. (effects on India of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination) (editorial)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 25, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ASSASSINATION, said Disraeli, never changed the history of the world. He may have been right, in his day. But the bomb that killed Rajiv Gandhi this week sent its blast through an india already on the edge of tragedy. That is why a single act of political barbarism, in the southern town of Sriperumbudur on the night of May 21st, may yet smash the world's biggest democracy into sectarian fragments.
Mr Gandhi's murder came in the middle of a general-election campaign that had already been marred by more killing, intimidation and vote-grabbing than India had seen in any of its nine previous elections. Sikh separatists, Assamese secessionists, Tamil militants, Bihari ...