Lalit Shastri Speaks: On 73rd Republic Day, no one has been given Bharat Ratna - the highest civilian honour - by the Modi government. Rajiv Gandhi was given this honour posthumously in 1991 by the Congress government led by PV Narasimha Rao. Rajiv's mother Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister of India at the time of receiving the award in 1971 after creating the Hydra headed monster of Bhindrawala, causing the death of countless hindus at hands of the Khalistan terrorists but riding on the crest of popularity post Bangladesh War. Before her, Jawaharlal Nehru, her father, who was less of a socialist and more of communist and had taken the short cut for building heavy industry by wooing the Russians and propagated the theory of Panch sheel only to be stabbed by China with Russians no where near to help when China attacked India. Very early in the day, even before he could pass the acid test, Nehru was a man in hurry and  had awarded himself the Bharat Ratna in 1955. The nation should not forget and I am making it a point to say this as public memory is short. It was Rajiv Gandhi who had sent the IPKF to Sri Lanka and caused the death of hundreds and hundreds of our soldiers. How can one forget the Sikh massacre, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. That's when Rajiv Gandhi, who got catapulted as PM demonstrated how insensitive he was towards the Sikhs, with his remark - "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes". This is what he said on the mass slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi. 

In mid-1988, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) had launched a separatist insurgency for independence of Kashmir during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure as PM and this created the situation for ethnic cleansing of the Kashmir valley on radical religious grounds that culminated with the slaughter, rape and exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Kashmir in January 1990 just after Gandhi had lost power. 

In 1985, drawing attention to the menace of corruption and lack of accountability in terms of those holding public offices, Rajiv Gandhi had said that of every rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reached the intended beneficiary. His message, awareness and concern about the malaise notwithstanding, the travesty is that even after winning a 2/3 majority riding on the crest of a sympathy wave created by Indira Gandhi's assassination, Rajiv lost power before the full term and was defeated in the election that followed due to the Bofors scandal. 

The Bofors scandal relates to illegal kickbacks paid in a big deal for the sale of field howitzer guns between the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors and India when Rajiv Gandhi was PM. 

Also, how can one cannot forget the shahbano case, the worst surrender to the forces of reactionary religious fanatics  - only for the sake of vote bank politics.