rahul gandhi
Reuters/Altaf Hussain

Congress President Rahul Gandhi has said that he and his sister Priyanka Gandhi were not happy when they heard about LTTE chief Prabhakaran's death in 2009. Rahul opened up about the man, who was behind his father Rajiv Gandhi's death, during a speech at Bucerius Summer School in Germany. 

During his speech, Rahul said that violence should be met with forgiveness and not more violence.  The Sri Lankan army had killed the LTTE chief in 2009.

"My grandmother (Indira Gandhi) and my father (Rajiv Gandhi) were both killed. So, I have suffered violence. I am talking actually from experience. The only way you can move forward after violence is forgiveness. There is no other way. And to forgive, you have to understand what exactly happened and why it happened," Rahul was quoted as saying by IANS.

He continued, "To deal with it is to actually listen and act non-violently. People think this is weakness. But, in fact, this is strength. My father was killed by a terrorist in 1991. In 2009, I saw the person who killed my father lying in a field in Sri Lanka," 

"I called up my sister Priyanka and said that this is very strange, but I am not happy. I should be celebrating that the person who is dead is the person who killed my father. But somehow I am not happy. She said 'you are right, I am not happy either'."

"The reason I wasn't happy was because I saw myself in his children. So, I realised, him lying there actually means that there are kids like me who are crying," he added.

"He might have been a bad or an evil person, but the violence that was done against him was impacting others like it had impacted me. If you go deep, you will find there is something that triggered that violence. It's not just a random event. Some action or violence done against him or her has triggered it."

Rahul Gandhi's grandmother, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguards and his father Rajiv Gandhi died in a bomb blast set by the LTTE.