7: INDIA AT 60

DIVIDED DAWN

REWIND

At midnight on August 15, 1947, India became independent. The end o

the beginning came on June 3 of that year when Lord Mountbatten
announced the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. It was a
bitter tryst with destiny, with M.A. Jinnah, the man with an angora cap
standing between India and Independence and the visceral violence w
ompanied by varying degrees of acceptance from rulers of 565 princely states to the ide
ndia. In a prescient November interview to Time, Mahatma Gandhi said, The fear haun
that India must yet go through a deeper blood bath.

TUAL GENOCIDE

ia became free, but paid a heavy price. Between 7,00,000 and 20,00,000 people lost the
s in the violence that followed the divisionthe exact figure remains uncertain. There w
mass exodus, perhaps the first of its kind as people left their homes and lands. It was
ally believed that the new boundaries were permeable. But that remained a dream as
stilities mounted between the two countries.

RST CUT

or Pramila became the first Miss India. Bombays Home Minister Morarji Desai presente
the title. Also known as Esther Victoria Abraham, Pramila starred and worked behind-th
nes in Ardeshir Iranis Mother India that became the first Indian film to be screened at
ckingham Palace.

m Mathur became the first woman with commercial pilot licence.

D YOU KNOW
 Edwina Mountbatten called Jawaharlal Nehru Jawa and visited him
every year in February, after Independence, according to Patrick
Frenchs book Liberty or Death.

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ in his poem Subh-e-Azadi (Freedoms Dawn)

is leprous daybreak, dawn nights fangs have manged, This is not that long-looked for
ak of day.

oking For A New Home

waharlal Nehru at the Kurukshetra refugee camp. This was the largest of the nearly 200
mps set up to house refugees from Pakistan. Planned for 1,00,000 people, it came to
ommodate thrice that number.

OU ARE FREE, YOU ARE FREE TO GO TO YOUR TEMPLES. YOU ARE FREE TO GO
YOUR MOSQUES.

hammad Ali Jinnah

said Jinnah in his Independence Day speech. Biographer Stanley Wolpert described him
the man who conjured Pakistan by the force of his indomitable will. Jinnah started ou
h supporting Muslim-Hindu unity. But pushed for a separate nation in 1940. During his
sidential address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly he said, On both sides, there a
ople who may not agree with it, but in my judgement there was no other solution and I am
e history will record its verdict in favour of it.

SEWHERE...

e un General Assembly passed a resolution for the partition of Palestine.

ester Carlson, signed an agreement to develop a copy machine. This was the beginning
ox.

e International Monetary Fund began operations.

ngster Al Capone (below) died of syphilis in Miami.

 The House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) scoured
Hollywood for Communists.

NEW ERA

Temples in South India opened their doors to Harijans, starting with Th

garaja-swami Temple in Tiruvarur. Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram later addressed the devote
ront of the mandapam.

48: INDIA AT 60

E LIGHT DIES

WIND

the evening of January 30, as he was walking to his prayer meeting, Gandhi was stopp
Nathuram Vinayak Godse, who took out a Beretta and shot him thrice. Twenty-eight
nutes later, Gandhi was dead. The light has gone out of our lives, a broken Nehru said
t night.

E K FACTOR

e first Indo-Pak war over Kashmir broke out and the highest tank battle in the world took
ce at Zojila Pass. On Nehrus request UN intervened and ordered a ceasefire. It then
ggested a plebiscite in the Valley.

RST CUT

e first Indian motor car rolled off Hindustan Motors Limiteds assembly line.

a Usha, the first India-built modern vessel, took to the sea.

e first stage of the Damodar power project, costing approximately Rs 12 crore, kicked of

D YOU KNOW
 The dewan of Junagarh who advised its Nawab to accede to Pakistan was Sir
Shah Nawaz Bhutto, father of Zulfikar Bhutto.

handful of Mahatma Gandhis ashes was deposited at the State Bank of India in
Orissa. It was released only in 1997.

LD DRIBBLE

e Indian hockey team won the gold medal the Olympic Games in London, the first of its
ee consecutive wins.

E DONT WRITE HISTORY, WE MAKE HISTORY.

labhbhai Patel

e big boss of Indian politics, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (seen on the left, with Lord
untbatten) was the man of the moment the year after Independence. He has been called
Iron Man, but Patel described himself as one of Bapus soldiers. He was responsible
bringing together 565 states and integrating them into the country. Patel was also credit
h bringing order out of the nightmare of chaos as his powerhouse secretary V.P. Menon
ed the process. These included the troublesome states of Junagarh and Hyderabad. Af
ch diplomatic negotiation, Hyderabad was brought under control in September during
eration Polo. Within four days, Hyderabad became a part of India.

rdar Vallabhbhai Patel while talking to G.D. Birla

e are having a grudging time, both with the weather and other problems; Kashmir, in
ticular, is giving us a headache .

MELODY

ong Carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmis admirers were Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaha
hru who called her the Queen of Song. As singer and actor, she took classical music
erywhere in India, her career managed with great skill by her entrepreneur husband T.
dashivam. She was the first musician to be conferred Bharat Ratna.
 ELSEWHERE...

The island nation of Ceylonnow Sri Lankabecame an independent dominion

within the British Commonwealth.

T.S. Eliot (above) won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah died at 71.

The World Health Organisation was founded by the UN.

The new state of Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq
banon.

500 acres, spread across 35 villages in Gujranwala and Sialkot districts, that refugee
yawati lost during the Partition. In compensation, she was allotted 835 acres in a village
nal.

st march

e First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry passed through the Gateway of India in
mbay, the last of the British troops to leave India. Seen here is the first batch to leave in
47. The battalion was presented a silver replica of the Gateway of India.
Next St

LINE IS DRAWN
 REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
India and Pakistan
signed the Karachi
Agreement establishing
a ceasefire line to be
supervised by UN observers. It was
suggested that the Kashmir issue be
solved through arbitration.
UNEASY
TRUCE:
EXIT, SOUZA Jawaharlal Nehru
with Liaqat Ali
Artist and founder of the Progressive Khan on his right
Artists movement F.N. Souza (third
from left) left India in July after the police raided his studio in
search of obscene paintings. He lived in London where his
art was exhibited all over Europe and bought by galleries like
the Tate. He moved to New York in the 60s, but never
returned to India.

FIRST CUT

Muthamma Chohivia Beliappa became the first woman to

clear the Indian Administrative Service examination and join
the Indian Foreign Service.

The Cinematographic Act, 1949, created two categories of

censorship certificates: A for adults and U for universal
exhibition.

China came to share border with India after its occupation of

Tibet.

EXIT, FRANCE
 The people of Chandernagore, a French
Indian settlement, decided by plebiscite
in favour of merging with India. The
territory was transferred a year later.

DID YOU KNOW

Nehru and Patel had a major disagreement over who should

become the first President of India. Nehru wanted Governor-
General C. Rajagopalachari but Patel preferred Rajendra
Prasad.

I FELT INDIAN POLITICS IN THE ABSENCE OF

GANDHIJI WOULD BE PRACTICAL AND ABLE TO
RETALIATE.

NATHURAM GODSE during his trial at Red Fort

On November 15, Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan
Dattatreya Apte were hanged. The accused in the case are
seen talking during the trial in a special court at the Red Fort
in 1948.

1,00,000 people who prayed at the site of Mahatma Gandhis

assassination on the first anniversary of his death.

4 new universities set up. This included the MS University in

Baroda.

A POLITICAL WILL

K.M. Cariappa

Lieutenant-General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa (left)

became the first Indian to become Chief of Army Staff and
commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, succeeding General
Sir Roy Bucher. He was also the first Field Marshal in the
 Army. Cariappa soon became a thorn on
Nehrus side. Moving away from military
matters, in the early 50s, he started
commenting on Indias economic issues,
provoking Nehru into asking him in 1952
to reduce the number of press conferences he was
addressing.

ELSEWHERE...

Samuel Beckett (above) finished writing En Attendant Godot,

which was translated into Waiting for Godot in 1953.

Scientists at Mayo Clinic, US, announced the synthesising of

a hormone, later called cortisone, useful in treating
rheumatoid arthritis.

The North Atlantic Treaty came into effect.

South Africa established an apartheid programme.

Soviet Union exploded its first A-bomb.

1950: INDIA AT 60

REPUBLIC OF HOPE

REWIND

On January 26, India cut her last ties with Britain and
became a republic. Rajendra Prasad became the first
President. For the first time, he said, the country had been
brought together under the jurisdiction of one constitution
and one union which takes over the responsibility for the
welfare of more than 320 million men and women who
inhabit it.
FAST FORWARD

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
Agriculture was the highest priority for
the first Five Year Plan that was
expected to bring the whole of India
agricultural, industrial, social and
economicinto one framework of
thinking. With a total expenditure of
Rs 2,069 crore, the Plan allotted 44.6
per cent of it to agriculture, including A NEW INDIA:
irrigation and power projects. It was Signing the
during this Planfrom 1951-1956 Planning
that the mega dam projects of Bhakra- Commission
Nangal, Hirakud and Mettur dam were report. From right:
initiated. The Plan allocated Rs 173 Nehru, G.L. Nanda
crore to industry. A little over four-fifths and R.K. Patil
of the Rs 497 crore earmarked for the
development of transport and communications was set aside
for railways. By the end of the Plan, in 1956, five Indian
Institutes of Technology were also started.

DID YOU KNOW

Japan was barred from the 1948 Olympic Games but was
allowed to compete in the inaugural Asian Games held in
Delhi.

FIRST CUT
 The first Indian Institute of Technology
was built on the site of a former British
prison camp in Kharagpur, West Bengal.

The villagers of Chini in Himachal

Pradesh became the first Indians to cast votes in Indias first
general elections that began in 1951.

A MATTER OF RELIGION

When President Rajendra Prasad inaugurated the newly

restored Somnath Temple in Gujarat, Jawaharlal Nehru was
horrified and asked him to reconsider. When he did not, it
added to the growing belief among critics that the Congress
under P.D. Tandon had become deeply conservative.

COUPLE SIZZLE

Elaborate sets and memorable songs made Awara an

instant hit. Nargis bathing suit caused a stir. Starring Raj
Kapoor and Nargis, the film was released in Russia as
Brodigaya two years later where orchestras played tunes
from the film for the actors visiting the country.

ETERNAL PADAYATRI
Vinobha Bhave

He covered over 50,000 miles and collected more than 36

lakh acres from landlords all over India. But the birth of the
voluntary land gift movement popularly known as Bhoodan
began while Gandhian leader Vinoba Bhave was on a
walking tour of Telangana. In Pochempelli village, landless
peasants told him they needed 100 acres of land. Bhave
asked the landlord Ramchandra Reddi to donate 100 acres
and met with success.
 IT HITS YOU ON THE HEAD AND
MAKES YOU THINK.

Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier (left)

goes over the design for Chandigarh in
1950, which Nehru asked him to construct as a new city
symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by traditions of
the past... an expression of the nations faith in the future.
Later, he said, It hits you on the head, and makes you
think.

ELSEWHERE...

Chinese Communists forced the Dalai Lama to surrender his

army to Beijing.

Jack Kerouac (below)wrote On the Road on a 120-foot-long

scroll.

J.D. Salingers novel, The Catcher in the Rye, published.

Liaquat Ali Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, was shot dead.

Shah Ali Razmara of Iran was assassinated.

Jordan's King Abdullah Ibn Hussein was assassinated.

2 million tonnes was the amount of food grain India received

to tackle the drought crisis.

200 the number of aircraft movements handled in a single

day at Dum Dum airport in Calcutta.

1952: INDIA AT 60
 THE FIRST COUNT

REWIND

There were 18,000 candidates for 4,500

seats, 497 of which were in the Lok
Sabha, during the first general elections. One-hundred-and-
seventy-six million Indians, 85 per cent of whom couldnt
read or write, formed the electorate. There were 2,24,000
polling booths and as many policemen pressed into service.
Symbols were used on ballot papers for voters who couldnt
read. When the results came in, the Congress led by
Jawaharlal Nehru had swept into power winning 364 of the
489 seats in Parliament.

VOTING FOR INDIA

Sukumar Sen

Appointed Chief Election Commissioner, the ICS officer had

the unenviable task of conducting the first two general
elections in independent India. He supervised voter
registration, design of party symbols and recruitment of
honest polling officers. Add to that an electorate spread over
more than million square miles. The second election in 1957
cost India Rs 45 million less. Reason: The prudent Sen had
safely stored the 3.5 million ballot boxes used the first time
round.

DMKS ICON

With a famous courtroom scene that lasted five minutes,

Parashakti starring the legendary Sivaji Ganesan, had its
dialogues crafted by future Tamil Nadu chief minister M.
Karunanidhi. The film was also considered a DMK-vehicle as
it dispersed the partys ideals and made Ganesan a DMK
 icon.

FIRST CUT

India launched a family planning

programme, the first in the world.

The first International Film Festival was inaugurated at

Bombay.

The first radio telescope was installed at Calcutta.

The first general budget was presented in Parliament.

India won its first ever cricket Test match, defeating England
in Madras.

OLYMPIAN FEATS

In the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, India won a gold

in hockey defeating Holland 6-1. Balbir Singh Sr. scored five
of Indias six goals. Wrestler K.D. Jadhav won a bronze
medal, the only time the country won more than one medal.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU on Potti Sriramalus hunger strike for

an Andhra state
Im unmoved by this and propose to ignore it completely

The New Temples

Jawaharlal Nehru at the Tungabhadra dam, the largest in

Karnataka. Situated north of Bangalore, it is spread over 400
sq km with 33 gates. On the Independence Day all 33 gates
are opened.

ELSEWHERE...
 The Diaries of Anne Frank was published in
English.

Elizabeth was formally proclaimed Queen of

England following the death of her father, King
George VI.

A revolution in Egypt occurred after Colonel Gamal Abdel

Nasser overthrew the monarchy and ended 2,300 years of
foreign domination.

3,89,816 phials of indelible ink were used in the first election.

76 A certificates and 6,492 U certificates were issued by

the Central Board of Film Censors till October 31, 1952.

133 Vijay Manjrekars score in the first Test against England

at Leeds.

1953: INDIA AT 60
STRAINS SHOW PICTURE SPEAK
REWIND

Nearly a year after

Potti Sriramulu
died while fasting
for the creation of
Andhra Pradesh, the state came into
existence. The END OF
inauguration at the MONARCHY:
capital Kurnool was Jawaharlal Nehru
attended by C. with the Nizam of
Rajagopalachari and Hyderabad
Jawaharlal Nehruthe
two people who opposed the creation of the state in the first
place. T. Prakasam became the first chief minister and
Kurnool remained the capital until November 1, 1956 when it
shifted to Hyderabad. It was the creation of this southern
state that spurred the movement for the
reorganisation of states.

HOW I WISHED I HAD MADE IT...

Thats what Raj Kapoor said on watching Bimal

Roys Do Bigha Zameen, which won a special
mention at Cannes and the Social Progress Award at
Karlovy Vary. The deeply neo-realist film of a poor farmer
during the Bengal famine had Balraj Sahni playing rickshaw-
puller, who worked day and night to pay off a loan. Roy
created unforgettable scenes in this filma memorable one
being that of a rickshaw race. While preparing for the role,
Sahni pulled rickshaws barefoot through the streets of
Calcutta for a fortnight.

FIRST CUT
EDGE OF BORDER

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
Nehrus foreign policy was opposed to
the continuance of colonial rule
anywhere. This meant reclaiming parts
of the country still languishing under
foreign yoke. Things came to a head
when unarmed satyagrahis were fired
upon by Portuguese authorities in Goa,
which dictator Antonio de Oliveira FIGHT FOR
Salazar had described as a light of the
FREEDOM:
West in lands of the Orient. An
Satyagrahis
enraged India asked the Portugal
march towards the
government to close their legation in
Indian border in
Delhi and its consulates in other cities.
Goa in 1954
The Indian consulate-general in Goa
was withdrawn on September 1.

FIRST CUT

HEC-2M, the first computer in the country, was installed in

Calcutta.

Bharat Petroleum became the first company to market liquid

petroleum gas for home use.

General Maharaj Rajendra Sinhji became the first person to

hold the rank of Chief of Army Staff.

State Bank of India, formed in July, became the first Indian

 bank to be nationalised.

CODE-BREAKER

Despite differences between the prime

minister and president, the Hindu law
was modernised with a series of acts reforming
laws on marriage, succession, guardianship and
adoption, passed over two years.

DID YOU KNOW

The crowd that turned up to hear Jawaharlal Nehru speak at

Moscows Gorky Park was so large that the venue had to be
shifted to the Dynamo Moscow Football Stadium.

ONLY SCIENCE CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF

HUNGER.

A new India can be built, not merely by the brilliance of a

score or hundreds of people, but by the cooperative hard
work of the millions, said Jawaharlal Nehru, while pouring
the first bucket of concrete into the foundation of the Bhakra
Dam. It was one of the most ambitious projects in India. At
680 feet, the dam was the second largest in the world with
water that would irrigate 7.4 million acres of land.

15 was the minimum age of marriage fixed for women after

the Hindu Marriage Act was passed.

ELSEWHERE...

Clarton-Schwerdt and Schaffer discovered the polio virus.

President Juan Peron of Argentina was ousted and military

leaders confiscated his wife Eva Perons body.
 Actor James Dean died in a collision.

Rosa Parks (below) was arrested in

Alabama as she refused to move to the
back of a bus, sparking off the civil rights
movement.

Down the Road With Ray

Filmmaker Satyajit Ray produced the first film in the Apu

Trilogy, Pather Panchali, (Song of the Road), which went on
to win the National Award. Pandit Ravi
Shankar recorded the music for the PICTURE SPEAK
film in a non-stop session of 11 hours.

WINDS OF
CHANGE:
Travancore-
Cochin during
elections in 1954.
Two years later it
became Kerala.

1956: INDIA AT 60

STATE MATTERS

Rewind
 The States Reorganisation Act of 1956
remains the single most extensive change in
state boundaries since the Independence of
India in 1947. It took 9,000 interviews, visits to
104 places and 1,52,250 memorandums
before the Act, creating 14 states and six Union territories,
was passed. The Act led to the formation of Kerala and
Bombay. A new article was also added to the Constitution
that ensured linguistic minorities the right of education in
their mother tongue.

WITH GRACE AND GOODWILL.

The formal end of French rule was marked by a treaty

signed in Delhi. Pondicherry, Karikal, Mahe and Yanam were
declared Indian territories. Jawaharlal Nehru praised the
French for their tolerance, good sense and wisdom.

FIRST CUT

Sulochana Modi became the first female mayor of Bombay.

The mile-and-a-half-long Banihal tunnel, an all-weather link

in Kashmir, was inaugurated.

The first steel tube plant at Jamshedpur went into operation.

Lambretta, the first scooter, was introduced.

India reached the semi-finals of the Olympic football

tournament.

DID YOU KNOW

India celebrated the 2,500th Buddha Jayanti with

celebrations organised all over the country. This included an
 international exhibition of Buddhist art.

FRENCH HONOUR

S.H. Raza painted The Village and

Eglise (above) and became the first
non-French artist to be awarded the Prix de la Critique. With
this award he joined the ranks of artists like Bernard Buffet.
He also started showing his work in Venice, Tokyo, Brussels,
Sao Paulo, New York and Britain. His work was exhibited at
the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Indian philosophy,
specifically tantric beliefs and their evocative values,
influenced Raza greatly. The reality of being an Indian artist
in the West at a period when all art from this country was
regarded imitative, weighed on him. But what saved his work
from being just exotic was the effort to be Indian in spirit,
says critic Yashodhara Dalmia.

FIRST LETS PROVE OURSELVES AND THEN TALK OF

GANDHI.
Homi J. Bhabha

The Cambridge-educated physicist was the first chairman of

Indias Atomic Energy Commission and the brain behind the
first atomic reactor in Asia that went into operation at
Trombay, Bombay, in 1956. He also founded the Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research in the city. Though he
said 50 bombs would cost Rs 10 crore, an expenditure quite
small when compared to the military budgets of many
countries, he was a votary of disarmament.

ELSEWHERE...

Sudan became independent from Britain. Northern Muslim

parties took over. Southerners demanded autonomy and civil
war began.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously to censure

Israel for its attack on Syria as a flagrant violation of the
Palestine armistice.

Actor Grace Kelly (below) married Prince Rainier III of

Monaco in a civil ceremony. A church wedding took place the
next day.

The last of the French troops left Vietnam.

70,000 tourists visited the state of Jammu and Kashmir

during this year.

500 million roubles was the loan offered by the USSR for the
purchase of farm machinery.

1957: INDIA AT 60

PLANS OF ACTION

REWIND

India went to the polls for the second time even as the
second Five Year Plan was also put into motion. Inspired by
Nehrus vision of an industrialised nation, P.C. Mahalanobis
prioritised the development of the public sector and paid
attention to domestic production of industrial products. He
travelled to different parts of the world in 1954, researching
economic models, before presenting what came to be called
the Mahalanobis model where qualitative problems found
quantitative solution. The honeymoon lasted till 1966, when
a Plan holiday was declared till 1969 and decision-making
moved to the Finance Ministry.

CINEMATIC
CROSSING
Mother Jaagte
Indian films India Raho
were on a global roll.
Jaagte Raho won the main prize at Karlovy
Vary and Pather Panchali was declared Best
Picture at San Francisco. Mother India had a
rare preview at a mainstream New York theatre and was
Indias entry to the Oscars. Do Aankhen Bara Haath was a
hit at the Berlin film fest.

FIRST CUT

The Indian Air Force got its first jet bomber, the Canberra. It
was the only bomber till the 1970s.

MV Andaman became the first passenger-cum-cargo vessel

built by Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam.

An Elephant Named Indira

As his daughter, his official hostess at Teen Murti, Indira

Gandhi looks on, Jawaharlal Nehru feeds an elephant which
he gifted to Japanese children in 1949, during a visit to
Tokyo. It was named Indira. This became a reference point in
future ties between the two countries.

A GOVERNMENT IS BEST THAT RULES THE LEAST.

E.M.S. Namboodiripad

India and the world got its first-ever elected Communist

 leader when CPIs Namboodiripad took over
as chief minister of Kerala. The party first
commuted the sentences of all death-row
prisoners. Fair price shops were opened and
labour dispute cases withdrawn. Whether this was Red
Terror or a New Dawn,the world was divided. But in the first
few months in office, the first Communist government of the
country invited the Birlas to set up a factory in the state. The
business house was offered bamboo at Re 1 a tonne,
though the market price was a thousand times more. During
the two years EMS was in charge of Kerala, he initiated
educational reforms.

DID YOU KNOW

The Indian polo team won the title at the World Polo Cup in
France.

Archaeologist V.S. Wankaner discovered one of the worlds

largest collections of rock paintings at Bhimbetka caves, that
chronicled history right from the Stone Age.

GO, GOA, GO

On August 26, Portuguese troops fired in the direction of the

Tarak Pardi post inside India. No casualties were reported
and the fire was returned. Portugal filed a complaint before
the International Court of Justice protesting that it was being
denied the right to pass through Indian territory to get to the
Portuguese enclaves, Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

ELSEWHERE...

There was a revolution in Iran as the king was overthrown

and a republican government established.
France sent its troops to Algeria to crush a rebel movement.
This later came to be called The Battle for Algiers.

French fashion magnate Christian Dior died and was

succeeded by his assistant Yves Saint Laurent.

USSR launched Sputnik 2 with Laika, a dog, on board.

Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins starred in

Bridge on the River Kwai (above).

80,544 number of foreign tourists, excluding Pakistanis, who

visited India in 1957.

1,216 postal offices across the country handled telegrams in

the Devnagri script.

GRAFT CRAFT
REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
For the first time, a financial scam
rocked Independent India.
Governmental corruption made
headlines when Feroze Gandhi, MP
from Rae Bareily and husband of
Indira Gandhi, brought to the notice of
the Parliament an investment of Rs
1.24 crore by the newly nationalised CAUGHT RED-
Life Insurance Corporation in stock
HANDED: T.T.
speculator Haridas Mundhras sinking
Krishnamachari
companies, calling it a conspiracy to
(centre)
beguile the Corporation
of its funds. Finance Minister T.T.
Krishnamachari was forced to quit after the
commission of inquiry headed by Justice M.C.
Chagla found that his principal aide, Finance
Secretary H.M. Patel, had ordered the deal.
After his arrest, Mundhra, whom Feroze called
the mystery man of Indias business underworld, revealed
he had contributed to the Congress party coffers. The inquiry
was intended to serve as a corrective to administrators all
over the country, but sadly, that was never to happen.

CARAVAN LEADER

Dismissed by M.A. Jinnah as a Muslim showboy and

elevated by Nehru as the caravan leader, Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad was crucial to the Congress in the early days of
Partition when there was unease over minorities.
Independent Indias first education minister, who died in
1958 of a stroke, is still remembered as a permanent
statement against the two nation notion.
 FIRST CUT

For the first time, two technical squadrons were

added to the National Cadet Corps air wing.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was

passed by the Parliament.

DID YOU KNOW

Filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak wrote the screenplay for Bimal

Roys famous reincarnation drama Madhumati, starring
thespian Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala.

I HAVE ALWAYS STOOD FOR JUSTICE FOR MY

PEOPLE.
Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah

He wasnt called Sher-i-Kashmir for nothing. Released in

January, Sheikh Abdullah was jailed in April on false charges
of complicity with Pakistan. He became prime minister of
Kashmir in 1948, but was dismissed in
1953 after rumours that he, in a
PICTURE SPEAK
conversation with American politician
Adlai Stevenson, had offered J&K as a
base for United States to operate from,
against the USSR, in exchange for
recognition of an independent
Kashmir. Jailed for 11 years, he was
exiled in 1971 for 18 months. He
became the chief minister of J&K in
HOME 1977 and remained in the post till his
TERRITORY: death in 1982.
Macmillan with
Rajendra Prasad Passage to India
(right)
 Harold Macmillan became the first British
prime minister to visit India after
Independence. Time magazine reported,
Macmillan took with him the cheering
knowledge that the British are today more
popular in India than ever before.

A 1928 CHEVROLET AND MADHUBALA

Babu samjho ishare, horn pukare; Hum thay woh thi, woh
thi hum thayKishore Kumar yodelled and danced and
laughed his way through Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, a kooky
romantic ensemble comedy starring the Kumar brothers
(Ashok, Anoop and Kishore). A 1928 Chevrolet and the
luminous Madhubala made this Satyen Bose movie a
classic.

ELSEWHERE...

Hungarys Communist regime charged Imre Nagy with

treason for leading the revolution and executed him.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov was released.

Boris Pasternak (below) won the Nobel Prize in Literature

though Soviet authorities pressured him into relinquishing it.

Explorer I, the first US satellite, successfully orbited the

earth.

Nine thousand scientists of 43 nations petitioned the UN for

a nuclear test ban.
1,200 dollars is what Mehboob Khan, his wife Sardar and
Nargis got as foreign exchange allowance from the
government for attending the Oscars, where Mother India
was nominated, only to be beaten by Fellinis Nights of
Cabiria.
PICTURE SPEAK

FLIGHT OF
HOPE: Dalai
Lama (centre) with
bodyguards after
fleeing Lhasa

1959: INDIA AT 60

FORSAKING HOME

REWIND

A homeland was lost, perhaps forever. His Potala Palace in

Lhasa increasingly under attack, the Dalai Lama crossed
into India with 10,000 followers after an abortive Tibetan
revolt against the Chinese. India gave him political asylum
and here he has stayed since then, heading Tibets
government in exile. Though Jawaharlal Nehru told the Dalai
Lama not to look for support in the West where he would
look like a piece of merchandise, independence or nothing
 was what the Dalai Lama and his people
wanted. The Chinese way, he said,
would make them a people without their
souls.

HINDU YA MUSALMAN?

Tu Hindu banega na musalman banega/Insaan ki aulaad

hai insaan banega (you will not grow up to be a Hindu or a
Muslim/you are the son of a man/and a human being you
shall be), sang Mohammad Rafi in Dhool Ka Phool, directed
by Yash Chopra, with lyrics from the great Urdu poet, Sahir
Ludhianvi. The movie examined the searing stigma of
illegitimacy and carried an impassioned plea for communal
harmony.

FIRST CUT

Bajaj Auto received a Government licence to produce two-

and three-wheelers in India.

The Press Club of India was inaugurated in Delhi.

National Aerospace Laboratories, Indias pre-eminent civil

research and development establishment in aeronautics and
allied disciplines, was set up in Delhi.

DID YOU KNOW

Visiting Peking in 1959, lawyer Daniel Latifi was told by his

Chinese colleagues that the McMohan line (line of control
between India and China) had no juridical basis.

WE CANT WORK UNDER THE DEFENCE MINISTER.

General K.S. Thimayya

So said the war hero and Chief of Army Staff in a stand-off

SHAKEN, STIRRED

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
The border dispute with China, which
led to war and humiliating defeat for
India in 1963, was the lowest point in
Jawaharlal Nehrus career. It caused
him a certain loss of face in the
international arena and undermined his
position at home. It eroded his
authority as he faced the first no- LONE RANGER:
confidence motion in Parliament, an A disillusioned
act of daring that was inconceivable at Nehru after the
any time between August Chinese
1947 and November 1962. aggression
On crucial policy matters,
ministers defied Nehru. Against this background,
Nehru forced the resignations of six cabinet
ministers who had opposed him. It was an
attempt to reassert his authority and revitalise the
party, but time was not on his side. Weak in both spirit and
authority, a shaky Nehru prompted everyone to ask the
inevitable question, After Nehru, Who?the title of a book
by American journalist Wells Hangen.

HIGH YIELDER

Norman Borlaug, plant breeder, came to India to test new

varieties of Mexican wheat, whose yields were five times
better than Indian varieties. This later fuelled the Green
 Revolution.

FIRST CUT

Indias space programme began in Trivandrum,

Kerala. The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in
Trivandrum was named after the father of Indian rocketry.

Ray Dolby, while working in India, conceived of separating

recorded sound into two channels as a means to strip away
unwanted tape recording noise. His first prototype was
completed in London in 1966.

DID YOU KNOW

After a helicopter crash killed five of Indias finest generation

of military commanders, no two senior officers were allowed
to travel together on the same aircraft again.

GUNGI GUDIYA, HE SAID

Ram Manohar Lohia

Opposition stalwarts Minoo Masani, J.B. Kripalani and Ram

Manohar Lohia entered Parliament in 1963 when the
Congress was defeated in a series of important by-elections.
Earlier Lohia, a prolific writer and doctorate from Berlin, had
created a stir, publishing a pamphlet, 25,000 Rupees a Day,
which he said was the amount spent on prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru, while most Indians lived on 3 annas a
day. A fierce critic of the Nehru-Gandhi dynastyhe called
Indira Gandhi gungi gudiya in 1967he also acknowledged
the centrality of caste in Indian politics, rejecting Marxism as
much as capitalism.

NIKE, INDIAN EDITION

 The seeds of Indias modern rocketry
programme were sown on November 21, when
a Nike-Apache rocket, made in the US, rose
from Thumba. The 715-kg two-stage rocket
rose to an altitude of 208 km, releasing sodium
vapour that illuminated the sky.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU explaining the Chinese aggression

The Chinese are a military-minded people, always laying
stress on military roads and preparedness.

ROMANCE, QUTUB STYLE

Nutan and Dev Anand sang Dil ka bhanwar kare pukar on

the steps of Qutub Minar in Delhi and a thousand hearts
started beating when Tere Ghar Ke Saamne was released.
The actors played the children of two feuding millionaires in
the classy comedy by Dev Anands under-rated brother,
director Vijay Anand, while its music was composed by S.D.
Burman.

ELSEWHERE...

Dr James Campbell performed the first human nerve

transplant.

Sukarno was appointed first president of Indonesia.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States,

had been in office two years, 10 months and two days, when
an assassin's bullet ended his life in Dallas, Texas.

The first female astronaut Valentina Tereshkova was

launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok VI.

22,000 were killed by cyclone-driven tidal waves from Bay of

Bengal in India. Over 1,00,000 went missing, while 1 million
houses were destroyed.

50% was the limit of reservation for all institutions, as

mandated by the Supreme Court.

PICTURE SPEAK

ORPHANED:
Indira Gandhi and
the nation mourn
Nehrus death

1964: INDIA AT 60

END OF AN ERA

REWIND

The Nehru era has come to an end, announced The Indian

Express. Jawaharlal Nehrus death was announced in All
India Radios 2 p.m. bulletin, and though Gulzarilal Nanda
was sworn in as successor, the power struggle had begun.
When asked once what his legacy to India would be, Nehru
had said, Hopefully, it is 400 million people capable of
governing themselves. Nehrus personality was reflected in
the nation he governed. As biographer Geoffrey Tyson said,
If Nehru had been a different kind of man, India would have
been a different kind of country.

FIRST CUT

The National Film Archive of India was established as a

media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in
February.

The Industrial Development Bank of India was established

on as a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBI

The first Indian mutual fund, Unit Scheme-1964 a.k.a. US-

64, was founded by the UTI.

ALLS GOLD

India regained its hockey gold medal beating Pakistan in

what was to be, unfortunately, Indias last Olympic hockey
gold. In the semi-final, India beat Australia 3-1 to set up their
third consecutive clash with Pakistan in the Olympic finals.

DID YOU KNOW

Actor Guru Dutt died while working on

K. Asifs Love and God in October. Asif PICTURE SPEAK
himself died in 1971 and the film was
never completed, though it was
released in a half-finished form in
1986.

A STRONG MAN INDEED, WHO IS

SURE OF HIMSELF.
Lal Bahadur Shastri PRIME TIME:
Radhakrishnan
So said The Guardian about Lal swears in Shastri
Bahadur Shastri. He gave himself a
 slogan, Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, which he took
seriously when it came to budget allocations.
Having inherited a nation which was
psychologically and financially on an edge, he
gave a sense of national unity to India. He also
surprised everyone by building an innovation, the Prime
Ministers Secretariat, which has evolved into the all-
powerful PMO now.

JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN welcoming Sheikh Abdullahs

release
It is remarkable how the freedom fighters of yesterday begin
so easily to imitate the language of the imperialists.

A Holy Call

Pope Paul VI visited India in 1964. Massive crowds gathered

at the Oval where the 38th International Eucharistic
Congress was held on December 4. A group of Hindus
raised objections, though, thinking the Pope would try to
convert people.

ELSEWHERE...

The G.I. Joe action figure debuted as a popular American

toy.

U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first major

government report saying smoking may be hazardous to
one's health. A US report, Smoking & Health, connected
smoking to lung cancer.

Fatah, the Palestinian guerrilla group founded by Yasser

Arafat, launched its first armed attack against Israel. The
annual celebration of this day came to be known as Fatah
Day.

30 countries participated in the third International Film

Festival aimed at providing a common platform
to filmmakers and cine-goers.

4,850 people were killed in a cyclone that hit

India and Ceylon.

THE TWISTER

The Rameswaram cyclone wiped out the

villages of Dhanuskodi from the map. A
passenger train which left Rameswaram was washed off by
the storm leaving several dead. The Pamban bridge
connecting Mandapam and Rameswaram island was also
submerged.

ONE MAN, ONE ACT

Sunil Dutt, a popular and charismatic star, made his

directorial debut with Yaadein, a one-of-a-kind film with a
single actor. It had some bizarre
scenes like an attack from a bunch of
PICTURE SPEAK
toys. The only other living presence in
the film was the silhouette of Priya,
played by his actor-wife Nargis. The
films story was credited to her.

1965: INDIA AT 60

THE SIEGE WITHIN LANGUAGE

REWIND BAR: Agitating
students swear by
Anti-Hindi protests gripped Tamil Nadu English
 as the DMK organised the Madras State
Anti-Hindi Conference on January 17,
calling for observing January 26 as a
day of national mourningthe day the
15-year grace period for the use of
English as the official language was going to end. The stir
was led by students, who hit the streets out of concern for
their careers, with a call of Hindi never, English ever. The
agitation soon became state-wide. In the Budget session of
Parliament, President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan assured
members that English would stay in India. Linguistic pride
had won.

FIRST CUT

The annual national beauty pageant, Femina Miss India, was

held for the first time, in which Persis Khambatta was
declared the winner. She went to Hollywood and later
appeared in Star Trek.

BORDER CONTROL

Till 1965, Indo-Pak borders were manned by the State

Armed Police Battalion. After the war, a specialised Border
Security Force was formed for the international border.

DID YOU KNOW

The Army was called to patrol the streets when 1,00,000

marchers set the security booth of All India Radio and
Congress president K. Kamarajs house on fire to protest
cow slaughter.

WE AIM TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY, BUT OF THE

TYPE PEOPLE VALUE.
 Thats what Mohammad Ayub Khan
(above left) said when he took over
Pakistan, becoming the first Pakistan
general to lead a coup in 1958. The
commander-in-chief of the Pakistan
Army since 1951, he was also the first to openly align with
the US against the Soviet Union and establish close ties with
China, in many ways setting the tone for subsequent
governments. But the war against India in 1965 was the
beginning of his end, with his foreign minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto resigning after he signed the Tashkent Declaration
with Lal Bahadur Shastri (above right) and aligning against
him. Under pressure from him and another opposition leader
Maulana Bhasnani, he had to turn over the government to
Commander-in-chief Yahya Khan.

RONALD SEGAL in a study, The Crisis of India

What foreign observers are finding perturbing is that free
expression of liberal views by Indians seems to be in
danger.

CIRCULAR BEDS, FANCY CARS

Waqt, Yash Chopras multi-starrer, was a tribute to the spirit

of Punjabis, with its lusty colour and spirited youngsters. Its
design ethos, suggesting a prosperity of no fixed address,
was much copied. As movie scholar Ashish Rajyadaksha
wrote: It had a series of living rooms in pink and blue, with
fountains and circular beds in bedrooms, motor boats and
fancy cars in which the rich raced each other to get the girl in
between attending huge parties. Ah, yes, there was also
Sadhanas hair, Raj Kumars sharp suits and Shashi
Kapoors smile.
 ELSEWHERE...

Singapores prime minister Lee Kuan Yew

proclaimed de facto independence from Malaysia
and Singapore.

Congolese lieutenant general Mobutu ousted Joseph

Kasavubu and declared himself president.

Winston Churchill died at the age of 90. India grieved though

Churchill had never wanted Indias independence.

765 reporters during the 1965 war were taken to the for-ward
areas, and 14,300 photos issued every month.

4,000 Indians died in 1965 Indo-Pak war, while Pakistan lost

3,000 men.

NO CONFIDENCE
REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
India seemed on the point of peril. With
failed monsoon for two successive
years 1965 and 1966, India saw a
severe drop in food production, and an
unprecedented increase in foodgrain
supply from the US. US President
Lyndon Johnson put wheat supplies on
a short tether. He refused to commit HUNGRY
food aid until an agreement to adopt
HORIZON: The
the green revolution package was
famine of 1966
signed between the two countries. On
made India a
the fiscal front, foreign aid,
basket case
which was hitherto a key
factor in preventing devaluation of the rupee, was
finally cut off and India was told that it had to
liberalise its restrictions on trade before foreign
aid would again materialise. India had never
looked so vulnerable and Indira Gandhi, who was
made the prime minister at 48 by the Congress syndicate led
by K. Kamaraj (described once as a cross between Sonny
Liston and The Walrus), appeared unequal to the task her
father and Lal Bahadur Shastri had handled so well.

FIRST CUT

Reita Faria (right) became the first Indian to win the Miss
World title. By winning the crown, she led the way for her
successors. After her year-long tenure, she turned down
modelling and film assignments and instead concentrated on
medical studies in Ireland, where she still lives with husband
David Powell.

DID YOU KNOW

 Homi Jehangir Bhabha, considered the
father of Indias nuclear weapons
programme, died when Air Indias
Boeing 707 Kanchenjunga crashed in a
snowstorm at Mont Blanc on January
24.

AN INNOCUOUS PERSON FOR PRIME MINISTER.

So said a Delhi journal Thought, in 1966. When the

Congress Parliamentary Party voted to choose a prime
minister, this mere chokri (chit of a girl), as Morarji Desai
called Indira Gandhi, defeated him by 255 votes to 169. The
new prime minister was faced not just with an economy
dependent on the USs ship-to-mouth approach but vicious
personal attacks in Parliament and a lack of confidence
within the party. Even an Alabama newspaper did not spare
her when she met US President Johnson during her world
tour in 1966. Its headline? New Indian Leader Comes
Begging.

MIZO FRONT MAN

Laldenga

Mizoram had been dissatisfied with its lot in the Indian Union
since a famine hit the state in 1959. A Mizo National Famine
Front was formed, which then became Mizo National Front.
It asked for a separate state and then a country. Laldenga,
an accountant by training, launched a movement in 1966 to
claim independence. After years of violence, in 1986, there
was an accord. Mizoram became a full Indian state and
Laldenga its interim chief minister.
 OF STARS AND STORIES

Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar played an

insecure version of himself on a days journey
from Calcutta to Delhi by train, as a charming
Sharmila Tagore (despite the glasses) quizzed him about his
life in Satyajit Rays Nayak. He was shown to be in a foul
mood as the morning papers were filled with his being
involved in an altercation and his latest film was slated to
become his first flop. The film explored the psychology of the
star and his admirers. She destroyed her notes because she
felt journalistsyes, even theyshould respect the privacy
of stars.

ELSEWHERE...

The Indonesian and Malayan governments declared that the

war over the future of the island of Borneo was over.

Temples of Abu Simble moved to make way for Aswan Dam.

Mao Zedongs (below) Cultural Revolution began in China

which witnessed a revolutionary upsurge by Chinese
students and workers against the bureaucrats of the Chinese
Communist Party. The revolution continued until Mao died in
1976.

Rs 7.50 the exchange rate of Indian rupee. Earlier pegged at

Rs 4.76 to the US dollar, it was devalued for the first time in
1966.

117 people died when a Bombay-to-New York Air India flight

crashed at Mont Blanc.
1967: INDIA AT 60 PICTURE SPEAK
THE SORRY STATE

REWIND

As a land dispute broke out between

peasants, led by Kanu Sanyal, a
middle class radical, and landlords in
Naxalbari, West Bengal, the area gave THE RISING:
its name to a whole movement and The movements
indeed became a shorthand for initial epicentre
revolution. It had an offshoot in Andhra was West Bengal
Pradesh, where Maoist revolutionaries
fought in Telengana and Srikakulam. In Srikakulam, the
movement was headed by Vempatapu Satyanarayana and
in Telengana by Tarimala Nagi Reddy. In West Bengal, the
CPM, which had stoked the Naxalbari fire, eventually came
to be at loggerheads with the Naxalites who formed a new
party, CPI (Marxist-Leninist). The protests, said historian
Ramachandra Guha, had their roots in the inequitable
agrarian structure of northern Bengal. But they may not
have taken the form they did, had the cpm not joined the
government. The party reacted in an authoritarian way by
putting Sanyal in jail while other rebels took refuge in the
jungle.

FIRST CUT

The first non-Congress ministry came to power in West

Bengal as Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee was sworn in as chief
minister of a United Front-Left Front alliance.

The first Boeing 707-337C aircraft arrived in Bombay. This

non-stop flight covered 4,931 miles between London and
 Bombay in seven hours and 54 minutes
setting a new speed record for any
Boeing.

DID YOU KNOW

Tamil Nadu, Indias sixth most populous state, was formed in

1967. The DMK routed the Congress Party in the 1967
elections and took control of the state, with C.N. Annadurai
as its first chief minister.

Nose Dive

Indira Gandhi broke her nose when irate people threw

stones at her during an election rally near Bhubaneswar,
Orissa, in 1967. Hurt by the injury, she jokingly wrote to her
friend Dorothy Norman: Ever since plastic surgery was
heard of, I have been wanting to get something done to my
nose...I thought the only way it could be done without the
usual hoo-ha was first to have some slight accident which
would enable me to have it put right.

PANDIT AND POLYMATH

P.N. Haksar

He was the man responsible for giving an ideological tint to

Indira Gandhis political struggle for autonomy. An Indian
Foreign Service officer, he was deputy high commissioner in
London when the prime minister asked him to join her
secretariat. He became the first of the all-powerful PMs
men, along with diplomat T.N. Kaul, economist P.N. Dhar,
politician D.P. Dhar and security analyst R.N. Kaothey
were collectively known as the Panch Pandava. As
Katherine Frank wrote in her biography, from 1967 to 1973,
he was probably the most influential person in the
 government. Backed by his socialist
agenda, she was able to distance
herself from the Syndicate by taking the
moral high ground.

NEVILLE MAXWELL in his series of articles Indias

Disintegrating Democracy
The great experiment of developing India within a
democratic framework has failed.

MERA BHARAT MANOJ

The Bharat image was successfully carved on celluloid when

Manoj Kumar starred in the desh ki dharti film Upkaar.
Kumar began a career of playing Mr Bharat roles while Pran,
the great villain, finally let go of his evil ways, playing the
crippled soldier Malang Baba. The movie celebrated
Shastris jai jawan, jai kisan rhetoric. The film was a huge hit
and made Kumar the authority on Bollywood patriotism.

ELSEWHERE...

Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against the three Arab

states in 1967. Israeli forces captured the Sinai Peninsula,
Gaza Strip, West Bank of the Jordan River, Old City of
Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

In the United States, the first space deaths occurred on

Apollo 1 when command pilot Gus Grissom, senior pilot Ed
White, and pilot Roger Chaffee died in a fire during a ground
test.

The US signed a space treaty with Russia. More than 60

nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear
weapons.
25 years passed since the Quit India Movement.

30 Indians in Venezuela died from a measles epidemic that

hit Yanomani villages at least one year before researchers
administered the Edmonston B vaccine.

MAKING PEACE

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
In 1970, the United Nations will
complete 25 years. Can we make it a
year of peace? asked Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi in her address in New
York. There was no peace in sight in
the neighbourhood, though, with
Pakistan President Ayub Khan
rejecting Indias offer of a no-war pact. THE WORLD IS
On the domestic front, too, the
HER STAGE:
situation was grim. Over 1,300 died in
Indira Gandhi
the floods of north Bengal and there
addressing the UN
was scarcity in Rajasthan, while
silver jubilee
violence followed the arrest of Naxalite
celebrations in
leader Kanu Sanyal as Communists in
1970
Kerala turned violent, attacking police
stations and staging protests.
 TAMIL PRIDE
C.N. Annadurai

Two decades of unrivalled Congress

rule in Tamil Nadu came to an end in the
1967 elections, which also saw the rise of the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam under playwright-politician
Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai. The Congress suffered a
humiliating defeat at the hands of the regional party, which
won 138 of the 234 seats in the state Assembly. The
Congress is still to regain power in the state. Under Anna, as
he was called by his followers, the Dravidian nationalists in
the party took up cudgels against the imposition of Hindi as
the national language. A witty orator and a prolific writer, his
tenure as chief minister was cut short when he died in 1969.
Anna was succeeded by his protege and writer Muthuvel
Karunanidhi.

FIRST CUT

Asias first ever heart transplant operation was performed by

Dr Prafulla Kumar Sen and other surgeons at KEM Hospital,
Bombay. He was only the third surgeon in the world to
achieve this feat.

Indias first meteorological rocket, Menaka, was successfully

launched at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching
Station in Kerala.

DID YOU KNOW

The mehendi ceremony in Rajiv and Sonia Gandhis

wedding was conducted at the Bachchans Willingdon
Crescent home. The couple got married on February 28.
 THE GENE SCENE

Raipur-born molecular biologist Hargobind

Khurana (right) became the third Indian to
win the Nobel Prize. Awarded for his work on
the interpretation of the genetic code, he hoped his work
would serve as a basis for further work in molecular and
developmental biology.

BHOLA, NEECHE SE

Says Kishore Kumar, playing music guru to tone-deaf Bhola,

played by the inimitable Sunil Dutt, asking him to sing on a
lower scale. Bhola, true to his name, takes it quite literally,
and slips down to the floor. Slapstick comedy met R.D.
Burmans musical genius in Padosan, a story of a simpleton
who wanted to woo his musically-inclined neighbour (Saira
Banu). Mehmoods politically incorrect comedy, complete
with the southern dhoti and accent, won him many fans.

WE GAVE YOU EVERYTHING WE OWNED JUST TO SIT

AT YOUR TABLE.

The Beatles travelled to India in February 1968 for

transcendental meditation studies at Maharishi Mahesh
Yogis ashram in Rishikesh. We gave you everything we
owned just to sit at your table/ Just a smile would lighten
everything, they wrote later. Many of the Liverpool bands
songs and albums, including White Album, Abbey Road,
Dear Prudence and Sexy Sadie were inspired by their stay
here.

ELSEWHERE...

Mauritius attained independence from Britain.

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King was
assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
His deathcaused a bullet wound in the neckgave rise to
riots.

Robert F. Kennedy died a day after he was shot by Sirhan

Bishara Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

France (below) became the worlds fifth thermo-nuclear

power as it tested the H-bomb.
PICTURE SPEAK

THE NEW
ORDER: Indira
with V.V. Giri;
Zakir Hussain
(below)

1969: INDIA AT 60

SPLIT WIDE OPEN

REWIND

Indias grand old party, the Congress, faced its first major
split as the old guard led by party President, S. Nijalingappa
expelled Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from the party for
fostering a cult of personality. The Syndicate, as the
 senior members were called, could not
quite come to terms with the fact that
the gungi gudiya (dumb doll)their
snide reference for Indirahad a mind
of her own. The break was complete
when Indira after proposing N. Sanjeeva Reddys name for
presidentship asked Congressmen to vote according to their
conscience. V.V. Giri, the rebel Congress candidate won.

Death of a President

When the communal temperature was at its peak in India,

the country had a Muslim president and a Muslim chief
justice of the Supreme Court. After serving as vice-president
to the great Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan for five years, Zakir
Hussain, an academic and former vice-chancellor of the
Aligarh Muslim University, became the philosopher scholars
successor at Rashtrapathi Bhavan in 1967. Hussain
however had one of the briefest terms as the countrys
president as he died less than two years later. He was also
the first Indian president to die in office.

FIRST CUT

The first superfast train, Rajdhani Express, was introduced

between New Delhi and Howrah, with an average speed of
130 kmph.

Indias first atomic power station at Tarapore became

operational.

The state of Madras was renamed Tamil Nadu.

1,516 sq km was the area covered by the Gir Forest

Reserve of Gujarat, established in 1969. It was set up to
protect lions in India, whose numbers had dwindled.
 HE HAS RECTITUDE, ABILITY,
EFFICIENCY AND FAIRNESS.
Morarji Desai

Jawaharlal Nehru had once written that

there are very few people whom I respect so much for their
rectitude, ability, efficiency and fairness as Morarji Desai.
Clearly, it was an opinion his daughter shared. She stripped
Desai of the Finance Ministry on the grounds he was
resisting her radical economic agenda. He had no choice but
to quit. A consistent contender for the prime ministers post
he had fought Indira Gandhi in 1967he finally got his
chance in 1977 after the Janata Party rode to power, and
became one of the worlds oldest heads of state at 81.

BANK ORDER

Indira Gandhis ordinance nationalising 14 scheduled

commercial banks, whose deposits exceeded Rs 50 crore,
was invalidated by the Supreme Court a year later, but the
Government used a Presidential order to re-nationalise
them. In the first six months of nationalisation, 1,100 new
branches were opened and loans were given to small-scale
entrepreneurs and farmers.

S. NIJALINGAPPA Congress president, on Indira Gandhi

Tragedy overtakes democracy when a
leader who rises to power due to
popularity, becomes a political
narcissist.

SILENT MADNESS

Khamoshi, directed by Asit Sen, with Waheeda Rehman in

the lead, was one of the finest films of the talented actor.
 With powerful performances by Rajesh
Khanna and Nasir Hussein, and Dharmendra
in a guest appearance, the film had some
disturbing scenes (when Rehman goes
insane) and songs that live on (Woh shaam kuchh ajeeb thi
and Tum pukar lo).

ELSEWHERE...

Nixon suggested an eight-point Vietnam peace plan on May

14, but Xuan Thuy, head of the North Vietnam delegation to
the Paris peace talks, rejected his suggestion of mutual
withdrawal of troops from South Vietnam.

Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon,
aboard the Apollo-11, the first manned mission to the moon.
He was accompanied by Edwin Aldrin.

Czechoslovakia became a two-nation federation of Czech

and Slovak republics.

DID YOU KNOW

The Congress Working Committee met in two separate

groups for the first time in history, with
one group led by Indira Gandhi and the
other by S. Nijalingappa. PICTURE SPEAK

HEAR, HEAR:
Indira Gandhi
went to the
electorate with a
new socialist
DIFFICULT YEAR

REWIND

The countrys economy took a beating

after the 1971 war with Pakistan. With
crop failure, a serious fall in food
production and declining industrial
growth, inflation skyrocketed and Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was forced to admit that
it was a very difficult year. India had to resort
to loans from Japan, Britain, Canada and the
World Bank even as it strove to increase the volume of
bilateral trade with Russia. Diplomatic ties in the
neighbourhood did not seem to be heading anywhere, with
the prime minister rejecting Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos invitation to
visit Pakistan.

UNSETTLING RESISTANCE

The Shanti Bahini guerrillas, members of the Chakma tribe,

took up arms after Bangladesh rejected their demands for
autonomy over a 5,500-sq mile region bordering India and
Burma. They demanded the ouster of over three lakh people
settled in their original homeland. There have been many
armed clashes between the Shanti Bahini and the
Bangladeshi military.

FIRST CUT
 The first national championship of
womens cricket was conducted and
Bombay emerged winner.

The first all-woman police station in the

country was set up at Calicut in October.

MP Govind Das was felicitated on November 21 in the

Central Hall of Parliament, on completing 50 years as a
parliamentarian, an unprecedented record then.

DID YOU KNOW

Indira Gandhi broke with tradition, appointing Justice A.N.

Ray chief justice of the Supreme Court, superseding three
judges senior to him, triggering protests in the judiciary.
Jayaprakash Narayan wrote to her asking whether these
out-of-turn promotions were intended to make the Supreme
Court a creation of the government of the day. She
answered that a mechanical adherence to the seniority
principle had led to an unduly high turnover of chief justices.

TANK TOP

The largest ship in the Indian merchant fleet, the supertanker

Jawaharlal Nehru, with a dead weight tonnage of 88,000,
was launched on February 4.

PRIZED PRINCE
Karan Singh

Through agreements between the Centre and the state of

Jammu and Kashmir, the title and power of the Sadar-i-
Riyasat, Karan Singh, had been abolished. In exchange,
Singh became a Central Cabinet minister in 1973, in charge
of Tourism and Aviation. Because of the special status of
 J&K and his lineage, Singh became a
prominent member of Prime Minister
Indira Gandhis cabinet and was soon
elevated to the better Ministry of Health
and Family Planning. In 1974, he made
headlines when he said at the first-ever World Population
Conference, Development is the best contraceptive.

HEADY ROMANCE

Scripted by K.A. Abbas and outfitted by Bhanu Athaiya,

Bobby became the epitome of youthful cool at a turbulent
time. As Madhu Jain wrote, there was mass hysteria when
Bobby was released, with teenagers sporting shirts with
Bobby written on them. Main shayar to nahin and Hum tum
ek kamre mein band hon defined puppy love.

Reaping Reward

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the un presented

Indira Gandhi with the Ceres medal in recognition of the
advances made in the Green Revolution.

ELSEWHERE...

President Nixon announced the suspension of all US

offensive action in Vietnam, claiming to bring peace with
honour (above).

Oil prices almost quadrupled following the Yom Kippur war

as Arab countries cut down on oil exports to the West. Japan
and the US faced severe oil shortages.

Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and the Awami League won a

landslide victory in the first elections in Bangladesh. l Artist
 Pablo Picasso died of a heart attack at
his home in France.

1,827 was the number of tigers in the

country in 1972. Project Tiger was
launched in 1973 to protect the species.

10,800 trains of the Indian Railways were in operation,

covering a route length of 60,234 km.

1974: INDIA AT 60

THE BIG BANG

REWIND

On the morning of May 18, 1974, in the Pokharan desert, the

ground shook violently as India conducted its first atomic
bomb test, cloaking it as a peaceful nuclear explosion. In
doing so, India became the worlds sixth nuclear power after
the US, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. The US
took offence to India barging into the exclusive nuclear club
angrily stating that Indias test would seriously undermine the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and trigger an arms
race in the sub-continent. The US then blocked aid to India
and imposed numerous sanctions.

FIRST CUT

The first tripartite meeting between India, Pakistan and

Bangladesh was conducted in Delhi.

Indias first lion safari park was opened in Hyderabad.

 DID YOU KNOW

India topped the list of US wheat buyers,

with cash orders for 3.8 million tonne
and another 3 lakh tonne expected to be
delivered under the food-for-peace aid programme.

SINKING FEELING

Cause: The nation faced a food shortage of 8 million tonne

and prices were up by 25 per cent. Effect: Indira Gandhi
cracked down on striking workers.

GANDHIJI SPOKE OF SWARAJ IN ONE YEAR. I SPEAK

OF REAL PEOPLES GOVERNMENT IN ONE YEAR.

Jayaprakash Narayan

Give me one year to build a new country declared

prominent socialist Jayaprakash Narain when he called for a
total revolution which became the rallying point for
opposition to Indira Gandhi and dissent against the ruling
Congress. The Gandhian, despite his advancing age,
attracted huge crowds at rallies and his Citizens for
Democracy movement gathered pace, eventually forcing
Indira to impose the Emergency. JP, as he was known,
campaigned against Indira during the post-Emergency
election, leading to her loss in the Rae Bareily elections.

Snapshot Visit

On March 25, Iraqi Vice-President

Saddam Hussein arrived in Delhi on an
official visit. At the time, he was just as
powerful as the then president Ahmed
Hassan Bakr, but five years later, he
 officially became head of the state when Bakr
resigned on July 16, 1979.

VILLAGE VISION

Shyam Benegals first masterpiece, Ankur,

starring Shabana Azmi in the role of a villager,
and Anant Nag as the feudal visitor who desired
her, explored caste and class conflict in rural
Indian society. Art cinema, finally, came of age.

ELSEWHERE...

A revolution in Portugal restored democracy.

In August, President Nixon became the first US president to

resign from office, charged with conspiracy in the Watergate
scandal. Gerald Ford became President (above).

The World Trade Centre, the tallest building in the world at

110 storeys, was inaugurated in New York City.

2.5 crore were unemployed. Currently,

the figure is well over 4 crore.
PICTURE SPEAK
15,000 workers were laid off by the
Indira Gandhi Government during the
year. The number of mandays lost
came down from 210 lakh in 1973 to
160 lakh.

1975: INDIA AT 60
THIS MEANS
REIGN OF TERROR WAR: George
Fernandes being
REWIND arrested
 The Allahabad High Court found Indira Gandhi
guilty of electoral malpractices, and she
declared national Emergency on June 26,
announcing on air that it was a necessary
response to the deep and widespread conspiracy which has
been brewing ever since I began to introduce certain
progressive measures of benefit to the common man and
woman of India. Thousands, including Opposition firebrands
like Jayaprakash Narayan, George Fernandes, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, were held under MISAthe Maintenance of
Internal Security Act, dubbed the Maintenance of Indira and
Sanjay Act.

FIRST CUT

Durba Banerjee became the first professional woman pilot in

the world to command a commercial passenger flight.

Shireen Kiyash became the only person to have represented

India in three different sportsbasketball, hockey and
cricket.

Indias first electric typewriter was produced by Hindustan

Teleprinters Ltd.

FREAK TRAGEDY

Indias worst coal mine disaster occurred in Chas Nala mine

near Dhanabad on December 26372 people inside the
mine perished as a result of caving in of a roof of coal, which
let in seven million gallons of water per minute. The Indian
Iron and Steel Company, which owned the mine, said it
conformed to international standards.

IF WE CAN CELEBRATE CHILDRENS DAY, WHY NOT

KISAN DAY?
 Raj Narain

The irrepressible Raj Narain not only

challenged the authority of Indira
Gandhi and ultimately led to her
downfall in the elections of 1977, but also beat her in her
own stronghold in Uttar Pradesh, Rae Bareily. When the
court upheld the petition filed by the bandanna-donning
Narain, accusing her of fraud in the 1971 polls, she became
the first Indian prime minister to testifyfor five hours in the
Allahabad High Court.

RETURN OF THE LION

Sheikh Abdullah, the Sher-e-Kashmir, had proclaimed

himself the prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 1948.
He had demanded autonomy for the state in 1953. For all
this, he was jailed for 11 years. After an
exile, Abdullah was back to being the
polestar of Kashmir in 1975 after Indira
Gandhi reassured him that the special status
conferred on the state by Article 370 would
stay. The leader of the National Conference returned as chief
minister in 1977, 23 years after being forced to give it up.

KITNE AADMI THE?

One of the biggest blockbusters in Bollywood history, G.P.

Sippys Sholay, with its impressive cast and memorable
dialogues, caught the fancy of a nation steeped in drama.
Gabbars kitne aadmi the and Amitabhs Basanti, tumhara
naam kya hai are enshrined in every cinema-goers
memory. The first Indian film to be made in 70mm, Sholay
ran for five years, with 190 prints being made in the first
year. Over five lakh records and cassettes were sold soon
after the release.
1978: INDIA AT 60

CURIOUS KISSA

REWIND

Despite all his alleged atrocities during

the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi was
booked in a relatively inconsequential
case, the disappearance of the reels of
Kissa Kursi Ka, a veiled satire on the establishment
produced by Janata Party MP and filmmaker Amrit Nahata.
The film, which had been disposed of by Gandhi and the
then I&B minister V.C. Shukla when it came up before the
Censor Board in April 1975, blew up into one of the biggest
controversies of 1978 when, on May 5, Gandhi was
remanded to custody and his bail cancelled.

WASHED OUT

Floods in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Bihar and West

Bengal killed 1,200 and displaced 320 crore people. The
Yamuna rose 1.83 m above safety level.

FIRST CUT

Indias first and the worlds second test tube baby, Durga,
was born in Calcutta on October 3. Dr Subhash
 Mukhopadhyay performed the in-vitro
fertilisation.

DID YOU KNOW

Flying saucers were sighted from

Mumbai to Udaipur. It prompted the
Physical Research Laboratory to lead
Indias first investigation into the UFO phenomenon.

LET PEOPLE COME TO SEE ZEENATS TITS.

RAJ KAPOOR on his film Satyam...

Zeenat Aman bared all in Raj Kapoors X-rated Satyam

Shivam Sundaram. While the film may not have made a dent
in the box office, Kapoor had an acute sense of the tastes of
his film-viewing public when he said, Let people come to
see Zeenats tits, they will go out remembering the film.
Aman had decided to win the role for herself. She arrived at
Kapoors doorstep to claim the part. The girl he had in mind
had to be plain-looking and willing to be made up to look
scarred and burnt. Aman was attractive, no great shakes as
an actress and spoke Hindi with an accent. However, she
had herself made up to look scarred, dressed in a costume
from the film and burst into Kapoors cottage. Flabbergasted,
Kapoor called his wife, Come and see what this girl has
done. Mrs Kapoor arrived with a gold coin to bless Aman,
and Kapoor knew he had found his heroine.

CAPTAIN M.M. CHOPRA father of Sanjay and Geeta

Chopra, who were slain in September
These days no mother and father feel secure about their
children. It is mine today; tomorrow it can be anothers.

Winning India
 US President Jimmy Carter arrived on a 48-hour
state visit to India. Carters mother, Lillian, was an
Indophile, having spent time in Vikhroli in
Maharashtra as a Peace Corps volunteer. After
his visit, a village, Carterpuri, was named after
him in Haryana.

ELSEWHERE...

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, was

sentenced to death by hanging.

The Camp David Accords were signed between Menachem

Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Later in the year,
the two were also jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for
their breakthrough.

The Spanish Constitution was approved in a referendum. In

1977, Spain held its first democratic elections since the
death of dictator Francisco Franco.

800 was Delhis crime rate, or number of crimes per lakh of

population. In comparison, Mumbais crime rate was only
550 while Chennais stood at 600.
This, despite Delhi having the highest PICTURE SPEAK
concentration of police in the country
with 25 policemen per 100 sq km of
area.

1979: INDIA AT 60

SHAKY GROUND
OVER AND
REWIND OUT: Morarji
Desai
After a brief two-year stint, the first non-Congress
government to rule at the Centre, the Janata Party regime
led by Morarji Desai collapsed due to various internal
contradictions. Deputy Prime Minister Charan Singh raised
the issue of dual membership of some of the senior ministers
who were also members of the Jan Sangh, the precursor to
BJP. Desai, alienated from the Cabinet, the party, the
administration and the people, chose to remain unperturbed
and indifferent. Result: Singh pulled out of the government
forcing Desai to quit office. President N. Sanjeeva Reddy
had to invite Singh to form the government since the
opposition Congress party decided to extend its support to
his Bharatiya Lok Dal. The Jat euphoria was, however,
shortlived as Singh quit five months later carrying with him
the dubious record of being the only head of government to
leave office without ever facing Parliament.

STOOPING TO CONQUER

The Janata Party, in a first, threatened to call for the

impeachment of President Sanjeeva Reddy when after the
fall of the Desai Government, he called upon Charan Singh,
who had a letter of support from the Congress, rather than
the Janata Party leader Jagjivan Ram, to form the new
government in July.

FIRST CUT

Indias first remote sensing low orbit earth observation

satellite, Bhaskaran 1, carrying tv and microwave cameras,
was launched by the Russian launch vehicle Intercosmos.

DID YOU KNOW

Ten days before the Naga massacre in the Doyang Valley in

 Assam, a boy had run in from across the
Indo-Nepal border, warning all, including
the police, about the coming attack. No
one paid heed and on January 5, Naga
warriors went on a 12-hour rampage
that left over 1,000 dead.

I WANT THIS PARTY AND GOVERNMENT TO STAY.

Chaudhary Charan Singh

So said a confident leader of the Bharatiya Lok Dal,

Chaudhary Charan Singh, when he became prime minister
on July 28 with the support of the very same Indira Gandhi
who had jailed him during the Emergency in 1975. But she
hardly let him settle in, before withdrawing support when
Jagjivan Ram tabled a no-confidence motion, leaving Singh
heading a caretaker government till her return to power in
1980.

JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN to S.M. Joshi, hours before his

death on Oct 8
I am sleeping and forgetting all that has gone before... I feel
my lifes sun is setting... for me to rise no more.

SOFT FOCUS ON HARD FACTS

Yash Chopras Kaala Patthar was the directors fourth

collaboration with Amitabh Bachchan, about poorly treated
coal mine workers and a humiliated Naval officer. A soulful
soundtrack and strong performances by Shatrughan Sinha
and Shashi Kapoor made it a classic to remember.

In the Name of the Poor

On October 17, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel

Peace Prize for taking care of the poor in Calcuttas slums
 and dedicated the prize money of Rs 15,20,000 to
helping them. I am grateful to receive the Nobel
in the name of the hungry, the naked, the
homeless, of all those who feel unwanted,
unloved in society, she said while accepting the
honour.

ELSEWHERE...

Idi Amin was deposed as president of Uganda as Tanzania-

backed rebels seized control. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran after he

returned to the country from a 15-year exile.

Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan (right) after a

second Leftist coup which put a more pro-Moscow regime in
power in Kabul. Babrak Karmal became the new puppet
leader and Soviet troops bolstered his rule against Muslim
resistance fighters.

150 lakh was the total number of bureaucrats serving in the

government in 1979. In 1970, the figure stood at 105 lakh. In
a similar vein, the bill of central
expenditure totalled Rs 6,000 crore, up
from Rs 1,661 crore in 1970.

1980: INDIA AT 60

SETTING SON

REWIND

Sanjay Gandhis death was as sudden as it was violent. It

1983: INDIA AT 60

SIMMERING FIRES

REWIND

Elections are all about democracy and

free play, but not in a state like Assam,
which had to be taken to the polls
kicking and screaming. For the residents
of Nellie in Nagaon district, mainly
Bangladeshi-immigrants, February 18
was a day which would haunt them
forever when a raging mob left 3,000
dead in less than 24 hours. The All-
Assam Students Union was allegedly
behind the attack and it was retribution for poll-related
violence in villages days before. Reports after the event
pointed to the complicity of local administration and police.

FIRST CUT

India launched its first successful multi-purpose

communication and meteorology satellite, insat-1b, on
August 30 from Cape Canaveral, in Florida, US.

FOR NAMS SAKE

India played host to the high and mighty of the world when
the Seventh Non-Aligned Summit (NAM) was held in Delhi
 between March 7 and 12. Over 100
member-nations participated in the
summit and later in the year, leaders
from across the world converged on the
city for the Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting.

WE ARE NOT A BRANCH OFFICE OF THE

CONGRESS.
N.T. Rama Rao

So said Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao when he became the

second South Indian film star to be made chief minister,
sweeping the Andhra Pradesh polls, winning 202 out of 294
seats. Rao, who often played Hindu deities in Telugu films,
founded the Telugu Desam Party in 1982 to protect the
honour and self-respect of 60 million Telugu-speaking
peoplethe spark was Rajiv Gandhis insult of Andhra
Pradesh Chief Minister T. Anjaiah, when he went to
Hyderabad airport to welcome him. NTR effortlessly rode his
screen popularity to power in 1983, making Andhra Pradesh
one of the few states in India at the time not swamped by the
Congress wave.

INDIA: 183; WEST INDIES: 140 ALL OUT

Kapil Dev led his men to one of World Cup crickets biggest
upsets when India, perennial underdogs, beat Clive Lloyds
mighty West Indies in the finals at Lords.

ELSEWHERE...

Island-wide anti-Tamil riots broke out in Sri Lanka in

retaliation to the deaths of soldiers the day before and over
400 people died. This marked the beginning of the civil war
in Sri Lanka.

Cosmos 1402, a Russian nuclear powered satellite launched

in 1982, fell into the Indian Ocean.

An explosives-laden truck crashed into the US Marine

barracks (below) near Beirut airport in Lebanon. The bomb
killed 241 Marines and injured 80.

31.5 lakh was the number of people in line for a telephone

connection in India. Even the
poor servicesin Kolkata,
every seventh phone was PICTURE SPEAK
normally out of orderdidnt
deter people from applying
for a connection.

BEFORE: AFTER: The

Jarnail Singh Golden
Bhindranwal Temple after
e was the the military
prime target operation
of Operation
Blue Star

1984: INDIA AT 60

PUNJAB BURNING

REWIND
 Dont shed blood but shed hatred,
Indira Gandhi said on air but the army
was already preparing for assault.
Operation Blue Star was Indiras
medicine to cure Punjab of its militant
fever. She had hoped the operation would be smooth, swift
and effective. But when on June 5 tanks rolled into the
Golden Temple, half the battlethe hearts and minds of the
Punjabishad been lost. The body counts only made it
clearer. When Jarnail Singh Bhindranwales body was
extricated from the debris of the Akal Takht on June 6, many
of his followers refused to believe he was dead. Prophet of
hate to some, messiah to others, Bhindranwale led the first
purge of Hindus from what he considered to be the state of
Khalistan.

FIRST CUT

Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma was launched into orbit

aboard the Soyuz T-11 on April 2, to become the first Indian
in space. He famously said to Indira Gandhis question about
how India looked from up there, Saare jahaan se achcha.

Terrorism is encouraged most by weakness in political

leadership and confusion in the security forces.
K.P.S. GILL DGP Punjab on terrorism in the state in 1984.

MARTYRDOM... IS ONLY A BEGINNING

What does it matter if I die lying down or standing up, said

Indira Gandhi once. When two of her Sikh bodyguards killed
her, it did, for those trapped in the ensuing riots. She had
been advised to change her Sikh bodyguards, to which she
had replied, Isnt India secular?
 RAJIV RAJ

Rajiv Gandhi, the heir to the Congress throne,

won the year-end elections with a landslide
margin. He set a record of winning 401 Lok Sabha seats out
of 508.

FIRE IN THE AIR

It took moments for the lethal methyl-isocyanate (MIC) gas

to leak out of the storage tanks at the Union Carbide factory
into the pre-dawn air of Bhopal on December 3, killing 3,000
overnight and 15,000 from related illnesses since then.

ELSEWHERE...

In one of the largest battles of the Iran-Iraq war, the two

armies clashed and inflicted more than 25,000 fatalities on
each other. The US accused Iraq of using nerve agent tabun
against Iran.

The USSR announced its boycott of the Los Angeles

Summer Olympics.

American space shuttle astronauts, Bruce McCandless II

and Robert L. Stewart, went on the first ever untethered
space walk.

Desmond Tutu (below), black Anglican Archbishop in South

Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent
struggle for racial equality.

Rs 10 crore was the cost of reconstruction of the Golden

Temple after it was destroyed in Operation Blue Star. This
included the cost of the 40 kg of gold donated by the state
 and the Central governments.

1985: INDIA AT 60

DEADLY STRIKE

REWIND

The third worst mid-air disaster saw Air-Indias Boeing 747

Kanishka, flying from Toronto to Bombay, plunging into a
watery grave with 329 passengers on board. As evidence
piled up, it became clear that a terrorists bomb had made
the flight disappear from the radar screens. Part of a larger
plan, another bomb went off in Tokyos Narita airport killing
two people. With it the fight for Khalistan, finally, reached
foreign shores. The long drawn-out investigation led to the
arrests of Khalistani militants Ripudaman Singh Malik and
Ajaib Singh Bagri. To this day, revelations pour out. The
latest: A former Vancouver policeman has testified that Sikh
militants had warned Indians not to fly Air-India weeks before
the blast.

FIRST CUT

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

(SAARC) was established on December 8, with
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar,
Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan as members.

LIBERAL SWEEP
On August 20, Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, who signed
the Punjab Accord with Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi on July 24, with a promise of peace and
free elections, was assassinated by Sikh
extremists. His death created a sympathy wave
for the Akali Dal, and S.S. Barnala (left) rode to
power for the first time in the September
Assembly elections.

OURS IS A WIN FOR REGIONALISM WITH A

NATIONALIST OUTLOOK.
Prafulla Kumar Mahanta

Whoever said politics is a game for the experienced and the

old would have to reconsider. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, 32,
the leader of the Assam Movement, became
the youngest chief minister in the countrys
history. He led the Asom Gana Parishad,
which was formed only 67 days before the
December polls, to victory. Sweeping 67 seats
in a House of 126, Mahanta led a cabinet that
had members with an average age of 40 and
was seen as a new ray of hope in the violence-
hit state. This, despite his affiliation to the All-Assam
Students Union, which was behind much of the agitation
against Bangladeshi Muslim refugees.

RAJIV GANDHI in Mumbai at the centenary celebrations of

the Congress party
Congressmen obey no principle of public morality.
Corruption is tolerated, even regarded a sign of leadership.

Down Under, India is Thunder

So read the placards at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and

so it was, when India took down ODI giants Australia,
1988: INDIA AT 60

BIG DADDY

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
India too played superpower games in
its backyard when it quashed the
Maldives coup of 1988.
Maldivian President Abdul
Gayoom, anticipating a third
and the most serious coup
against his regime (the earlier ones
were in 1980 and 1983), appealed to BAND AID:
the US, the UK and India for help. On Indian soldiers
November 3, Rajiv Gandhi responded arrive in Male to
by sending 1,200 soldiers to help put bail out the
down the armed Tamil mercenaries beleaguered
who were on the brink of a takeover. Abdul Gayoom
More than anything else, it reinforced
Indias influence in the Indian Ocean.

GUN CONTROL
Julio Ribeiro

Julio Supercop Ribeiro handed over charge of Punjab

Police to K.P.S. Gill to carry on the fight against militancy in
the state. Ribeiro came to Punjab in 1986 as an advisor to
 the Governor on the militancy issue. His
reputation as Bombay police
commissioner followed him. Rather than
bow down to terrorism, Ribeiro promised
the terrorists a bullet for bullet. The
result? Between May 1987 and April 1988, 364 terrorists
were killed. The supercop was, however, carefulYou have
to win over the Sikhs, he said.

FIRST CUT

Viswanathan Anand became Indias first chess grandmaster

at 18. He was the youngest Indian to win the International
Master Title at 15 in 1984. He was also the first Indian to win
the World Junior Chess Championship in 1987, which was
when he was awarded the Padma Shri and the Soviet Land
Nehru Award.

YOU ARE YOUNG. YOU CAN SHAPE THE NEW

WORLD.

So said an ailing, 84-year-old Deng Xiaoping when he met

Rajiv Gandhi in Beijing for 90 minutes. Rajiv became the first
prime minister of India, since his grandfather Jawaharlal
Nehru in 1954, to scale the Great Wall of China in
December.The visit, however, failed to achieve any
breakthrough in the turbulent Sino-Indian ties.

REPEAT STRIKE

Operation Black Thunder, a counter-terrorist operation

carried out by the National Security Guards, was aimed at
drawing out terrorists holed up in the Golden Temple,
Amritsar. During the operation that lasted six days, 151
terrorists surrendered.
 Telly-revolution

Streets wore a deserted look. Life came

to a standstill on Sunday mornings. This,
from the day Ramayan and Mahabharat
hit the otherwise staid television screens of the great Indian
middle class. Beginning in 1987 and ending in 1988, with 78
episodes and an estimated 80 million viewers, it had events
advertised for Sundays adding the caveat: To be held after
Ramayan. Mahabharat, started in 1988 and ending in 1989,
also gripped the popular imagination, and was seen in 90
per cent of all Indian television homes.

ELSEWHERE...

Moscow agreed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan,

promising to pull out all 1,15,000 men by mid-February 1989.

On October 19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost

almost 22 per cent, triggering similar drops across the world.

Pakistan President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and US

ambassador Arnold Raphel died in a plane crash near
Bhawalpur in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as
prime minister, the first woman ever to head a government in
an Islamic state.

3,074 was the death toll due to militancy in Punjab in the

year, compared to 910 a year before, in 1987.

91 lakh tonne was the sugar India produced, making it the

largest producer in the world.
1989: INDIA AT 60 PICTURE SPEAK
FREEDOM AT A COST

REWIND

The end of the six-day drama of the

kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed
daughter of Union home minister Mufti
Mohammad Sayeedwas a case of CAVING IN: A
good news, and then the bad news. relieved Mufti
While the 23-year-old doctor was hugs his
brought back safely, it was only after daughters
the exchange of five members of JKLF Rubaiya and
who were released to secessionist Mehbooba
slogans (if you wish to do Gods work,
go pick up a Kalashnikov). As the government blinked first,
the separatist movement grew in Kashmir, leading to more
kidnappings and killings.

FIRST CUT

Kottayam in Kerala became the first town in the country to

achieve complete literacy. All 70,000 citizens in this small
southern town can read and write.

Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian prime minister to visit

Pakistan, but lost soon after, the Congress winning only 197
seats in Lok Sabha, 200 down from 1984.

SEEDS OF DISCORD

The first stone for building the Ram Mandir was laid at the
disputed Babri Masjid site on November 9. In Ayodhya, over
two lakh Hindus pledged their lives for the cause of Ram
Janmabhoomi, while in Delhi an equal number of Muslims
 swore to protect the structure. The
Government watched, sitting on a keg of
communal gunpowder.

DID YOU KNOW

The National Front victory saw oversized egos clashing after

Devi Lal said he wanted the top spot. If not that, he asked for
the second-best post, that of deputy prime minister. His wish
was fulfilled.

I WANT TO PLAY THE ROLE OF BALRAM IN

MAHABHARAT.
VISHWANATH PRATAP SINGH after taking over as Prime
Minister

V.P. Singh inherited one of the most difficult jobs in the world,
running the country with a minority government hanging
between the Left and the Right. His reign saw the explosion
of the Mandal bomb, the motive behind which was creating a
caste matrix that could make his seat unassailable for the
next 20 years. He fell from power in 11 months, after bringing
to a grinding halt L.K. Advanis Rath Yatra. The subsequent
tom-tomming of the secular card couldnt save Mr Clean.

MIRA MASALA

Mira Nairs Salaam Bombay won the prestigious Golden

Camera award at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar
in the best Foreign Language category. It was the first film to
be nominated since Mother India in 1957. The film, co-
written by her friend Sooni Taraporevala, starred 24
handpicked real street children who were trained at a special
workshop before appearing in the film.

Comeback Man
 M. Karunanidhi returned to power 13 years after
an ignominous exit. In one of the most dramatic
victories in Indias electoral history, his party DMK
won 147 of the 198 seats it contested, making
him the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the third
time.

RANASINGHE PREMADASA on the IPKFs involvement in

Sri Lanka
The Indians came on our invitation and helped us. Now they
must go and help us by going.

ELSEWHERE...

Hundreds of civilians were shot dead by the Chinese Army in

the Tiananmen Square massacre. The armys attempt to
crush a democratic uprising in Peking was telecast to the
whole world (right).

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9 as East Germans

swarmed across checkpoints to meet their West German
compatriots, after weeks of protests against East German
authorities.

Emperor Hirohito of Japan died at the age of 87 after the

longest reign in the history of Japan.

$470 million is the amount Union Carbide agreed to pay

India for damages in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy in an out-
of-court settlement in May. While the personal damage was
taken care of, the environmental impact was ignored.

1990: INDIA AT 60
CASTE CLEFT

REWIND

It was just a four-paragraph government

order implementing the
recommendations of the Mandal
Commission, set up in 1978. But for V.P.
Singh, the prime minister of a coalition government, it blew
the lid off the caste cauldron. With 27 per cent reservation in
government jobs, schools and colleges for socially and
educationally backward classes, it was a move to cleave the
BJPs Hindu vote bank along caste lines. But it all went
wrong as self-immolations and protestor-police battles
created mini-Tiananmen Squares across India.

COMING HOME

The IPKF completed its pull-out from Sri Lanka as the last
ship left with Indian soldiers.

FIRST CUT

On February 4, Ernakulam in Kerala was declared the first

totally literate district in the country. The distinction, fittingly,
came in International Literacy Year. Kerala has the highest
literacy in the country.

The All Tripura Tiger Force was founded by Lalit Debbarma

to fight for Tripuras secession from India.

DID YOU KNOW

 According to nuclear weapons specialist
L.S. Spector, India, in 1990, had a
capacity to produce 15 nuke warheads
annually, but had made only 10 at the
time.

The Human Torch

Rajiv Goswami, a final-year student in Delhi University,

immolating himself on September 15 to protest the
implementation of the Mandal Commission
recommendations. He died in 2004.

BJP HAS PUT SECULARISM IN PROPER

PERSPECTIVE.
Lal Krishna Advani

When L.K. Advani stepped into his rath at Somnath, the

temple of his dreams 10,000 km and 30 days away, he sent
out the BJPs most audacious message to the people of
India, associating itself with the RSS-VHP line, that
construction on the Ram Temple would begin on October 30
no matter what. In a final showdown, the BJP withdrew
support to the V.P. Singh Government.

TELE-REALISM

The show Wagle ki Duniya, based on a character by

cartoonist R.K. Laxman, was aired on Doordarshan at a time
when television sets had already found their way into over
two-thirds of Indias homes. In the days of staid sarkari
programming, people instantly connected with lead actors
Anjan Srivastava and Bharti Achrekars middle-class
muddles.
 ELSEWHERE...

Nelson Mandela (below) was released

from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape
Town, South Africa, where he had been
imprisoned for 27 years.

US President George W. Bush and Soviet Union leader

Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty to stop manufacturing
chemical weapons and began reducing stocks. Iraq invaded
Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War.

Establishing the first ground link between the United

Kingdom and mainland Europe since the Ice Age, Channel
Tunnel workers from the UK and France met 40 metres
beneath the English Channel seabed.

Rs 500 was the value of just one kilogram of Darjeeling tea

in auctions for exports on April 30. India is the worlds largest
producer of teaalmost all of the fine Darjeeling tea is
exported, the major buyers being Russia, Iran and Iraq.

1991: INDIA AT 60

REMAINS OF THE DAY

REWIND

Former prime minister and front-runner in the 1991 polls,

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by an LTTE suicide bomber at an
election rally in Sriperumbudur. Fired by a new optimism and
unburdened of the IPKF debacle, Gandhi never saw it
coming as the bespectacled Thenmuli Rajaratnam garlanded
him and bent, ostensibly to touch his feetexcept that she
 was bending only to detonate the bomb-belt
she was wearing under her salwar kameez. A
dream was over, and a nightmare had just
begun. The LTTEs IPKF score had been
settled. In blood.

I HAVE THE PMS MANDATE

Manmohan Singh

So said Oxford-educated finance minister Manmohan Singh.

He promised to think big and he did. In July, as loans
burgeoned and the public sector lay defunct, it took this mild-
mannered academic to give the economy the kind of shock
therapy it needed. Doing away with industrial licencing,
relaxing investment norms and devaluing the rupee to more
realistic market levelsthis was Singhs bitter pill for Indias
anaemic economy. When he pushed the most radical policy
rethink ever, saying, The world must know India has
changed, Singh, for once, won a unanimous, if begrudging,
agreement.

FIRST CUT

The worlds first railroad hospital, the Jeevan Rekha (Lifeline

Express), set off on July 16. The train, with coaches donated
by the Indian Railways, was operated by the Impact India
Foundation.

P.V. Narasimha Rao liberalised Indias protectionist economy

in reaction to a severe foreign exchange crisis.

Presidents rule lifted from Punjab after five years to make

way for elections in 1992.

DID YOU KNOW

 Chandra Sekhar was Indias shortest-
serving prime minister, with the
exception of A.B. Vajpayees 13-day
coalition of 1996. Holding office for
seven months, Shekhar resigned on
March 6, 1991 after the Congress withdrew support.

DISMANTLING LICENCE RAJ

The New Industrial Policy of July 1991 was released, freeing

most sectors of the economy of licencing obstacles. Sectors
like aviation were opened to private players for the first time.

PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE

Bollywood moved into the bedroom and dispensed with

blushing rosebuds and twittering birds as Govind Nihalani
made a bold attempt at exploring infidelity with Drishti.
Dimple Kapadia and Shekhar Kapur played a couple
exploring extra-marital affairs that lead to a breakdown of
their marriage.

ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE BJP LEADER

The present Muslim generation is not to be punished for
what their forefathers did.

DEATHLY DESTRUCTION

On October 20, a low-intensity earthquake hit the Garwhal

hills. Measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, it lasted less than a
minute. But when the earth stopped quaking, most of
Uttarkashi, Tehri and Chamoli were devastated, with at least
1,000 dead in Uttarkashi alone, and over 42,000 destroyed.

ELSEWHERE...
 The Persian Gulf War (left) began as the US led a
30-nation coalition to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.

Germany formally regained complete independence after the

four post-World War II occupying powersFrance, the
United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union
relinquished all remaining rights.

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union for almost

seven years and executive president for
nearly two, stepped down from office as
the Soviet Union broke up into Russia
and the CIS.

$975 million was Indias foreign

exchange reserve at the peak of the July forex crisis. At the
time, India had to swap 20 tonne of its gold in the Swiss
market. Later, it also shipped an additional 46 tonne of gold
to London as collateral.

1992: INDIA AT 60

END OF REASON

REWIND

The Ramjanmabhoomi agitation reached its zenith as

thousands of kar-sevaks converged on Ayodhya and
demolished the Babri Masjid on December 6. In a matter of
just five and a half hours, a 400-year-old monument was
reduced to a pile of rubble and Indias long-heralded secular
traditions lay in a shambles. For millions around the country,
it was the dawn of the proverbial Ram Rajya. For many
others, it was the end of reason and minority rights. The riots
 that followed left over 700 dead across
the country, but the BJP still considered
it a living proof of the unstoppable power
of the Hindu Rashtra.

FIRST CUT

The Indian Air Force inducted its first women officers,

Savneet Shergill and Shivika Khurana. They were both
inducted in the non-technical arms.

WORLD VIEW

The cable TV boom had viewers plugging into the Gulf War,
and the World Cup in Australia. By November, 12.82 lakh
Indians watched Star TV, which started in December 1991.

DID YOU KNOW

The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal, on February 1,

declared former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson
an absconder in the Bhopal Gas Leak case. He has still not
been extradited for trial.

I DONT HAVE TO REGRET ANYTHING. IF THERE IS

ANYTHING TO REGRET, IT IS THAT SUCH A THING HAS
BEFALLEN THE COUNTRY.
P. V. NARASIMHA RAO after the demolition of the Babri
Masjid

TRYING TO PUT THE GENIE BACK

On December 5, former prime minister V.P. Singh, along with

a host of Janata Dal and communist leaders, was arrested at
Ram Sanehi Ghat in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh.
They were on their way to Ayodhya to obtain a first-hand
 account of the Babri Masjid situation as it
developed there. Singh recorded a detailed
statement on the demolition with the Liberhan
Commission of inquiry into the matter.

DESTROYER-IN-CHIEF
Kalyan Singh

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh was a vital cog in

the machinery that eventually brought down the Babri
Masjid. As the soft face of the BJP, he hoodwinked the
Centre with false assurances and played on Narasimha
Raos near-obsession for constitutional propriety. And as the
smoke of burning Muslim homes was beginning to cloud the
horizon, he pre-empted the dismissal of his government by
the Centre by resigning on December 6.

IM LIVING HOUR TO HOUR.

Harshad Mehta was a small-time stockbroker on Dalal Street

who became a self-made celebrity living in a palatial
mansion with a golf course, swimming pool and a fleet of
flashy cars. Arrested on June 4, the Big Bull is estimated to
have siphoned off close to Rs 5,000 crore by manipulating
banks and building false positions on a number of high value
stocks. Mehta died of a heart attack in 2001.

ELSEWHERE...

The Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina proclaimed independence from the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Democrat candidate Bill Clinton became the 42nd president

of the United States, defeating Republican incumbent
George Bush. There is nothing wrong with America today
that cannot be cured by what is right with America, he said
in his inaugural speech after taking oath.

Suspected Armenian forces massacred 613 Azerbaijani

civilians in Khojaly.

25 lakh was the number of people awaiting telephone

connections on the eve of Indias economic reforms. Today,
over 206 million Indians own phones, including mobile
connections. Fixed line phones have been dropping in
number.

1993: INDIA AT 60

ON THE BRINK

REWIND

It was to be retribution for the demolition

of the Babri Masjid just months ago, and
Dawood Ibrahim insisted on a sense of
poetic justice. So on March 12, they had
their bloody revenge as 12 bomb blasts, timed over a span
of two hours, left over 300 dead and 1,500 injured in
Bombay. The city, barely calm after the carnage of the post-
Babri riots, would have been expected to explode into
flames. But Bombay, a metaphor of modern India in its better
days, was now in its fortitude, an example, if not a metaphor,
 for the country.

ONE TOUGH GUY

K.P. S. Gill

For K.P.S. Gill, director-general of

Punjab Police, an iron fist worked best
in dealing with terrorism. And while his
human rights record may not have been
immaculate, his results were beyond
reproachfrom 3,000-plus deaths a
year in 1991, he was counting in double digits. In Punjab,
Gill broke the norm when he replaced the Army with the
police on the frontline, turning the local-outsider fight in to
one between Jat Sikh vs Jat Sikh, and winning the support of
the people in the process.

FIRST CUT

Indias first private air carrier, Jet Airways, began operations

on May 5, with a fleet of four Boeing 737-300 aircraft. The
first flights were from Bombay to Delhi and Madras and ten
other destinations. Naresh Goyals maiden venture, though,
had its share of adventure, when one of his planes landed at
the Air Force base at Coimbatore, instead of the civilian
airport.

DID YOU KNOW

Following his smashing debut with the soundtrack for Mani

Ratnams superhit, Roja, which sold over 25 lakh copies,
composer A.R. Rahmans soundtrack for Bombay was
already sold for Rs 80 lakh.

Arms and the Shrine

 In April, the army cordoned off a mosque
in the Hazratbal area of Srinagar, where
40-50 militants were holed up. But the
month-long seige began only on
October 15. The government remained
indecisive, but in the end, the militants left the shrine
unconditionally.

NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO SANJAY NOW.

SUNIL DUTT after Khalnayaks release

To have a film release with one is playing a terrorist at a time

when one is in jail accused of the same is an ironic twist of
fate. But for that reason, Khalnayak, was remembered more
for Ballu Balram, played by Sanjay Dutt than it was for
Jackie Shroff or Madhuri Dixit. Subhash Ghai rode the post-
Roja fascination for terrorism themes to box-office success.
And Choli ke Peeche helped.

JOLT FROM THE BLUE

The earthquake, which struck Latur and Osmanabad districts

of Maharashtra on September 30, measured 6.5 on the
Richter Scale. But it made seismic history for other reasons.
Its epicentre lay in an area considered the least vulnerable,
where one could take comfort in the impossibilities of
probability. Yet, when the earth quaked for those three
minutes, it left over 15,000 dead and many more homeless.
Property worth crores was destroyed.

ELSEWHERE...

The Great Blizzard of 1993 struck eastern United States,

bringing record snowfall all the way from Cuba to Qubec,
killing 184.
 A Tamil Tigers suicide bomber
assassinated Sri Lankan President
Ranasinghe Premadasa.

In New York City, a van bomb parked

below the North Tower of the World Trade Center (above)
went off, killing six and leaving over 1,000 injured.

The Maastricht Treaty came into effect, formally establishing

the European Union, after protracted talks, and later the
euro.

50 was Indias defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP,

compared to Chinas. Indias expenditure is also one-third of
Pakistans in the same measure.

1994: INDIA AT 60

CLEAN SLATE

REWIND

The ancient scourge of bubonic plague laid its deathly grip

on Surat in Gujarat and Beed in Maharashtra in September
and October. The panic was widespreadwithin four days of
the outbreak, over four lakh people, or 12 per cent of the
citys population, fled the city carrying with them the disease.
A case of the plague was reported from Bangalore within a
day of the outbreak in Surat. Modern medicine kept the
death toll to 54, but only just, considering 1,500 people were
infected within the first week itself.

CELEBRATED ABROAD
 Kiran Bedi, Indias first woman IPS officer and
a former all-Asian tennis champion, won the
Magsaysay Award for her efforts in
rehabilitating criminals in Tihar Jail. But that
didnt prevent her being shunted from one
insignificant posting to another.

FIRST CUT

On October 15, the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle)

made a successful launch. It became a workhorse launch
vehicle for ISRO, and since then has put eight Indian remote
sensing satellies and six satellites for foreign customers in
orbit.

What is the Essence of Being a Woman?

That was the final question. Sushmita Senss answer, A gift

of God we must all appreciate, clinched the Miss Universe
crown for her on May 21, while Aishwarya Rai followed it by
winning the Miss World pageant later in the year.

20,000 Kashmiri militants were said to have been trained in

105 terrorist camps, both private and isi-sponsored, between
1991 and 1994.

THIS IS MY FINEST HOUR.

Kapil Dev

Thats what Kapil Dev said in 2002 when he was crowned

Wisdens Indian Cricketer of the Century. Its roots lay in
1994. More than a decade after that unforgettable World Cup
day on the Lords balcony, Kapil basked in that king-of-the-
world feeling again when he took his 432nd Test wicket,
against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad on February 8 to become
Test crickets most prolific wicket-taker. Then in March, he
 became the first to take 250 wickets in one-day
internationals. Kapil retired that year, playing his
last Test in Hamilton, New Zealand, in March and
his last one-day against the West Indies in Faridabad later
that year.

ELSEWHERE...

Rwandan President Juvnal Habyarimana and Burundi

President Cyprien Ntaryamira died when a missile shot down
their jet near Kigali, Rwanda.

Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna (right) died in an accident

during San Marino Grand Prix. Another racer, Roland
Ratzenberger, was killed on the previous day at the same
track during qualifying.

Nelson Mandela became South Africas first Black president.

The anti-apartheid activist had spent 27 years in prison.

DID YOU KNOW

On December 30, India ratified the pact that brought the

World Trade Organisation into existence, ushering in an era
of reforms in tarrifs, subsidies and intellectual property rights.

1995: INDIA AT 60

HAIR-TRIGGER

REWIND

When the flames died down, reducing

the Sufi shrine of Charar-e-Sharif and some 200 buildings
near it to a smouldering heap, it was 3 a.m. on May 11.
Soon, under the cover of darkness, the 40 militants holed up
in the shrine, including Pakistani commander Major Mast
Gul, escaped into town. In the close-quarter fighting that
followed, 27 militants were killed with no civilian dead, but
the incident set back the leadership by many steps on the
hard road to normalcy.

RAIL OF BLOOD

On August 20, the superfast Purushottam

Express, travelling at over 100 kmph, collided
with the stationary Kalindi Express near
Ferozabad, killing 348 people, in the second
worst rail disaster in the countrys history. The
accident once again put the spotlight on the
Railways shocking disregard for basic safety norms.

FIRST CUT

Mayawati, then a member of the Rajya Sabha, became Uttar

Pradeshs first Dalit chief minister on June 3. But she rode
roughshod over the bureaucracy and the BJP, transferring
officials placing Dalits in key posts, and accumulating
corruption charges, until BJP withdrew support to bring her
tumultuous 136-day rule to an end.

FUTURE CALLS

The mobile phone revolution came to India on September 27

as Hutchison Max Telecom became the first service provider
to begin operations in the country.

DID YOU KNOW

On December 23, over 400mostly childrendied in a fire

incident in the midst of a school function in Dabwali,
 Haryana. The shocking incident raised
questions about fire safety conditions in
India.

YES, I AM THE REMOTE CONTROL.

WE NEED IT.
Bal Thackeray

Hindutva rode to power in Maharashtra as Shiv Sena and

the BJP formed a coalition government. The man behind it
all was Balasaheb Thackeray, forever enshrined in Salman
Rushdies words as Raman Fielding aka Mainduck, who
wanted a golden age when good Hindu men and women
could roam free. He ran the government by remote control
and things began to change soon enough, with Bombay
becoming Mumbai and the media subjected to cultural
censorship.

COLOURFUL MOVES

For Urmila Matondkar, Rangeela was a case of real

becoming reel and vice versa. A.R. Rahmans slick
soundtrack, Manish Malhotras new fashion sense, and
Matondkars moves enthrallled audiences as she announced
herself to the world. She had found her makeover mantra
and as a spate of copycats, flouncing peroxide curls and
lycra twirls prowled the screens, Bollywood found a new
definition of cool.

SHAH RUKH KHAN about competition in the Mumbai film

industry
In my opinion I am the best.

And the World Went Dark

A complete solar eclipse was seen over India on October 24

 and was visible from Rajasthan to West Bengal.
Some hailed the spectacle of astronomy, others
hid away in superstition. The last total eclipse was
in 1980.

ELSEWHERE...

168 people, including eight federal marshals and 19 children,

were killed at the Murrah Federal Building in the Oklahoma
City bombing. Timothy McVeigh and one of his accomplices,
Terry Nichols, set off the bomb.

Members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult released sarin

nerve gas on five separate railway trains in Tokyo, killing 12
and injuring hundreds. Cult leader Shoko Asahara was
arrested May 16.

For the first time in 26 years, British soldiers stayed off the
streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Rs 1,500 crore was the estimated market worth of the

exquisite jewels of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. After a
protracted battle, the Indian Government finally acquired
them for a paltry sum of Rs 218 crore.

Previous Story Next Story

1996: INDIA AT 60

POWER GAMES
 REWIND

When the CBI, on January 16, sought

permission to chargesheet top political
leaders in the Jain Hawala case, it
swept in its dragnet three Cabinet
ministers of the Narasimha Rao GovernmentBalram
Jakhar, V.C. Shukla and Madhavrao Scindiaas
well as opposition leaders like L.K. Advani and
Sharad Yadav. Hawala broker S.K. Jains diaries
revealed that over the years he had transacted
with at least 115 persons, working as a
middleman on deals for multinational power companies.

The Jharkhand trap

Former Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Shailendra Mahato

filed a public interest litigation in Delhi alleging that P.V.
Narasimha Rao, Satish Sharma, Buta Singh, Bhajan Lal and
others had bribed JMM and breakaway Janata Dal leaders
to vote in favour of the minority Congress government in the
no-confidence motion it faced in 1993. The CBI looked into
the matter in earnest only after Rao left office.

A LONG WAIT

Leander Paes brought India its first individual Olympic medal

since 1948, winning the bronze medal at the Atlanta
Olympics, beating Brazilian Fernando Meligeni.

FIRST CUT

The BJP secured 160 seats in the Lok Sabha elections to

emerge as the single largest party in the house.
 The first lung transplantation in India
was conducted at Chennai.

The Krem Um Lawan, the longest

(6,381 m) and deepest (106.8 m) cave
in the Indian subcontinent, was discovered in Meghalaya by
an Indo-German expedition.

DID YOU KNOW

In the 1996 World Cup, held jointly by India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka, Anil Kumble was the highest wicket-taker (15
wickets) and Sachin Tendulkar the highest run scorer (523
runs).

THE RAO GOVERNMENT IS NON-FUNCTIONAL.

P.V. Narasimha Rao

Rival Congressman N.D. Tiwari might have said so, but

despite political complications like Ayodhya, Rao managed
to ride through a whole five-year term, banking on his classic
trait of not acting until forced to do so. But when the Jain
Hawala scandal blew up, followed by Shailendra Mahatos
allegations in the JMM bribery case and renewed activity in
the St Kitts forgery case of 1990, it was all over, both for him
and the Congress.

TWO PMs, ONE YEAR

Politics, in1996, was a fickle game indeed. In what became a

mockery of the high office, two men took oath as prime
minister, each faltering in time. After the hung Parliament,
first it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee trying for a majority as his
government was put to vote. But the BJPs calculations went
awry, and the party was unable to make it past the 200 mark.
Less than two hours after Vajpayee tendered his resignation,
 the President summoned H.D. Deve Gowda to
lead the United Front to Government. For Gowda,
who led the new 13-party coalition, prime
ministership was a question of just taking the path
of least resistance and sidestepping key elements of the
United Fronts radical new agenda.

LALU PRASAD YADAV on the ordering of a probe into the

Rs 950-crore fodder scam
The people will judge whether I am involved in the loot
or the one who busted the racket.

ROUGH CUT

When Shekhar Kapur reconstructed the story of a rape

victim who took up arms against the caste system, Bandit
Queen met with stiff resistance both from the censors and
from the subject herself, Phoolan Devi. It was released in
India two years after its release worldwide.

ELSEWHERE...

In Afghanistan, the Taliban captured the capital, Kabul, after

driving out President Burhanuddin Rabbani and executing
former leader Mohammad Najibullah.

A truck laden with explosives rammed into the main gates of

the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing at least 86
people and injuring 1,400.

Over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed after Israeli forces

shelled the United Nations refugee compound in Qana (left).

Thunderstorms and a tornado killed 600 in Bangladesh.

89 was Indias rank amongst 101 developing countries,

 according to the UNDPs 1996 Human
Development Report. The study said 53
per cent of Indian children under five
years of age were underweight, while 64
per cent women were illiterate.

1997: INDIA AT 60

50, AND NOT DONE

REWIND

The slums are still there, but Kolkatas Saint of the Gutters
has gone. Eighty-five years old, 50 years of washing the sick
and comforting the dying, and yet she was not ready. On
September 5, her heart, which had been functioning on a
pacemaker since 1989, finally gave up, too weak after a
succession of heart attacks in the last few years and too
tired after a lifetime of loving. She died as she lived, quietly,
and as questions about her canonisation were revived, she
left behind an icon that no human heart would deny.

BY NATURE I AM A SILENT PERSON. I WILL TALK

LESS AND DELIVER MORE.
Inder Kumar Gujral

A replacement candidate for prime minister to start with and

the man at the helm of Indias celebration of 50 years of
nationhood, Gujral found himself embroiled in problems
when he took over from H.D. Deve Gowda. His efforts
towards better India-Pakistan relations were lost amid the
rumbling of imminent collapse at home. When parts of the
Jain Commission report were first published in INDIA
TODAY, implicating key DMK members in the assassination
 of Rajiv Gandhi, the United Front-Congress
relationship got severed. The Congress
withdrew support and Gujral resigned.

FIRST CUT

Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian woman in space

when she blasted off aboard NASAs space shuttle Columbia
on November 19. On her first mission as an astronaut,
Chawla travelled over 6.5 million miles in 252 orbits of the
earth, logging more than 375 hours in space.

DID YOU KNOW

The Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme tax amnesty

initiative brought Rs 33,000 crore to the government from
declarations by 4,66,031 persons.

38 BULLETS, ONE BODY

The cold-blooded murder of cassette king Gulshan Kumar

on August 12 was a grim reminder of Bollywoods dangerous
flirtation with the underworld. Allegedly shot for having
refused to pay extortion money to the dons, on that fateful
day, his Rs 350-crore empire came to nothing as gunmen
pumped 38 bullets into his body.

A NEW GODDESS

Her narrative crackles with riddles and yet tells its tale quite
clearly, said Gillian Beer, chairwoman of the judges who
awarded Arundhati Roy the Booker Prize for The God of
Small Things.

Mic-testing Times
In the 50th year of Indias Independence, political debate
took on another dimension altogether. In the Uttar Pradesh
legislature, the symbolism of the microphone as a weapon
was realised as politicians were unable to express
themselves in words. With parliamentarians hurling not just
abuse but also chairs at one another, India watched,
disillusioned by the ungainly show.

ELSEWHERE...

Diana, Princess of Wales (right), was taken to a

hospital after a car crash in the Pont de lAlma
road tunnel in Paris. She was pronounced dead at 4 a.m.

The United Kingdom formally handed over Hong Kong to

China.

The last of China's major Maoist revolutionaries, Deng

Xiaoping, died at the age of 92.

In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announced the successful

cloning of the first adult sheep, Dolly, who was born in July
1996.

1,057 people died through the year due to communal

violence while another 197 died as a result of bomb blasts.
Road accidents claimed another 50,975 lives, while over 350
were killed in more than 20,000 fires across the country.

1998: INDIA AT 60
GIANT STRIDES

REWIND

Five nuclear tests conducted over two

days made India blast its way into the
exclusive nuclear club. Codenamed
Shakti, meaning strength, the nuclear
tests in Pokhran on May 11 and 13 opened the floodgates for
ethical debates and a wave of sanctions against the country.
Indias success might have been doubted by western
scientists, but the country was proud of its big bomb.

DEATH ON TRACKS

In the years worst train accident, the Sealdah Express and

the Frontier Mail collided on November 26, killing 220 and
injuring 300. Cruising at 100 kmph, the drivers of the
Amritsar-bound Frontier Mail were oblivious to the fact that
nine bogies of the train had got detached. A minute later, the
Sealdah Express rammed into three of the detached bogies
that had overturned on the adjacent track. The accident was
so terrible that it took the authorities over 12 hours to
extricate the dead bodies.

FREE ENTRY

The Government opened up the economy further by

scrapping import curbs on 340 items such as consumer
products and liberalised all major export promotion schemes.

FIRST CUT

In a first, the World Bank singled out Andhra Pradesh, led by

 Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu,
for a loan of Rs 2,200 crore for the state
alone.

Sonia Gandhi got elected as Congress

president for the first time, becoming the fifth member of the
Nehru-Gandhi family to occupy the post, following Sitaram
Kesris resignation after the partys defeat.

DID YOU KNOW

Admiral Bhagwat was sacked for defiance of civilian

authority. The governments decision to remove the
controversial naval chief was seen as a transgression of
civilian authority in the domain of defence.

WE NEED A CLIMATE OF INTELLECTUAL

DISSIDENCE.
Amartya Sen

Professor Amartya Sen received the 1998 Nobel Prize for

Economics on December 10. The first Asian to head an
Oxbridge college, he was awarded for his analysis of famine
and poverty. The backbone of his award-winning work stated
that in many cases of famine, there was hardly any food
shortage. The crisis occurred
because of social and economic
factors. He also helped develop
Human Development Index that
draws on observed features of living
conditions.

Crime and punishment

Salman
Satya
Bollywoods fascination with crime Khan
found a new and articulate
 troubadour in Ram Gopal Varma whose Satya
captured a new street language and created a
memorable villain in Bhiku Mhatre. But while
Manoj Bajpais wildness was restricted to the
screen, Salman Khan flirted with danger in reality, apparently
shooting a blackbuck while on the shoot of the squeaky
clean Sooraj Barjatyas Hum Saath Saath Hain. Retribution
from the Bishnois, the guardians of the wild, was swift. The
actor had spent 71 hours in jail before being granted bail
from a higher court. The trial continues in Jodhpur even
today.

P.V. NARASIMHA RAO after being denied a Lok Sabha

ticket by the Congress
My plight is like Draupadis. Everyone watched her being
disrobed. None came forward to help her.

ELSEWHERE...

An earthquake measuring 6.1 in Afghanistan killed more

than 5,000.

The bombing of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam,

Tanzania, Nairobi and Kenya killed 224 people and injured
over 4,500.

The Yangtze River in China (above) broke through the main

bank. The death toll exceeded 12,000.

US President Bill Clinton admitted that he had an improper

physical relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He also
admitted he misled people about this affair.

8 per cent was what the Unit Trust of India (UTI) scam
shaved off from the stock market in a single day. The scam
permanently damaged UTIs reputation and the Government
 had to pour in Rs 3,300 crore to bail out
the embroiled US 64 scheme.

1999: INDIA AT 60

FIERY HEIGHTS

REWIND

Guns fired and a battle raged high on the icy mountains of

Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir in an armed conflict between
India and Pakistan from May to July 1999. Having stealthily
made their way into the Indian side of the LoC, Pakistani
infiltrators had to be pushed back by Indian troops. Pakistan
blamed the war on Kashmiri militants but evidence from
casualties proved otherwise. After three months of battle, the
Indian jawans recaptured the lost territory. Many died, but
cries of patriotism resounded, bringing the nation together
like never before.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER...

Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee made the historic bus trip to

Lahore on February 20 to meet his Pakistani counterpart
Nawaz Sharif and initiate a peace talk.

FIRST CUT

Infosys Technologies became the first Indian company to be

listed in the prestigious top 100 companies of Nasdaq on
March 11.
 For the first time in the countrys history, the
Central Government lost a confidence motion
by the margin of just one vote. This led to the
downfall of the 13-month-old Vajpayee
Government.

I BOWL EVERY DELIVERY WITH THE SAME

INTENSITY.
Anil Kumble

Delhis Feroz Shah Kotla stadium was the stage and Anil
Kumble the star of the show on February 7 when the leg
spinner became the second bowler in the world to take 10
wickets in a Test innings. Famous for his flipper and
unorthodox style, the 29-year-old Bangalorean ripped
through the famed Pakistani batting line-up, in that
memorable Test, after losing the first Test in Chennai. It
happens once in a lifetime, he admitted. Coach Anshuman
Gaekwad vouched for him, I could see the determination in
his eyes. He is a bowler who plans a batsman out instead of
waiting for the batsmen to get themselves out.

A Surrender and A Death Sentence

Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked by five Pakistanis

on December 24 from Kathmandu to Delhi. One passenger
was killed but others were released on December 31 after
India surrendered to the hijackers demand and released
three terrorists. One of those released was Omar Sheikh,
who is still on trial for the murder of Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

ELSEWHERE...

NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia for refusing to

sign a peace treaty.

Two teenagers opened fire on their teachers and

classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher, and then
themselves in the Columbine High School massacre (right).

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey, killing more than

17,000.

In Washington, the first major mobilisation of the anti-

globalisation movement forced the cancellation of the
opening ceremonies of the WTO meeting.

Rs 1,549 on average was what each Indian paid as income

tax in the year 1999, nearly double the figure of Rs 786 in
1991. The Union Budget that year projected a collection of
Rs 48,855 crore as direct taxes.

2000: INDIA AT 60

New Beginnings

REWIND

The historically frosty relations between

India and the US thawed when Bill
Clinton visited India on March 19, the
first presidential visit in 22 years. The
diplomatic call improved relations that were strained since
the Cold War. Clinton, who got a rock star welcome
wherever he went, pressed India to scale down its nuclear
programme, sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and
resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue with Pakistan.
We want India to be strong; to be secure; to be united; to be
a force for a safer, more prosperous, more democratic
world, said Clinton while addressing a joint session of the
Parliament.

STATE AFFAIRS

Parliament passed the Bihar Reorganisation Bill to carve 18

districts out of Bihars eastern part to form Jharkhand, the
28th state of India. It had 14 Lok Sabha and 81 assembly
seats.

FIRST CUT

Mohammed Azharuddin, former captain of the Indian cricket

team, became the first Indian cricketer to receive a life ban
from the game for his alleged involvement in a match-fixing
deal.

Chess grand master Viswanathan Anand beat Lithuanian

Alexei Shirov to become the world champion at the fide
World Chess Championships in Tehran.

DID YOU KNOW

The population of India officially passed the 1 billion mark on

May 11, when Baby Astha was born in Delhi. The UN,
however, believed that India had already crossed the mark
on August 15, 1999.

Azim Premji Chairman, Wipro, on becoming the richest man

in India
I feel like a zoo animal these days. My privacy has been
 invaded.

WINNING MEDALS IS NOT EASY.

Andhra Pradeshs Karnam Malleswari

won a bronze at the Sydney Olympics
for weight lifting in the womens 69 kg category. The 25-year-
old became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal.
Criticised for being overweight and shadowed by charges of
doping, Malleswari went on to win the coveted Padma Shri
and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award.

LOCK KIYA JAYE?

India found its new favourite tagline when Kaun Banega

Crorepati debuted with Amitabh Bachchan as the host. The
show that saw contenders trying for the Rs 1-crore jackpot
entered three crore TV homes in 18 months and made Rs
135 crore from ad sales.

And The Three Ruled the Galaxy

Beauty is subjective, they say. But for one golden year, India
set the standard for the world, as Lara Dutta became Miss
Universe, Priyanka Chopra Miss World and Diya Mirza Miss
Asia-Pacific. Aditi Govitrikar got the Mrs World title. Dutta
and Chopra subsequently starred in a movie together,
Andaz, solidifying Bollywood as a destination for beauty
queens.

ELSEWHERE...

Pope John Paul II began the first official visit by a Roman

Catholic pontiff to Israel.

Hugo Chavez was re-elected as Venezuelas president with

 a 59 per cent vote.

An Air France Flight 4590 crashed into a

hotel in Genesse just after taking off
from Paris, killing 113.

Presidential elections were held in Russia and Vladimir Putin

(right) became President.

5,740 was the mark the Sensex touched in February, the

highest for that year, before crashing to 3,711 in October. It
ended the year with a loss of 26 per cent, caused by the
technology, media and telecom sectors.

2001: INDIA AT 60

LINE OF FIRE

REWIND

Striking at the jugular of Indian democracy, five terrorists

attacked Parliament House on December 13. Security
Forces were able to kill all of them, but not before losing five
of their own. The ruling NDA blamed Pakistan-based terrorist
groups for the attack. A stand-off between the two countries
followed the attack, which saw one of the largest
deployments of troops since the 1971 war.

BIG DEAL

A sting operation caught several politicians including BJPs

Bangaru Laxman accepting bribes for alleged defence deals.

QUAKING DEATH
 The Bhuj earthquake that struck on the
morning of January 26, Republic Day,
measured 7.6 on the Richter scale. One
month after the tremblor, official figures
placed the death toll at 19,727 and the
number of injured at 166,000. Official estimates put the
number of earthquake affected, directly or indirectly, at 15.9
million people out of a total population of 37.8 million.

FIRST CUT

An eight-lane expressway between Delhi and Noida opened

in January, the Noida Toll Bridge was the first infrastructure
facility to be funded partly with money raised from the capital
market.

Apple introduced iPod, a breakthrough MP3 music player

that holds 1,000 CD-quality songs in an ultra-portable, 6.5
ounce design that fits in your pocket.

DID YOU KNOW

That when Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi was shot dead by

three armed men outside her home, she was about to lead a
rebellion against Mulayam Singh Yadav in the Samajwadi
Party.

LO, AB HO GAYI SIKHNI

Imagine that a line such as thisequal parts pin-up

patriotism and kitschy Bollywood romancecould become a
political hot potato. In an age of intolerance, it did. Gadar, a
typical Partition romance, set the box office on fire as it
grossed over Rs 50 crore in two weeks, becoming one of the
biggest hits in Bollywood ever. But the film more than lived
 up to its name outside the cinema, as it
sparked off protests from the Muslim
and Sikh communities to some scenes.

LAW OF THE LADY

J. Jayalalithaa

She may have been down but she was never out of the
running for Tamil Nadus top position. Despite being
convicted in the TANSI land deal, J. Jayalalithaa was
appointed chief minister after her victory in the assembly
elections on May 14. In the process, she became only the
second convicted political leader, after Kalyan Singh in Uttar
Pradesh, to become a chief minister.

Two Much Trouble

V.V.S. Laxmans 376-run partnership

with Rahul Dravid set the stage for
Indias thrilling 171-run victory over
Australia at the Eden Gardens. Laxman
scored 281, an Indian record at the time.

ELSEWHERE...

All it took was a determined group of 19 to do

what the Third Reich, Imperial Japan and the nuclear power
of Soviet Union couldntstrike the military and financial
heart of America. On September 11, two planes struck the
towers of the World Trade Centre, killing 3,000 and reducing
to rubble the most poignant symbol of America. Another
plane hit the Pentagon military headquarters, while a fourth
crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Rs 700 crore was the amount of money lost during all of the
January 2 Northern Grid power black-out. The grid failure left
seven states and a union territory in darkness. Even VIP
areas like the Rashtrapati Bhawan were not spared.

2002: INDIA AT 60

RULE OF HATE

REWIND
PICTURE SPEAK
It was darkness at noon. Gujarat went
up in flames after 57 VHP kar sevaks,
including 25 women and 14 children,
were burnt to death when a mob set
fire to a coach of the Sabarmati
Express on the outskirts of Godhra
station on February 27. In the riots that
followed, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus POISONED
were killed. The aftermath of the
FLAMES: The
horrific massacre saw the BJP
burning Sabarmati
defending the states Narendra Modi
Express
Government against charges of
genocide.

FIRST CUT

Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani flagged off the Delhi

Metros first trial run at Rail Corporations Shastri Park Metro
Depot.
 Direct flights between India and China
were resumed after 40 years following
the visit of the Chinese Prime Minister
Zhu Rongji. Flights had been suspended
after the 1962 war.

FALLEN KINGS

On October 10, just three weeks before the dynastys 55th

anniversary, the Abdullahs of Jammu and Kashmir were
routed in the assembly elections as Omar lost his stronghold
Ganderbalin the October assembly elections. While
father Farooq may have saved his seat, the National
Conference were ousted from government, winning only 28
of 87 seats.

DID YOU KNOW

The Central Government pushed through the Prevention of

Terrorism Ordinance in what was only the third joint session
of Parliament in Indias history.

Temple Trauma

The terrorist attack on the Akshardham Temple on

September 24 which left 29 civilians dead, signalled the
beginning of a new, dangerous strain of terrorism, with
militants looking to hit soft targets, extending the pale of their
terror beyond the army camps in Kashmir.

THE MAJOR TASK IS TO INTEGRATE THE NATION.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

The 2002 presidential race seemed to all to be a fight

between P.C. Alexander, incumbent K.R. Narayanan and
Vice-President Krishan Kant. So it was a surprise when on
 June 10, Indias missile man, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam,
emerged as the consensus candidate. While it
was a political coup that the ruling National
Democratic Alliance had pulled off by suggesting a rank
outsiderthat too from the minority communityKalams
credentials were impeccable, being seen by the strong
middle-class as a man of honour, besides being one of the
great scientific minds of our time.

ELSEWHERE...

Euro notes and coins were issued in all major countries of

mainland Europe.

On June 4, Queen Elizabeth II (below) and the Duke of

Edinburgh rode in a gold state coach to mark her 50 years
on the throne.

The US invasion of Afghanistan began as it searched for

9/11 mastermind, Osama Bin Laden. The operation, called
Enduring Freedom, marked the beginning of the US War on
Terrorism. The US and Britain led the aerial bombings, with
support by the Afghan Northern Alliance and supplemented
by NATO troops.

Rs 50 crore was spent by Sanjay Leela Bhansali on his film

Devdas. This was a remake of the Sarat Chand
Chattopadhyay classic and was touted as the most
expensive film at its time. It starred Aishwarya Rai and Shah
Rukh Khan in lead roles.

Previous Story Next Story

Index
2003: INDIA AT 60

STARS N STRIPES

REWIND

Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born

NASA astronaut died on February 1,
when space shuttle Columbia, carrying
a crew of seven astronauts,
disintegrated upon re-entry in the Earths atmosphere.
Chawla, as she attained immortality in sudden death, had
clocked over 10 million km and 760 hours in space. Born in
Karnal, a small town in Haryana, she did her graduation in
aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College
at Chandigarh and went on to become the second person of
Indian origin after cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma to fly in space
in 1996. An avid maker of aero-models even as a child, she
considered it her birthright to be a resident of the Milky
Way. For her scores of admirers in India, a number swollen
by the tragedy of her death, her life was an epigraph of
small-town, middle-class success. More so for her as she
wore her Indianness on her sleeve, proudly saying at a
NASA press briefing, I am from Karnal, India.
 MUMBAI MADNESS

Terror returned to Mumbai when twin

bomb blasts rocked the city on August
25. The blasts took place at the
Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar, killing 52 and injuring
149. The two bombs, which were suspected to have been
planted by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, were placed
in taxis and went off during the peak time.

FIRST CUT

Welcomed by the tune of Saare jahaan se achcha and the

raving Mumbai crowd, the first stealth warship, Shivalik, was
launched on April 18.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made the first-ever visit

by an Israeli PM to India even as neighbour Pakistan raised
its eyebrows and other Islamic countries watched silently.

DID YOU KNOW

The Rolling Stones performed for the first time in India in

Bangalore, rocking the crowd with their all-time classics like
Satisfaction, Street fighting man and Sympathy for the devil.

"I'LL WORK TO HEAR THE ANTHEM ON THE PODIUM.

With that singular thought, Anju Bobby George pushed

herself and entered the history books, winning a bronze
medal in long jump at the Paris World Athletics
Championships. She was the first Indian to win a medal at
the event. Aishwarya Rai scored a win of sorts too, on an
altogether different turf. Domestic fashionistas
notwithstanding, the French loved her when she went to the
Cannes Film Festival as the first Indian actor on the jury. Rai
 rubbed shoulders with international celebrities
and for a time threatened to take Bollywood
global.

POWER PLAY
Atal Bihari Vajpayee

The Gujarat riots, though they shook the foundation of

Indias deep-rooted secularism, couldnt come in Atal Bihari
Vajpayees way in restoring peace within the BJP. His visit to
China in June led to the establishment of a Joint Study
Group for economic cooperation. Vajpayee was able to
facilitate ceasefire in Kashmir, free prisoners, resume bus
and rail travel and break down barriers on trade between
India and Pakistan. And at home, he gave the economy the
booster shot it needed to step up into the world.

ELSEWHERE...

On December 12, Saddam Husseins reign came to an end

after he was captured at a farmhouse near his hometown,
Tikrit. Hussein, as he emerged from his underground hiding-
place, was bearded and dishevelled, a shadow of his
fearsome former self. After capture, Hussein was put on a
speedy trial on charges of crimes against humanity. With his
conviction US President George Bush hoped to gain support
for his War Against Terror, both at home and abroad.

1,560 is the number of kilometers that was marked to be

added to the National Highway network, taking the total
kilometers to 3,477 since the year 2000. The World Bank
decided to invest $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) in the countrys
transport sector in the same year.
 2004: INDIA AT 60

THE NEW GUARD

REWIND

It was hope against hope, when the Congress-

led coalition went past the BJP-led NDA in the
May general elections. Leaving behind a shell-shocked BJP,
the Congress emerged as the single largest party, their
efforts to reach the grassroots with the aam aadmi
campaign, as against the BJPs lofty India Shining
sloganeering, paying off. Sonia Gandhi pulled off a coup
when she renounced the prime ministership, saying, I am
not attached to any particular post.

DELUGE OF DOOM

What should I domourn the loss of my loved ones or worry

about an uncertain future? This dilemma of a victim of the
devastating December 26 tsunami was shared by the whole
world. The deadly waves, caused by an earthquake of 9.0
magnitude under the Indian Ocean, killed over 85,000
around the world and at least 10,000 people in India. Waves,
as high as 100 feet, caused deaths as far as on the east
coast of Africa. In India, the islands of Car Nicobar were
virtually wiped off the map and Cuddalore and
Nagapattinam, along the coast of Tamil Nadu, suffered the
worst on the mainland. While relief operations began swiftly,
the sheer geographical spread of the tragedy stretched all
resources. Within 24 hours of the disaster, nearly 35,000
people had been provided shelter in 67 camps. But many
still are homeless.

FIRST CUT
 India launched the $20 million, 2-tonne
EDUSAT from Sriharikota on September
20. This was the worlds first dedicated
educational satellite. It was also the
heaviest satellite that was ever launched
by an Indian rocket.

India made history when it won its first Test series on

Pakistani soil. The Men in Blue defeated Pakistan 2-1.

your performance is an image of yourself.

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore

Bulls eye. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore redefined the

meaning of the term for Indians when he won the silver at
the Athens Olympics, Indias best individual performance at
the games. But for the Army officer, the medal was just
another victory, and the silver only weighed with the missed
opportunities that separated him from gold-medallist Sheikh
Ahmed Al-Maktoum of the UAE.

Ode to Life

After having sung 50,000 songs in over 20 languages, the

nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar, turned 75 on
September 28. And as if to prove her eternal youth, she
belted out another superhit soundtrack for Yash Chopras
Veer Zaara that year.

100 CRORE, 125 PAINTINGS

It was raining moolah for painter M.F. Husain. Known for

inciting controversy, this time he made news when he signed
a deal with industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava for 125 oil
paintings from his Our Planet Called Earth series for Rs
 100 crorethe questions would come later. Days
before the sale of Tyeb Mehtas Mahishasura,
Husain could grab headlines without having to run
for cover.

ELSEWHERE...

The Return of the King proved to be a fitting end to the Lord

of the Rings fantasy trilogy as it bagged an Oscar in every
category in which it was nominated with 11 wins in total.

Four blasts (above) in rush-hour local trains killed 190

persons and injured over 2,000 in Madrid on March 11.

In its largest expansion ever, European Union extended its

sphere of influence over 10 states on May 1.

Russian forces put an end to a siege at a school in Beslan

on September 3. At least 335 people were killed.

309 was the number of runs that

Virender Sehwag scored in the first
PICTURE SPEAK
match against Pakistan at Multan
during the Friendship Series. Anil
Kumble too shone bright in the series
as he broke Kapil Dev's record of 434
test wickets.

2005: INDIA AT 60
ACROSS
TERRA INFIRMA BORDER: A man
REWIND with daughter
amidst the debris
An earthquake measuring 7.6 struck at Balakot,
the Indo-Pak border on October 8 Pakistan
 killing 80,000 people and leaving
millions homeless, with the worst of the
Himalayan winters ahead. The quake,
which had its epicentre at Muzaffarabad
in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, sheared
off entire hillsides, snapping the regions
already perilous communication link with the rest of the
Valley. Such was the damage that when Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh visited the affected areas, he called upon
the resilience of the nation to tide over it. Bitter rivalry
between the two nations did not deter the people of India
and Pakistan from helping their brethren across the loc.

DARK DIWALI

Diwali in Delhi saw the macabre victory of evil over good as

three bombs went off on October 29 in Sarojini Nagar,
Paharganj and on a bus near Govindpuri, killing 63 people
and injuring 200. The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba was a
prime suspect in the attack.

FIRST CUT

Stitching up the ties, the first Indo-Pak bus service across

the LoC was started on April 7 between Srinagar and
Muzzaffarpur.

The era of Lalu Prasad Yadav came to an end in Bihar as he

was ousted by Nitish Kumar. It was corruption, lawlessness
and lack of development that brought an end to his 15-year
rule as chief minister.

I HAVE BEEN GIVEN NO CHANCE TO EXPLAIN.

 Natwar Singh

The expose on former External Affairs

Minister Natwar Singhs involvement in
helping his son Jagat get contracts
under the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq
published in INDIA TODAY led to his
resignation from the Cabinet, and the
Congress. His role had first been mentioned in the Volcker
Report which revealed those who had made illegal payments
to the Saddam Hussein regime. While Singh continues to
protest his innocence, the INDIA TODAY revelations showed
otherwise.

PARTING WAYS

There are ownership issues. With that remark to a TV

channel, Mukesh Ambani, elder son of the founder of
Reliance Industries, Dhirubhai Ambani, confirmed talk about
the Rs 90,000-crore Reliance empire being headed for a
split. With matriarch Kokilaben as referee, the group was
divided between Mukesh and brother Anil, but not before
dirty linen was washed in public.

MASTERLY KNOCK

Master Blaster, The Little Master; the accolades and titles

that came Sachin Tendulkars way were well deserved. No
other contemporary batsman has electrified the cricket
stadium like the Indian superstar. The statistics speak for
themselves. In December 2005, he set the record for the
highest number of Test centuries (35), overtaking compatriot
Sunil Gavaskar and West Indian rival Brian Lara. He
currently has 37 test centuries to his name. He also holds
the record for most one-day centuries (28) and was the first
 batsman in the world to go past 10,000 runs in
one-day internationals, in March 2001, against
world champions Australia.

ELSEWHERE...

January 30 saw the first 'free' Parliamentary elections in Iraq

since 1958.

Suspected masterminds behind Air Indias Flight 182

Kanishka bombing, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh
Bagri were acquitted of all charges on March 16.

Four explosions rocked London on July 7, injuring 700 and

killing 56. Three of the bombs were placed in the
underground train network, while a fourth exploded on a bus.

Three explosions in Bali on October 1, killed 26 people and

injured more than 100.

$10 billion (Rs 400 crore) was the foreign institutional

investment inflows compared to $8.51 billion (Rs 345 crore)
in 2004. In the same year, the Sensex also hit a record high
of 9,394.27.

2006: INDIA AT 60

TRAIL OF TERROR

REWIND
 It was almost a recap of the well-coordinated
7/7 bombings in London the previous year as
seven explosions, within a span of 11 minutes,
tore through packed commuter trains during
rush hour, killing over 187 people and injuring
hundreds in Mumbai, the financial capital of
the country. Ripping through the heart of the
city, powerful bombs exploded between 6.24
p.m. and 6.35 p.m. at Matunga, Mahim, Bandra, Khar Road,
Jogeshwari, Bhyander and Borivli. The plan hatched by
Lashkar-e-Toibas Azam Cheema was simple, and was
executed over a period of three months. Seven two-member
teamseach comprising one Indian and one Pakistani
placed pressure-cookers packed with RDX and ammonium
nitrate on the luggage racks of first class compartments. The
damage was great, but Mumbai was remarkably resilient.
That the blasts were a result of a cross-border conspiracy
was not lost on anyone, with Manmohan Singh stating, We
are certain that these terror modules are instigated, inspired
and supported by elements across the border, without which
they cannot act with such devastating effect.

FIRST CUT

The US became a friend, a well-wisher, to quote Prime

Minister Manmohan Singh. Marking a turning point in
bilateral relations, India and the US signed the Henry J.
Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy
Cooperation Act.

The Thar Express in Rajasthan made its way to Pakistan

from Jodhpur, after 41 years.

DID YOU KNOW

 India had a whopping 130 million mobile
phone users in 2005, with the Capital
joining the elite club of world cities
thanks to the presence of over 10 million
mobile phone users.

I DIDNT EXPECT TO WIN. I DONT HAVE A SPEECH.

So declared Kiran Desai, the low-key NRI author and

daughter of Anita Desai, as she bagged the prestigious Man
Booker Prize, the highest literary honour for contemporary
fiction, for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. Laxmi Mittal,
Britains wealthiest man and the worlds fourth richest
individual, was also making world-beating news. He made
corporate history by successfully taking over French steel
giant Arcelor, the second largest steel company in the world
after his own Mittal Steel, giving him an edge in the global
market. It was a protracted battle with allegations of racism
being bandied, but in the end, Mittals muscle won.

FAMILY DRAMA

The BJP lost one of its brightest young leaders when

General Secretary Pramod Mahajan, who was shot by his
brother Pravin, succumbed to bullet injuries after a 12-day
struggle on May 3. On June 3, his son Rahul and secretary
Vivek Maitra were rushed to hospital after imbibing a cocktail
of drugs and drinks.

India Everywhere

India Inc finally announced its arrival to the world with an

extravaganza at the years World Economic Forum meet at
Davos, Switzerland. Brand India was publicised under an
initiative spearheaded by the CII.
 ELSEWHERE...

Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in

response to Hezbollahs abduction of
two of its soldiers. Hezbollah declared
open war against Israel two days later.

NASA's Stardust mission became the first to successfully

return dust from a comet.

In Kuwait, women voted for the first time in the elections to

the National Assembly.

Italy won the 2006 FIFA World Cup by beating France 5-3.
Seen above is Frances Zinedine Zidane (right) headbutting
Italys Marco Materazzi.

16 was the number of gold medals the country won in the

Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

9.2 was the growth rate of the Indian economy in percentage

terms between July and September.

2007: INDIA AT 60

DASHED HOPES

REWIND

On the back of two series wins at home, serenaded by

movie stars and pop singers, the Indian cricket team went to
the World Cup as sureshot semi-finalists and dangerous
contenders. But defeat to Bangladesh in the opening game
and capitulation to Sri Lanka meant the Caribbean campaign
had all the energy of a deflating balloon. Rahul Dravid held
 on to his captaincy but garrulous Greg
Chappell quit as coach and India
struggled to come to terms with its
earliest World Cup exit since 1979.

FIRST CUT

A court of law defined mental cruelty in a marriage in the

case of Samar Ghosh vs Jaya Ghosh.

A Hollywood film was dubbed in Bhojpuri, making the

heartland heartthrob Ravi Kissens voice that of Spiderman.

A condom bar opened in Chandigarh, urging customers to

get it on and harping on safety first, to address the aids
problem.

THE BIG LEAP

Shilpa Shetty went international, without even doing a two-bit

role in a Hollywood movie. Richard Geres kiss gave her a
controversy, the lifeblood of a modern celebrity.

DID YOU KNOW

For the first time, India and China came together to agree on
implementing measures to limit breeding and restrict the
population of tigers raised in captivity.

MARE HUE KO KYA MAARNA (WHY KILL THE DEAD)?

Mayawati

That was Mayawati taking a dig at Mulayam Singh after her

return to the throne of the countrys largest state. Call it
social engineering or caste politics, but when the self-
proclaimed champion of the Dalits won back Uttar Pradesh,
 she also found allies among the upper
castes, who form 30 per cent of the
states electorate. Even a vigorous
campaign led by the rockstar-like
Congress heir apparent Rahul Gandhi
and a Mulayam-Amar-Amitabh joint effort couldnt save the
day, as Mighty Maya triumphed in a landslide victory, winning
206 of the 402 Assembly seats. In the 2002 elections, the
BSP had won just 98 seats.

RAHUL GANDHI during the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh

Assembly polls
Once my family decides on something, it doesnt go back.
Whether its about Indias freedom or dividing Pakistan.

Happily Ever After

An eager nation found itself waiting at the pearly gates of

Bollywoods most powerful family, as eligible bachelor
Abhishek Bachchan tied the knot with Indias international
face Aishwarya Rai. It might have been a private ceremony,
but with pictures splashed all over the newspapers, it
became the most public.

ELSEWHERE...

Cannes celebrated 60 years of its existence.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his retirement in

a year.

Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of France, defeating

Sgolne Royal.

Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer (below) died under mysterious

circumstances during the cricket World Cup.

A state of Emergency was declared in Bangladesh by

Iajuddin Ahmed.

3 major terrorist blasts hit the country this year so farthat

on the Samjhauta Express in February, and in Gorakhpur
and Hyderabad in May.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/60-47to48.html

FORTIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

Liberty, With Death

Two nations were born, torn from a dream of one. India

and the world changed in ways never imagined.

By Gyan Prakash

The world changed in the 1940s. The decade opened

with the aggressive imperial and racial ambitions of
Germany and Japan engulfing the globe in a truly
total conflict. World War II witnessed millions being
herded into concentration camps, millions more being
slaughtered on the battlefields, and densely populated cities
being levelled by aerial bombardments. The atomic bombs
dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945 were a fitting symbol of the wars unspeakable
violence. The nuclear explosions also marked the beginning
of the Cold War and the end of the European world
dominance. The Nazi genocide of the Jews and barbarism of
the war had already robbed Europe of its claims as a
superior civilisation.

The mobilisation of the colonies in the war effort in the name

of freedom further undermined Europes imperial dominance.
The winds of change had begun blowing well before the
beginning of the decade. The end of World War I witnessed
the collapse of the Austro-Hapsburg and Ottoman empires,
and the upsurge of nationalism in Eastern Europe and Asia.
The Weimar Republic in Germany succumbed to Hitler,
Mussolini triumphed in Italy, Japan militarised and acquired
an empire, and Stalin embarked on breakneck
industrialisation and ruthless political consolidation. It was
the unraveling of the liberal imperial order and the onset of
an era of mass society and politics.
Nationalism in India also took to mass PICTURE SPEAK
mobilisation, dealing a deathblow to
the liberal politics of constitutionalism.
Mahatma Gandhi turned the Congress
into a mass party, successfully
inserting the illiterate peasantry into
democratic politics. Backed by popular
mobilisation, the Congress pressed its
claims to power. But so did The 1940s saw
Mohammed Ali Jinnah and B.R.
the British
Ambedkar on behalf of Muslims and
leaving the
Dalits, respectively. The Congress did
spectacularly well in the 1937 subcontinent
elections, forming several provincial and India
ministries, but the communal divisions becoming an
were already quite visible. independent
nation.
When the British Viceroy Lord
Linlithgow proclaimed on September 3, 1939, that India was
at war with Germany, underlining Indias colonial status, the
turmoil surfaced. Pointing to Britains hypocrisy of
proclaiming it a war of freedom, while refusing to relinquish
colonial control, the Congress ministries resigned. Jinnah
welcomed the deliverance from Hindu bondage and the
Muslim League passed a resolution in March 1940,
demanding Pakistan. The die was cast.

The Quit India movement of 1942, launched with the August

uprising in Bombay, signalled a mass challenge to the
British rule. The imperial response was fierce. With Gandhi,
Nehru and much of the Congress leadership jailed, the
initiative was passed to the local leaders, students, and
socialist activists. Much like 1857, the upheaval in the
Gangetic belt took the form of a peasant rebellion. Student
leaders and Kisan Sabha activists in Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh attacked government properties, uprooted railway
lines, and paralysed the administration. Socialist leader
Jayaprakash Narayan set up a provisional Government.
Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, declared that violence
was preferable to cowardice. India was in upheaval.

Battered by Germany in Europe and by Japan in Southeast

Asia, the British feared the impact of Subhash Chandra
Boses radio broadcasts calling for rebellion. Their unlikely
allies were the Communists who declared their support to
the Peoples War, to defend the Soviet Union against the
Nazis. But more crucially, the British exploited Muslim
anxiety about the impending Congress hegemony. Jinnah
had long demanded equality for Muslims, arguing that a
minority status should not mean being a minor part of
independent India. This desire for equality was the driving
force behind the two-nation theory and the demand for
Pakistan. Could India be an independent state while
acknowledging that it contained multiple and equal
nationalities, they asked. The Gandhi-Ambedkar
disagreement in the 1930s had posed a similar question.
Echoes of it could also be heard in the rise of the Dravidian
movement. By the 1940s, however, this broad challenge to
rethink the relationship between socio-cultural multiplicity
and citizenship was reduced to the Hindu-Muslim question.
As Congress insisted that the nation was single and
homogeneous, which it alone represented and Jinnah
asserted that he was the sole spokesman for the Muslims,
the opportunity was lost for crafting political answers for
communal and social conflicts.

The 1945-46 elections exposed the fracture of communal

divisions. Congress won 90 per cent of non-Muslim seats in
the Central Legislature while the Muslim League swept the
Muslim reserved positions in the Centre and provinces.
Emboldened, both turned intransigent. Nehru declared in
April 1946 that the Congress would be free to override any
previous agreements for provincial autonomy, if it came in
the way of the Centres plans for national development. In
Jinnahs eyes, this was proof of the Congresss perfidy. With
mass politics firmly in place, discord at the top tumbled
quickly onto the streets. Jinnah called for direct action, and
communal slaughter commenced. Thousands perished
between August 16 and 20 in the great Calcutta killing.
Despite Gandhis calls for non-violence, much of northern
and eastern India plunged into chaos. Killings and revenge
killings prevailed and a united India was now impossible.

In retreat after the battering of the war and anti-colonial

upheavals, the British partitioned the subcontinent. India
and Pakistan came into existence as independent nations in
August 1947, bathed in the blood of communal butchery. The
different communities fought pitched battles and trainloads of
massacred Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims rode in ghostly
silence into the railway stations of the new nations. More
than a million lost their lives and over 12 million were
uprooted and forced to reconstruct their lives in the new
nations. Thousands of women were raped, kidnapped and
forcibly married to their captors. The violence left deep scars
and the trauma of the birth of the two nations went on to
haunt their futures.

While Nehru marked August 15, 1947, with an eloquent

speech about Indias tryst with destiny, Gandhi heroically
preached the message of non-violence and communal
peace. But his message was lost on the Hindu communalist
eager to build a muscular and modern Hindu nation-state.
On January 30, 1948, Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse
murdered Gandhi, and a tearful Nehru mourned that the
light has gone out of our lives. With Gandhi gone, the
Congress scrambled to establish state authority, manage the
accession of princely states, including Kashmir, and stave off
the Communist-led Telangana insurrection. The Constituent
Assembly met from 1947 to 1949 to lay the basis for a
modern democratic polity.

As the new decade opened, a lot had changed. The British

Empire was gone from the subcontinent, India was an
independent republic, and the era of democratic politics had
taken root. But the price paid was Partition, millions of lost
and uprooted lives, and an inheritance of communal conflict.
The promise was freedom, justice, and prosperity for
ordinary citizensyet to be fulfiled.

The author is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at

Princeton University.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-gyan.html

FIFTIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

Looking Back, For Lessons

The 1950s were the decisive decade, because of what

happened and also what did not, because of the wrong
turnings and the right moves.

By Sunil Khilnani

Contemplating the 1950s, most of us slip into torpor.

Lodged between the exhilarating, tragic 40s and later
decades of manoeuvrings, personality cults, self-
mutilations and shimmering aspiration, the 50s seem
a black & white newsreel. Press Fast Forward. Even better,
Delete.

The settled aura of the 1950s is a trick of retrospective

vision. For the 1950s, as lived, were precarious times: years
in which solutions to crisespolitical, economic and
internationalhad to be invented on the fly in testing
conditions. To some, this was the era when India took all the
wrong turnings: towards socialism, big dams and vast
industrial plants, non-alignment, bureaucratic babu-worship.
But the truth is, as usual, more complex.

The decade opened with Indias future direction in limbo.

Gandhi was gone and Patel, with whom Nehru battled for
leadership of the Congress party, would be dead by
December 1950. Even as Nehru saw off other challengers,
he struggled to get a strong grip over his party and
government. Inside the Congress, many of his colleagues
opposed him, and the regional bosses had real powers.
Outside, he faced vigorous criticism from the Hindu right,
economic liberals, socialists, Communists, as well as those
pressing for recognition of linguistic identities. There was no
common political consensus for him to rely on. Nor were
there effective instrumentsapart from
the inherited ICS bureaucracyto
PICTURE SPEAK
engage in what was then called
nation-building let alone to
aggressively pursue social change.

The crises years of the 1940s had

eroded the states ability to ensure
security: the British, preparing for exit,
had gradually drawn down state
capacities, and the Indian leadership Many of todays
emerging blinking from jailwas in no battles revisit
position to develop alternatives. In the the 1950s
international domain, Indias options trenches. How
were constrained, as pressure built for should the
the country to choose a tent in one or economy work?
other of the Cold War camps. Gravest What is the
of all was the economic situation: the role of the
effects of Partition, which disrupted state?
economic networks and created a
large refugee population, were now superimposed upon
endemic poverty. Food and basic necessities were in short
supply, and capital too was scarce.

Such were the unpropitious circumstances in which India

embarked on its great transformation: from a territory where
an authoritarian colonial state ruled over a repressive
traditional agrarian order into an open democratic society
linked into a single economy. As India effects this transition,
it turns out the 1950s was the decisive decade. For two
reasons: because of what did happen during these years,
and equally because of what did not.

The period saw three fundamental accomplishments. Most

foundational was the consolidation of the state and its
assertion of sovereignty over the social. Law was
established as a basic tool for Indias self-transformation.
Law became the means to express the ambition to abolish
caste and remedy historical injustice through reservations.
So too, unjust religious practices were changed through
reform of Hindu law. Law is usually seen as the principle of
stability, rather than of change, in society. Indias
interpretation was unusual interpretation, and consequential.
It gave law and the courts a central role in our politics, not
merely in defending rights but in pursuing social goals.

The decades second defining impulse was the will to create

institutions, from the Atomic Energy and Planning
Commissions to the Election Commission (a body that has
proved crucial to maintaining India as a democracy). The
performance of these institutional spawn was, and is,
uneven. But overall, the energy invested in creating new
institutions gave public life a structural density that has
helped to sustain an open society.

Third, the state secured the subcontinent as a zone of

relative peace with conditions of economic stability under a
democratic government. This sounds unremarkable, until
one thinks of the rest of Asia in the decades after World War
II. Across Asia, two patterns emerged: zones wracked by
civil or interstate war and a mosaic of authoritarian regimes.
India, too, faced similar challenges; yet it managed to
achieve a stable, inflation-free environment under an elected
government. Without this feat, Indias later development
would have been impossible.

Three things that did not happen during the 1950s were
equally consequential. First and foremost: the government
failed to educate the citizenry. India began the decade with a
mere 18 per cent of its population classed as literate; a
decade later, the figure had increased by only 10 percentage
points and 85 per cent of Indias women remained illiterate. A
useful comparison is China, whose per capita GDP in the
1950s was lower than Indias. Although China began the
1950s with a literacy rate similar to Indias, it made a
concerted effort to educate women. Female literacy
increased by around 3.5 per cent a year for much of the
decade, and by the early 1960s, around 40 per cent of
Chinese women were literate.

The 1950s set a long pattern for educationrhetorical

attention, practical neglect. And even that attention was fitful.
Nehrus huge prime ministerial correspondence contains
astonishingly little sustained discussion of primary education.
And it is sobering to realise that even when Maulana Azad
headed the education ministry, the ministry lacked
competence to utilise the monies allocated to it.

A second missed opportunity was the inability to alter Indias

unequal distribution of land ownership. Again, a comparison
with other Asian countries shows that in the countries that
later enjoyed sustained economic growth, land reform was a
pillara key precondition of the East and South East Asian
economic miracles. Indias land policy (like its primary
education policy) was in the hands of the regional state
legislatures. The 1950s, when the Indian National Congress
controlled both the Central and state legislatures, was the
optimal time to push through legislation. But the battle was
evaded, and lost. The result was the forfeiture of a crucial
instrument both to raise agricultural productivity and to effect
economic redistribution, fundamental problems with which
we still struggle.

A third failure was in the international realm. Indias foreign

policy during the 1950s is usually framed in the context of
the Cold Wars Soviet-American rivalry; many now criticise
Nehrus policy of equidistance from the superpowers. In fact,
this was very effective, given Indias interests and meagre
resources. The actual failure lay elsewherethe inability to
work out a positive regional stance. This is most clear in the
case of Pakistan. The irresolution of the Kashmir dispute has
kept the subcontinent the least integrated region of Asia and
has blocked the regions economic development.

Still more important was the failure of Indias China policy,

the country with which we share our longest border. Nehrus
China policy, in which he was so personally invested,
suffered a slow deflation through the closing years of the
decade. The policys collapse in October 1962, when
Chinese forces routed Indian troops, should have come as
no surprise. The cloud which ever since has enveloped our
relations with China has only just, and slowly, begun to
dissipate.

It is striking how many of todays battles revisit the trenches

of the 1950s. How should the economy work? What should
be the role of the state? What are the terms of redistribution?
What role shall we have in the world? The persistence of
these questions is cause for frustrationbut also
reassurance. Beginning in the 1950s, we have accrued a
body of experience from which we can learn, if we choose to
learn. Authoritarian societies, committed to forgetting,
obliterate their pasts. They live in a permanent present,
defined by the exercise of political will. Democracy is the
most historical of political forms. Indeed, it is nothing else but
history. And the 1950s launched us on a historical quest: to
try to master our present by making whatever sense we can
of our own cumulative choices. Our own history is the
resource we have to draw upon to grasp our options, as we
move forward.

The author is director of South Asia Studies at the Johns

Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
in Washington, DC.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-sunilkhilani.html

SIXTIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

An Area Of Darkness

A four-year wait for a car, no kissing on screen and no

drinking without a permit. In the third decade of
freedom, India was a land of scarcity, prohibitions and
controls.

By Mihir Bose

The Sixties in the West were a decade of revolution,

mini skirts and the Beatles. In India it was a decade
when you were constantly told what you could not do
and, when for a while, it seemed the very idea of
India might not work.

The decade began promisingly with seemingly impossible

dreams fulfilled. In August 1960, K. Asif finally released
Mughal-e-Azam, 15 years after he had started making the
movie. A year later, the Indian Army marched into Goa and
ejected the Portuguese. For the first time in four hundred
years India was free from foreign colonial domination. The
country was pictured as an aeroplane poised for economic
take-off. Not without significance, 1961 saw the launch of
two of Indias leading financial dailies, The Economic Times
and The Financial Express.

But soon Plane India stalled so badly on the runway that for
a time there were real fears it would collapsecertainly
foreign critics wrote it offand while Armageddon was
avoided, the decade ended with much of the high hopes of
freedom turned to dust. For me, a Midnights Child, this
mood change crystallised on the night of January 26, 1963.
I grew up in Flora Fountain in the PICTURE SPEAK
heart of Bombay (as it was then
called) and the night of January 26
was always special. That night the
major buildings in Bombay would be
illuminated. Our house was
surrounded by some historic buildings
of the city and every January 26 saw
thousands from Bombays suburbs Plane India
driving past our flat in open-top lorries
stalled badly.
to gaze at the illuminations. As they
The decade
did so they would wave to us
shouting, Bharat zindabad. But on ended with
the night of January 26, 1963, there much of the
were no illuminations, no lorries, no high hopes of
crowds, just deafening silence. I freedom turned
remember sitting by the window of our to dust.
flat that night and as I looked at the
statue of Flora, I got the feeling she
was shedding silent tears for Bharat Students were told
Mata. they couldnt sit for
their exams unless
Three months earlier, in October they underwent
1962, the Chinese had crushed the three years of
Indian Army in the North East Frontier training in the NCC.
Area (NEFA). For a time it seemed all
of eastern India would be lost. Jawaharlal Nehru, in a radio
broadcast, very nearly bid Assam goodbye and we were told
how shopkeepers in Calcutta were learning Chinese. The
Chinese attack on India was so overwhelming that the
Cuban missile crisis, which nearly led to a nuclear war
between the US and the Soviet Union, hardly made an
impression on us.
Republic Day was no longer a day of celebration and the
shockwaves of that invasion were felt for the rest of the
decade. Not least by us students. The talk of the day was to
get the country better prepared militarily and so students
were told that they would not be allowed to sit for their
graduation examinations unless they underwent three years
compulsory training in the

National Cadet Corps. Eighteen months after the Chinese

invasion, we found ourselves being given basic military
training. Twice a week we gathered at a maidan near our
college to be shouted at by fierce-looking Indian soldiers. I
doubt if the Chinese spies lurking in the maidans were much
frightened by this budding Indian army. I can recall nothing of
military value I learnt, which included a spell in an NCC
camp, except that it made me realise that the brave jawans
we were asked to hero worship grew up to become foul-
mouthed old soldiers with an inventive vocabulary of swear
words.

Our military service was justified on the grounds that this

was the price we, the first generation of free Indians, had to
pay for freedom. But all around us there were people
questioning whether this freedom was worth having. In 1964,
V.S. Naipaul, after a year in India, produced

An Area of Darkness, his bleak and deeply pessimistic book

about India. A year later came Nirad Chaudhuris The
Continent of Circe which argued Indians could only regain
their place in the world if they realised they were Europeans.
While we could dismiss them as anti-Indians, Chaudhuri was
easily lampooned as our home-grown Brit. All around us we
could see much that was wrong with our beloved Bharat.

In the third decade of freedom, India was the land of scarcity

a four-year wait for an Ambassador, 12 years for a Fiat.
And of the great Pprohibitions in all kinds of things from no
kissing on the screen to no drinking anywhere. My father
could drink at home in Bombay only after getting a permit
from the Collector of Customs. It was obtained after his
doctor certified that for health reasons my father required
two pegs of whisky every night. My father also used his
friends in the Indian Armed Forces to get around prohibition.
On Indian naval ships the Gandhian injunctions against
alcohol did not apply, the old British custom of drinking still
prevailed and as soon as his naval friends came onshore,
my father was off to the Bombay docks.

The other big prohibition was in relation to food with the

1960s seeing a determined effort to change Indian eating
habits. Parliament in the 1960s spent much time debating
over famine-stalked parts of the land. At our dining tables we
were told that we should eat less rice and have more wheat:
so cut out the plate of rice for dinner, have chapattis instead.

In West Bengal, the Congress chief minister tried to engineer

a more radical change in food habits. Following a
tremendous milk shortage, he had the brilliant idea of telling
his fellow Bengalis that they should cut down on sweets,
most of which were made from milk. The Bengalis were
outraged and it made many middle-class Bengalis distrust
the Congress and turn to the communists. Whatever else
Marx may advocate, he would never target the beloved
Bengali rosogolla.

Now this may be one of the stories that may have gained
more in retelling but there was no getting round the Guest
Control Order which prohibited any meals for more than 50
people. This led to the most curious wedding receptions.
Hundreds gathered in elaborately decorated shamianas, the
presents were as lavish as ever, but all that the guests got
was a thin slice of vanilla ice cream. In many ways, the
biggest P of all concerned foreign travel. With the country
facing massive foreign exchange shortages you could only
travel abroad if a Form P was authorised by the Reserve
Bank of India. But even when Form P was approved, the RBI
gave you only 3 in foreign exchange. The joke was that it
was enough to pay for a peg of whisky on the Air India flight
taking you out of India.

With no television, foreign was increasingly exotic and the

restrictions made us long to leave India. Not an escape but a
temporary flight so we could return and make good the
deficiencies we saw in a land that we still loved so much.

After 12 years with The Telegraph, the author is now with

BBC Sports.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-meher.html

SEVENTIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

The Rise, Fall And Rise Of Indira Gandhi

The 1970s will forever be identified with the changing

fortunes of the countrys first woman prime minister and
the politics of dynasty.

By Ramachandra Guha
 Indira is India, and India is Indira, said a Congress
sycophant in the 1970s, a decade thatfor good and
for illwill forever be identified with the countrys first
woman prime minister. Politically speaking, the
decade actually began in the second half of 1969, when
Indira Gandhi split the Congress party, nationalised the
banks, and set in motion the abolition of the princely order.

Having refashioned herself as a messiah of the poor, Mrs

Gandhi then fought and won the 1971 elections on the
compelling slogan, Garibi Hatao. Before the year ended,
she had won a more emphatic victoryin the battlefield
against Pakistan. Opposition politicians were now falling
over one another to sing her praises. The luck, it seemed,
was all running Mrs Gandhis wayshe could even take
credit for the Green Revolution, which had actually been set
in motion by her predecessor Lal Bahadur Shastri, who did
not, however, live long enough to enjoy its fruits.

Halfway through her term, Mrs Gandhi was truly the

monarch of all she surveyed. Even Jawaharlal Nehru in his
heyday had not enjoyed such enormous and countrywide
adulation. But then a veteran freedom-fighter named
Jayaprakash Narayan abandoned social work to re-enter
politics. Disgusted, he said, by the corruption and
degeneration around him, he had decided to join the youth of
his native Bihar in restoring, to public life, the values of the
national movement.

Through 1974, Bihar saw a series of strikes and

processions, demanding the resignation of the Congress
Government in the state. One protest, in Gaya, provoked the
police into firing on unarmed demonstrators; in another
protest, in Patna, the police rained lathis on Narayan himself.
By now, the Bihar movement had been renamed the JP
Movement. To its banner flocked students of all stripes, and
also the major Opposition parties. No longer did it merely
want a change of regime in Bihar; it demanded that Indira
Gandhi herself vacate her chair and seek a fresh mandate
from the people.

In the second week of June, 1975, the

JP Movement got a huge boost when a
court in Allahabad ruled that Mrs PICTURE SPEAK
Gandhi was guilty of electoral
malpractice. The call for her
resignation grew louder; instead, the
Prime Minister imposed a state of
Emergency on the nation. Opposition
leaders were jailed, and the press
censored. There was surprisingly little
dissent. The trains ran on time. The The 1970s saw
rains that year were good, bringing the rise of
down prices and inflation. Once more, populist
it seemed that the Gods were smiling politics:
indulgently on Indira Gandhi. Under disputes being
her benign care even the countrys
resolved in the
notoriously under-performing
streets rather
sportsmen were tasting success. India
than in the
won the hockey World Cup towards the
end of 1975; then, in early 1976, our legislature.
cricketers beat the mighty West Indies. As the winning runs
were scored in distant Port of Spain, I heard the All India
Radio commentator credit the victory to the Prime Minister
and her 20 point programme. Ye Indira Gandhi ka desh hai!,
he shouted, Ye bis sutri karikram ka desh hai!

Behind the faade of the mothers rule, a younger son was

swiftly rising. Sanjay Gandhi had no time for democracy
future generations will not remember us by how many
elections we had, he once said, but by the progress we
made. Progress, itself, he defined in rather narrow terms
the number of slums demolished, the number of young men
sterilised. Following his instructions, bulldozers moved into
Old Delhi, provoking a riot while teams of Government
officials fanned into the North Indian countryside, pulling
villagers into vans and driving them to the hospital.

By its second year, the Emergency had generated a great

deal of fear and terror. Then, in January 1977, and without
consulting Sanjay, the Prime Minister announced that she
was returning India to democratic rule. In the elections held
in March, her Congress party was trounced by a merger,
hastily cobbled together, of four older parties that called itself
the Janata Party. In the state worst hit by the Emergency,
Uttar Pradesh, the rout of the Congress was complete, with
both Indira and Sanjay failing to win elections.

Most Indians who lived through the period of their rule

dismiss the Janata Party as a bunch of jokers. While broadly
true, this characterisation omits to acknowledge one great
service that this first non-Congress Government rendered to
the nation. During Emergency, a series of Constitutional
amendments had been introduced, centralising power in the
office and person of the Prime Minister. Now the original
provisions were restored. Directing the restoration were the
new Prime Minister Morarji Desai and his hardworking Law
Minister Shanti Bhushan. As historian Granville Austin has
written, the Janata Government enjoyed a remarkable
success in repairing the Constitution from the Emergencys
depredations, in reviving open parliamentary practice
through its consultative style, and in restoring the
judiciarys independence.

When Mrs Gandhi lost the elections in 1977, an English

friend wrote asking whether she would now spend some
time enjoying birds, up in the Himalaya, or in Kashmir. Then
he added: We shall try to keep up with the news from India,
and perhaps in five years from now, you will be in office once
again with the biggest majority ever. Such is democracy!.

In fact, it took less than three years for Mrs Gandhi to

become Prime Minister once more. Towards the end of 1979
the Janata Party collapsed under the weight of its
contradictions. In the mid-term poll that resulted, the
Congress returned to power. Thus ended a decade
momentous in the history of the nation, and momentous also
in the life of one particular individual. For between 1970 and
1980, Mrs Gandhi had tasted Kiplings two impostors,
success and failure, in full and equal measure.

The 1970s saw the ascendance of a populist style in Indian

politics, with disputes increasingly sought to be resolved in
the streets rather than in the legislature. The decade also
saw the introduction of the dynastic principle. While
Jawaharlal Nehru never wished or hoped that his daughter
would become Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi made it clear that
Sanjay would, when the time came, succeed her. After he
died, the succession was transferred by her to Rajiv. In time,
the precedent set by Indias oldest party was adopted by
most others. Now, with the exception of the cadre-based
parties of Left and Right, the CPI(M) and the BJP, all political
parties have transformed into family firms. That is the legacy
of the decade of the 1970s, and of its pre-eminent political
figure, Indira Gandhi.

Ramachandra Guha is the author of India after Gandhi: The

History of the Worlds Largest Democracy.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-guha.html

EIGHTIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

The Great Indian Political Churning

The decade proved to be ostrich-like. It saw old verities

vanish and new ones raise their heads, as Congress
hegemony ended and religious fundamentalism began.

By Ashutosh Varshney

The 1980s fundamentally altered Indias political

landscape and also planted the seeds of an
economic revolution. This ostrich-like decade saw
the old verities vanish and new ones raise their
heads, some quite unwholesome and others hugely
promising. Two political developments of the decade stood
out for their long-run significance: the end of Congress
hegemony in politics and the emergence of, what Amartya
Sen has called, illusion of singular identity, which meant
the obsessive identification of human beings with their
religious selves.

Looking back, the disappearance of Congress hegemony

was a great surprise. It was a decade of resounding victories
for the Congress party right until the very end. In January
1981, Indira Gandhi triumphantly returned to power, a mere
three and a half years after she had been thrown out in a
stunning twist of electoral fate, conjured up by her
Emergency excesses. Her assassination in October 1984
gave Rajiv Gandhi an unparalleled victory too. Even under
Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress party
was never able to win three-fourth of
the Lok Sabha seats. PICTURE SPEAK

Yet, in 1989, Rajiv was decisively

voted out. It is clear that the
strengthening of new anti-Congress
forces was only temporarily postponed
by Mrs Gandhis assassination, which
gave an extraordinary spike to Rajivs
electoral fortunes for five years. The Had Rajiv given
next decade-and-a-half witnessed two greater power
alternative political formations: the to panchayats,
Hindu nationalists in the north and
Indias
west and the lower caste politicians
economic
dominant in the south for decades,
finally forcing their way up in the north miracle might
as well. No one in the 1980s could have lifted
have predicted that the Congress villages too.
would poll less than 10 per cent of the popular vote in Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar, as it does these days. The 1989
elections inaugurated the new electoral era, as the BJP and
the lower caste parties began to eat into the social base of
the once mighty Congress.

But a more significant development was the attempted

religious simplification of Indias multidimensional self. A
religious construction of Indian identity was vigorously
promoted in politics and an effort was made to subsume all
other identities, which Indians traditionally had, under an all-
consuming religious framing of politics. With this massive
simplification arose terror as a mode of quotidian politics.
Concurrently, solid conditions for the rise of Hindu
nationalism were also created.

Indian terrorism was born in Punjab, a most unlikely site, for

it was the centre of the Green Revolution, the nations richest
state in the 1980s and an established supplier of legendary
fighters to Indias armed forces and also a state with a
history of good relations between Sikhs and Hindus. That
Sikhs had or developed irresolvable political grievances
against Delhi, or against the Hindus, was shocking. Sikh
integration in mainstream India was always considered deep
and exemplary. How could the Sikhs possibly rebel against
Delhi? How could that come about?

Political analysts have a rare consensus on what caused the

unfortunate developments in Punjab. In an interconnected
set of events, Mrs Gandhis use of a Sikh preacher, Sant
Bhindranwale, to weaken her electoral adversaries the
ruling Akali Dalmorphed into religious terror on the part of
some Sikh religious organisations and counter-terrorism
operations on the part of the Indian state. It was her
monumental blunder to meddle in Sikh religious politics, for
which she, of course, paid with her life when her Sikh
bodyguards, seeking revenge, killed her for desecrating their
holiest shrinethe Golden Temple. The systemic
implications were equally bloody and horrendous. Terror
became acceptable as a way of political life in some circles.

Scholars and long-time observers of Indian politics have

noted how unprecedented Mrs Gandhis political moves in
Punjab were. Nehru, for example, never used religion in
politics, keeping thereby the temperature of Indian public
sphere in control. In the 1960s, Nehru had refused to allow
the formation of a new Punjab state on religious grounds,
despite Master Tara Singhs fast unto death. Punjab and
Haryana were eventually reorganised into linguistically, not
religiously, distinct states.

Two decades later, Nehrus daughter sought to exploit the

religious divisions in the Sikh community for political gains.
Religion, once unleashed as an electoral device right from
the topmost tiers of the polity, engulfed all else in Punjab.
Terror as a weapon of everyday politics was born and the
state was plunged into a decade-long civil war.

The other quite awkward and controversial religious moment

in politics in the 1980s arrived when the Supreme Court,
pronouncing its judgment in the Shah Bano case, questioned
both the validity of the shariat for Muslims as well as the
competence of Muslim jurists and religious leaders to
interpret the shariat. A secular court, having no expertise in
centuries-long traditions of Islamic jurisprudence, showed
incredible modernist hubris in condescendingly looking down
upon believers. Caught in a Muslim furore and
understanding it little, Rajiv Gandhi used his three-fourth
majority in the Lok Sabha to overturn the courts judgment.

Thereupon, all hell broke loose. Viewing it as Muslim

appeasement and smelling an opportunity for anti-Congress
and anti-Muslim mobilisation, Hindu nationalists began to
rouse large numbers of urban Hindus. In an attempt to pacify
those so mobilised, the Government then allowed the re-
opening of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, a contested
Hindu-Muslim site that had remained padlocked since
1948. Riots broke out and the Hindu nationalists launched a
movement to liberate Ram Janmabhoomi and purge it of
Muslim symbols, including the mosque at the heart of the
site.

Looking back, it is clear that Rajivs mistake stemmed from a

misreading of religion. He was not unprincipled, simply
politically innocent. Overturning the Supreme Court
judgment, he thought, would pacify Muslims, and re-
reopening the temple, he inferred, would please the Hindus.
What happened was something radically different: the
reopening of the temple caused anxiety among the Muslims,
and reversing the court judgment upset the Hindus.

Rajivs other big contribution was, however, salutary. He was

the first prime minister who knew what modern technology,
market competition and private entrepreneurism could do to
the countrys economic uplift. Nehru understood the power of
modern technology, not that of market competition; Indira
understood neither; Rajiv understood both. Indias economic
policies were fundamentally transformed only in 1991, but
Rajiv sowed the seeds of change. He brought in a new set of
market-oriented economic advisers and placed them in
positions of power. He was assassinated before the reforms
could be put in place, but when the foreign exchange crisis
of 1991 arrived, the new economic team and ideas he had
nurtured were already in place, ready to execute the new
vision, propelling India towards the economic revolution
unfolding before our eyes today.

Despite the economic celebration Rajiv deserves, one

cannot but end on a note of anguish. Panchayati Raj was
one of his pet projects. It is clear that he was right about
adding the third tier of elected government to the countrys
governance. However, the execution was delayed until after
his death and the powers of panchayats were insufficiently
imagined. A fast accumulating body of research on China
makes it plain that its economic revolution was led in the
1980s and 1990s by the so-called Township and Village
Enterprises (TVEs). TVEs were essentially village-based
manufacturing units, led by local governments. They
produced buttons, plastic bags, toys, shoes, simple radios,
elementary calculators etc. If Rajiv had envisioned greater
powerboth financial and political, for Indias panchayats,
the nations economic revolution might well have lifted
villages as well, not simply the cities.

Ashutosh Varshney is the Professor of Political Science at

the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-vashnai.html

NINETIES: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

Breaking From The Past

The years saw India rise like a phoenix from its ashes.
Social, economic and political, there were reforms on all
fronts.

By Kaushik Basu

It is a reasonable forecast that 30 to 40 years from

now India will be a developed country. And when that
happens, I believe it is the 1990s that will be viewed
as the decade when the nation broke from its past.

The decade had not started out well. The shock waves of the
first Gulf War caused remittances into and exports out of
India to take a nosedive and this triggered a spiralling
economic crisis during 1991-92. That year the nations per
capita income recorded a negative growth rate. The crisis
turned out to be a blessing in not too much of a disguise. As
a nation we had fallen into a groovenurturing a mindless
bureaucracy in the name of socialism, repeating the same
tired policies and refusing to admit the need for change. It
was like Mr Needleman, who, in a Woody Allen short story,
leaned out from his balcony seat during an opera and fell
into the orchestra pit. And then, as Mr Allen puts it, Too
proud to admit that it was a mistake, he attended the opera
every night for a month and repeated it each time.
It needed courage to break the logjam.
Tribute has to go to the then finance PICTURE SPEAK
minister, Manmohan Singh, for
ushering in what was arguably the
most dramatic policy shift in
independent Indias history. The
countrys notorious licensing system
was dismantled, the mindlessly high
import tariffs lowered and exchange
controls eased. The gamble paid off. As a nation we
The economy turned around from the had fallen into
brink of major chaos and international a groove and
debt default. And by 1994 the economy refused to
was booming. The next three years admit the need
would be the best that independent to change.
India had seen till then, with the GDP
growing at above 7 per cent per annum. There was a small
dip after that as the whole of East Asia plunged into a major
economic depression. But the growth rate picked up again
after two years and currently the economy seems to be
cruising at an average rate of 8 per cent per annum, which is
remarkable.

Indias balance of payments used to be forever crisis-ridden.

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the nations foreign
exchange reserves were stuck at what, to use a tired
expression, could be described as the Hindu foreign
exchange balancearound $5 billion. The reforms did the
impossible. By 1994 the balance rose to $25 billion, by 2002
to $75 billion, and now it is close to $200 billion.

While the reforms were critical for the turnaround of the

economy, we would be remiss not to recognise that there
were other factors of importance. Indias savings rate had
risen sharply in the 1990s, following the bank nationalisation
of 1969, and this was critical for the success of the economy.
As a nation we had, for a long time, over-invested in higher
education, producing more engineers than what the
economy could absorb, more English-language skills than
would be recommended on narrow utilitarian grounds. But
once the technology revolution in Americas Silicon Valley
occurred, there was a surge in global demand for these
resources and the over-investments paid off unexpectedly
and handsomely.

This shows that the argument, that the success of the

reforms proves the Nehruvian policy to be wrong and India
should have adopted the 1990s reforms 40 years ago, need
not be valid. While it is true that India had been excessively
stubborn about policy and experimented too little, the
success of the particular policy package adopted in the early
1990s depended on several complementary pre-conditions.
There are many Latin American nations that had undertaken
similar reforms in the 1960s and 1970s and plunged into
crisis and political instability. For one, cutting deals with
multinationals is a challenging task. The contracts can run
into hundreds of pages and a nation that ventures in to this
before acquiring the necessary expertise can end up
unwittingly losing more than it gains. History is replete with
instances of such voluntary impoverishment.

Finally, I consider the 1990s to be a decade of critical

political and social change. In global politics, India has come
to occupy a strategic space that it never had before. With the
rise of China and the decline of Russia, it is now evident that
the US and China confront a future where they will either
have to live with a bilateral face-off or have the comforting
presence of a third pole, which India can provide. This is in
the interest of both China and the US and an advantage
handed to India on a platter. India has also come to occupy a
critical space, beyond its own making, in Americas anti-
terrorism strategy.

Even more importantly, this was a decade of critical social

change. It saw the rise of a new class of honourable people
(albeit still very few) in business and politics. In the psyche of
middle-class India, business has long been a dirty word.
The arrival of people like N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys
sent a message to a whole generation of youngsters that to
be an entrepreneur one does not have to be corrupt and a
money-hawk. In politics, Manmohan Singh represented a
rare combination of intelligence and personal integrity.

New research in economics shows that one important trait

that helps a nation or a community prosper economically, is
trust. Cross-country studies suggest that nations where
citizens are known to be trustworthy tend to do better. The
reason is not difficult to see. Not every deal and contract in
life can be enforced by the courts and the police (certainly
not our police). Hence, when we cut deals relating to trade,
we often have to rely on the expected innate integrity and
trust-worthiness of people. On the flip side, being trustworthy
means having to give up some quick short-term gains, but
one can expect to do better in the long-run. Hence,
trustworthiness and integrity are forms of social investment.
One foregoes immediate gains but benefits in the long run.
With the rise in this kind of investment, one can hope for not
only more economic development, but also a decline in
corruption.

Indias financial investment is on the risewe have data on

this. My belief is that even our social investment (in being
more dependable and trustworthy) is on the rise, though,
admittedly, it is difficult to produce hard data on this. The
trend was started in the 1990s. And if my conjecture is right,
the benefits of this will accrue for many decades to come.

The author is Professor of Economics and Director, Centre

of Analytic Economics, Cornell University. He is currently
based in Delhi at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Delhi
School of Economics.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-kaushik.html

2000s: INDIA AT 60 | GUEST COLUMN

The Great Greed Creed

Welcome to the banquet world. From a begging bowl to

a 10-course repast, India now makes appetising news.

By Shobhaa De

It began with fireworks. Literally. At least, for me. We

were in Goa to greet the new century...the new
millennium, for Gods sake. How else could 2000
begin but with the sky exploding in technicolour?
There was an irrational, absurd sense of euphoria. It was a
nave, trusting, touching belief that somehow everything
would sort itself out. I was ready to believe in magic
miracles. The world was not going to the dogs. India was not
going to the dogs. This was a cosmic moment. Everything
would turn out just fine.

A few hours after the fireworks, in true Goa style, a few

believers gathered at the edge of a very calm sea, to
participate in a pre-dawn havan. We were bleary-eyed and
champagned-out, but not entirely wasted. Determined to
salute the first sunrise of a brand new century, we faced the
east and raised our expectant faces to greet the pale pink
orb, emerging at its own pace from behind low hills in the
distance. We prayed our own personal prayers as priests
chanted in unison. A bright and beautiful dawn smiled down
on us. On the world. It was a moment.

Little did we imagine then that it would turn out to be Indias

moment very shortly after that poetic opening scene. Today,
as we negotiate our way past the half-way mark of the
current decade, that heady, euphoric New Years Day feeling
continues to enchant, seduce and intoxicate. India is a
moveable feast. Welcome to the banquet, world. Strange
irony. From begging bowl to a 10-course repast, we sure
have come a long way. Never mind the downside. Lets not
spoil the party with unappetising news. Why burst the
bubble? India is on a roll and the momentum continues to
gather speed, much to the disappointment of doomsday
prophets, whod rather crow, I told you so, if the fairytale
turns into a nightmare. As of now, there arent too many
ogres in sight, and lets not give Narendra Modi that dubious
honour, please. Like any ambitious global player competing
for a large slice of the yummy pie, India too is busy stuffing
its face and gobbling what it can. Why not? Brand India has
finally shown the needed courage to abandon outdated
socialist double standards and embrace aggressive
international strategies designed to propel the country into
the big boys club. Ten years ago, wed have been hooted
(and booted) out of this elite club of developed nations, and
reminded about our lowly place (Down, boy) in the pecking
order. Its a dramatically different story now, and the smart
thing to do is to cash in on current perceptions. Whether
India is merely poised, shining, glowing or growling, nobody
will argue that India is certainly climbing, clambering, clawing
its way to the top of the heap. About time, too. The only
question worth asking is: what took us so long?

It has become trendy for some self-appointed critics to trash

the newly brash India. The present, unapologetically brazen
one that does not shy away from wearing its success on its
sleeve. But why? What are we afraid and/or ashamed of?
Could the answer be, ourselves? The single biggest change
in the India story has been in the area of self perception. We
have finally stopped seeing ourselves as perennial losers
waiting for handouts from the first world. The elephant has
stirred out of the sanctuary and has decided to play the size
does matter game on its own terms.

For all the fuss over threats from the Chinese dragon, the
fact remains, the dragon is a mythical creature. The elephant
exists. Today, there is nothing all that incredible about India.
The early gee whiz reaction has been replaced by the more
important wow factor. Weve done it, dammit. And every
Indian who travels overseas can sense this change.
Economic muscle power is just one
aspect of the new-found respect
Indians encounter. And, Im sorry, but I PICTURE SPEAK
think it also goes well beyond the stale
BPO story. The reason why India rocks
is because we have the money to
match our guts. And it is guts that are
doing it for us. Perhaps for the first
time ever, India has been able to stand
Nobody will
argue that
India is
certainly
 climbing,
clambering,
clawing its way
to the top of
the heap.
up and be counted. Gone is the old chamchagiri in the
presence of G8 leaders, the sickening obsequiousness.
From Bush, Brown, Putin, Merkel and now Sarkozy, we have
looked them in the eye and said, Hello, are you talking to
me? like Robert de Niro. Good feeling. New feeling.

Middle India is practically unrecognisable in every which

way. People discuss a nebulous cultural and sexual
revolution in awestruck terms. Its true, a lot has changed.
But a lot still remains the same. India shocks easily, despite
the bravado and big talk. Periodic surveys show the same
old prejudices and hangups, never mind that our movies
pretend otherwise. Women may be wearing less and less,
drinking and smoking much more, sleeping around with
abandon, and generally feeling liberated. But behind all
that stylish huffing and puffing, society continues to frown at
the Westernisation of our youth, and bridegrooms still
prefer virgins.

Decade 2000 spells excess. Like Oliver, we all want more.

More of everything. India has discovered a new narcotic. Its
called quality of life. From a dhobi to a dj, the race is on to
acquire all those goodies that used to be unattainable in the
past. Our tycoons have shown the way. The good life is here
to stay. From private yachts and jets, to island getaways and
stud farms, affluence and luxury dictate tastes across the
board. The branding of India is the next big story after
biggies like LVMH have tested the waters and declared them
easily navigable.

The other significant shift has come from the Millennium

Woman. She has claimed her place in the sun, and isnt
about to budge an inch. It has been a hard fought battle.
Now that the turf is hers, shes staying put. With a mind of
her own, and money to match, she has successfully
renegotiated the equation with society. You really dont want
to mess with this lady. Has this successful city chicks newly-
acquired status helped her rural sisters? Not yet, but what
else is the trickle down effect for? Personal ambition is
driving most of the present change and will continue to do
so. Prepare yourself for a decade of unadulterated self-
indulgence and self-love, propelled by greed in the Gordon
Gecko league. Can the delicate fabric of Indian society
handle naked avarice? Will it? Should it? At what cost? Have
the Russian billionaires ever stopped to ask themselves
such a question? Nyet, nyet. They have cleverly focused on
making more roubles. Them. The old Russkies with commie
commitments. Were desis, yaar. No such hangover.

Despite all the new and old double standards, there is an

unmistakable buoyancy in the air. Its a decade of hope and
expectancy. Overseas Indians are coming back home in
droves, attracted by the magnet of a motherland they may
never have known, but feel a part of. This newly-acquired
sense of belonging goes hand-in hand with the sense of
security India offers its prodigal sons. The very shores they
abandoned, now appear more welcoming. The gilt-edged
dream they chased by relocating in phoren is no longer all
that attractive. Suddenly, mere desh ki dharti has become
their theme song. Welcome home, strangers. Its all about
the money. And the general belief is that the lolly is all here.
Financial wizards are only too happy to share their upbeat
forecasts and inform non-converts that international big
bucks have shifted to India. Its a great place to park ones
money, is one phrase thats repeated ad nauseum by smug
suitsworking the circuit. We hear you, guys. No one I know
is complaining.

So does that mean we can put on our dancing shoes? Why

not? Whos to stop us now?

The author is a columnist and novelist. A former model, she

started her journalism career in 1970.

http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20070702/gc-shoha.html