After Nehru. . .

After Nehru. . . Towards the last years of Nehru’s prime ministership itself, there were serious debates on what would happen to India after him. And when he died in May 1964, many in India and abroad were almost sure that the Indian political system would be severely and adversely affected, and could even collapse, with a fight within the Congress party over who would take charge. However, there was no such turmoil; a smooth succession took place.

Indeed, since the Nehruvian era, India has seen not only several prime ministers but also certain changes in its political history. Down the years there have been some upheavals to threaten the smooth functioning of a vibrant democracy, but these challenges have been met and overcome. Amidst the coups and military takeovers in the neighbouring countries, India has managed to survive as a democracy and witness smooth change of government from time to time though democratic elections.

Immediately after Nehru’s death, Gulzarilal Nanda was appointed as the interim prime minister, pending the election of a new parliamentary leader of the Congress party who would then become prime minister.

(June 1964 – January 1966) It is generally accepted that a group within the Congress, formed in 1963, which came to be known as the Syndicate and included the president of the party, K. Kamaraj, and some others, guided the succession to the prime minister’s post after Jawaharlal Nehru. The choice was between Morarji Desai and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

The former was the senior and experienced Congressman who was known for his administrative skills and honesty but also considered to be conservative, somewhat rigid, and leaning towards the ‘right’; the latter was seen to be mild, soft-spoken, and flexible even though a man of integrity and of incorruptible nature. Shastri was supported more widely across the party than was Desai. In the end, Shastri was chosen by the party as the next parliamentary leader, hence the prime minister, as Desai decided not to contest.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was born on October 2, 1904, in Uttar Pradesh (known as United Provinces at the time). Firmly opposed to the caste system, he decided to leave out his surname of Srivastava. ‘Shastri’ was a title he got on completing his graduation at Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi, in 1928. When he married Lalita Devi in 1928, Lal Bahadur Shastri, very much opposed to the idea of dowry, is said to have accepted just five yards of khadi and a spinning wheel on the insistence of his father-in-law to accept something.

Swayed by Mahatma Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri joined the freedom movement; in the Non- cooperation Movement of1921, he was arrested for taking part in a demonstration but, as he was then a minor, he was let off. Later he was part of the major movements of the struggle against the British rule, such as the Salt Satayagraha and the individual satyagraha movement, and then in the 1942 Quit India Movement. Imprisoned several times, he made use of his time in prison

reading the works of the social reformers and western philosophers. Shastri was very much part of the Congress political organisation, becoming the secretary of the local unit of the party and later the president of the Allahabad Congress Committee. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the United Provinces in 1937.

After independence, Shastri became a minister in Uttar Pradesh state, in charge of the Police and Transport portfolio in Govind Ballabh Pant’s cabinet. Among his initiatives in that position were the appointment of women as bus conductors, and a direction to the police that water jets be used instead of lathis to disperse unruly mobs. Shastri was made the General Secretary of the All-India Congress Committee, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the President, in 1951.

The same year he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Nehru drew him into the union cabinet. Shastri was the railways minister, though he resigned in 1956, taking moral responsibility for a serious rail accident. But he was soon drawn back into the cabinet, and in 1961, he was appointed home minister; in this capacity he achieved a reputation of being a skilful mediator, and he also formed the Committee on Prevention of Corruption headed by K.

Santhanam—on the basis of whose recommendations the Central Vigilance Commission was established. He had also been Minister for Transport and Communications; Minister for Commerce and Industry; and, during Nehru’s illness, Minister without Portfolio. Prime Minister: Continuing Nehru’s Legacy but with Change Lal Bahadur Shastri was sworn in as the second prime minister of India on June 9, 1964. He kept with himself the portfolios of external affairs and atomic energy, though he later transferred the external affairs ministry to Swaran Singh.

In his first broadcast to the nation as prime minister, Shastri said: “There comes a time in the life of every nation when it stands at the cross-roads of history and must choose which way to go. But for us there need be no difficulty or hesitation, no looking to right or left. Our way is straight and clear—the building up of a socialist democracy at home with freedom and prosperity for all, and the maintenance of world peace and friendship with all nations.” A true secularist at heart, Shastri said: “The unique thing about our country is that we have Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, and people of all other religions.

We have temples and mosques, gurdwaras, and churches. But we do not bring all this into politics. This is the difference between India and Pakistan. Whereas Pakistan proclaims herself to be an Islamic State and uses religion as a political factor, we Indians have the freedom to follow whatever religion we may choose, and worship in any way we please. So far as politics is concerned, each of us is as much an Indian as the other.” As prime minister, Shastri retained the main ministers of Nehru’s cabinet, but also drew Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, into his cabinet as information and broadcasting minister.

He respected Nehru and kept true to the general policies created by the first prime minister of India, but he was not a blind follower of Nehru. In several ways, he showed he had a mind of his own. Shastri was the first prime minister to have a secretary to the prime minister when he drew upon L.K. Jha, a senior ICS officer, to advise him. He thus laid the foundation of what later took the form of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat or the Prime Minister’s Office. Challenges

Shastri’s short tenure saw some major developments. It also showed that Shastri was no weakling but had a vision of his own besides being capable of taking tough decisions quickly. He said: “Perhaps due to my being small in size and soft of tongue, people are apt to believe that I am not able to be very firm. Though not physically strong, I think I am internally not so weak.” The three major crises that his government faced were the violent anti-Hindi demonstrations in the state of Madras (later to be named Tamil Nadu), the widespread food shortages, and the second war with Pakistan.

The country was disturbed in 1965 by major protests in the non-Hindi speaking states against the possibility of Hindi being imposed as the only national language of India. The agitation was especially intense and violent in Madras state. There were agitations by students and even riots in some places over the issue. Shastri brought peace to prevail by assuring the people that English would continue to be used as the official language as long the non-Hindi speaking states wanted, though the army had to be called in to quell riots in some places.

Though few people seem to have realised it, Lal Bahadur Shastri took some important steps to meet the challenges that faced the country, steps that were very different from Nehruvian economics. A Forerunner of Economic Reform Not many seem to know that Shastri tried to decentralise governance by moving decision- making on projects from the Planning Commission to the ministries dealing with economic subjects.

Indeed, there was an attempt to reduce the dominance of the Planning Commission by the setting up of a national planning council. In 1965, Shastri announced in Parliament that there would be a reconsideration of government controls over the economic activities; consequently, there was a relaxation in regulations for some sectors, such as steel and cement. Shastri’s economic team comprised people like L.K.

Jha, I.G. Patel, Dharma Vira, and S. Bhoothalingam who were tilted towards reforming the economy through modernising agriculture and allowing more private sector freedom. Even the decision to devalue the rupee was taken in principle by Shastri though the actual step was implemented by Indira Gandhi. Unfortunately, Shastri died before effective steps could be taken in all the fields. If he had lived longer, it is possible, as P.N.

Dhar says, that Shastri might have pursued “an agenda of economic reform of the kind that was taken up only twenty-five years later” (under the prime ministership of Narasimha Rao). The slogan that he gave India during the war with Pakistan aptly reflected his view: “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” showed Shastri’s firm belief that the security of the nation upheld by the soldier was closely linked with food security, food production that was the farmer’s forte.

The slogan implied that the farmers’ work on the field was equivalent to the soldier’s action on the battlefield in the service of the nation. Views

He (Shastri) wore no ideological blinkers; he saw facts as they were in all their starkness. Chronic food shortages made him sift from basic industries to agriculture. Roaring black markets persuaded him to make relative shift from controls to incentives, and the glaring inefficiency of the public sector made him accept a larger role for the private sector and foreign investment. He also took measures to shift the locus of economic decision-making from the Planning Commission to the ministries and from the Centre to the states. P.N. Dhar

The Seeds of Green Revolution and White Revolution

India faced a food shortage and things were in a bad shape when Shastri drew in C. Subramaniam as his food and agriculture minister. Shastri gave full support to his minister in laying the foundations of the Green Revolution, although it was Indira Gandhi who is usually given the credit, as the gains of the new methods came to be seen only after about a decade. But in fact, it was the result of Shastri’s initiatives to transform Indian agriculture.

The Green Revolution involved a threefold thrust— technological, economic, and organisational. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research was reorganised and, for the first time, a scientist, Dr B.P. Pal, was appointed as its head. M.S. Swaminathan of the Indian AgriculturalResearch Institute brought the government to an awareness of the new high-yielding wheat varieties developed by Norman Borlaug’s team in Mexico and how India must launch field demonstrations.

In the face of opposition from various quarters, including the Congress party, Shastri approved the import of 250 tonnes of wheat seeds in 1965. Later, in 1966, some many thousands of tonnes were to be imported. And the Green Revolution in wheat was set in motion, as Indian scientists improved upon these varieties. In November1965, when C.S. Subramaniam and Orville Freeman, the US agriculture secretary, met in Rome, they signed an accord that put on paper what had already been launched with the support of Shastri.

As per the accord, India was committed to end imports of food grains by 1971 by investing more in agriculture, irrigation, research, seeds, fertilisers, and put in place suitable economic and marketing policies. The Americans, for their part, agreed to send more wheat to India in 1965 and 1966. Incentives to support the new technology were also put in place. The Agricultural Prices Commission (APC) and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) came into being in January 1965.

The National Seeds Corporation and theCentral Warehousing Corporation were also set up around this time. Shastri was also instrumental in setting in motion the White Revolution – a national campaign to raise the production and supply of milk. On his visit to Anand in Gujarat in October 1964 to inaugurate the Cattle Feed Factory of Amul at Kanjari, he was impressed by the milk cooperative. He wished that Verghese Kurien, who was the General Manager of Kaira District Co-operativeMilk Producers’ Union Ltd (Amul) at the time, would help in creating such cooperatives in other parts of the country so as to improve the conditions of farmers.

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was established, as a consequence, at Anand in 1965. Skip a Meal Idea The chronic food shortage in the country was a worrying fact. Also, during the 1965 war with Pakistan, Lyndon B. Johnson, the then President of the US, tried to put pressure on India by warning that if India did not stop the war, the US would stop providing wheat to the country under the PL-480 agreement. (India needed to import wheat at that time to meet its requirement of food grains.) Shastri refused to be budged.

“We may go hungry, but not bow before the US,” he told the Indians. Shastri motivated the people to voluntarily give up one meal a week so that food could be saved to be distributed to the people who required it. However, before asking the public to do so, he got his family members to first try the system. Surprisingly, the public response was huge, with even restaurants closing down on Monday evenings. New Institutions and Projects Several new institutions were inaugurated during Shastri’s tenure. Some of these were the

Central Institute of Technology Campus at Tharamani, Chennai, in November 1964; the Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University at Hyderabad in March 1965 (renamed Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University in 1996, and separated into two universities after the formation of the Telangana State, with the university in Telangana being named in July 2014 as Professor Jayashankar Agricultural University); and the National Institute of Technology, Allahabad.

The Jawahar Dock of the ChennaiPort Trust was inaugurated by Shastri, and the construction work of Tuticorin Port was begun in November 1964. The foundation stone for the Upper Krishna Project, of which the Alamatti Dam is a part, was laid by Shastri in 1964. (It was decided by the government to name the Almatti Dam after Lal Bahadur Shastri.) It was Shastri who inaugurated the plutonium reprocessing plant at Trombay in 1965.

This followed the suggestion by Dr. Homi Bhabha that India should develop nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes, an idea which Shastri endorsed. At the initiative of Homi Bhabha, the nuclear explosive design group Study of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (SNEPP) was set up.

Shastri made no basic changes in the policy of non-alignment. However, he was deeply conscious that, in the wake of India’s war with China (1962) and the growth of military ties between Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China, the Indian government should increase the defence budget of the country. So, he tried to modernise the armed forces of India. He also decided that India should build closer ties with the Soviet Union.

He made overtures to neighbouring states to solve outstanding problems. The Bandarnaike- Shastri accord of 1964 between India and Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then called) was signed by Lal Bahadur Shastri and his Ceylonese counterpart, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Concerned with the status of Indian Tamils in Ceylon, the pact settled for the repatriation of 6,00,000 Indian Tamils to India and Ceylonese citizenship to be granted to 3,75,000 Tamils in Ceylon—to be accomplished by 1981.

Shastri, however, died soon after, and the accord was not fulfilled, and some years later India considered the agreement to have lapsed. Burma had undergone a military coup in 1962, and following that, many Indian families settled there had been repatriated by the Burmese government in 1964. Relations between India and Burma were strained. However, Shastri made an official visit to Rangoon in December 1965, and cordial relations were again established between India and the Burmese government under General Ne Win.

Considering the situation in the subcontinent and the disturbed relations with Pakistan and China, Lal Bahadur Shastri did not hesitate to initiate a nuclear explosives programme. In 1965, he gave authorisation to the Atomic Energy Commission to work on achieving a nuclear test. He faced strong opposition on this issue from his own government and party as well as others, but he did not waver. Unfortunately, Lal Bahadur Shastri died in January 1966 as did the prominent personality on the nuclear science programme in India, Homi J. Bhabha, before the programme could proceed.

In 1965, India faced threats of war from Pakistan. General Mohammad Ayub Khan had come to power in Pakistan through a military coup in 1958, forcibly taking over from President Iskander

Mirza and assuming the president’s post himself. The US was giving Pakistan a great deal of military support. The war with China in 1962 had left the Indians, including the armed forces, feeling demoralised. So, Ayub Khan probably thought it was the right time to test the strength of the Indian forces at the frontier. In April 1965, Pakistan tested the situation in Sindh. It seemed as if the Pakistanis could win after the first clashes in the Rann of Kachchh.

Both sides were, at Britain’s intervention, made to agree to a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces to the positions held before the clashes. Confident that the Indian Army was weak, and trying to capitalise on the unrest created in the valley by the followers of Sheikh Abdullah and some other dissidents, the leadership in Pakistan decided to launch an attack in Kashmir. ‘Operation Grandslam’ was launched in August with the idea of using the only significant overland route to Kashmir before India could muster its forces and outmoded tanks.

Pakistan’s foreign minister at the time, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, encouraged Ayub Khan in this venture. Well-trained infiltrators were sent into the valley with the idea of creating an uprising there. The Indian prime minister showed his strength of mind at this point of time. Pakistan claimed that there was a spontaneous uprising against the Indian occupation of Kashmir. India pointed out that Pakistan had instigated trouble inside Indian territory by sending armed raiders into Jammu and Kashmir from so-called ‘Azad Kashmir’ (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir).

Declaring that force would be met with force, Shastri gave orders that the Indian Army should cross the ceasefire line and close the passes used by the infiltrators. By early September, the second Indo- Pakistan war had begun. Shastri proved that he could be decisive in a way that Nehru had not been. He took little time to grant the Indian forces the permission to take the needed retaliatory steps.

His defence minister, Y.B. Chavan, also proved to be outstanding. In September, Indian forces launched a three-pronged attack, with their tanks aiming at Lahore and Sialkot across the border in Punjab. Soon, Lahore was within the range of Indian fire. It was also the first time that the Indian Air Force was to take part in war after independence. The United Nations intervened and a ceasefire was brokered to which both sides agreed on September 23.

Peace Agreement at Tashkent A South Asian peace conference was held in January 1966 at Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan, then one of the republics of the Soviet Union), which was sponsored by the Soviet President, Alexei Kosygin. It was with the mediation of Kosygin that President Ayub Khan of Pakistan andPrime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India met and signed the Tashkent Declaration on January 10, 1966 to “restore normal and peaceful relations between their countries and to promote understanding and friendly relations between their peoples”.

The Tashkent Declaration was meant to form a framework for lasting peace between India and Pakistan. It is believed that the two sides were not able to reach an agreement on their own and that they were compelled by the Soviet leaders to sign a draft that they had prepared. However, it did not meet with complete approval in India. Critics felt that the agreement should have but did not include a no-war pact, nor was there any provision that Pakistan should give up guerrilla aggression in Kashmir.

In Pakistan, the agreement was received even more angrily: there were riots and demonstrations against it. Zulfikar Bhutto distanced himself from Ayub Khan and the pact, and in the end broke away to subsequently form his own political party. The Tashkent Declaration

The points of the Tashkent Declaration signed by President Ayub Khan of Pakistan and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri

of India that was directed towards bringing peace after the September war are as follows:

1. Both sides will exert all efforts to create good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan in accordance with the United Nations Charter. They reaffirm their obligation under the Charter not to have recourse to force and to settle their disputes through peaceful means. They considered that the interests of peace in their region and particularly in the Indo- Pakistan Sub-Continent and, indeed, the interests of the peoples of India and Pakistan were not served by the continuance of tension between the two countries. It was against this background that Jammu and Kashmir was discussed, and each of the sides set forth its respective position. 2. All armed personnel of the two countries shall be withdrawn not later than 25 February, 1966 to the positions they held prior to 5 August, 1965, and both sides shall observe the ceasefire terms on the ceasefire line. 3. Relations between India and Pakistan shall be based on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of each other. 4. Both sides will discourage any propaganda directed against the other country and will encourage propaganda which promotes the development of friendly relations between the two countries. 5. The High Commissioner of India to Pakistan and the High Commissioner of Pakistan to India will return to their posts and that the normal functioning of diplomatic missions of both countries will be restored. Both governments shall observe the Vienna Convention of 1961 on Diplomatic Intercourse. 6. Measures will be considered towards the restoration of economic and trade relations, communications, as well as cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan, and to take measures to implement the existing agreements between India and Pakistan. 7. The two leaders would give instructions to their respective authorities to carry out the repatriation of the prisoners of war. 8. Both sides will continue the discussion of questions relating to the problems of refugees and evictions/illegal immigrations. Both sides will create conditions which will prevent the exodus of people. The return of the property and assets taken over by either side in connection with the conflict would be discussed. 9. Both sides will continue meetings both at the highest and at other levels on matters of direct concern to both countries. Both sides have recognised the need to set up joint Indian- Pakistani bodies which will report to their governments in order to decide what further steps should be taken.

Source: Ministry of External Affairs website

Early in the morning of January 11, 1966, the morning following the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, Lal Bahadur Shastri died of a heart attack. There was a controversy over the death, with rumours floating that Shastri had been poisoned. The hand of the Central Intelligence Agency (of the USA) has been suspected in the matter (as also in engineering the death of Homi Bhabha in an air crash) as the West was wary of the nuclear aspirations of India and a disturbance in the balance of power in South Asia.

The controversy has still not ended, especially as RTIs asking for relevant information have been turned down by the government.

Indira Gandhi: The First Phase (January 1966 – March 1977) After the sudden and unexpected death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966, once again, Gulzarilal Nanda was appointed the interim prime minister pending elections. Morarji Desai was a contender for the post of the Congress party parliamentary leader and, as a corollary, the prime minister. The Syndicate supported Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, and most party members also were in favour of her. She won the election; it is said most of the senior Congressmen supported her as they thought she was weak enough to be manipulated as they wanted. Time was

to prove them wrong.

Indira Priyadarshini was born on November 19, 1917 in Allahabad to Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru. India was in the midst of a struggle for freedom from the British, and the Nehru family was fully involved in the struggle. So, almost from childhood, Indira was closely in touch with the events of those days of turmoil. It is reported that when bonfires of foreign goods were made during the freedom movement, Indira, then a child, gave up a doll made in England to be thrown into the fire.

At the age of 12, she brought together and led a group of children— calling it the Vanar Sena—to do their bit for the freedom struggle. These youngsters addressed envelopes, made flags, helped put up notices and carried messages to the freedom fighters. Indira attended several schools and colleges, sometimes just for brief periods: these included the Ecole de Bex in Switzerland, Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati, the university at Santiniketan, Bengal, and Somerville College, Oxford, UK, among others.

In 1936, Indira joined the Indian National Congress, and in 1938, she became a member of the India League. It was during her stay in England that she met Feroze Jehangir Ghandy (later changed to Gandhi), who was also a member of the India League and studying in London. Feroze was a Parsi. Indira returned to India in 1941 with Feroze Gandhi, and she married him in 1942. Feroze too was a member of the Indian National Congress and took part in the freedom struggle.

Indira was an active participant in the Quit India Movement and was imprisoned in Naini Central Jail for some time. Feroze and Indira had two sons—Rajiv and Sanjay— both of whom were later to be part of India’s political scene in their different ways.

After independence, when the Congress party came to power and Jawaharlal Nehru became the country’s prime minister, Indira often acted as her father’s hostess for events and accompanied him on his travels. In the 1951–52 General Elections, Indira Gandhi handled the campaigns of Feroze, who was contesting from Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. Feroze was elected to the Lok Sabha. But they had differences in personal life and soon separated.

Feroze soon became a major spokesman against the corruption in the government. He was instrumental in exposing a scam involving major insurance companies and the finance minister in Nehru’s cabinet, T.T. Krishnamachari. He died in September 1960. Indira joined the Congress party’s working committee in 1955, and in 1959, she was elected the party’s president. Following the death of her father in 1964, she became a member of the Rajya Sabha and was inducted into the cabinet by Lal Bahadur Shastri as the information and broadcasting minister.

Prime Minister On January 19, 1966, Indira Gandhi became the third prime minister of India—the first woman to occupy the post in the country. The General Elections of1967 came amidst economic problems—stagnation and food crisis, rising prices, unemployment—which caused much disenchantment among the people. The decision on devaluation of the rupee was criticised by many. Also, political disputes obstructed the import of wheat from the US. In the1967General Elections, Indira Gandhi won the Lok

Sabha seat from Rae Bareilly. The Congress party managed to win the elections but managed only a thin majority in the Lok Sabha. Indira Gandhi was now prime minister but also had Morarji Desai as deputy prime minister and finance minister. The Congress either lost power or failed to get a majority in several states in the assembly elections. The coalition governments that took power in many states, however, led to unstable governments and the practice of defections from party to party.

Congress Split and Minority Government at the Centre In the following years, there was much turmoil within the Congress party. So far, the Congress party had been accommodative of diverse interests. There was now a growing divide in ideology between the right and the left. The Congress right was in favour of tackling the protest movements and putting down the left, giving more space to the private sector in the economy and improving relations with the US.

Indira Gandhi did not agree with many of the ideas of the senior leaders of the party. She was in favour of radical economic reform which did not meet the approval of the conservative senior members of the party.

A 10-point programme adopted by the Congress Working Committee under Indira Gandhi’s aegis referred to the need for social control of banks, the government taking up foreign trade, nationalisation of general insurance, ceilings on property, public distribution of food grains, accelerated implementation of land reforms, provision of subsidised plots for housing the rural poor, etc. Indira Gandhi was in favour of abolishing the privy purses to former rulers of the princely states. Her decision to nationalise a set of banks without consulting her finance minister was not approved by the senior party members.

In the end, Morarji Desai was forced to resign from the cabinet. With the death of President Zakir Hussain in May 1969, things came to a head; there were strong differences over the choice of candidates for the election to the post of President of India. The official Congress candidate was Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, a member of the Syndicate, but Indira Gandhi, now increasingly leaning towards socialistic ideology, and fearing that the Syndicate would use Sanjiva Reddy to get her out of power, was in favour of V.V.

Giri (erstwhile vice- president now standing as an independent candidate). V.V. Giri won the election and became the President of India in August 1969. Consequently, in November, the Congress party president, S. Nijalingappa, expelled Indira Gandhi from the party on ground of indiscipline. India Gandhi managed to win over a majority of the party members to her side and created her own faction, the Congress (R) where R stood for ‘Requisitionists’, in 1969, while the other group was the Congress (O) with O for ‘Organisation’ headed by Ram Subhag Singh.

Indira Gandhi no longer had a majority in the Lok Sabha, but with the issue-based support of regional parties such as the DMK, the Akali Dal, and the two communist parties, she retained power at the Centre. The1971 Elections: Indira Triumphant Indira Gandhi found she could not take independent action as head of a minority government. Her efforts at progressive legislations were obstructed by the Supreme Court as well as the Parliament.

She got the nationalisation of banks through a presidential ordinance after clearing the legal lacunae pointed out by the court. The abolition of privy purses not only failed to get passed in Parliament (the constitutional amendment fell through just by one vote in the Rajya Sabha), but the presidential order derecognising the princes that Indira Gandhi brought in was nullified by the Supreme Court.

In December1970, Indira Gandhi recommended dissolution of the Lok Sabha and called for early elections. The nation thus went to the polls in 1971. The

catchy slogan of the Congress (R) was ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Remove Poverty). Indira Gandhi campaigned for social change and removal of disparities in income and for stability of government. The non-Communist opposition parties (Swatantra, Congress-O, SSP) came together in what was called the Grand Alliance with the election cry of ‘Indira Hatao’ (Remove Indira). Congress (R) won the election with a good majority, probably because the voters showed maturity in preferring to vote on national issues rather than fall prey to political patronage.

Indira Gandhi was now well on her way to dominating the political scene for a long time to come. India’s victory over Pakistan in December 1971 and the subsequent creation of independent Bangladesh out of the erstwhile East Pakistan in the liberation war gave a big boost to the image of Indira Gandhi. In the state assembly elections in March 1972, the Congress (R) came to power in many states. The elections of 1971 and 1972 had virtually reduced the importance of the Congress (O) and the Swatantra Party as significant opponents.

Problems The huge enthusiasm for Indira Gandhi, however, started fading by 1973, in spite of some important achievements of the government. Economic problems grew. The main issue was high inflation that followed from the wartime expenses, drought in some parts of the country and the oil crisis of 1973. Food grains production declined due to poor monsoons, and low agricultural growth had its adverse impact on industry as well.

As world crude prices soared, India was affected by high costs of import and the resulting high prices of petroleum products. Unemployment grew. There were strikes, the most notable one being the all-India railway strike in May 1974. Most the influential social classes got gradually alienated from Indira Gandhi—the rich peasants resented land reforms, the industrialists resented the wide-scale nationalisation and socialistic policies, and the middle classes were deeply affected by the price rise and were critical of the spreading corruption among officials and politicians.

The fact that Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s second son, was entrusted with the venture of producing a small fuel-efficient Indian car and was handed the contract and the exclusive production licence, though he had little experience in the field, was seen by most people as nepotism. The JP Movement There were protest movements in many places, especially in Gujarat and Bihar, against the rising prices of essential commodities.

The Nav-Nirman Movement in Gujarat between December 1973 and March 1974 was serious enough for the central government to decide to dissolve the assembly in the state. The chief minister, Chimanbhai Patel, had to resign, and the Centre promulgated president’s rule over Gujarat. The movement in Bihar began as a series of student protests, but it was soon taken up by Jayaprakash Narayan (popularly known as JP) on a larger issue of corruption in high places.

JP called for ‘Total Revolution’ against the very system that he said had forced people to become corrupt. He demanded that the Congress government in Bihar resign and the assembly be dissolved. People were asked to gherao the legislature and offices and refuse to pay taxes – in other words, obstruct government functioning. Jayaprakash Narayan went beyond Bihar to try and draw the rest of the country into the protest with the aim of bringing down Indira Gandhi’s government which was portrayed as corrupt and undemocratic.

People in many parts of North India were enthused by JP’s call; besides, the non-left opposition parties rallied behind him. The movement, however, lost momentum by the end of 1974. Indira Gandhi challenged Jayaprakash Narayan to test the strength of his group against the Congress in the 1976 elections and JP accepted the challenge. However, before the ‘contest’ could be settled democratically, things changed drastically.

The Allahabad High Court Decision and the Imposition of Emergency On June 12, 1975, Justice Sinha of the Allahabad High Court delivered a verdict in an election petition filed by Raj Narain, Indira Gandhi’s opponent in the Rae Bareilly contest in 1971. Raj Narain had accused Indira Gandhi of corrupt practices during her election campaign.

The court verdict declared Indira Gandhi’s election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 invalid on grounds of electoral malpractice, excessive election expenditure, and using government machinery and officials for party purposes; this meant that she could no longer be the prime minister and could not try for election to Parliament for six years. An appeal against the judgement was made in the Supreme Court, but before that could be settled, other events took place.

For one, in the Gujarat assembly elections the Congress party suffered reverses and could not form a government. The JP movement was revived with greater zeal and the demand grew for Indira Gandhi’s resignation. There was a call for nationwide agitation, and an announcement was made that a civil disobedience would begin on June 29. Indira Gandhi responded by recommending to President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed that a state of internal emergency should be declared all over the country because of the lawlessness.

The president, accordingly, declared a State of Emergency due to internal disorder, in accordance with the provisions of Article 352(1) of the Constitution, on June 25– 26, 1975. (The prime minister’s decision had not yet been endorsed by the cabinet, and the cabinet could agree to it only after the event.) State of Emergency (1975–77) “The President has proclaimed the Emergency. This is nothing to panic about.

I am sure you are all aware of the deep and widespread conspiracy which has been brewing ever since I began to introduce certain progressive measures of benefit for the common man and woman in India.” Those were Indira Gandhi’s words to the nation in her broadcast over All India Radio. President’s rule was soon imposed on Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the two states where parties other than the Congress ruled; the entire country thus came under direct central rule or were under Congress governments.

Emergency powers were used to replace with compliant men those Congress chief ministers who were strong and could offer opposition to Indira Gandhi. All pending legislative assembly elections were indefinitely postponed. Most opposition leaders—Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Asoka Mehta—and some Congress dissidents such as Chandra Shekhar, as also many journalists (Ajit Bhattacharjea and Kuldip Nayar to name two), trade union leaders, student leaders, and academicians were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

Several organisations of extreme ideologies—the Anand Marg, the RSS, the Jamaati- Islami, the CPI(ML)—were banned. As a result of the Emergency, the fundamental rights were suspended and civil liberties were curtailed with the amendments to MISA and the Defence of India Act in July 1975. Parliament was practically ineffective as there was no effective opposition to debate issues. Several decrees,

laws, and even constitutional amendments were passed to reduce the power of the judiciary and to declare that Parliament’s right to amend the Constitution was unlimited. In this context, the 42nd Amendment is memorable. Indira Gandhi and JP—Both to be Blamed?

The agitation led by JP was getting increasingly chaotic and certainly posed issues of law and order for the government. JP even exhorted the army and the police not to obey ‘illegal’ orders. When the Allahabad Court judgement came, the cry for Indira Gandhi’s resignation/removal became strident. Indira Gandhi’s appeal to the Supreme Court led to an interim decision by the vacation judge, Justice V.R.

Krishna Iyer, who, on June 24, allowed a conditional stay of the Allahabad verdict —that Indira Gandhi could remain in her post, speak in Parliament but could not vote in it. This stay order reinforced the demand of JP and the Janata Morcha for the removal of Indira Gandhi as the prime minister. JP seems to have forgotten the Gandhian principles on which he had been nurtured. He could have had the patience to wait for the general elections which were due in March 1976: if people were dissatisfied, they would have thrown out Indira Gandhi and the Congress.

But JP and his allies were not even willing to abide by the Supreme Court judgement and wait for the final decision.

In her broadcast to the nation on the evening of June 26, 1975, Indira Gandhi said: “In the name of democracy it has been sought to negate the very functioning of democracy, duly elected governments have not been allowed to function… agitations have surcharged the atmosphere, leading to violent incidents… certain persons have gone to the length of inciting our armed forces to mutiny and our police to rebel… How can any government worth the name stand by and allow the country’s stability to be imperilled?” Indira Gandhi, for her part, seems to have forgotten or deliberately discarded her father’s democratic ideals.

But then, perhaps, she was always a little autocratic; she was after all instrumental in getting an elected Communist government in Kerala dismissed. After the Allahabad Court judgement, she could have gracefully resigned, dissolved the Lok Sabha, and called for early general elections or waited a few months on the sidelines for the elections on their due date. But she was not interested in giving up power: she claimed later that resignation would have strengthened the forces that were, according to her thinking, threatening democracy.

As Joe Elder, a British sociologist pointed out, “JP erred in launching a mass movement without a cadre of disciplined, nonviolent volunteers… his movement’s credibility was weakened by the presence within it of extremists of the Left and Right. On the other hand, the Prime Minister clearly over-reacted in imposing the Emergency.” P.N. Dhar said: “When the fateful moment arrived, JP did not let the law take its own course.

Whether it was his mistrust of Indira Gandhi’s motives, or his own lack of faith in the democratic method, or his ambition to go down in history as a political messiah of the Indian people is beside the point. Similarly, Indira Gandhi showed more faith in the repression of political opponents and dissidents in her party than in her own ability to engage them constructively or fight them politically.

Whether she opted for the Emergency to save herself from loss of power or as shock treatment to bring the country back to sanity is also beside the point. The fact remains that both JP and Indira Gandhi, between whom the politics of India was then polarized, failed democracy and betrayed their lack of faith in the rule of law.”

Censorship was imposed on the press and some newspapers used to come out with blank spaces on the editorial pages to signify that their views had been blacked out for being critical of the situation. The Indian Express and The Statesman will be remembered for trying their best to put across criticism of the Emergency and the government. The Emergency will be remembered for the ruthlessness of the State: people were detained without charges, the law enforcement authorities abused and even tortured those arrested, and so- called programmes for development were thrust on an unprepared people.

The rise of Indira Gandhi’s younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, to wield a power he did not hold officially seemed ominous. He spearheaded the programmes of destruction of crowded housing settlements and forced sterilisation for controlling the population, causing misery to thousands of people. He was, in the opinion of many, instrumental in helping to set up what was in effect a police state.

Support for the Emergency The imposition of Emergency was not condemned outright by everyone. In fact, considering that such a mass movement had been curbed and JP arrested, no spontaneous demonstration took place. The JP movement clearly did not have the support of people across the socio-economic spectrum. The middle classes on the whole initially welcomed the Emergency: they were tired of the protest atmosphere and were all in favour of some discipline and the control on prices, for instance.

Law and order certainly improved as did administration, and there was a sense of calm that was welcome. MISA was used to arrest smugglers, hoarders, and those indulging in black market. The suppression of strikes also met with general approval. The announcement of the Twenty Point Programme enthused the poorer and rural sections of population as well. The economy improved initially, though it was mainly because of the good monsoons.

And, on the whole, people believed that the Emergency was a temporary step to bring the country back on the path of progress. Even if the Congress party president Dev Kant Baruah’s sycophantic praise of Indira Gandhi in 1976 that “India is Indira, and Indira is India” was not shared by all, many eminent personalities supported her step, at least initially. The Communist Party of India was all in support of the Emergency “to thwart right reactionary forces that is using all the rights and liberties of parliamentary democracy set up in order to destroy the freedom of the country”.

The party regretted its position later. The Communist Party (Marxist), though, opposed it, and some of its members were jailed. Acharya Vinobha Bhave appreciated that it was time for discipline to be imposed. Mother Teresa too supported Indira Gandhi’s step for bringing calm and peace in the country. Eminent journalist Khushwant Singh, surprisingly, supported the Emergency in the beginning as he believed that the JP movement would have led to anarchy in the country.

Later on, he was to change his view of the Emergency, especially in light of the atrocities that were perpetrated. Growth of Popular Discontent By mid-1976, the popular mood had changed: there was discontent everywhere as the economic improvement could not be sustained; the criminals were back at their work, and the welfare programmes failed to move at a fast enough pace to please the poor. Also, it was the same corrupt and callous bureaucracy and sycophantic and exploitative politicians who were handling these programmes and the impact was therefore poor.

The strict and rigid discipline imposed did not meet with the approval of government officials and teachers who also resented being compelled to fulfil targets of getting people sterilised. The police and bureaucracy had too much power which they abused. Above all, the atmosphere of fear and insecurity that had been created made people angry and resentful, but these feelings had no vent as protest was forbidden even as there was no alternate way for getting grievances against corrupt and abusive officials redressed.

Sanjay Gandhi’s rise to power without responsibility created great unease and anger, not only among intellectuals who feared the erosion of democratic values, but more so among the common people who had to bear the brunt of the demolition and sterilisation drives. Surprisingly, the points he put forward were not in themselves bad, for he advocated abolition of dowry, planting of trees and beautification of cities, encouraging literacy, and limiting family size.

But the ruthless and insensitive way in which these ideas were implemented caused great misery and shocked people. Abuse of authority, apparently under the direction of Sanjay Gandhi,

was rampant. With no effective press to report with at least some accuracy on the situation and with people disbelieving the official publicity news, rumours of atrocities and violent protest put down forcefully spread and were believed. The scale of the Emergency atrocities were more in the northern parts of the country than in the southern parts. This was to be reflected in the election results of 1977.

In retrospect, the Emergency was one of the darkest periods of post-independent history of India; the two-yearlong period was also perhaps a very significant episode in the political evolution of the Indian National Congress. A lasting effect of the Emergency was to be felt in the way the Congress party worked since then. At the1976 AICC session in Guwahati, the stage was set for sycophancy as an important political need.

In fact, sycophancy was institutionalised and prepared the way for dynastic politics. The Guwahati session marked the debut of Sanjay Gandhi in politics, and the Youth Congress cemented the rise to power by considering Sanjay to be the heir to the throne, so to say. On Sanjay’s death, Rajiv Gandhi was to step into the space created, even if reluctantly. View “. . . democracy not only throws up the mediocre person but gives strength to the most vocal howsoever they may lack knowledge and understanding.” —Indira Gandhi

Elections of1977The Emergency was extended twice, and then most unexpectedly Indira Gandhi called for elections. It is possible that with just sycophants reporting to her about the situation and the absence of a free press to give a correct picture, she thought people would endorse the policies brought in under the Emergency rule and thus give them a popular legitimacy. It has also been put forward by some that her inherent democratic instincts were against continuing with the draconian emergency rule.

Yet others observe that when she got an idea of the excesses being perpetrated she wanted to get out of a situation that was getting out of her control. The announcement of the elections came in January 1977. Political prisoners were released and press censorship lifted, even as political parties were allowed to campaign freely. Opposition Gets Together In the elections, the Congress of Indira Gandhi was opposed by an alliance of opposition parties.

The Jan Sangh, Congress (O), Bharatiya Lok Dal led by Charan Singh, and the Socialist Party got together to form the Janata Party. In February, Jagjivan Ram, Nandini Satpathy, and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna left the Congress of Indira Gandhi to form their own party, Congress for Democracy (CFD). The CFD, Akali Dal, DMK, and the CPM allied with the Janata Party to fight the elections in opposition to the Congress and its allies, the CPI and AIADMK.

After the elections, the CFD merged with the Janata Party. A Historic Election The Janata alliance made the excesses of the Emergency and the issue of civil liberties the major planks of its election campaign. The people voted in March 1977; the elections seemed to be practically a referendum on the Emergency. The Janata alliance got a huge mandate with 330 out of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha. The Congress was trounced, especially in the north, and its allies did not perform well either.

Both Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost their seats. Incidentally, the Congress did well in the south where it got most of the 150 odd seats it won. (The election results reflected the fact that the south escaped much of the Emergency excesses; furthermore, the pro-poor programmes were better implemented there than

in the north.) Before the elections, many political observers of India had despaired that democracy had no place in a country in which a majority of the populace was illiterate and presumably unaware of democratic values. They predicted that with the Emergency, India would cease to be a democracy in the true sense. But the elections proved that the Indian people were astute and used their political power to good effect.

The poor too understood the value of civil rights. The elections which brought a non-Congress government at the Centre for the first time since independence showed that democracy was well imbedded in the country. The Emergency came to an end on March 21, 1977.

The elections over time showed how the voters had changed. The 1967 and the 1971 showed a marked increase in electoral malpractices with booth capturing and rigging becoming rampant. The Election Commission observed that casteism that was becoming prominent, especially in Bihar, “vitiates in no mean degree the political atmosphere”. This feature has become practically entrenched in the country’s voting behaviour.

Changes in the Congress The1971 elections—the fifth general elections since India became independent—came earlier than the due date, thus dissociating the national elections from the elections for the state assemblies (the two had so far taken place simultaneously). After the triumph in these elections, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi dropped the (R) and adopted the (I) to become Congress (I) and soon after dropped the (I) as well: the margin of victory for her faction seemed to confirm that it was the ‘real’ Congress.

From now on, the inner party democracy within the Congress was to get more and more eroded. A lasting effect of the Emergency was to be felt in the way the Congress party worked since then. At the1976 AICC session in Guwahati, the stage was set for sycophancy as an important political need. In fact, sycophancy was institutionalised and it prepared the way for dynastic politics. The Guwahati session marked the debut of Sanjay Gandhi in politics, and the Youth Congress reinforced the rise to power by considering Sanjay to be the heir to the throne, so to say.

On Sanjay’s death, Rajiv Gandhi was to step into the space created, even if reluctantly. Growth of Regional Interests Regional interests grew and took hold in many parts of the country. At the level of the states, after the 1967 elections the Congress had lost out in many; governments formed by the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD)—composed of the Jana Sangh, socialists, the Swatantra Party, and defectors from the Congress—came and went in the northern states.

The rise of the SVD is considered as the manifestation of the growing political consciousness of the lower castes who had benefited from the land reforms but had not got the political clout. Most of these castes belonged to the intermediary position below the brahmins and above the lowest, and formed the dominant group in their respective areas. Incidentally, the politics increasingly became affected by the politics of defection.

In southern India, especially in the Madras State (later Tamil Nadu), a North-South divide was perceived: it was felt that the North was trying to dominate and exploit the South. Brahminism was, in fact, seen as a manifestation of this exploitation as it was seen to have come from the North. Language became a prominent bone of contention. The South, especially Madras, viewed

the possible imposition of Hindi as official language with resentment. While the knowledge of English was more or less evenly spread over the regions of the country, imposition of Hindi would be very much to the advantage of the people in the Hindi belt in the fields of education and employment. The three-language formula calling for learning Hindi, English, and the regional language—each one with a different script—was unsatisfactory as Tamilians would still have to become proficient in all three while their ‘northern’ counterpart would have no extra difficulty with their mother tongue.

Kerala, Mysore State (later Karnataka), and Andhra adopted the three-language formula. The southern demand that northern states also include a southern language in a three- language policy for themselves was generally ignored. The northern states either refused to adopt a three-language formula, or if it was adopted, there was an option for taking Sanskrit instead of the southern language, so the formula itself had no meaning.

It was in this background that the Dravida parties gained prominence. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), formed of the middle castes of the region and firmly anti-brahmin in its outlook, gained power in Madras; it came to power in the state in the 1967 elections with a huge majority and formed the first non-Congress government there under C.N. Annadurai. Since then, the state has in most elections brought to power either the DMK or the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the group that separated from the DMK under M.G.

Ramachandran. In Kerala, the Congress failed; CPI and the CPM came together to form the government with E.M.S. Namboodiripad once again becoming the chief minister. In West Bengal after the 1969 election, the Congress lost power, and a coalition government was formed by the CPM and the Bangla Congress. AjoyMukherjee of the Bangla Congress was the chief minister and Jyoti Basu of the CPM, the home minister.

There was trouble in the alliance, and the state government also had problems with the Centre. There was also the conflict with the Naxalites, chiefly the Communist Party Marxists-Leninists, in short, the CP(ML) formed in 1969 and led by Charu Mazumdar, consisting of those rebels who left the CPM saying it had betrayed the ‘revolution’. It was in the Naxalbari area that bordered Nepal and Pakistan (at the time East Pakistan) that the rural poor had been mobilised around 1967 by Kanu Sanyal of the CPM to demonstrate against landlords who had evicted tenants.

The protests soon turned violent, leading to the beheading of some landlords. From the name of the place, the term ‘Naxalites’ grew to represent those who would resort to violence against the State to protect the interests of the oppressed. Now the CP(ML) also attacked rival communists as agents of the government and the police in urban areas; the police took repressive action. They looked to China and Maoism for inspiration.

In the end, they were successfully suppressed by the government, though they continued to influence certain areas of the country. In Andhra Pradesh, there was a fresh agitation demanding the creation of Telengana, with Hyderabad as its capital. The Naxalites also established themselves in the rural areas here. In Maharashtra, a new party Shiv Sena was founded in 1966 by Balasaheb Thackeray (more popularly called Bal Thackeray), a cartoonist, in Mumbai.

This party was vociferous in its demand of ‘Bombay for Maharashtrians’, and targeted the South Indians residing there, who, according to it, were taking away jobs from the natives. There were even attacks on the homes of South Indians and commercial establishments run by South Indians. The Maharashtra for Maharashtrians approach seemed to find favour with many of the inhabitants, and the Shiv Sena

came second to the Congress in the municipal elections of Bombay. The calls for greater autonomy were reflected in the border areas as well. Kashmir had gone through an election in 1967, which was, to all purposes unfair, with Congress candidates being elected without opposition as other candidates’ nomination papers were rejected. Sheikh Abdullah, under house arrest for some time, was released. His attitude to the position of Kashmir vis-à-vis India remained ambivalent, but according to some reports, he was more ready than before with the idea of Kashmir’s accession to India.

After the Indo- Pakistani war of 1971, the new order in South Asia seemed to indicate that India’s control over Kashmir was quite firm. Sheikh Abdullah was in a mood for a more conciliatory approach to the Centre, and Indira Gandhi was ready to open a dialogue with him. He agreed not to raise the issue of selfdetermination for Kashmir but to limit his demand to just greater autonomy within the Indian Union.

He became the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and the leader of the National Conference. There was relative peace and, in 1975, Indira Gandhi declared the state of Jammu and Kashmir to be a constituent of India. In1966, Indira Gandhi accepted the Akalis’ demand that Punjab be reorganised on linguistic lines. In consequence, the southern part of Punjab which was predominantly Hindispeaking became a separate state, Haryana.

At the same time, the hilly areas in north-eastern Punjab were merged with Himachal Pradesh. However, the contentious issue on the status of Chandigarh, which the Akalis wanted to be the capital of Punjab alone, was declared a union territory to be shared by both the states as a capital. Though demonstrations over the status of Chandigarh went on in 1968 and 1969, and a veteran freedom fighter, Darshan Singh Pheruman, fasted unto death, the initially temporary arrangement continued indefinitely.

The north-eastern region of India has a strategic importance. The Mizos rose up against the Government of India in 1966, with the Mizo National Front (MNF) under the leadership of Laldenga demanding sovereign independence of Greater Mizoram. Indira Gandhi had to use the army to quell the rebellion; the air force carried out strikes in Aizawl, the only time the IAF was used in this way in civilian Indian territory.

With the1971 war victory, the Mizo separatist movement slowed down. Negotiating with the Mizo leaders, the union government offered to turn Mizo Hills into a union territory in July 1971. The Mizo leaders accepted the offer on condition that the status of union territory would soon be upgraded to statehood. In January 1972, the Union Territory of Mizoram came into being. (Later, under Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister, Mizoram was to become a fullfledged state in 1987.) There was insurgency in Nagaland too.

Nagaland had been a part of Assam at the time of India’s independence, but in 1963, it had become a separate state of India. But there were extremists in the state who demanded a separate identity outside the State of India. The radicals in charge of the movement were ready to get help and training from China. Violent clashes took place between the Naga rebels and the Indian Army. Indira Gandhi handled the situation with firmness, especially during the Emergency.

In March1975, president’s rule was imposed on the state. The leaders of the largest rebel groups agreed under the Shillong Accord in November 1975 to lay down arms and accept the Indian Constitution. However, a small group did not agree and spurts of violence and conflict continued. Statehood had also, in the meanwhile, been granted to Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura in 1972, while the North- East Frontier Agency was made into a union territory and renamed Arunachal Pradesh.

Annexation of Sikkim Sikkim had become a protectorate of India in 1950. By 1974, several elections had been held in Sikkim; in the last elections, two rival parties merged to form the Sikkim Congress and won a massive victory in the polls. This party campaigned for greater political rights. The chogyal, the ruler of Sikkim, tried to suppress the movement but was not successful. He turned to India, and India prepared a constitution for Sikkim.

The constitution was approved by the national assembly of Sikkim in 1974. In 1975, a special referendum was held in which an overwhelming majority of the electorate voted in favour of Sikkim’s merger with India. As a consequence, Sikkim was incorporated into the Indian Union as its 22nd state in May 1975 after the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Indian Constitution. Sikkim is of great strategic importance for India because of its location bordering on China.

Language Policy to Curb the Anti-Hindi Disturbances Indira Gandhi assuaged the sentiments of the non-Hindi speaking states by getting the Official Languages Act amended in 1967 to provide that the use of English could continue until a resolution to end the use of the language was passed by the legislature of every state that had not adopted Hindi as its official language, and by each house of the Indian Parliament. This was a guarantee of de facto use of both Hindi and English as official languages, thus establishing the official government policy of bilingualism in India.

The step led to the end of the anti-Hindi protests and riots in some states. Centralisation of Power and the SocialisticPath After she came back to power in 1967, Indira Gandhi improved upon what Lal Bahadur Shastri had begun—having a number of advisers to the prime minister in the prime minister’s secretariat (which came to be known as the prime minister’s office when Morarji Desai became prime minister in 1977).

The real expansion of the prime minister’s secretariat and its emergence as a power centre in its own right occurred under Indira Gandhi with P.N. Haksar becoming the first principal secretary to a prime minister. There was an increase in the number of joint secretaries in the secretariat as well. Indira Gandhi needed to show her independence of the Syndicate within her party; she did not trust the politicians and was not sure when they may conspire to get her removed.

She chose to depend on the advice of a team of advisers: besides Haksar, there were T.N. Kaul, a career diplomat, D.P. Dhar, politician-turned diplomat, P.N. Dhar, economistturned bureaucrat, and R.N. Kao, security analyst. Incidentally, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was established in 1968 on the CIA model, with Kao as its head. Haksar, with a firm orientation towards the Left, was the principal influence in the socialist path taken by Indira Gandhi.

Her other advisers were also enthusiastic about this as they believed in socialistic ideals. They felt that the State needed to have a greater role in the economy for social equity to be ensured and national integration to be nurtured and advanced. They were in favour of the public sector too for promoting social integration. It is not certain that Indira Gandhi held these ideals, but she was pragmatic in her awareness that it was what she needed to follow.

Her advisers helped develop her image as a socialist in economics, a secularist in religious matters, and as one who was pro-poor and wanted development for all, says Ramachandra Guha. Clipping the Wings of the Judiciary The judiciary came in the way of implementing many of the steps to facilitate quick social reforms. The contention over property as a fundamental right was severe. The court had obstructed the implementation of the abolition of privy purses as well as the nationalisation of banks (which was almost immediately implemented through a presidential ordinance).

In 1971, the Twenty-fourth Constitutional Amendment Act was put in place that authorised Parliament to amend any provision of the Constitution; this was to overcome the restrictions placed by the Supreme Court on Parliament regarding amendment of fundamental rights (Golaknath case). In 1972 came the Twenty-fifth Constitutional Amendment Act providing that giving effect to certain directive principles could not be challenged in court on the grounds of their being inconsistent with certain fundamental rights.

In 1973, the practice of appointing the senior-most Supreme Court judge as the Chief Justice of India was set aside, and Justice A.N. Ray was made Chief Justice of India though there were three other judges senior to him. The appointment was politically motivated as A.N. Ray was seen to be on the government’s side. When the law passed by Parliament giving it greater powers to amend the Constitution had been challenged in the apex court, Justice Ray had voted in favour of the government’s view: this was seen as having influenced his promotion.

Then in 1975 came the Thirty-eighth Amendment Act specifying that the satisfaction of the president or the governor to declare emergency or issue ordinances could not be challenged in court. The Thirty-ninth Amendment Act of1975 provided that disputes regarding the election of the president, vice-president, speaker, and prime minister could not be heard by the high courts or Supreme Court, but only by a special court to be set up by Parliament.

The Forty-second Amendment was to further curtail the power of the judiciary. The Forty-Second Amendment Act: A Mini Constitution of Sorts In1976 came the Forty-second Constitutional Amendment Act that was the longest one till then and brought about sweeping changes in the Constitution, so much so that it came to be called a mini constitution in itself. It added some 40 articles and a new chapter to the Constitution, besides adding new words to the Preamble.

The main ideas were to exclude the courts entirely from election disputes; to concentrate power in the central government as against the states so that the country could be ruled as a unitary and not a federal polity; to protect revolutionary social legislation from judicial scrutiny; and to further curb the power of the judiciary so that it would be difficult for the court to upset parliament’s policy regarding certain matters. Some of the huge changes the amendment brought about that affected the democratic system are given below.

Some of these steps would be repealed by the Janata government that came in 1977. The 42nd Amendment placed amendments outside the purview of courts, further declaring that there was to be no limitation on the power of Parliament to amend the Constitution. It curtailed the powers of the high courts and the Supreme Court in matters of judicial review and writ jurisdiction. In the Preamble, India was now characterised as ‘sovereign, socialist secular democratic republic’ instead of the original ‘sovereign democratic republic’.

Besides, the words ‘unity of the nation’ were changed to ‘unity and integrity of the nation’. New directive principles were added to the Constitution, and the directive principles were, on the whole, accorded primacy over the fundamental rights. A new chapter on fundamental duties was added to the Constitution. The term of the Lok Sabha was extended from 5 years to 6 years. It further froze the number of

seats in constituencies for election to Lok Sabha, and state legislative assemblies at the 1971 census level till the first census after 2000; there was to be no readjustment every 10 years after every census as was the practice till then. The laws made by Parliament to deal with anti-national activities were declared to take precedence over fundamental rights. The necessity of quorum in Parliament as well as in state legislatures was discarded.

As per its provisions, the proclamation of national emergency could be made for a part of territory of India. The duration of president’s rule without Parliament’s approval was extended from six months to one year. The Centre was given the power to deploy armed forces in a state if a serious situation of law and order arose.

It was P.N. Haksar who apparently advised Indira Gandhi that if she wanted to get control of her party she must oppose the Syndicate on ideological lines. So, she presented the socialistic path to be adopted for the good of the country. Several steps were taken in keeping with this socialistic ideology. Nationalisation of Banks and Other Sectors of Economy Bank nationalisation was a step on this path, as Indira Gandhi sided with the Young Turks (one of whose leaders was Chandra Shekhar).

She relieved Morarji Desai of his finance portfolio as he opposed the idea, pointing out that the step would cause a strain on the government administration and lead to lower resources for economic development even as it increased bureaucratic control. Indira Gandhi then adopted the ordinance way to nationalise 14 major private banks in July 1969.

The ordinance was later passed by Parliament to become the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act. (In 1980, when Indira Gandhi came back to power, another six banks were nationalised.) The prime minister explained over the radio that India might be an ancient country but was a young democracy and, as such, should remain vigilant against the “domination of the few over the social, economic, or political systems”. Banks, she said, should be publicly owned so that they catered to not just large industries, and big business but also to agriculturists, small industries, and entrepreneurs.

Furthermore, the private banks had been functioning erratically, with hundreds of them failing and causing loss to the depositors who were given no guarantee against such loss. The nationalisation did result in a huge expansion of the banking sector, with branches not only increasing in numbers but also coming up in remote and rural areas where the formal credit system was hitherto unknown. Household savings increased, with deposits increasing.

Investments rose in the informal sector. The nationalisation of banks led to credit being provided to agriculture and small and medium industries. It was stipulated that banks had to reserve a certain percentage of credit to the priority sectors (agriculture and small and medium industries). Differential interest rates scheme introduced in 1972 required the public sector banks to provide at lower than normal rates of interest to the weaker sections of the society.

After being re-elected in 1971 on a campaign that endorsed nationalisation, Indira Gandhi went on to nationalise the coal, steel, copper, refining, cotton textiles, and insurance industries. The main reasons were to protect employment and the interests of the organised labour. Whatever industries remained in private hands were strictly regulated. The foreignowned private oil

companies in India created obstructions for India by refusing to supply fuel to the Indian forces during the war of 1971. In consequence, Indira Gandhi nationalised the oil companies in 1973; since then, the major oil companies have to maintain a minimum stock of oil for military use when needed. Abolition of Princely Privileges After India got independence, the rulers of the princely states, on merging with the State of India (thus losing the right to rule), were granted a ‘privy purse’ by the Government of India.

This ‘purse’ was a certain amount of money, payable annually to the rulers (and their successors) of such states in proportion to their revenue, ranking as a salute state under the British Raj, the antiquity of the dynasty, etc. Article 291 of the Constitution of India, the privy purse would be a fixed, tax-free amount guaranteed to the former princely rulers and their successors. The quantum of these ‘purses’ ranged from Rs 5,000 per annum to Rs 26 lakh per annum.

The privileges enjoyed by erstwhile rulers were often questioned and considered by many to be a relic of the past. The 1969 attempt by the Indira Gandhi government to abolish the ‘privy purse’ system and the official recognition of the titles did not meet with success: the Constitutional Amendment Bill to this effect was passed in the Lok Sabha, but it failed to get the required two- thirds majority in the Rajya Sabha.

It was only in 1971 that with the passage of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of India that the privy purses were abolished. As per the objectives and reason stated in the amendment bill, “The concept of rulership, with privy purses and special privileges unrelated to any current functions and social purposes was incompatible with an egalitarian social order. The Government, therefore, decided to terminate the privy purses and privileges of the rulers of former Indian States.

It was necessary for this purpose, apart from amending the relevant provisions of the Constitution, to insert a new article therein so as to terminate expressly the recognition already granted to such rulers and to abolish privy purses and extinguish all rights, liabilities and obligations in respect of privy purses.” Thus, Article 363-A was inserted in the Constitution. Besides, the abolition of the privy purses would reduce the government’s revenue deficit.

MRTP Act In1969, the Indira Gandhi government was able to get the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act passed after abolishing the managing agency system; the latter, it was thought, enabled a small number of capitalists to control a large number of industrial enterprises even though they had little or no financial stake in them. The MRTP Commissioner was to check the concentration of economic power wielded by a few leading business families.

Steps for Equity and Poverty Reduction It was under Indira Gandhi’s administration that a clause calling for equal pay for equal work for both men and women was enshrined in the Indian Constitution. It was also in the cause of social equity that the princely privileges were withdrawn. Her programme for poverty reduction and redistribution of wealth included rapid enforcement of land ceilings— agricultural as well as urban land ownership; legislation for redistribution of land to the marginal farmers was also passed in many states.

A programme was initiated for distribution of food grains at low cost to the economically vulnerable sections of population. A crash programme for creation of employment in rural areas was also devised.

Programmes for building houses for landless labourers were designed. At least on paper, bonded labour was abolished and there was a moratorium on the debts of the poor. As already mentioned, the nationalised banks had to keep in mind priority sector lending. The nature of the reforms has been criticised, but it cannot be denied that the social changes had the long-term effect of bringing to prominence middle-ranking farmers from the lower castes. And these classes were to pose a challenge in the political system in the North. Views

“. . . even the late prime minister’s critics would concede that the maximum number of legislations of social significance was brought about during her tenure.” Pankaj Vohra “I suppose you could call me a socialist, but you have to understand what we mean by that term...we used the word [socialism] because it came closest to what we wanted to do here – which is to eradicate poverty. You can call it socialism; but if by using that word we arouse controversy, I don’t see why we should use it. I don’t believe in words at all.” Indira Gandhi

In the mid-1960s, Indian economy was going through a crisis. There was shortage of food grains, a huge fiscal deficit, and a deterioration in the balance of payments situation. This led to a greater dependence on foreign aid. The war with Pakistan in 1965 resulted in the suspension of food aid from the US, which refused to renew the PL-480 agreement. In the circumstances, five-year planning was suspended in favour of annual plans (between 1966 and 1969).

Inflation remained high except during the Emergency. Unemployment too was a grave problem. Devaluation of the Rupee There was pressure from the US, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund on India to reduce its controls over trade and industry and to devalue the rupee. Indira Gandhi did devalue the rupee in June 1966 by 36.5 per cent, increasing the dollar’s value against it by 57.4 per cent. (According to B.K.

Nehru’s account in Nice Guys Finish Second, Lal Bahadur Shastri had decided upon devaluation as early as January 1966 before he went to Tashkent.) The idea behind the step was that devaluation would help India sell more abroad and get the dollars to pay for its imports of food, oil, and capital goods. The step was severely criticised. The critics seemed to be vindicated when the World Bank fell short on its commitment to quickly organise more aid.

Foreign capital did not come as expected. Indira Gandhi felt betrayed and lost faith in promises made by the West—this could have been a factor in her subsequent shift leftward. Furthermore, another drought added to macroeconomic difficulties, and the effect of devaluation was ineffective due to contradictory export-import policies. Devaluation thus came to be seen as a failure. The medium-term effect of devaluation was, in fact, beneficial: India managed to avert famine as well as bankruptcy, and the trade deficit reduced drastically by 1970–71.

In the short term, however, it led to inflation and failed to the extent that it was not accompanied by other reforms. In the circumstances, the idea of liberalising the economy became politically unacceptable and was abandoned. Indira Gandhi chose to control the deficit through drastically cutting down government expenditure. This led to an industrial slowdown. Indira Gandhi had by now turned leftwards and launched some radical policies—nationalising banks and insurance, enacting the MRTP Act, enacting the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) which placed restrictions on

foreign investment and foreign companies functioning in India, taking over ‘sick’ companies (especially in the textiles sector) rather than letting them close down. In the long term, some of these steps weakened the Indian economy, causing stagnation and slow growth, but in the short term, they led to an improvement in the economic situation, so much so that India was able to stay clear of a debt crisis.

Foreign exchange was painstakingly built up. The resolve was to avoid food aid; it seemed sensible to use the foreign exchange to buy food grains commercially—as was done after the poor harvests in 1972. Of course, the success of the Green Revolution helped to restore the food economy. Fourth Five-Year Plan The much postponed Fourth Five-Year Plan (1969–74) was at last launched. Its investment outlay was almost double than that of the Third Plan.

The goal was stated to be “growth with stability and progressive achievement of self-reliance”. The plan was dovetailed to the socialist principles adopted by Indira Gandhi by then. The rationale was the Ten Point Programme put forward by Indira Gandhi in 1967, her first economic policy formulation soon after taking office of prime minister. The programme placed an emphasis on greater state control of the economy as it was believed that government control ensured greater welfare than leaving the economy to the private sector.

So, the private sector needed to be regulated. By the end of the 1960s, the liberalisation process had been reversed and India’s policies could be called as ‘protectionist’. The government intended that India should be free of dependence on foreign aid and emphasise on increasing agricultural and industrial production. The objectives of the Fourth Plan included: increasing the income of the rural population and augmenting the supply of food; making efforts towards maximising production; attaining stability of prices; making policies to encourage mixed economy; and bringing about human resource development, especially in rural areas.

It was intended to provide for the minimum needs of the community through a rural works programme. The performance of the plan was not as good as expected, though many of the social goals were realised. The shortfall in targets was mainly because the war with Pakistan and dealing with the refugees from East Pakistan took their toll, and because of the 1973 oil crisis. Green Revolution Success The bright spot on the economic scene was the success of the new agricultural strategy.

The Green Revolution, the seeds of which had been sown in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s tenure, bore fruit and benefited the government of Indira Gandhi. The new dwarf varieties of wheat that the Punjab and Haryana farmers adopted led to bumper harvests. The new varieties of rice, groundnut, and cotton too did well. Production of wheat, especially, grew sensationally.

There were shortcomings in the strategy: huge regional variations, large areas unaffected by the ‘revolution’ still depending on the erratic monsoons, growth in the disparity of farmers’ income and what was to be seen much later—the damage to the environment overuse of chemical fertilisers and wastage of water. But at the time, the feeling was that endemic food shortage had ended. Fifth Five-Year Plan The Fifth Five-year Plan (1974–79) did not last its full term, but its programmes mostly coincided with the Emergency period.

The plan was targeted at reducing poverty through addressing the consumption needs of the poor and by enacting a range of socio-economic

reforms. This was more or less an aspect of the Twenty Point Programme. With the Emergency in place, the economic programmes could be implemented forcefully. Indeed, with the economy growing at the rate of 9 per cent in 1975–76 alone, the Fifth Plan was the first plan during which the per capita income grew by over 5 per cent. However, with the elections of 1977 and the Janata government coming to power, the Fifth Plan period was curtailed and it was ended in 1978.

The war between India and Pakistan in 1971 was a milestone in that it saw the liberation of East Pakistan resulting in the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh. The 1970 Polls in Pakistan and Unrest in East Pakistan In 1970, General Yahya Khan, who had succeeded Ayub Khan as president and chief martial law administrator in Pakistan, promised to restore democracy in Pakistan and duly called for general elections—the first ever election based on adult franchise in that country.

Also, the number of seats to the National Assembly was to be in proportion to the population. East Pakistan, the more populous of the two wings of Pakistan, was thus, naturally, allotted more seats than West Pakistan. In West Pakistan, the dominant party was the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, while in East Pakistan, the Awami League led by Mujibur Rahman was the dominant party.

Mujibur Rahman spoke of the eastern wing being repressed by the military rulers and treated as a colony to cater to West Pakistan’s interests. The East Pakistanis resented their language—Bengali—being sidelined and the low representation of their people in the higher administrative sections of the country. Mujibur Rahman demanded greater autonomy and a true federal constitution with greater powers for the East wing.

The poll was held in December 1970 and the results showed where Pakistan was heading. While the PPP won a majority of seats in West Pakistan, the Awami League simply swept the elections in East Pakistan and, in the process, got a majority over all. Yahya Khan did not like the prospect of an assembly led by an East Pakistani and dominated by East Pakistanis with their demand for autonomy in framing a new democratic constitution.

There was also a fear among the West Pakistan rulers that the Hindus in East Pakistan, many of whom were well-educated professionals, might influence the writing of the constitution. Yahya Khan with the endorsement of Zulfiqar Bhutto postponed convening the National Assembly. This angered the East Pakistanis, and the call for a general strike by the Awami League met with a good response. In March 1971, the Pakistani military regime took steps to crush the protest and sent tanks and forces into East Pakistan.

Mujibur Rahman was arrested and moved to an unknown destination. There seemed little chance for reconciliation after the violent clashes and the brutal killing of civilians, especially students, by the Pakistani Army. Refugee Influx in India and Indian Response One consequence of the civil war in East Pakistan was the exodus of refugees (mostly Hindus) from that country into India, the numbers running into millions by August 1971.

India allowed these refugees in and set up camps for them (in West Bengal, Tripura, and Meghalaya, and even in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa) and fed them. It was the central government that bore the cost of all this. In the beginning, India mounted diplomatic efforts at convincing the world powers of the desperate situation building up. Indira Gandhi contacted the US on the matter. Henry Kissinger,

the national security adviser to the US president at the time, brought a letter from the US president asking India to send back the refugees under UN supervision. Indira Gandhi pointed out that the American arms given to Pakistan, which were once used against India in 1965, were now being used by Pakistan against its own people. She also asked if the refugees from Hitler’s Germany would have been repatriated under the conditions that existed at the time.

It is now known that Kissinger and Nixon differed in their opinions on the situation. Nixon favoured Pakistan, especially as it had secretly helped Kissinger establish contact on behalf of the US with China, and did not want to help India. The USSR, as opposed to the US, agreed with India on the situation on the subcontinent—that the two wings of Pakistan had drifted too apart for a possible reconciliation.

The USSR offered military equipment to India. It also proposed a friendship treaty with India, which would act as a deterrent to Pakistan and China if they thought of getting together and indulging in military adventurism. When India’s foreign minister at the time, Swaran Singh, visited Moscow in June 1971 and met his Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko, and the president, Alexei Kosygin, it was decided that such a friendship treaty would be signed.

In August1971, the foreign ministers of the two countries signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. The most significant part of the treaty spoke of the mutual consultations on suitable measures to be taken in the face of any attack or threat of an attack on either country so as to remove the threat and ensure peace and security of their countries. By the summer of 1971, India had decided to intervene actively in the situation.

Indian forces began to provide instruction in the use of weapons to Bengali guerrillas in training camps. The group of these fighters, comprising regular soldiers of the erstwhile united Pakistan as well as fresh volunteers, was known as the Mukti Bahini. These guerrillas were to sneak across the border into East Pakistan to attack army camps and communication installations. The Mukti Bahini was to play an important role in the liberation of East Pakistan.

Indira Gandhi toured the world to acquaint the leaders of the situation on the subcontinent. The country that could have made a difference, namely the USA, remained unimpressed. In November1971, Richard Nixon and Indira Gandhi met but did not agree on the situation; Nixon said that the US would not agree to overthrow Yahya Khan and warned India against taking military action. In the meanwhile, the situation along the border between India and East Pakistan had reached conflict stage, with shelling taking place across the line.

It was an opportunity for the members of the Mukti Bahini to use the exchange of fire to cross the border to carry out their insurgent activity. War and Liberation of East Pakistan Pakistan chose to attack India on the western border on December 3, 1971. As their bombers targeted airfields along the western borders, their artillery regiments attacked Kashmir. India, under the generalship of Sam Manekshaw, took swift action in Kashmir and Punjab on the ground and with massive air strikes.

The Indian Navy got into action for the first time and moved towards Karachi. The Western Naval Command, under Vice Admiral S.N. Kohli, successfully launched a surprise attack on Karachi port under the codename Trident. India now had every reason to push across into Eastern Pakistan with its troops and tanks and to turn the secret skirmishes into open confrontation. It must be pointed out here that India had modernised its armed forces, besides starting

indigenous weapons’ manufacture. The Pakistani military was no match for the Indian forces. There was a further handicap that the Pakistanis were working under—the low morale of its forces due to the civil unrest and defection of Bengali personnel and the stress of having to fight people of their own country. It has been pointed out that Yahya Khan’s strategy was difficult to understand. If Chinese help was anticipated, it did not come; perhaps the snow in the Himalayas in December did not allow any Chinese action.

The Indian forces, on the other hand, had no problem with weather on the eastern front and furthermore were helped by the locals and the Mukti Bahini. Moving towards Dacca (now Dhaka) from four directions, the Indian forces captured strategic installations. The Indian Eastern Naval Command, under Vice Admiral Nilakanta Krishnan, created a naval blockade in the Bay of Bengal and isolated East Pakistan.

From December 4 onwards, the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was deployed to carry out attacks on the major ports of East Pakistan. India’s intention for East Pakistan became clear on December 6, 1971 when the Indian government formally recognised the Provisional Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. The US sent Task Force 74 led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal, but it was just a show of power and an indication of the US stand.

It did not affect the course of what happened to East Pakistan. It was now clear that Dacca was going to fall to the Indian forces and, what is more, once the East Pakistan issue was settled, India might turn its full attention to West Pakistan and also cause its disintegration. On December 13, the Yahya Khan sent a message to Lieutenant-General A.A.K. Niazi, the Commander of the Pakistan Eastern Command, to give up arms.

But it was December 16, 1971 before the Instrument of Surrender of Pakistan Eastern Command stationed in East Pakistan, was signed between the Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the GOC-in-C of Indian Eastern Command andLieutenant- General A.A.K. Niazi, the Commander of the Pakistan Eastern Command, at the Ramna Race Course in Dacca. East Pakistan had been liberated and a new independent nation Bangladesh had come into being.

Mujibur Rahman, released from captivity, assumed the leadership of the new nation. On December 16, Indira Gandhi announced on radio a unilateral ceasefire on the western front as well. The next day, Pakistan too announced a ceasefire. Indira Gandhi’s image was greatly enhanced as an effect of the victory. Many in India called her ‘Durga’. There was a new confidence and a sense of power and achievement in the Indians.

The country seemed to have established a dominant position in the subcontinent. The Simla Agreement In Pakistan, following the war, Yahya Khan resigned and Zulfiqar Bhutto took over. Bhutto was reported to be in favour of beginning a new relationship with India. India was not against the idea. Bhutto was invited for a summit at Simla in June 1972. At the meeting, the Indians expressed the need for a comprehensive treaty settling all outstanding problems including Kashmir.

But the Pakistanis preferred a step by step approach. In the end, whereas the Indian side wanted a ‘nowar pact’, it had to agree to a ‘renunciation of force’ by both sides. The Kashmir issue was left hanging, and regarding the Line of Control which India wanted to be respected by both sides, Pakistan added the caveat, ‘without prejudice to the recognised position of either side’. Many of India’s demands were watered down, and India apparently went with it

because it realised the precarious position held by Bhutto in Pakistan and pushing too hard may have deposed him and made the situation worse. The agreement (not treaty, as India wanted) was signed on July 2. The Simla Agreement was considered to be a comprehensive blue print for good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan. Under the agreement, both countries undertook to abjure conflict and confrontation, and to work towards the establishment of durable peace, friendship, and cooperation.

The two countries agreed to follow a set of guiding principles in managing relations with each other: respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; noninterference in each other’s internal affairs; respect for each other’s unity, political independence; sovereign equality; and abjuring hostile propaganda. There was a mutual commitment to the peaceful resolution of all issues through direct bilateral approaches, and to build the foundations of a cooperative relationship with special focus on people-to-people contacts.

However, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s speech in Pakistan’s National Assembly soon after the agreement indicated that the Kashmir issue was very much alive and that Pakistan was ready to help the people of Kashmir if they started a freedom movement. In 1976, in spite of the Pokhran nuclear test by India and the hostile reception to it in Pakistan, the two countries agreed to reopen diplomatic establishments and normalise relations. Text of the Simla Agreement

1.The Government of India and theGovernment of Pakistan are resolved that the two countries put an end to the conflict and confrontation that have hitherto marred their relations and work for the promotion of a friendly and harmonious relationship and the establishment of durable peace in the subcontinent, so that both countries may henceforth devote their resources and energies to the pressing talk of advancing the welfare of their peoples.

In order to achieve this objective, the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan have agreed as follows: That the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries; That the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.

Pending the final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organization, assistance, or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations; That the pre-requisite for reconciliation, good neighbourliness, and durable peace between them is a commitment by both the countries to peaceful co-existence, respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,

and noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit; That the basic issues and causes of conflict which have bedevilled the relations between the two countries for the last 25 years shall be resolved by peaceful means; That they shall always respect each other’s national unity, territorial integrity, political independence, and sovereign equality; That in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations they will refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of each other.

2. Both governments will take all steps within their power to prevent hostile propaganda directed against each other. Both countries will encourage the dissemination of such information as would promote the development of friendly relations between them. 3. In order progressively to restore and normalize relations between the two countries step by step, it was agreed that;

Steps shall be taken to resume communications, postal, telegraphic, sea, land including border posts, and air links including overflights. Appropriate steps shall be taken to promote travel facilities for the nationals of the other country. Trade and co-operation in economic and other agreed fields will be resumed as far as possible. Exchange in the fields of science and culture will be promoted.

In this connection, delegations from the two countries will meet from time to time to work out the necessary details. 4. In order to initiate the process of the establishment of durable peace, both the Governments agree that: Indian and Pakistani forces shall be withdrawn to their side of the international border. In Jammu and Kashmir, the line of control resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971 shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognized position of either side.

Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this Line. The withdrawals shall commence upon entry into force of this Agreement and shall be completed within a period of 30 days thereof.

5. This Agreement will be subject to ratification by both countries in accordance with their respective constitutional procedures, and will come into force with effect from the date on which the Instruments of Ratification are exchanged. 6. Both Governments agree that their respective Heads will meet again at a mutually convenient time in the future and that, in the meanwhile, the representatives of the two sides will meet to discuss further the modalities and arrangements for the establishment of durable peace and normalization of relations, including the questions of repatriation of prisoners of war and civilian internees, a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir and the resumption of diplomatic relations.

Source: Ministry of External Affairs website

Bangladesh India’s relations with Bangladesh were specially cordial with Mujibur Rahman in power. However, Mujibur Rahman’s policies that were pro-India did not meet with approval of many in the political and military circles of Bangladesh as they feared Bangladesh would become some kind of satellite state to India. Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975, following which came Islamist and military regimes.

Indira Gandhi’s relations with these regimes was uncomfortable. But, on the whole, the relations between the two countries remained amicable. Sri Lanka Indira Gandhi had cordial relations with her Sri Lankan counterpart, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and was initially accommodative about the ethnic problem involving the Tamils in that island country. In 1974, India ceded the tiny islet of Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka in order to save Bandaranaike’s socialist government from a political disaster.

In 1974, India ceded the small islet Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka through the Indo-Sri Lankan Maritime Agreement that was intended to settle the maritime boundary in the Palk Strait. Sirimavo’s popularity was rather low at the time, and Indira Gandhi decided to cede the island so as to improve the image of the Sri Lankan prime minister and to help stabilise the Bandranaike regime in Sri Lanka. The agreement, which did not specify fishing rights, allowed Indian fishermen to fish around Katchatheevu and to dry their nets on the island.

However, in 1976, without consulting the Tamil Nadu assembly or Parliament Indira Gandhi’s government finalised another agreement to determine the boundary in the Gulf of Mannar and Bay of Bengal and restricted both the countries’ fishermen from fishing in the other’s waters: “The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the Exclusive

Economic Zone of Sri Lanka, nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone of India, without the express permission of Sri Lanka or India, as the case may be,” said the agreement. Soviet Union Under Indira Gandhi, India’s relations with the Soviet Union deepened, especially in light of the attitudes of the US and China regarding Pakistan.

The Treaty of Friendship with the USSR was a move to counter the Chinese closeness with Pakistan. When the US introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of armed forces by India and Pakistan after Pakistan began the attack on the western front, the Soviet Union vetoed the resolution. Though the Soviet Union was not happy with India’s nuclear test of 1974, it did not support further action against India.

Certainly, there was a tilt towards the Soviet Union for pragmatic reasons during the times of Indira Gandhi. United States From the time Indira Gandhi came to power, the relations with the US were strained. When Lyndon Johnson was president and India was reliant on the US for food aid, Indira Gandhi resented aid with strings attached— that in return for food, India was expected to agree to the policies of the US.

She was also firm about not signing the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). After Nixon came to power in the US, relations deteriorated; Nixon disliked Indira Gandhi as well as the Indians and had a clear bias for Pakistan. Indira Gandhi expressed her criticism of the Vietnam war as well. West Asia Indira Gandhi fully supported the Palestinians’ cause and against Israel. The pro-Arab stand had mixed results, especially after the war with Pakistan.

While some of the Arab governments remained neutral (Egypt, Algeria, Syria, for instance), the conservative pro- American Arab monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates supported Pakistan. Libya saw the Indian intervention in East Pakistan as an attack on Islam. Ties with Iran floundered for a while in the wake of the Indo-Pak war, with Iran viewing India’s tilt towards Moscow and the break-up of Pakistan as part of a larger conspiracy against Iran involving India, Iraq, and the Soviet Union.

However, Iran had not agreed to activate the Baghdad Pact and draw in the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) into the conflict at Pakistan’s instigation. By 1974, the relations had recovered enough for Iran and India to come to an agreement that led to Iran supplying a substantial amount of crude to India. Asia-Pacific In 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed. In India’s view, ASEAN was a pro-US organisation with links to the SEATO.

The ASEAN countries were not happy about India’s stance over Vietnam and the close ties with Moscow. Nor did India’s nuclear test meet with their approval; they saw it as contributing to the tension in the region. Africa India’s image as a vigorous opponent of colonialism suffered in African eyes because of the cordial relations India maintained with the Commonwealth of Nations. Initially, India condemned the armed struggle in Kenya and Algeria for independence.

Under Indira Gandhi, relations began to be repaired. Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Libya— the countries that had supported India during the Sino-Indian War in 1962 got special attention after she came to power. Diplomatic and economic relations with these states were expanded. Unlike her father, Indira Gandhi openly supported the liberation struggles in Africa. India’s image too had improved in the world with the nuclear test and the refusal to be bullied by the US in the Indo- Pak War of 1971.

Furthermore, Indira Gandhi firmly connected the Indian antiimperialist interests in Africa and those of the Soviet Union. The experience of Indians in Uganda, however,

was depressing: they suffered persecution in the Idi Amin regime and were eventually expelled from that nation.

Though it could be seen as a part of the national security policy, it was scientific endeavour that led to India’s successful detonation of a nuclear device. On May 18, 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, at the army base near the village of Pokhran. Officially termed Pokhran I but code-named ‘Smiling Buddha’, the exercise was an underground detonation. It was formally called a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’.

It was the first time that a confirmed nuclear test was done by a nation that was not one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. It is believed that Indira Gandhi authorised the development of nuclear weapon system, presumably in light of China slowly and steadily becoming a nuclear power. She was guided by the belief that it was in the interests of the stability and security of India if it was to develop independently of the nuclear superpowers.

The nuclear device, which was of the implosion type and was said to resemble the American nuclear bomb called ‘Fat Man’, was developed under the guidance of Raja Ramanna who was then the Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). The project was overseen by the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Homi Sethna. Some of the other scientists of renown involved in the projects were P.K.

Iyengar, R. Chidambaram, Basanti Nagchaudhuri, and Waman Dattatreya Patwardhan. Though there was euphoria in many sections of the population, there was also a perception that the test was authorised by Indira Gandhi to divert attention from the unrest that was going on in the country. International Reaction Though India called it a test for ‘peaceful purposes’, the rest of the world was not too happy about it.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group was formed to check nuclear proliferation. As the plutonium used in the test came from the CIRUS reactor supplied by Canada and the heavy water was supplied by the US, the two countries were unhappy. Canada suspended assistance for the two heavy water reactors then under construction. Pakistan was furious and cancelled the talks that were soon to take place for the normalisation of relations.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, declared that he would not be blackmailed by India and would not accept India’s domination in the subcontinent. The Indian test, according to Pakistani opinion, pushed Pakistan into the nuclear field.

(March 1977 – January 1980) The Janata Party contesting under the symbol of ‘chakrahaldhar’ and its allies won a massive majority in the 1977 elections.

There were three contenders for the post of prime minister, namely, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, and Jagjivan Ram. It was left to Acharya Kripalani and Jayaprakash Narayan to decide who would become prime minister. Their choice was Morarji Desai who duly took the oath as

prime minister on March 23, 1977. Charan Singh (minister of home, and later of finance) and Jagjivan Ram (defence minister) were deputy prime ministers.

It was felt that the nation had expressed its dissatisfaction with the Congress and hence the states under Congress rule should also have fresh elections. These state assemblies were dissolved and elections were held in June. As a result of the elections, the Janata Party was able to form governments in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh. In Punjab, the Janata Party and the Akali Dal formed a coalition government.

In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK swept the elections and its leader, M.G. Ramachandran formed the government. His government was not interested in confrontational politics with the Centre; it was also to be the pioneer in launching the midday meal scheme to encourage children, specially girls, to attend school. In West Bengal, a coalition of left parties won a good majority, with the CPM doing exceptionally well, and Jyoti Basu became the chief minister.

The left government was to undertake agrarian reforms from which a large number of poor peasants benefited. In Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah had led the Congress government consequent to an accord with Indira Gandhi before the Emergency. Now the Morarji Desai government dissolved the assembly and initiated fresh polls to install a mandated government in the state. Sheikh Abdullah revived his party, the National Conference, and, in the first truly fair and free polls in the state since independence, his party won a comfortable majority.

However, the divide between the Muslim-dominated Valley and the Hindu-dominated Jammu became apparent, with the National Conference not doing so well in Jammu.

With a hold on most states, the Janata Party was able to get its candidate, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, elected as the President of India in June 1977. The presidential election was necessitated by the death of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in February of that year.

The Janata government began with full popular support and high hopes, but cracks soon started showing with marked differences on ideological and political lines coming up. What is more, the concentration of some leaders on revenge against Indira Gandhi worked against the party and revived the Congress leader’s popularity. In combination, these two factors worked towards the fall of the first non-Congress government at the Centre.

Futile Commissions Various commissions of enquiry were set up to look into alleged malpractices and wrongdoing by Indira Gandhi and her son. The most famous of these was set up under the chairmanship of Justice J.C. Shah, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to enquire into the atrocities and excesses of the Emergency. Most of the allegations, however, could not be proved, and few convictions could be obtained.

The cases against Indira Gandhi could not be maintained as there was lack of evidence. Belchi and Indira’s Masterstroke Then in May 1977, came the violence in Belchi, a village in Bihar: a group of Harijans were burnt to death by a mob from the upper castes, allegedly over a dispute over land. It may be noted here that the social set-up in India was undergoing a transformation. There was a rise to prominence of the backward castes (who later came to be called the ‘other backward classes’) who had got rich in the wake of the Green Revolution and the White Revolution and bought land from the forward castes and had elected representatives to

further their cause. Unfortunately, they also took this as a licence to act as they wanted. The Harijans worked on these lands, but they were at the receiving end of much abuse from the landlords. With the spread of education and scope for political representation, the younger among the Harijans, especially, were no longer ready to meekly accept the ill treatment handed out. They too gave a fight.

There was thus a spurt in caste violence. The Belchi incident was exploited to her own advantage by Indira Gandhi. She travelled to Belchi, the last bit on an elephant as there was no clear path on which to even walk to reach the village, and showed her sympathy for the affected people. Besides showing up the Janata government as callous to the poor and marginalised, Indira Gandhi’s action built up her own image as a friend of the poor and the Harijans even as her party members were made to realise that she was the leader to follow if power was to be regained.

Indira makes Gains Charan Singh’s single-minded hounding of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay worked in her favour. Indira Gandhi was arrested on some vague corruption charges and kept in police custody for a day, after which the magistrate released her, rejecting the charges as insubstantial. She was now very much back in the game and made speeches critical of the government. The Congress split once again in January 1978; the group led by Indira Gandhi becoming the Congress-I (for Indira).

Her party won the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh state assembly elections, defeating the Janata Party as well as the rival Congress party. She herself contested elections from Chikmagalur in Karnataka and won a seat to the Lok Sabha. Now, a parliamentary committee reported on Indira Gandhi having misled the house on the Maruti enterprise, and the house said she should go to jail. She was disqualified from her seat.

However, she won again from Chikmagalur. Indira Gandhi was now seen as a victim of a witch-hunt, and her popularity grew. Differences within the Janata Party and Fall of Morarji’sGovernment The Janata Party was in the meanwhile disintegrating, with growing factionalism and personal rivalries overshadowing the efforts at governance. The antagonism between Morarji Desai and Charan Singh, who was not satisfied with his second number position in the cabinet, grew to such an extent that Desai was forced to dismiss Charan Singh as well as Raj Narain from office in mid-1978.

Charan Singh retaliated by organising a farmers’ protest march to Delhi in December 1978. In an effort to keep peace, Charan Singh was recalled to the cabinet by Desai in February 1979 and allotted the finance portfolio as well as the post of deputy prime ministership. Things, however, failed to move smoothly. The divide was getting deeper, with two sides being formed: the Socialists siding with Charan Singh and the Jana Sangh with Desai.

There was further the issue of ‘dual membership’ of the Jana Sangh members who maintained their ties with the RSS. They would not give up the membership of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) as they considered it to be merely a cultural entity. The Socialists and Charan Singh’s party walked out of the coalition reducing the government to a minority. Desperate bids to get support from the Congress factions did not succeed and the Morarji Desai government resigned in July 1979.

In a brazen show of opportunism, Charan Singh negotiated with his erstwhile bitter enemy Indira Gandhi to get support for a government led by him. With a letter of support from the Congress, Charan Singh was able to convince the president that he could have a majority in the Lok Sabha. He was sworn in as prime minister towards the end of July subject to proving the confidence of

the House. So, he gave the prime minister’s speech from the rampart of the Red Fort on Independence Day but never got to face the Parliament: just a day before the confidence vote, Indira Gandhi withdrew her support to his government. Charan Singh had not accepted Indira Gandhi’s demand that the special courts set up to prosecute her be disbanded. Charan Singh had no option but to resign. The president explored other options of government formation but none was feasible.

In the end, Lok Sabha was dissolved and fresh elections called for. Charan Singh remained caretaker prime minister till elections could take place.

Lok Sabha elections took place in January 1980. The parties in the fray were the Congress (I), Congress (U), Lok Dal, the new party floated by Charan Singh and the Socialists, and Janata, now consisting primarily of Jana Sangh and of the old Congressmen such as Jagjivan Ram and Chandra Shekhar. The presence of the CPM and CPI was only in West Bengal and Kerala.

The Janata Party campaigned again on the planks of threats to democracy, and Charan Singh spoke of power to the farmers, but this time round Indira Gandhi ignored ideology and astutely focused on an issue close to the people’s heart at the time, namely, the offer of a government that could govern. The people, tired of the Janata’s lack of governance and incessant mutual quarrels, gave their mandate in favour of the Congress led by Indira Gandhi, also thus endorsing the view that hers was the real Congress. The Janata Party split into various parties, like Janata Dal, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party, etc.

Short-lived its rule might have been and marked by strife and contradictions within, but the Janata Party government contributed something valuable to the Indian polity even as its negative aspects cannot be ignored. It was the first non-Congress government at the Centre since India’s independence. It was also the first coalition dispensation at the central level. Restoration of Democratic Rights An unforgettable contribution of the Janata Party government was the restoration of democracy and civil rights in the country.

The Janata government was prompt to take steps to reverse the draconian measures of the Emergency: media censorship was removed and several controversial executive decrees were repealed. It repaired the Constitution from the Emergency ‘depredations’ and revived ‘open parliamentary practice through its consultative style when repairing the Constitution’ and restored the independence of the judiciary, as Granville Austin points out.

Arbitrary powers of the executive were curbed and the power of an independent judiciary restored. Under the supervision of the law minister, Shanti Bhushan, amendments were devised to nullify the democracy-throttling steps of the Forty-second Amendment. The Forty-third and Forty- fourth Amendments to the Constitutions were landmarks in India’s political history. The Forty-third Amendment passed in 1977 deleted Article 3ID which gave powers to Parliament to curtail even legitimate trade union activity under the guise of preventing anti- national activities. Ratified by more than half the states as required, the amendment gave back to

the states the legislative powers to make appropriate provision for antinational activities consistent with the Fundamental Rights. The power of the judiciary to invalidate laws was restored. The high courts were given the power of going into the question of constitutional validity of central laws, thus making it possible for persons living in distant places to seek justice without having to come all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Forty-fourth Amendment of1978 made the promulgation of Emergency more difficult than it was. It would now require the ‘written advice’ of the cabinet and not the prime minister alone before the president could proclaim Emergency. The proclamation would have to be approved within one month of the reassembly of Parliament, and that too by a two-thirds majority; its renewal would need a parliamentary vote on it every six months.

Furthermore, the term ‘internal disturbances’ was replaced with ‘armed rebellion’ as a cause for imposing emergency. A special session of the Lok Sabha could be called, one-tenth of its members requesting the president for the purpose of revoking the emergency; such a revocation could be achieved by simple majority. It was also asserted that Article 20 and Article 21 would never be suspended even during emergency, while other fundamental rights would not get suspended automatically but would require a separate order by president.

All important, the emergency provisions could be challenged in courts. The amendment restored the term of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies to the original term of five years. The courts also got back the power to decide the election disputes of the president, prime minister, speaker, etc. The president would now be allowed to return the advice tendered by the cabinet once for a review. The amendment deleted Article 31, the Right to Property from the list of Fundamental Rights to become just a legal right.

Economic Contradictions The Janata Party had no single ideology; its members were a mix of veteran socialists, trade unionists, and pro-business leaders. It made the achievement of major economic reforms difficult. With Charan Singh in a prominent position, it was inevitable that agriculture and the rural sector got importance. The Sixth Five-Year Plan (meant for 1978–83 but also curtailed due to change of regime in 1980), launched by the government after curtailing the Fifth Plan, aimed to boost agricultural production and rural industries.

It was called the rolling plan. In a rolling plan, planning is at three levels: first, for the current year as decided by the annual budget; second, a plan for a slightly longer fixed period which allows flexibility to change priorities as per the need of the economic and political situation; and third, a perspective plan which is for 10, 15, or 20 years. There are no fixed dates and the targets can be revised every now and then as per the annual reviews which are very important.

While flexibility is a plus point with this type of planning, a major drawback is that targets are difficult to achieve as they could keep changing. With the fiery Socialist George Fernandes in charge of the industries ministry, the aim was to promote economic self-reliance and indigenous industries and, if need be, even expel the American multinational companies, such as Coca- Cola and IBM (which indeed was accomplished).

Such policies led to a reduction in foreign investment. However, the problems of resurging inflation, fuel shortages, unemployment, and poverty could not be effectively

addressed as no effective alternative economic policy was evolved to deal with the economic situation. The government failed to work on the radical reforms the party had promised in the run-up to the elections. There were some bright spots. The Food for Work programme, launched in April 1977, envisaged some of the stocks of food grains with the government to be used for payment as wages in kind to workers in rural areas who helped to build roads and water ponds during the season when agricultural employment was low.

Madhu Dandavate, also a socialist but on the moderate side, undertook some important reforms of the railways of which he was in charge. It was he who initiated steps to reduce the corruption in ticket reservation. He initiated steps to repair worn-out tracks. He did a huge favour to the travellers in the sleeper second class compartments: he directed that the hard bare wooden seats be cushioned with two inches of foam.

There was a belief that the Janata government would move closer to the West to compensate for the Indira Gandhi tilt towards the Soviet Union. The Janata government certainly tried to improve ties with the US, with the result that the US president, Jimmy Carter became the first US president to visit India after Eisenhower. Efforts were made to improve trade and expand cooperation in science and technology.

However, the Janata government made it clear that it would practise genuine non-alignment, so maintained cordial relations with the USSR too, with Morarji Desai and Vajpayee (the foreign minister) paying visits to Moscow. Representing India at the UN conference on nuclear disarmament, Vajpayee continued with India’s earlier policy and spoke in defence of India’s nuclear programme and its refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty on the ground of discrimination.

One of the firsts in foreign relations of the Janata government was the effort at normalisation of ties with the People’s Republic of China. In1979, Vajpayee became the highest-ranking Indian official so far to visit Beijing to meet the Chinese leaders. Diplomatic ties were re-established between India and China; ties had been suspended since the 1962 war. The two sides agreed to establish regular dialogue to resolve long-standing territorial disputes, expand trade, and improve border security.

Social Changes and Movements The late 1970s, observes Ramachandra Guha, saw a churn in political and social terms. Politicians seemed to have abandoned ideology in favour of expediency and the polity had become fragmented. On the social level, the sections of society that had been oppressed for so long began to assert themselves, and this led to a certain amount of social turmoil. There were new social movements, such as the feminist and the environmentalist.

The older movements, such as the trade union movement, spread out into fresh areas, such as mines, and there were campaigns for equal wages for men and women, education, health, and safety. The liberated press wrote at length and on a wide range of subjects. And technology in the form of the new offset printing presses helped disseminate the location of newspapers and journals. Investigative journalism began with its lens on crime and corruption.

Readership expanded, especially in small towns as did journalism in Indian languages. And a civil liberties movement became active. The social classes—the OBCs—had reaped economic power through the Green Revolution, and

the land reforms and also gained political power. (The Socialists and the Lok Dal were mostly formed of the OBCs.) They now sought a space in the administrative system. The Janata government in January 1979 appointed the Second Backward Classes Commission, popularly known as the Mandal Commission after its chairman Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal, a former chief minister of Bihar. Its remit was to examine whether reservation in jobs for OBCs should be there in the central administrative system.

Indira Gandhi: The Second Phase (January 1980 – October 1984)

In the 1980 General Elections for the Seventh Lok Sabha, the Congress (I) was returned to power with a strong majority. Indira Gandhi won from Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh as well as from Medak in Andhra Pradesh. She chose to keep the Medak seat. Chosen as the Congress parliamentary leader, she became the Prime Minister of India once again. Indira Gandhi trusted very few and had come to rely more and more on her son, Sanjay, who had also been elected to the Lok Sabha.

She was not ready to share power with anyone else. But in June 1980 Sanjay died when he tried out some stunts in the plane he was flying and lost control. And Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s elder son, an airline pilot with no experience in politics, was reluctantly forced into politics. Soon enough he was elected from Amethi to the Lok Sabha and most people knew he was heir apparent to the Congress leadership.

Economy Indira Gandhi paid immediate attention to the economy. The Janata Sixth Five-Year Plan was curtailed and a new Sixth Year Plan (1980–85) was launched. The objectives of the new Sixth Five-Year Plan India were mainly focused on increasing growth and industrialisation and reducing poverty and unemployment. There was to be promotion of efficiency in the use of resources and improved productivity, besides the strengthening of the impulses of modernisation for the achievement of economic and technological self-reliance.

A minimum needs programme was envisaged for the economically underprivileged, designed to ensure that all parts of the country attained, within a prescribed period, nationally accepted standards. The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) was launched on October 2, 1980 all over the country. The National Rural Employment Programme (NREP), launched in October 1980, became a regular programme under the Plan from April 1981.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development was established for the development of rural sector in 1982 on the recommendation of the Shivaraman Committee. The Sixth Plan is considered to have initiated the first steps towards economic liberalisation, with the government subsequently launching Operation Forward in 1982. They were the first cautious attempt at reform, but they were too cautious to have much effect.

Indira Gandhi was wary of the multinational companies eroding the country’s self-reliance. Improvement in the ecological and environmental aspects of the country was also to be given attention, according to the Sixth Plan. It is worth recalling that Indira Gandhi had attended and spoken at the first UN conference on environment in 1972. In her earlier stint as prime minister, she was behind the implementation of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 and the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1974. The Wildlife Protection Act facilitated the

establishment of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, and Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Now, in her second stint in power, the Forest (Conservation) Act of1980, and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of1981 were enacted. India’s Man in Space

It was during the rule of Indira Gandhi that an Indian went travelling in space. As a part of the joint programme between Indian Space Research Organisation and theSoviet Intercosmos, Rakesh Sharma, an Indian Air Force pilot, was selected in 1982 as a cosmonaut for a joint Soviet-Indian spaceflight. On April 2, 1984, Sharma flew on board Soyuz T-11 with two Soviet cosmonauts to the space station Salyut 7.

During his stay of nearly eight days on the space station, he performed certain experiments in the fields of bio-medicine and remote sensing and exercises to study the effects of yoga on the body during weightlessness. The most memorable aspect of that space mission for many Indians is the episode of Indira Gandhi asking Sharma, on a hazy live video link, how India looked from space, and he replied in Hindi: “Sare jahan se achcha (the best in the world). Today that would have become viral tweet!

Foreign Relations Sri Lanka and TamilsProblem In the area of foreign relations, Indira Gandhi was unhappy with Sri Lanka’s turn away from socialism after Sirimavo Bandaranaike lost power to J.R. Jayewardene, who, Indira Gandhi felt was a puppet of the West. Though it is alleged that India under Indira supported LTTE militants in the 1980s to pressurise Jayewardene to be sensitive of Indian interests, the Indian prime minister refused demands that India attack Sri Lanka after the incidents of Black July 1983, in which Sinhalese mobs targeted the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

Pakistan: Siachen Conflict India-Pakistan relations reached low depths after the rise to power of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan in 1978. It was strongly felt in India that General Zia supported Khalistani militants in Punjab. In 1984, there were military skirmishes on the border. In the end, it became a conflict over the Siachen Glacier lying between the Saltoro ridge line to the west and the main Karakoram range to the east in the Himalayas; located in the disputed Kashmir region, it is claimed by India and Pakistan.

The water melting off the glacier ultimately feeds the Indus, crucial to both countries. The roots of the conflict lie in the lack of proper demarcations of the territory on the map beyond the map coordinate known as NJ9842. Before 1984, neither India nor Pakistan had any permanent presence in the area. However, in order to reinforce their claim on the area, the Pakistanis encouraged expeditions to the glacier on the basis of permits given by their government.

Becoming aware of this in about 1978, an Indian Army expedition was also sent to Teram Kangri peaks as a counter-exercise. To free the glacier from Pakistani domination, the Indian armed forces launched Operation Meghdoot in April 1984, and Siachen became the world’s highest battlefield. India was victorious in the conflict; two passes, namely, Sia La and Bilfond La, were secured by India while Pakistan retained control of the Gyong La pass.

Non-Aligned Movement Under Indira Gandhi, India reasserted its prominence in the Non- Aligned Movement. India hosted the 1983 summit of NAM at Delhi, and thus Indira Gandhi became its chairperson. She brought attention to bear on the relationship between disarmament and economic development. She actively worked to project the need for a new international economic order that would be of benefit to the developing countries.

Political and communal tensions rose in many parts of India during the second term of Indira Gandhi as prime minister.

Naxalites were once again active in the tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh. There was a movement for separate statehood in Jharkhand region, which was then a part of Bihar. Less intense but very much present were movements for separate states in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. In Nagaland, militancy reared its head again with Muivah setting up the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) with ideas of separating from India and to that end working with separatists from Kashmir and Sikh militants.

There were also movements for greater autonomy for states even if these states did not desire to leave the Union of India. The most serious disturbance was in Assam with the growth of the All- Assam Students Union which wanted the Bengalis out of the state in fear of being culturally dominated. In Andhra Pradesh a new political party under the aegis of N.T. Rama Rao, a very popular film star, was formed in 1982.

The Telugu Desam party spoke for the self-respect of the Telugu- speaking people. And his party came to power in the state elections at the end of the year.

The political turmoil was greatest in Punjab with strong communal overtones to it. In fact, there were many strands in the turmoil. There was the strident demand for greater autonomy. Many Sikhs increasingly saw themselves in terms of their separate religion and resented that a Sikh political party (the Akalis) could not rule the state on its own free on central interference; they had waited for a long time to get a state of their own, but Chandigarh was still a shared territory with Haryana.

There was trouble over sharing of river water as well. In 1973, the Akalis had brought out the Anandpur Resolution that on one level just demanded greater autonomy—as did all states. On another level, by using the term ‘Sikh nation’, it lent itself to the interpretation of separation from the Indian Union. The Akalis opposed the Nirankari Sikhs whom they called heretics. It was in this context that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale rose to prominence.

As a priest and head of the Damdami Taksal, he spoke vehemently against the Nirankaris. But he also orated against being slaves in independent India, and mocked at Hindus as well as the ‘modern’ Sikh. It has been said that Bhindranwale had been encouraged and built up by the Congress as a counterpoise to the Akalis. If so, he became a Frankenstein’s monster, and very soon broke free to create an independent image of himself.

He attracted a large number of followers. In 1980, the Akalis suffered a blow when they were dismissed from power in the state and the Congress came to power. The impetus to form a state free of India was given mainly by Sikhs in England, US, and Canada. In June1980, a group of students meeting at the Golden Temple in Amritsar declared the formation of an independent Sikh republic— Khalistan; its president was to be Jagjit Singh Chauhan from London.

The situation became worse and worse, with Bhindranwale gaining greater power and suspected to be behind several assassinations of prominent men, including the Nirankari leaders. The government proved ineffective in bringing him to book. In an effort to up the ante against Bhindranwale, the Akalis became more extreme in their views. Their legislators resigned en masse from the state assembly on Republic Day of1983. It seemed to indicate that their commitment to the Indian Constitution was not firm.

Bhindranwale, in the meantime, was becoming more virulent towards the Hindus in his speeches and instigating Sikhs to violence against the Hindus in order to drive them out. Conflict between Hindus and Sikhs seemed impossible in light of the origin of the Sikhs, but it had now come about. The central government sent a team led by Narasimha Rao to try to convince Bhindranwale to make peace; the negotiations failed and the law and order situation in Punjab continued to deteriorate.

Khalistani terrorists, reported to be encouraged by Pakistan, were slowly entrenching themselves in Punjab and killings took place to eliminate prominent Hindus and Sikh officials. In October 1983, a bus was stopped and the Hindu passengers on it shot. The Centre imposed President’s Rule on the state. Bhindranwale moved without facing any hindrance into the Akal Takht, the seat of temporal authority for the Sikhs near the Golden Temple, which was the seat of spiritual authority.

By 1984 beginning, Bhindranwale and his associates had begun to fortify the Golden Temple complex and arms and ammunition as well as food stocked. It was all under the command of Shubeg Singh, once a major general and hero of the Indian Army but later dismissed from it. Clearly, strong action needed to be taken. Indira Gandhi gave her permission to initiate Operation Blue Star on the recommendation of Army Chief A.S.

Vaidya. By the night of June 25 and June 3, 1984, curfew had been imposed on the state of Punjab, all means of communication and public travel suspended, and electricity supply interrupted. Media was strictly censored. It was on the night of June 5 that the actual army action began, with the army storming Harmandir Sahib under the command of Major General K.S. Brar who acted under the direction of General K Sundarji.

The militants were not easy to subdue as they had sophisticated weaponry. In the end, tanks had to be used against the Akal Takht before the army had full control of Harmandir Sahib by the morning of June 7. Bhindranwale was found dead as was Shubeg Singh. While many militants were killed, there were also many casualties among the army personnel as well as civilians. Aftermath The operation caused great disturbance to the Sikhs all round the world.

Many Sikhs left the Indian Army. Even mutinies by Sikh soldiers were reported. But it did put an end to militancy in the state and cleared the Golden Temple complex of arms and ammunitions, at least for the present. But the assassination of a prime minister is also to be seen as the result of Operation Blue Star. On the morning of October 31, 1984, while walking over from her house to her office, she was shot by her Sikh security guards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh.

She was rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, but she did not survive. Though it was generally known that Indira Gandhi had died, All India Radio and Doordarshan made the official announcement only in the evening. The Indira Gandhi era was over. Her son Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as prime minister by President Zail Singh that very evening after Congress leaders unanimously decided that he should take the post.

Indira Gandhi was in power for a long time. As a result of economic programmes and spread of education, the middle social castes/classes as well as the lower castes/classes were asserting

themselves and there was a growth in the middle classes in urban India. One consequence of the changing social situation was widespread social unrest; there were caste clashes as well as communal violence. Though Indira Gandhi was liberal minded and not discriminatory as a political leader, there was a deterioration in values of democracy in her time. Indira Gandhi’s style of functioning began with a reliance on the prime minister’s secretariat formed of persons she could trust, but who were also of indubitable integrity and intellect, but went on to depend more and more on her son and a small coterie.

It was the same at party level: fearing competitive power centres, she weakened the Congress party structure. Sycophancy grew, and a party that had developed a well- organised structure with grassroots presence and a range of regional leaders across the country gradually lost strong leadership at state level and gave up the democratic style of choosing its leader and officials. A member of the Gandhi family had now become indispensable for holding the party together.

Ideology was no longer the basis of politics. And this was true of other political parties as well. Corruption spread, and the state apparatus was more and more manipulated by the powerful for personal gain. Indira Gandhi’s grit and decisiveness in the face of external aggression, however, was exemplary. She showed that India was not to be bullied and brought the country to prominence in the world map.

(October 1984 – December 1989)

Appointed prime minister after the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, on October 31, 1984, Rajiv Gandhi faced major problems from the very outset on the domestic front. Anti-Sikh Riots Even as the news of Indira Gandhi’s death became known, there were sporadic incidents of violence showing anger at the assassination—perhaps a spontaneous reaction in the circumstances. But as her body lay in state at Teen Murti House (Nehru’s residence as prime minister), these sporadic incidents had deepened and widened; by November 1 there seemed to be an organised and brutal mob violence against Sikhs.

There was a continual replay on Doordarshan, the stateowned and only television channel available at the time, of the crowds filing past paying their respects to the assassinated prime minister with the grieving son beside the body and the shots of the crowds outside shouting revenge; this would have further instigated the mob. While most of the Sikhs targeted were in the resettlement colonies in North Delhi, inhabited by the poorer section of the population, there was some looting and killing in middle-and upper middle-class localities, as well.

The mobs, composed mainly of Hindus drawn from the “scheduled caste sweepers who worked in the city, and Jat farmers and Gujjar pastoralists from villages on the fringes”, as pointed out by Ramachandra Guha and many newspaper reports of the time, killed thousands of Sikhs, burnt their homes, and looted their houses and businesses. Witnesses indicated that several Congress leaders instigated and encouraged these mobs. Rumours stoked the violence.

The role of the police and the administration was shocking; the police either turned a blind eye, refused to take action or, more reprehensibly, actively helped the mob. The riots went on unabated for two days. The prime minister and his home minister, Narasimha Rao, did not call in the army immediately; the army could have quelled the riots at once and effectively. It was late on November 2 that Rajiv Gandhi declared over radio and television that acts of rioting should be stopped and that these were casting a slur on the late prime minister.

It was only by November 3 that the army got its orders to take steps to control the situation. On the birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi on November 19, Rajiv Gandhi in a speech said that when a great tree falls, the earth around it shakes; it was taken to imply a justification of the riots. Even if one agrees with the view that the public anger was great after the assassination, it was an insensitive remark for a prime minister to make.

The anti-Sikh riots was the official term given to the violence, but many called it ‘genocide’. It was an unforgettable and tragic blot in the history of India since independence. The silver lining in an otherwise dark spot in India’s history lay in the efforts made by many Hindus to hide and help Sikh families during the rioting. View

Though we boast of being the world’s largest democracy and Delhi being its national capital, the sheer mention of the incidents of 1984 anti-Sikh riots in general and the role played by Delhi Police and state machinery in particular makes our heads hang in shame in the eyes of the world polity. Delhi High Court in 2009The Bhopal Gas Tragedy On December 3, 1984, India faced another great tragedy: a leak of the toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from the pesticide plant of the US multinational company Union Carbide (UCC) at Bhopal killed thousands and left many more impaired for life.

The gas caused internal haemorrhage, lung failure, and death. Worst affected were the inhabitants of the villages and slums in the neighbouring areas of the factory. It was one of the worst industrial tragedies of the world. The plant should not have been allowed in the city in the first place; further, it seemed to have disregarded safety measures several times. After the disaster, UCC tried its best to disown responsibility for the gas leak by shifting culpability to the Indian subsidiary UCIL, stating that the plant was wholly built and operated by UCIL.

Soon after, the first multi-billion dollar lawsuit was filed by an American attorney in a US court. And the legal battles and machinations began with the ethical implications of the tragedy and its effect on the people being pushed to the background. In March1985, the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act was enacted by the Indian government so as to ensure speedy and equitable settlement of claims arising from the accident.

As per the act, the government became the sole representative of the victims in legal proceedings anywhere in the world. Eventually, all cases were removed from US jurisdiction and shifted to Indian jurisdiction. Under the aegis of the Supreme Court of India, UCC agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government to be distributed to claimants as a full and final settlement. The figure was based on a number of claimants that was on the lower side, whereas the actual number came to be much larger.

There were allegations that American pressure and political influence had resulted in the UCC chairman, Warren Anderson, being allowed to leave India for the US without being arrested. The controversy continues and so do the troubles of the people who suffered from the fallout of the gas leak and had to do with such low compensation.

Rajiv Gandhi on assuming the post of prime minister in October 1984 recommended early elections. General elections were to be held in January 1985; instead, they were held in December 1984. The Congress (I) won an overwhelming majority, securing more than 400 seats, the largest ever majority in independent India’s Lok Sabha election history till then. The mandate was partly the result of a sympathy wave and largely from a desire to keep extremism and separatism down.

Rajiv Gandhi, who now assumed the post of prime minister, was also the youngest person to do so in India. The March1985 elections to assemblies in 11 states brought the Congress (I) to power in 8 of them.

Several ethnic conflicts raged in different parts of the country when Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister. Some of these were settled, but others continued to cause trouble. Punjab was a burning problem. Akali leaders were freed and an agreement was signed by the Akali leader Sant Harcharan Singh Longowal and Rajiv Gandhi in July1985. But in August, Longowal was shot dead. However, state elections were held in September and in what was seen as a vote against extremism, the Akali Dal came to power with a comfortable majority.

But militancy was not to end so easily. It reared its head soon and the Golden Temple was once again being used by militants. This time round, strong—in fact, even ruthless—action by the police under J.F. Ribeiro and K.P.S. Gill brought the situation under control, after Operation Black Thunder was launched in May 1988 to flush out militants from the Golden Temple. It was a smoother and cleaner operation, but then there was no charismatic leader like Bhindranwale this time round to whip up emotions.

Even so, militancy did not quite die down for quite some time in the state. The Chandigarh issue continues to rankle. Assam was torn by violent agitation in the 1970s and the 1980s over the influx of foreigners. Rajiv Gandhi and the All AssamStudents Union (AASU) signed an accord on August 15, 1985. President’s Rule was removed and elections held in December. The AASU became a political party—the Asom Gana Parishad—and contested the polls; it emerged victorious leaving the Congress far behind.

Yet another agreement was that between the Centre and the Mizos in 1986, whereby the Mizo rebels surrendered their arms. Mizoram was granted statehood. The Mizo National Front under the leadership of Laldenga—once a fiery rebel calling for secession from India—came to power as chief minister of Mizoram which became the 23rd state of India in February 1987. Problems, however, arose in other parts of the country as well as in the same states later.

The Gorkha National Liberation Front under Subhash Ghisingh represented the interests of the Nepali-speaking population in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal and began demanding a separate state for themselves. Ghisingh after meeting Rajiv Gandhi was persuaded to accept an autonomous district council. Tripura was torn by agitations and clashes between the tribals and Bengalis who had come into the state after Partition.

The Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) adopted the way of terrorists intimidating civilians and the police with kidnappings and murders. In August1988, a memorandum of understanding was signed under which TNV decided to abjure violence, give up secessionist demands, and to hold negotiations for a peaceful solution of all the problems of

Tripura within the Constitution of India. It was agreed by the Indian government that the seats for the tribals in the legislative assembly would be increased and that some more villages would be brought under the purview of the autonomous tribal councils. The terms of surrender were chalked out through talks between the Centre, the Tripura government, and the TNV. The troubles were not, however, quite over.

In Assam there was a violent agitation led by the Bodo tribals against local Assamese. The leadership was given by the All-Bodo Students Union. Some kind of resolution of the problem lay some years in the future. In Jammu and Kashmir, a different kind of problem arose. On Sheikh Abdullah’s death, his son Farooq Abdullah had become the chief minister of the state, but Indira Gandhi had removed him.

Now, with Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister, the Congress and the National Conference formed a coalition caretaker government in Jammu and Kashmir in 1986. Elections were held in 1987. The Muslim United Front (MUF) formed by a group of Kashmiris who sought greater autonomy from the Centre was also in the fray. There was wide-ranging rigging in the elections to favour the Congress- National Conference so that the results went overwhelmingly in favour of that group.

This was a most unfortunate thing to happen; even in fair and free election, the Congress- NC group would probably have won, but now the unfair practices created disappointment and anger and alienation from the Indian State. This was the beginning of the militancy in Kashmir, with some of the Kashmiri youth turning to Pakistan for help.

Rajiv Gandhi as a fresh face in politics came to power with a lot of goodwill from the people. He tried to change the way things worked. Within his party he indicated that he would not tolerate incompetency, corruption, or sycophancy. He introduced modern managerial techniques and tried to bring younger, more dynamic people into the decisionmaking process of the Congress. In the long run, the effort did not work.

The ‘Congress culture’ was too entrenched, and even the young who began hopefully were soon drawn into the old ways. He tried to cut red tape and make the administration more open and less rigid. Anti-Defection Act One of the first things Rajiv Gandhi did as prime minister was to get the anti-defection law passed in January 1985. As a result, an elected member of a legislature at the central or state level could not join an opposition party until the next election, or he/she would be disqualified as a member of the house.

The measure was aimed at curbing corruption and bribery of MPs and MLAs to switch parties so as to manipulate the numbers in the house to form the government. Environmental Legislation An outcome of the Bhopal tragedy was the increase in environmental awareness and activism in India. Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister responded positively. In 1986 came the Environment Protection Act (EPA) under which the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) was created, with overall responsibility for administering and enforcing environmental laws and policies.

EPA gave authority to the Centre to issue direct orders to close, prohibit, or regulate any industry. An enabling law, it delegates wide powers to the executive, allowing it to make rules to manage different issues. In 1987, amendments to the Factories Act, 1948 empowered states to appoint site appraisal committees to guide the location of factories using hazardous processes. Systems were also set up to ensure the safety of workers and nearby residents and emergency disaster control plans specified. By 1989, the Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling)

Rules had been enacted for management, storage, and import of hazardous chemicals. But it would be 1991 before the enactment of the Public Liability Insurance Act to provide for immediate relief to persons affected by accidents while handling hazardous substances.

Improving Local Government Rajiv Gandhi saw the ineffective manner in which the panchayati raj system worked in states and tried to amend the situation through a constitutional amendment that called for regular panchayati elections being mandatory; the law could not be passed in his tenure, but the effort had been made, and in the coming years, the local government system would get constitutional sanction. First Steps towards Liberalising the Economy The first budget presented by the Rajiv Gandhi government— by the finance minister, V.P.

Singh—sought to remove some of the controls that were stifling the growth of the economy. Besides simplifying the licensing scheme, the trade regime was liberalised with reduction in duties on several import items and incentives to promote exports. Tax rates were reduced and curbs on company assets were loosened. As a result of these steps, business houses did well, and the growth rate of industry was good.

However, the period also saw businessmen and politicians getting closer, with the former doling out gifts (even of money) that were eagerly accepted by the latter for favours done. Real estate became a potent source of corruption and unaccounted money with the politicians. However, by the end of his term as prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, faced with several problems in the country, went back to populism.

Taxes were increased on consumer durables and air travel made more expensive. In April1989, the National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP) were merged into a single programme, the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana. Technology Missions Imbued with the desire to reform the socio-economic situation in India, six technology missions were set up under Rajiv Gandhi’s direction.

The idea was to use science and technology to tackle underdevelopment. The scientific approach was to be applied for solving problems. The target- oriented projects intended that India should enter the millennium as a modern nation. The drinking water mission aimed at using satellites and the disciplines of geology, civil engineering, and biochemistry in locating, extracting, and purifying water so that all people in the country could have safe drinking water.

There were missions directed towards improving milk yield and health of cows; expanding the production of edible oil so that imports could be curbed; improving health of people, especially through immunisation of children against polio; and increasing literacy, by spreading the television network to rural areas and using it as a medium. These were all good ideas and evolved into other programmes over time.

The best known of the missions was that of telecommunications. Realising the importance of communications to reach remote corners of the vast country, Rajiv Gandhi wanted improvement of service, dependability, and accessibility of telecom across India. Indigenous development, local talent, and privatisation were part of the mission. Sam Pitroda, a young US-trained Indian telecom expert, became Rajiv Gandhi’s adviser on this as well as the other technology missions; he was made the chairman of the Telecom Commission. The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, popularly known as MTNL was set up.

Computerisation Computerisation was another field in which Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative has to be appreciated. His government took steps to make it easy for large-scale computerisation with reduction of import duties on components so that domestic manufacturers could increase production. Laws were liberalized to allow foreign manufacturers to enter the market so that quality and competitive prices could be ensured.

Use of computers in schools and offices was encouraged. As a result of these measures, India was soon to emerge as a major software exporter. Some people have called these steps as initiating the ‘information revolution’ in India. Education Policy In1968, the government under Indira Gandhi launched the first national Policy of Education (NPE). In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi promulgated the new NPE that stressed on “special emphasis on the removal of disparities and to equalise educational opportunity”.

The policy called for expanding scholarships, adult education, recruiting more teachers from among the SCs, incentives for poor families to send their children to school regularly, development of new institutions and provision of housing and services. Under the policy, Rajiv Gandhi included Operation Blackboard to improve the educational infrastructure at primary schools all over India. Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), a byproduct of this policy, was directed towards promoting adult education.

The concept of having a Navodaya Vidyalaya in every district of India was born as a part of the 1986 NPE, the aim being to provide excellence along with social justice. These residential schools were meant to provide quality education free of charge to children of poor families, chosen by merit, who could stay in the schools.

There were several areas in which the Rajiv Gandhi government failed to act in a statesmanlike manner or made grave tactical mistakes. The Shah Bano Case In1985, the Supreme Court gave a decision in a case involving a Muslim divorcee, Shah Bano, upholding the decision of a lower court. The lower court verdict was that Shah Bano’s erstwhile husband should pay her maintenance every month, while Mohammed Ahmed Khan (the husband) contended that he had paid three months allowance as required, according to him, by Islamic law.

Invoking Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), the apex court said that Shah Bano, not having remarried and not in a position to maintain herself, was entitled to get an allowance from the ex-husband. The court was clear that Section 125 of the CrPC would prevail over personal law in case there is a conflict between the two. The Supreme Court even went on to say that a uniform civil code, as mentioned in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution, would help national integration.

Conservative Muslims resented the court decision as interfering with their personal law. Sometime later, an MP moved a private member’s bill in Parliament to the effect that Muslims be exempted from the purview of Section 125 of the CrPC. This was opposed by Arif Mohammed Khan, the minister of state in the home ministry. The bill was defeated in the House. But dissatisfaction among a section of Muslims was deep.

With thousands of Muslims demonstrating against the Supreme Court decision, the Rajiv Gandhi government bowed to the pressure. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill was introduced in the House in 1986 to overturn the Supreme Court judgement and a whip issued to Congress MPs to vote in its favour. The bill was passed, thereby denying divorced Muslim women the right to

claim maintenance under the CrPC and confining the maintenance to the iddat or a threemonth period. The bill placed the onus of supporting the divorced wife on her relatives or the Wakf Board. Arif Mohammed Khan resigned in protest. The Babri Mosque Gates Opening In British times, the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was used by Muslims for worship; there was a platform outside the mosque where Hindus worshipped Ram.

It was believed that the place was the birthplace of Ram. In1949, an idol of Ram Lalla (baby) is said to have been placed inside the mosque one night. Hindu devotees saw this appearance of the idol as a miracle and now wanted the place for worship. In the wake of disturbances, it was decided by the local authorities to lock the disputed premises in Ayodhya so that neither Hindus nor Muslims could use the act of worship to press their claims.

Appeals were made before Faizabad court that the Ram Janmabhoomi gates be unlocked on the grounds that it was the Faizabad district administration, and not a court, that had ordered its closure. In the 1980s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other such Hindu groups launched a campaign to construct a Ram Mandir at the site. On February 1, 1986, the Faizabad district judge ordered that the doors to the mosque be opened so that the devotees could pray.

According to reports at the time, the Congress government under Rajiv Gandhi ensured that the locks of the mosque were opened almost immediately after the Faizabad judge’s ruling. Television cameras were present to cover the opening, suggesting that the judge’s decision was known by the administration beforehand. There was a strong belief that the Rajiv Gandhi government’s decision in the Ayodhya matter was made to balance the Muslim Women’s Act by placating the hard core Hindus.

If the Congress thought it could undercut the BJP’s temple campaign, it was mistaken; the initiative was grabbed by the Sangh Parivar. The VHP was emboldened and its attitude hardened: now the demand for the demolition of the mosque to build a temple at the site became vociferous. The image of Rajiv Gandhi as a modern forward-looking leader was tarnished after these two issues. As political analysts warned at the time, the policy of appeasement of communities for electoral gains could become a vicious cycle and cause much damage to the social fabric.

The Bofors Scandal There was more trouble for the prime minister. In March1986, India signed an agreement with the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors (once owned by Alfred Nobel) for the supply of four hundred 155mm Howitzer guns for the Indian Army. The deal included an option to license- produce 1,000 more guns. The deal amounted to $285 million (about Rs 1,500 crore), which was huge for the time.

Almost a year later, in April 1987, a Swedish radio report claimed that the Bofors deal involved payment of bribes to top Indian politicians and defence personnel as well as Swedish officials. The Hindu correspondent in Geneva, Chitra Subramaniam, investigated the matter on behalf of her paper and collected several documents on the basis of which she revealed that over Rs 64 crore was indeed paid to some very powerful people.

One name that appeared amidst it all was that of Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman who represented the Italian petrochemicals firm Snamprogetti and was alleged to have become a powerful broker between the Indian government and international businesses, mainly because of his reported closeness to the Gandhi

family. The Indian Express and The Statesman also carried long reports on what came to be known as the Bofors scandal. In the meanwhile, V.P. Singh who had been shifted from finance to defence also seemed to have uncovered details of corruption in the Bofors deal. V.P Singh was finally left out of the cabinet. This seems to have increased the suspicion against the Rajiv Gandhi government, and even against the prime minister himself.

There was scepticism about Rajiv Gandhi’s declaration in Parliament that no bribe was paid and no middleman was involved. Rajiv Gandhi who had been nicknamed ‘Mr Clean’ suffered an irreparable damage to his image. In July1988, Rajiv Gandhi introduced what has been termed as one of the most draconian bills drafted by the Indian government. The bill was aimed at checking the freedom of the press: it provided that an editor or proprietor of a newspaper/ journal could be imprisoned for ‘criminal imputation’ and ‘scurrilous writings’, terms which would be defined by the State.

Apparently, he was pushed into introducing the measure because of the investigative journalism into the Bofors scandal. The bill was in the end dropped, but further damage had been done to the image of the government.

The failure of monsoons still plagued the country, and the drought in 1987 was severe, causing much rural distress. Kalahandi district in Orissa was particularly affected. The discontent in the countryside went beyond the rain-fed areas to the irrigated areas. Farmers’ organisations were formed. The most famous were the Shetkari Sanghatana led by Sharad Joshi, who had once been a civil servant, and the Bharatiya Kisan Union led by Mahendra Singh Tikait.

While the former’s base was in Maharashtra, the latter covered Punjab and Haryana. These leaders spoke of a divide in the country— between the Bharat of villagers and the India of the urban middle class, with the former getting little attention in the economic policies formulated by the government. Their demand was that there should be a higher price for agricultural produce and subsidised power for agricultural use.

In actual fact, however, these organisations were representatives of the rich and middle-level farmers, not the really poor sections of rural society. The poor all over India, whether in the urban or in the rural areas, shared the same problems, which seldom found voice.

Rajiv Gandhi set out to improve relations with the US and expanded scientific and economic ties with that country. His policies of economic liberalisation and emphasis on information technology brought him closer to the US and other western nations. Rajiv Gandhi is said to have used a direct private channel to Ronald Reagan, the US president, which led to the cancellation of proposed supplies of AWACS aircraft to Pakistan.

Despite moving closer to the West, Rajiv Gandhi did not succumb to pressure on the nuclear non-proliferation issue which he linked, as Indian policy had always done, to universal disarmament. In June1988, at the 15th special session of the United Nations General Assembly, Rajiv spoke about a world free of nuclear weapons, and put forward his ‘Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order’.

In 1986, the President of Seychelles faced a coup and sought India’s help. The Rajiv Gandhi government authorised the Indian Navy to reach the coasts of Seychelles to help avert the coup in a mission named ‘Operation Flowers are Blooming’. Then, in 1988, Maldives faced an attempted coup whose perpetrator was apparently assisted by

armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organisation from Sri Lanka, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). The Maldives government sought India’s help, upon which Rajiv Gandhi ordered the deployment of the Indian forces in an operation code-named Cactus. The coup was averted. In 1987, India re-occupied the Quaid Post in the disputed Siachen region in what was termed Operation Rajiv.

In December 1988, Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954 to visit China. In 1986–87, there had been a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at Sumdorong Chu on the north-eastern border. However, Rajiv Gandhi’s visit led to better relations. He had a cordial meeting with Deng Xiaoping who, though he was not the head of state, or head of government or general secretary (of the Communist Party), was an all-important person in China.

India and China signed two crucial agreements to establish a joint working group (JWG)—to seek fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable solution on the boundary question—and a joint economic group (JEG) and agreed to expand and develop bilateral relations in all fields. The IPKF Misadventure Sri Lanka was faced with an ethnic conflict between the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority who were inhabitants mostly of the northern part of the island.

After Sri Lanka got independence from the British, Sinhalese was imposed as the sole official language in the island country. The Tamils wanted parity on all fronts with their language given the same status as Sinhalese. There were protests when discrimination continued. Opposition to the official repressive measures took a violent turn. Soon, a number of militant groups were operating in the Jaffna Peninsula against the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Over time, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) became the most prominent under Velupillai Prabakaran and took over the struggle using violence against the Lankan forces as well as civilians; their demand had progressed from autonomy to liberation from the Sri Lankan government to form an independent Tamil state. Though it was an internal affair of Sri Lanka, the events in Jaffna raised tensions in Tamil Nadu, where many felt close to the Sri Lankan Tamils.

The LTTE used Tamil Nadu as a refuge, and the state government was sympathetic to their cause, even as the central government kept quiet. It is believed that the governments under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi surreptitiously supported the Tamil militants. When the Sri Lankan forces responded with brutal force and blockaded the Tamil majority district of Jaffna, Rajiv Gandhi first tried to resolve the problem diplomatically.

But the siege continued. India hoped the Sri Lankan government would be amenable to India, sending relief supplies to the beleaguered Tamils by sea. A flotilla of Indian ships with relief supplies was locked by the Sri Lankan Navy as they approached the territorial waters of Sri Lanka. On June 4, 1987, the Indian government ordered relief supplies to be air-dropped into the area on humanitarian grounds—in what was called Operation Poomalai (also Eagle-Mission-4)— after warning Sri Lanka not to try and stop the planes.

India was criticised by some nations for the action even as Sri Lanka accused India of “blatant violation of sovereignty”. The US expressed regret over the incident but added no further comment. India wanted the airdrop to send a message; the siege of Jaffna was lifted, and there was a declaration of ceasefire. Indo-Sri Lanka Accord 1987 In July 1987, the Sri Lankan president, J.R. Jayawardene, asked Rajiv Gandhi to mediate in the island country’s ethnic conflict. As a result, the Indo-Sri Lanka

Peace Accord was signed by the two leaders in Colombo on July 29, 1987. Incidentally, it was on the occasion of this visit to Colombo that Rajiv Gandhi was assaulted by a Sri Lankan in the Guard of Honour held for the Indian prime minister in what seemed an attempted assassination. Rajiv Gandhi escaped serious injury. The peace accord was perhaps too ambitious in its scope, seeking to address three contentious issues: strategic interests, people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka, and rights of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Sri Lankan government would devolve power to the Tamilmajority areas, the Sri Lankan troops would withdraw to their barracks in the north, and the Tamil militants would surrender their arms. Besides the LTTE being dissolved, Tamil was to be designated an official language of Sri Lanka. Significantly, the Tamil groups were not party to the talks that led to the agreement.

It was under the accord that the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern provinces where the Tamils were in majority to “guarantee and enforce the cessation of hostilities” between the Tamil separatist groups and the government. The LTTE, however, refused to surrender arms and began threatening Tamils who opposed the militant group. The IPKF and the LTTE became involved in a military confrontation.

The IPKF was working under severe strategic constraints. The scene of action was an island- nation; the war was an unconventional one being waged against a group that had strong emotional connections with Tamil Nadu; and the Indian intervention evoked hostile reaction from the Sinhalese as well as they felt their sovereignty to be undermined. Finally, the IPKF captured the LTTE headquarters in Jaffna, but the militants retreated into the jungles from where they used guerrilla tactics to keep the forces at bay.

A large number of Indian soldiers died and the cost of the operation was huge. Back in India, the pressure was on the government to recall the force. In the end, the IPKF misadventure was to be the cause for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 during his election campaign in Tamil Nadu. At Sriperumbudur, a woman bent to touch his feet and exploded an explosive device attached to her. The suicide bomber belonged to the LTTE and her action was in retaliation of India’s role in Sri Lanka.

V.P. Singh, on leaving the Congress, floated the Jan Morcha along with Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammed Khan, both of whom had parted ways with Rajiv Gandhi. Later, this group merged with the Janata Party, Lok Dal, and Congress (S) to form a new party, the Janata Dal, with the idea of bringing together centrist parties opposing the Congress government under Rajiv Gandhi. The Janata Dal then joined a set of regional parties (which included the DMK, the Telugu Desam party, and the Asom Gana Parishad) in a coalition which came to be called the National Front.

In November1989, general elections were held for the Lok Sabha. By then, the opposition to Rajiv Gandhi had consolidated, and a coordinated strategy was adopted. The Congress did badly in the elections, though it still manged to be the largest single party in the Lok Sabha. People had lost faith in Rajiv Gandhi in the face of the accusations of corruption. The 1989 election was the first in which no single party got a majority on its own.

At that time itself, some commentators indicated that the elections marked a milestone, the beginning of coalitions, and a period of political instability.

Rajiv Gandhi resigned in December 1989. His party chose to sit in the opposition as it did not have the majority or the support to form the government after the elections.

(December 1989 – November 1990) The National Front did not have a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha after the 1989 elections. But it staked the claim to form the government and did so with the BJP and the Left parties offering to support it from the outside. Vishwanath Pratap Singh was sworn in as India’s prime minister on December 2, 1989. Rajiv Gandhi, as head of the Congress party, was leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Soon, after state legislative elections in March 1990, the governing coalition at the Centre achieved control of both houses of Parliament. One of the first decisions taken by V.P. Singh was to recall the IPKF from Sri Lanka. V.P. Singh was prime minister for less than a year, but he faced major problems in that short period.

In Kashmir, in December 1989, militants of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) kidnapped the daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the Union home minister. The Centre capitulated to the demands of the JKLF and released jailed militants. Another prominent militant group, which was soon to sideline the JKLF, was the Hizb-ul Mujahideen led by Syed Salauddin, with more hard core ideas of turning the state into an Islamic regime.

Salauddin, incidentally, had left mainstream politics after the rigged elections of 1987. With armed attacks on banks and grenade attacks on police stations, the militants were becoming more defiant and daring. The Centre decided to take strong action and sent in forces to control the situation. The governor was changed and Jagmohan was appointed to the post. A series of incidents turned many Kashmiris into supporting the militants. ‘Jihad’ became a prominent cry as religion became an important factor in the militants’ game.

The Hindu minority suffered as a consequence: the Kashmiri Pandits, who formed an integral part of the Valley and shared a common culture with the Muslims in that state in almost every aspect except religion, became the target of brutal violence, with many of them being killed by the militants. There was an exodus of Pandits from the Kashmir valley to Jammu and farther afield; they became refugees in their own land. Many of them still live in refugee camps and makeshift buildings, afraid to go back.

The Mandal Commission appointed during the Janata Party rule had submitted its report in December 1980. The Congress governments under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had quietly shelved the report. The Mandal Commission or the Backward Classes Commission—to give it its official name— said that caste and backwardness were linked, and that the other backward castes, despite forming a significant proportion of the country’s population, had very low representation in the administration, especially at the higher levels. In this context, the main recommendation made by

the commission was that 27 per cent of jobs in the central government be reserved for these castes beyond the percentage reserved for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The same kind of relaxation in age was also to be made for the OBCs as existed for SC/ ST in being considered for posts. V.P. Singh thought it would be a good idea to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations to gain popularity with the decidedly large group of OBCs whose importance as a ‘vote bank’ was not to be ignored.

There were rising politicians from the group, Lalu Yadav in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, the two states that had a decisive say in most elections in India. A move forward on social justice-related issues, Singh calculated, would consolidate the caste coalition that formed the support base of the Janata Dal in northern India. In this context, it might be worth noting that in the southern states a large proportion of government jobs were reserved for the non-brahmins, and, it was pointed out by those who agreed with the Mandal recommendations, efficiency had not suffered.

On August 7, 1990, V.P. Singh announced in Parliament that his government had accepted the Mandal Commission report and would implement 27 per cent reservation at all levels of central government services for the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes as identified by the Mandal Commission. Large-scale protests greeted the government’s order. There were self-immolation bids and even suicides by youngsters from the upper castes, as these people felt their chance of getting government jobs had become more difficult.

The protests were intense in the northern part of the country while the south was not affected. In the south, with the reservation policy being in place for quite some time, youngsters over time had become less dependent on government for their livelihood as the industrial sector offered a good alternative for jobs. Also, the proportion of upper castes in the population in the south was less compared to the north. [The matter had been taken to the Supreme Court which stayed the order.

But it was only in November 1992 that the nine-judge bench of the court gave its decision. Six judges upheld the constitutionality of the Mandal Commission as well as the government order based on its recommendations. Three judges offered a dissenting view that impersonal criteria rather than caste should be used in deciding who was disadvantaged. The apex court, however, laid down two conditions: reservations in toto should not exceed 50 per cent and that caste criterion should be restricted to the recruitment level and not apply in case of promotions.

By the time the judgement came, most political parties were reconciled to the reservation order; they realised that opposing it would prove to be politically harmful. Even the Congress which had been lukewarm to the matter had realised the importance of the OBC factor in winning elections in the north. The Narasimha Rao government which came to power in 1991 had already issued a fresh order in September 1991 in favour of the Mandal recommendations, with a condition attached that within the 27 per cent reservation preference would be given to the poorer sections of the OBCs.]

One issue on which the Bharatiya Janata Party had gained popularity was the campaign to build a Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. With the implementation of the Mandal recommendation, the BJP was itself divided over whether to support the move or oppose it. While some thought it was a plan to fragment Hindu society, others felt OBC aspirations needed to be met. The BJP in the end decided to play the mandir card to mobilise the Hindus.

The party president, L.K. Advani, decided to set out on a yatra or tour in a rath (which was a van converted to look like a chariot). The Ram rath yatra beginning in Somnath in September 1990 was to culminate in Ayodhya after touring several of the states in between. V.P. Singh faced a dilemma; whatever he did—stop the procession or let it continue—would prove counterproductive for the government.

In the end, it was left to the chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, to prevent the yatra from reaching Ayodhya; he got Advani arrested on the charges of disturbing the peace and fomenting communal tension and placed under preventive detention in a guest house when the procession passed through Bihar. There were widespread disturbances after many of the kar sevaks, who were to build the temple, were also arrested by the Mulayam Singh government in Uttar Pradesh.

Clashes took place between security forces and supporters of the mandir, and there were communal clashes as well. The BJP withdrew its support to the National Front government. V.P. Singh lost the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha and resigned in November 1990.

(November 1990 – June 1991) With the imminence of the fall of the V.P. Singh government, Chandra Shekhar and Devi Lal had left the Janata Dal along with several others who supported him to form the Samajwadi Janata Party. Once again, the Congress, as in the case of Charan Singh earlier, offered to support from outside a minority government, this time led by Chandra Shekhar who had just 64 MPs with him. Chandra Shekhar won a confidence motion and was sworn in as prime minister on November 10, 1990.

The economic situation was in a bad shape, and foreign exchange levels had reduced to a dangerous low. The economic crisis was mainly due to the large and growing fiscal imbalances over the 1980s. The loans that earlier governments under Congress had taken from world financial institutions and, in Rajiv Gandhi’s case, from the market had created a huge debt. India was struggling to finance its essential imports, especially of oil and fertilisers, and to repay official debt.

The situation was made worse because of the Gulf war and the resultant hike in oil prices. By January1991, the Chandra Shekhar government, with Yashwant Sinha as the finance minister, had convinced IMF to approve two loans. In return, the government promised to initiate economic reforms through the budget due to be presented in February. By the middle of February, it was clear that the Congress would create trouble.

During the motion of thanks to the president’s speech at the beginning of the budget session, the Congress withdrew its support to the government on some flimsy grounds, with the result that the minority government was unable to present the full budget. In March1991, the government was forced to pledge gold reserves of the country to manage the foreign exchange situation. According to news reports, economic advisers to the prime minister pointed out India could use the plentiful gold that it held.

The State Bank of India was asked to put up a proposal to the Reserve Bank to lease gold confiscated from smugglers on the

government account. The central bank approved the proposal and the government approved it too. By mid-March, global credit-rating agencies had placed India on watch. It was impossible to raise even short-term funds. In the absence of a full budget and a firm commitment to reforms, there was no more funding available from multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

It was in these circumstances of a severe liquidity crisis with the possibility of a default in sovereign payments that Chandra Shekhar, though only a caretaker prime minister at the time, authorised the decision to pledge the gold to raise money; it was an inevitable move. Though there was a public outcry when it came to be known, and criticism that it had humiliated India, it was this move that helped meet the balance of payment crisis besides helping the next government begin its much vaunted process of economic reform.

With Chandra Shekhar’s resignation in March 1991, the Lok Sabha was dissolved and fresh elections announced. President Venkataraman asked Chandra Shekhar to continue as caretaker prime minister till June when the new government would take over.

The first phase of the General Elections took place in May. Then, on the night of May 21, tragedy struck: Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated while campaigning in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. The next phase of elections were held in June. In the first phase, voting took place for 211 constituencies while the rest of constituencies voted in June. The results showed a marked variation between the two phases: the Congress did not do well in the constituencies that voted before Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, whereas in the constituencies that went to the poll after the tragedy the Congress did remarkably well.

The results reflected the sympathy and horror felt by the people over the young leader’s assassination. Incidentally, that act by the LTTE led to the total loss of support for it in India. In the end, the Congress was the largest party with 244 seats, which, however, did not reach the level of a simple majority in the House. The BJP improved upon its earlier tally creditably.

(June 1991 – May 1996) Pamulaparti Venkata (P.V.) Narasimha Rao was chosen to lead the Congress (I) after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Narasimha Rao was an erudite scholar and knew several languages, and he was a Congress loyalist. He had held important ministerial posts—external affairs, defence, human resources, and home—in the governments of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. After the elections, he formed a minority government.

Narasimha Rao himself had not contested elections in 1991, probably with the intention of retiring from politics. But after he was sworn in as prime minister, he won in a by-election from Nandyal in Andhra Pradesh to become a member of the Lok Sabha. Rao is best remembered for the economic reforms undertaken by his government; however, he has other achievements to his credit as well. And a few blots as well.

On becoming prime minister, Narasimha Rao inducted Manmohan Singh, a non-political economist who was at the time Chairman of the University Grants Commission, into his cabinet as finance minister. He backed his finance minister in all the steps he took and took a few on his own as industries minister. He also managed the reactions, especially within the Congress party, which were not initially in favour of reform when socialism had been the basic approach under Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

The economy of India was in shambles. Besides the precarious balance of payment situation, domestic scene was not good with high inflation. When Rao became prime minister, the Soviet economic model was discredited. China under Deng Xiao Ping had undertaken market-oriented reforms. Narasimha Rao also opted for market reforms, but not the free market type; he opted for the middle path. He focused on reforms that would produce the least pain to the masses in general even while producing high growth rates.

The government approach was not radically reformist. There was to be no bank privatisation or staff reforms. Nor would there be no opening up of the farm sector. The New Economic Policy of1991 aimed at correcting the weaknesses on the fiscal and balance of payments fronts to stabilise the economy. On the structural reform side, the policy sought to remove the rigidities that infested the various sectors of the economy.

An effort was to be made to control inflation and release industries from unnecessary controls and regulations so that hurdles in the way of growth would be removed. The fundamentals of the new economic model were to be liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. The rupee was devalued. Manmohan Singh explained that this would help export. The budget took a bold step of correcting fiscal imbalance by reducing the fiscal deficit.

Singh initiated the gradual reduction of import duties, income tax, and corporate tax. The finance minister, with the support of his prime minister, specifically targeted the highly restrictive trade and industrial policies. The quotas on the imports of most machinery and equipment and manufactured intermediate goods were removed. There was a rationalisation of the tariff structure and reduction in custom duties, especially on capital goods.

Imports of technology were freed. The Industrial Policy of1991 was revolutionary for the times. Significantly, Narasimha Rao himself held the industries portfolio. The industrial licensing system was made applicable to a much shortened list of environmentally sensitive or security-related industries. The MRTP Act was modified to remove sections that restricted growth or prevented merger of large business houses.

The industries reserved for the public sector was drastically reduced. The public sector was also granted more autonomy. Private investment was made welcome in the infrastructural sector. The restrictions on foreign ownership were liberalised. Foreign investment was gradually liberalised. The service sector was also liberalised, with private sector allowed to invest in insurance, banking, telecom, and air travel sectors.

The Rao government abolished the Controller of Capital Issues which governed capital issues in India; introduced the SEBI Act of1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) to regulate all security market intermediaries; and started the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system. The system may not have been wholly reformed: because of bureaucratic controls it still took

much more time to start a business in India when compared to China or Malaysia; labour laws were not reformed, and the process of exit for losing enterprises continued to be difficult.

Though it was Rajiv Gandhi who had initiated the move, it was during the time when Narasimha Rao was prime minister that the Panchayati Raj and municipal government got constitutional status. With the enactment of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, a new chapter, Part-IX, was inserted in the Constitution of India. A new Eleventh Schedule covering 29 subjects within the functions of the Panchayats was also added.

The amendment is an implementation of one of the Directive Principles of State Policy. States have been given flexibility to take into consideration their geographical, politico-administrative, and other conditions while adopting the Panchayati Raj system. With the enactment of the 74th Amendment to the Constitution, a new chapter, Part-IX A, has been added to the Constitution. States now have a constitutional obligation to adopt municipalities as per the system prescribed in the Constitution.

In both panchayats and municipal bodies there is reservation for SC/ST and women; this is an attempt to ensure that there is inclusiveness in local self-government.

The Punjab situation was controlled. Rao went in for state elections though there were misgivings. It was for the good as after the 2002 elections, militancy died down. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act was passed mainly directed towards eliminating the infiltrators from Pakistan. The modernisation of the defence sector was given importance, and military spending was increased.

Prithvi 1 missile was inducted into the army. It is widely believed that it was Narasimha Rao who made sure that India’s nuclear programme made progress. Space technology progressed with the successful tests of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle as well as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

The Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, and the Indians were forced to rethink their foreign policy as there was no Cold War, and bloc politics now had no place in international relations. India’s relations with the US gradually improved. But India also tried to build up strong relations with other nations of the West as well as with Japan, Israel, Brazil, and South Africa. Post Cold War, India’s foreign policy became closely linked with its economic policy.

Rao launched the Look East policy in an attempt to bring India closer to ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations). The strategy involved the creation of close economic and commercial ties, bringing about an increased cooperation in strategic and security matters, and an emphasis on age-old cultural and ideological connections between India and the region. The policy has over time served to strengthen India’s political, economic, and cultural relations with the countries of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, besides helping India become an important part of the economic and security dynamics of the region. Significantly, the policy was taken up by governments that came after Narasimha Rao’s.

Rao’s overture to China, which he visited in 1993, and Iran were useful when Pakistan brought a resolution on India’s violation of human rights in Kashmir in the human rights body of the UN: China and Iran did not favour it.

There were two main criticisms against Narasimha Rao. One was that he allowed the Babri Masjid demolition and the other was corruption. The Babri Masjid Demolition In the late 1980s, the Bharatiya Janata Party had raked up the issue of the Ram Janmabhoomi to its advantage in the 1991 elections. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was even more vociferous and aggressive on the issue and began organising protests and demonstrations in Ayodhya and in other parts of the country demanding a temple at the site of the Babri Masjid.

There was apparently some demolition and building at the site earlier itself, but the administration took no notice. Uttar Pradesh was under BJP rule, and the chief minister at the time was Kalyan Singh. The VHP announced that on December 6, 1992, work on the temple would begin. Thousands of volunteers—the kar sevaks—converged on Ayodhya. While the plan announced was that prayers would be held on a platform near the mosque, when the time came, groups of kar sevaks were moving towards the mosque despite being asked not to by the RSS and the police.

The crowd became quite uncontrollable and not amenable to reason, their one intention being to demolish the mosque. They were armed with iron rods and other tools and had soon scaled the mosque walls. The BJP leaders gathered there, such as L.K. Advani, are reported to have called these kar sevaks back but to no avail. The police did little to control the situation. The mosque was soon attacked and reduced to rubble.

The BJP clarified that it was not a party to the vandalism and that it was an unfortunate thing to have happened. It was more than unfortunate; it was tragic and ominous and would have long-term repercussions. BJP leaders were arrested. Communal riots broke out in Uttar Pradesh and many other parts of the country resulting in many deaths. Bombay was one of the worst sufferers, with the Shiv Sena stoking the violence.

In 1993, there were bomb blasts in the city at strategic locations orchestrated by a couple of mafia dons based in Dubai, apparently in retaliation for the attacks on Muslims earlier. The fact that Kalyan Singh did nothing to stop the situation from turning ugly cannot be condoned; as a chief minister, he was an authority of the State and he should have upheld the law and enforced it. What shocked many and aroused criticism was the non-action of the Centre.

Surely, it was pointed out, president’s rule should have been imposed in anticipation of trouble and central forces should have been given firm orders to intervene and control the situation. Maybe the prime minister did not want himself and his party to be dubbed anti-Hindu by taking firm action. The Uttar Pradesh government was dismissed and president’s rule imposed on the state only after the destruction had taken place.

India’s image was damaged world over because of this event and its aftermath of riots. There were dire predictions that India wold be reduced to one of those lawless countries with ineffective government or become a dictatorship of some kind. The predictions did not come true, but the Babri Masjid demolition remains a blot in the history of modern India that continues to echo down the years ominously.

In society, where there had so far been no open antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, though a sense of victimhood was felt by both and communal riots did occur, now there was open suspicion and even hostility between the two communities. It

would not be fair or true to say that every Muslim and every Hindu felt that way, but the general impression to that effect had been created. Liberhan Commission A commission was appointed 10 days after the Babri Masjid demolition by order of the home ministry. The one-man commission, comprising Justice Liberhan, a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, was assigned the task of probing the sequence of events that led to the occurrences at the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid complex on December 6, 1992, resulting in the destruction of the structure.

The commission submitted its report some 17 years later in June 2009 when the UPA was in the government. The commission indicted top BJP leaders, and held 68 people culpable, including L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Kalyan Singh, the then-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. It identified the Kalyan Singh-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh as the key to the execution of the conspiracy to demolish Babri Masjid.

The report of the commission apparently contained no criticism of the 1992 Indian government and then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. It accepted Rao’s contention that it was not possible to legally and constitutionally impose president’s rule in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992 before the event. Corruption Scandals Till July1993, the Narasimha Rao government ran smoothly though technically it was a minority government.

But in July 1993, the opposition decided to test the strength of the government and brought in a no-confidence motion. The government side on its own did not have the numbers to pass the test. When the no-confidence motion was put to vote, it was found that some members belonging to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Janata Dal (Ajit Singh group) had voted against the motion, thus enabling the government to win the vote and remain in power for the full five-year term.

It was later alleged that the JMM members had been bribed by Narasimha Rao through a representative. In 1996, after Rao was no longer prime minister, investigations in the case took place. A special court convicted Rao and his colleague, Buta Singh (who is alleged to have taken the MPs to the prime minister). However, on appeal to a higher court, the decision was overturned, mainly due to the doubt attached to the credibility of Mahato who said he had taken the bribe.

Both Rao and Buta Singh were cleared of the charges in 2002. Rao’s name was also dragged into the Harshad Mehta stock market scam and then in the hawala and Lakhubhai cheating cases. Rao was cleared in both cases. Rao may not have been convicted in any of the cases, but in the public mind the whiff of corruption never faded.

Even as Hindu religious feelings were being whipped up in India by certain groups, there was growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Kashmir valley. It was in the 1980s and the 1990s that militancy grew with the active help of Pakistan. Religious sentiment was intensified and linked to the liberation of Kashmir from the Indian State. The cry was for ‘jihad’ and groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba wanted Kashmir to join Pakistan.

This group was rapidly gaining prominence, trying to suppress other groups such as JKLF which wanted independence rather than joining Pakistan, and working for vengeance against India for its role in the creation of Bangladesh. The fundamentalism was not confined to fighting the Indian State machinery but extended to changing the way of life with banning cinema, smoking, and drinking alcohol besides compelling women to wear the burqa.

The Pandits bore the brunt of the actions of the militants: they were forced to leave their homes and Kashmir and become refugees.

In May1996, Narasimha Rao resigned following the resounding defeat of the Congress in the General Elections. He also resigned from the post of party chief later. The elections were fought along three themes—Ayodhya, economy, corruption. Lines were drawn along religious and caste; besides the Congress was torn by factions, and many accusations were made against the Narasimha Rao government from within the party itself for mishandling situations and corruption charges.

In the circumstances, the verdict was fractured. No party got enough seats to form a government on its own. The BJP won the most seats (161), while its allies formed of Samata Party, Shiva Sena, and Haryana Vikas Party won a total of 26 seats, thus making the BJP group get a total 187 seats. The Congress got the second position, while the National Front composed of Janata Dal, Telugu Desam, and Left Front won 114 seats.

Another feature that marked the 1996 general elections was that several strong regional and state parties showed no interest in allying with any of the three main contenders for power.

Even as political parties were getting to represent people on the basis of religion and the OBCs, the Dalits (much more commonly used now than the official scheduled caste or the Gandhian term ‘Harijan’) were also being consolidated into being represented by their own party. In earlier times, the Congress had always drawn the Dalit votes, and after the death of Ambedkar, the Dalits found a leader in Jagjivan Ram.

The Congress in this aspect was challenged only by the Republican Party in Maharashtra and by the more militant Dalit Panthers, also in the same state. But alongside, as far back as in the 1970s, Kanshi Ram, having quit his government job, had mobilised Dalit government employees into an organisation— the All India Backward and Minority CommunitiesEmployees Federation (BAMCEF). This organisation attracted a large number of followers.

Encouraged, Kanshi Ram started a political party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which, as indicated by the choice of the name ‘bahujan’, was to represent not just Dalits but other backward castes as well as Muslims and others as well over time. The area of influence was mainly Uttar Pradesh. The Dalits were drawn by the narrative that the BSP presented—that the Congress was merely using them as vote banks whereas the BSP stood for social justice and change that would take the Dalits along the path of progress.

The BSP fought the 1984 elections but won no seat though it got quite a few votes. In the Uttar Pradesh state elections, it made an impressive showing. In 1993, the party won more than 60 seats, mostly drawing away votes from the Congress, and became a major player in Uttar Pradesh politics alongside the Samajwadi Party and the BJP. Mayawati, a protégé of Kanshi Ram, succeeded him as the leader of the BSP.

She was the one who built up alliances with other caste groups and political parties. She won a Lok Sabha seat in 1989. In 1995, In June1995, she created history by becoming the first-ever Dalit woman in India to serve as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Though her term in office was short, in later years she was to come back as chief minister of the state. In 2007, she became chief minister, and this time she stayed in that post till 2012.

Between 1996 And 1999: Three Prime Ministers Now began a period of quick change of governments; the period 1996–1999 saw three prime

ministers at the helm. The BJP won its largest tally so far in the 1996 elections, but, even with its allies, it was far from the simple majority required to form a government on its own. The National Front emerged as a contender with the agenda of replacing the Congress or the BJP. The elections also for the first time showed the strength of regional and state parties.

As it was the largest party in the Lok Sabha, the BJP was called by President Shankar Dayal Sharma to try and form a government. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was elected the new Prime Minister of India, replacing P.V. Narasimha Rao of the Indian National Congress in May 1996. However, the party just found no allies to support it, and Vajpayee resigned after just 13 days later rather than lose a confidence vote in the House. The Congress, as the second largest party, declined the invitation to form a government.

In the end, the United Front, composed of some 13 parties including the National Front, Tamil Maanila Congress, the DMK, and Asom Gana Parishad, and led by Deve Gowda, formed the government with outside support extended by the Congress party. The Communists later joined the government. The government, however, fell in April 1997 when the Congress party withdrew its support. During its short tenure, the government signed an agreement on confidence-building measures with China and the Ganga water accord with Bangladesh.

The government maintained its refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The government, however, fell in April 1997 when the Congress party withdrew its support. A compromise was reached so as to avoid elections: the Congress agreed to support a government led by a new leader. The United Front elected I. K. Gujral as the new leader, and he was sworn in as prime minister on April 21, 1997.

I.K. Gujral is best known for what has come to be known as the Gujral Doctrine. This was a policy which sought friendship, on the basis of sovereign equality and noninterference, with the neighbouring countries of India. Its aim was to create an atmosphere of peace in South Asia.

It enunciated five principles: (i) With the neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka, India does not ask for reciprocity but gives all that it can in good faith and trust. (ii) No South Asian country will allow its territory to be used against the interest of another country of the region. (iii) None will interfere in the internal affairs of another. (iv) All South Asian countries must respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. (v) All South Asian countries will settle all their disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations.

Though theoretically praiseworthy, critics have pointed out that it may not work very well to believe in the ‘inherent goodwill’ of openly hostile neighbours.

Gujral managed to maintain good relations with the Congress, which supported his government from outside. Trouble, when it came, came from within his party. The Governor of Bihar gave the Central Bureau of Investigation the permission to take up a corruption case against the chief minister of the state, Lalu Prasad Yadav in the matter of the purchase of fodder (what has come to be called the Fodder Scam).

Yadav refused to resign in the face of demands from within and outside the United Front. Gujral personally told him to resign. In the end, Lalu Yadav left the party and formed his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal in July 1997. However, as the new party extended its support to the United Front, the government did not fall. The Gujral government took a controversial decision when it recommended to the president that president’s rule be imposed in Uttar Pradesh which was then under Kalyan Singh of the BJP when violence marred the assembly.

President K.R. Narayanan sent it back to the government for reconsideration. A decision by the Allahabad High Court also went against the idea of president’s rule in Uttar Pradesh. Then the Jain Commission which had enquired into the conspiracy aspects of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination submitted its report to the government. The government finally tabled the report in Parliament in November. The report criticised the DMK for tacitly supporting the Tamil militants accused in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

This created uproar in the House, and the Congress demanded that the prime minister dismiss the DMK ministers from his government. Gujral refused and the Congress party finally withdrew support from the government on November 28. 1997. Gujral resigned as a result, though he continued to be caretaker prime minister till the next government took over.

Fresh elections were held in February–March, 1998. Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, entered the political fray and campaigned for the Congress. It was the fourth time since 1989 when a parliamentary election yielded a ‘hung’ house, indicating that the era of coalitions had become established. The BJP once again came ahead of the other parties though without a majority of its own. This time round, however, the BJP had formed an alliance with regional parties from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa (now Odisha), and West Bengal. This enabled it to increase its tally of seats, besides attracting new post-poll allies.

(March 1998 – October 1999) After the elections of 1998, the BJP joined up with several regional parties to stake its chance to form the government. The group became known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP was chosen to lead the NDA, and in March 1998, he was sworn in as prime minister, for the second time. The NDA proved its majority in the Lok Sabha. The government lasted till April 1999 when the AIADMK withdrew from the NDA.

In a dramatic noconfidence motion in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1999, the government lost by a single vote. This loss is generally attributed to the vote of Giridhar Gamang, who, despite having been chief minister of Orissa for a couple of months, had not yet resigned from the Lok Sabha, so was technically still an MP.

With the Opposition not able to come up with an alternative to form the new government, the Lok Sabha was dissolved by President K.R. Narayanan, and fresh elections were held in September–October 1999. Vajpayee remained caretaker prime minister till the elections. In the meanwhile, Sharad Pawar and some leaders left the Congress when the party chose Sonia Gandhi as its head. The few months the Vajpayee government was in power were marked by some notable events.

In May1998, a series of five nuclear explosions was conducted by India at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range. This was the second time, the first time being in 1974, that such devices were being tested. Termed Operation Shakti, it involved the underground detonation of a regular fission device, fusion devices, as well as a ‘sub-kiloton’ device. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee convened a press conference to declare India a full-fledged nuclear state.

The main scientists involved were A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (a future President of India) who was a scientific adviser to the prime minister and head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, and R. Chidambaram who was Director of the Department of AtomicEnergy. May 11, incidentally, is celebrated as National Technology Day. The world, especially the US, was shocked, as the detonations were conducted with utmost secrecy.

The relations between the US and India plunged to an all-time low. The US implemented the Glenn Amendment for the first time. Newer sanctions were imposed, and at one point it looked that relations would never recover. Pakistan reacted with its own nuclear tests, Chagai I and II, also in May 1998, as if it were responding in kind to India. In June, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the Indian and Pakistani tests.

In late 1998 and early 1999, Vajpayee worked towards a diplomatic peace process with Pakistan. The Delhi-Lahore bus service was inaugurated in February 1999, and Prime Minister Vajpayee travelled to Lahore by the bus. An attempt was made by Vajpayee now to begin a new peace process between India and Pakistan so as to permanently resolve the Kashmir dispute and other conflicts.

At a summit at Lahore in February 1999, Prime Minister Vajpayee of India andPrime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan signed the Lahore Declaration, espousing a commitment to dialogue, expansion of trade relations and mutual friendship, undertaking to refrain from intervention and interference in each other’s internal affairs,

and expressing a commitment to take immediate steps for reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons and discuss concepts and doctrines with a view to elaborating measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields, aimed at prevention of conflict, reaffirming their condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and their determination to combat this menace and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The bonhomie of the bus and the summit at Lahore did not last long. Barely three months after the summit, it was found that a steady infiltration was taking place into the Kashmir valley by

armed militants and Pakistanis soldiers, and these intruders had got control of hilltops at the border and unmanned border posts. It came out later that the incursion was planned by the military of Pakistan which was under General Pervez Musharraf, and the civilian prime minister was only told after the plan was under way. The Kargil district was the main centre of this incursion. The Indian Army first came to know of the incursion from a group of shepherds in May 1999.

Swift action was taken to counter the Pakistani infiltration. Both army and the air force (with its operation called ‘Safed Sagar’) were coordinated in their action. (But the military were told clearly that they were not to cross the Line of Control.) Operation Vijay was successful and the peaks taken over by the Pakistanis recaptured. The vantage points included Tiger Hill in the Drass sector. These points were crucial as they overlooked the Srinagar-Leh highway which the Pakistanis aimed at occupying and so cutting off this only all-weather road link between the two towns.

In June, Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan is reported to have asked the US to intervene, but the then US president Bill Clinton declined to do so until Pakistani troops were withdrawn from the Line of Control. Nawaz Sharif ordered the operation of the Pakistanis to stop. By July 26, the war was over with India victorious. The Indians fought a fierce battle in cold and treacherous terrain, and over 500 of the soldiers were killed.

The Kargil victory boosted the image of Vajpayee as a decisive and sensible leader and also enthused the public with patriotic feelings.

(October 1999 – May 2004)

The Kargil war was fresh in the public mind when the country went to the polls in 1999. There was public support for the NDA and the prime minister, in particular. The election results gave the NDA led by the BJP a majority with the support of new constituents such as the Janata Dal (United) and the DMK. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in as prime minister for the third time on October 13, 1999.

The NDA government carried forward the economic reforms that had been initiated by the Narasimha Rao government. Infrastructure development got special attention and encouragement. Telecom, highways—the National Highways Development Project and theGolden Quadrilateral—got importance. Rural sector was not ignored: the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana was launched to improve rural connectivity with all-weather roads.

The services sector was growing and software industry was given a boost. Outsourcing of work from the West created tremendous increase in jobs in India. The government came out with a new telecom policy that announced a shift from the high fixed licence fee to a more reasonable revenue-share based fee. The government also privatised state monopolies such as VSNL and brought about fiscal changes in the form of duty-free imports. The Disinvestment Commission was upgraded into a ministry.

With the economy being opened up, foreign companies began tapping Indian markets. Indian pharmaceuticals exported their medicines and brought in precious foreign exchange. Efforts were made to encourage foreign investment, especially from Europe and the United States. The government was instrumental in getting through the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act in 2003 to institutionalise financial discipline, reduce India’s fiscal deficit, improve macroeconomic management and the overall management of the public funds by moving towards a balanced budget and strengthen fiscal prudence.

The government tried to spread education through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for achieving universalisation of primary education. A highlight of the period was the Constitution 86th Amendment Act, 2002, which placed the right to education among the Fundamental Rights in Part-III of the Constitution.

In December1999, an Indian Airlines flight (IC 814 from Nepal) was hijacked by Pakistani terrorists and flown to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The government ultimately met the demands of the terrorists and released certain terrorists including Maulana Masood Azhar from prison. There was no explanation forthcoming from the Indian government as to why the external affairs minister personally escorted the terrorists to Afghanistan to exchange them for the passengers.

Relations with Pakistan dipped. But again in July 2001, Vajpayee made an effort to improve relations with Pakistan by inviting Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf to Delhi and Agra for a summit and peace talks. No breakthrough was possible as Musharraf did not agree to leave aside the Kashmir issue. Then, in December 2001, came the attack on the Parliament House in Delhi, which was carried out by Lashkare- Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists.

Once again Indo- Pakistani relations dipped. Following this attack and other terrorist attacks, the government got the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) passed.

With the US, India improved relations with President Clinton coming on a visit to India and efforts were made to expand trade and cooperation on strategic issues.

Kashmir went to elections in September 2002, which were firmly made free and fair with the Election Commission making its effort in that direction. Despite militants threatening the people and telling them to boycott the elections, large numbers of people voted. The National Conference which was in power was voted out. An alliance of the Congress and Peoples Democratic Party was voted to power. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became the chief minister.

In 2001, the defence minister, George Fernandes, was forced to resign following the Barak Missile Deal scandal and another scandal involving the supplies of coffins for the soldiers killed in Kargil. There was also the report of an enquiry commission that the government could have prevented the incursion in Kargil.

Then there was the episode of the BJP party chief, Bangaru Laxman, apparently accepting a bribe which was videoed and telecast—one of the first sting operations by the media. The Godhra incident and the riots that followed put a blot on the image of India. In February2002, the Sabarmati Express caught fire at Godhra (in Gujarat) and several pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were killed. It was widely believed that a mob of Muslims had set fire to the compartments, whereas reports also said the fire started inside the compartment was due to a gas cylinder or a stove catching fire.

Riots followed, with Ahmedabad and Baroda being chiefly affected. The riots have been called a pogrom as Muslims were targeted and the violence was unbelievable. It recalled the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Narendra Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat at the time, was severely criticised for being unable or unwilling to control the situation. It is believed that Prime Minister Vajpayee was deeply disturbed by the happenings in Gujarat and officially condemned it. It is also believed that he wanted Modi to resign, but others in the party dissuaded him from pursuing that.

The NDA government lasted almost its full term, the first non-Congress government to do so. Vajpayee turned out to be an efficient prime minister, ably managing the coalition tightrope politics. With the NDA completing its term, it appeared as if a credible alternative was available to the Congress at the national level. And this was necessary in a truly democratic State. Some of the programmes it launched were noteworthy. Its freeing the economy further helped India.

The Lok Sabha term was to end in October 2004, but the government decided on early polls; the Lok Sabha was dissolved in February itself and the country went to polls in April–May 2004. Perhaps the BJP thought that the government had done exceptionally well and took the slogan ‘India Shining’ seriously and misread the feelings on the ground. Perhaps it was encouraged by the party’s recent successes in state assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarh.

Even newspapers and magazines misread the situation and predicted that the NDA would win without difficulty. But the NDA was defeated. It is possible that the BJP lost the support of a section of the population because its campaign stressed economic issues rather than the controversial and ideological questions. The Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi, emerged as the single largest party.

(May 2004 – May 2009; May 2009 – May 2014) After the elections, the Congress joined up with minor parties to form the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which managed more numbers than the NDA. President Abdul Kalam called the UPA to form the government. The UPA with external support from the BSP, Samajwadi Party, Kerala Congress, and the Left parties managed a comfortable majority. It was expected that Sonia Gandhi, as party president, would be the natural choice for the prime minister’s post.

She declined the office, despite dramatic entreaties by her party members and the allies, stating that she was following her ‘inner voice’. She nominated Manmohan Singh for prime minister. She probably understood that her foreign origin would be exploited by the opposition to create trouble for the government. She, however, remained Congress party president and the UPA chairperson.

Manmohan Singh, former finance minister, who had initiated the economic reforms when in Narasimha Rao’s government, was sworn in as Prime Minister of India on May 22, 2004. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha. A common minimum programme (CMP) was formulated to guide the policies of the UPA government. As the communist parties had an important role in devising this CMP, the government’s policies were perceived to be ‘leftof- centre’.

Social Welfare Measures The reformist tendency of Manmohan Singh in the field of economy was probably curbed by Sonia Gandhi. A National Advisory Council (NAC) had been formed, which Sonia Gandhi chaired. This council had, as its members, social activists with a welfare agenda. The ideas for social welfare that came from the council needed to be adopted by the government. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)—to which the name of Mahatma Gandhi was added later to become MNREGA—was the largest welfare scheme of its kind in the world; it was started in 2006.

It guaranteed rural households 100 days of paid labour in a year, with the aim of tackling rural poverty. The programme also sought to help women with one-third of the work mandated for women. In 2005, the government’s health ministry started the National Rural Health Mission. Under the provisions of the Right to Information Act of2005, any citizen of India may request information from a ‘public authority’ which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days.

The act also requires every public authority to computerise their records for wide dissemination of certain categories of information so that citizens do not have to formally request for information. In 2005, Manmohan Singh’s government introduced VAT (value added tax) to replace the complicated sales tax. Foreign Relations The Manmohan Singh government made efforts for stronger ties with the United States.

The prime minister visited the US in July 2005 to initiate negotiations over the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. When, in 2006, President George W. Bush visited India, the declaration over the nuclear agreement was made. This gave India access to American nuclear fuel and technology, though in return India would have to allow its civil nuclear reactors to be inspected by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).

It was only in October 2008 that India and the US finally signed the agreement after further negotiations and approval from the IAEA, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the US Congress. With this agreement, the thirty-year-long ban that the US had placed on nuclear trade with India came to an end. Manmohan Singh was adamant over the Indo-US nuclear deal saying he would not backtrack from an international commitment even if it led to the fall of his government.

In July 2008, the UPA government faced a confidence vote over the issue, as the Left parties withdrew support to the government. The government managed to win the trust vote. Manmohan Singh tried to ease relations between India and the People’s Republic ofChina. In 2006, China’s President Hu Jintao visited India, and in 2008, the Indian prime minister visited Beijing. In the process, the Nathula Pass was reopened in 2006 after having been closed for more

than four decades. New President In the meanwhile, in 2007, Pratibha Patil was elected and sworn in as the President of India, the first woman to hold the post in the country. Not very well known, Pratibha Patil was a Congress member, who had been the Governor of Rajasthan, and a close associate of the Nehru-Gandhi family. She was favoured by Sonia Gandhi as a candidate for the president’s post. Terror Attacks India faced several terror attacks in 2007–08.

Even as terrorist acts were carried out by Islamic groups, there were also a number of bomb attacks in which the ostensible targets were Muslims, investigations into which pointed to the role of Hindu groups and individuals. In 2006, a series of explosions occurred at a Muslim cemetery in Malegaon, in Maharashtra. In May2007, a blast took place in the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, then in Andhra Pradesh.

In 2007, a bomb exploded at the Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan. These blasts claimed many lives. In February 2007, a blast on the Samjhauta Express took place as the train was on its way to Attari in Amritsar, the last railway station on the Indian side. Many Pakistanis were killed as well as some Indians. Initially, it was reported that the main suspects in the terrorist act were the Lashkar-e- Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

In 2009, the United States Treasury and the UnitedNations Security Council put in place sanctions on Lashkar-e-Toiba, and Arif Qasmani was named for having had a part in the Samjhauta Express bombing. However, in 2011, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), established after the NIA Bill was passed in December 2008 following the Mumbai terror attacks, accused eight people of involvement in the Samjhauta blasts.

These were all Hindus with extremist views who were, said the NIA, “angry with attacks on Hindu temples by jihadi terrorist activities”. They included Naba Kumar Sarkar, alias Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan, and Rajinder Chaudhary among others. [In March2019, however, the four were acquitted by the NIA court citing lack of evidence.] There was a series of bomb blasts in 2008 in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan.

In September2008, bombs were set off in a busy marketplace in Delhi. These acts of terrorism were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists often aided by Pakistan. The worst incident was the attack on November 26, 2008, perpetrated by Pakistani terrorists when a group of these young men went through Mumbai and created havoc. They entered the prestigious Taj hotel and held the guests hostage before killing many.

They attacked the busy Shivaji rail terminus, again causing the death of innocent people. India’s security weaknesses were exposed as these terrorists had apparently reached the coast of India in a small boat and entered the country unnoticed. In the end, nine of the terrorists were killed and one, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was captured. The captive’s confession confirmed that Pakistan and, more particularly, the Lashkar-e-Toiba, had masterminded the attack. [On November 11, 2012, a special court issued Kasab’s death warrant after a trial.

He was hanged to death after being held guilty of 80 offences, including waging war against India.] Situation in States Before the country went in for general elections, there were noteworthy changes in state governments. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), led by Mayawati, won a majority in the assembly elections and formed the government in Uttar Pradesh. Her party’s victory is attributed to the fact

that it had reached out to the higher castes among the Hindus besides the Muslims and not confined itself to the Dalits. After a long time, the state was free of a coalition government. This brought stability to the state. In May2008, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made an inroad in the South for the first time, forming the government in the state of Karnataka. In Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference emerged with the largest number of seats and formed a government, with the Congress joining as a junior coalition partner.

In Gujarat, Chattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh, the BJP was in power. Trouble in Kashmir Kashmir witnessed unrest once again in 2008. When it was decided to allot some forest land for shelters for pilgrims to Amarnath, there were protests in the Valley. There were counter-protests in Jammu, which was dominated by Hindus. Several people were killed in police firing. The series of protests and counter-protests subsided for a time in the winter before a fresh series or protests erupted in 2010, this time over a youth killed in police firing.

A large number of people, mostly the young, came out on the streets and they resorted to throwing stones and rocks at the police. The army was called in to control the situation, and this served to increase the resentment of the people. Protests continued, with violence every now and then. The situation worsened when it was reported that a copy of the Quran had been burnt by a Christian priest abroad.

Protestors burnt down a school of the Christians. The protestors in Kashmir were getting more and more influenced by the fundamentalists even as the central government would not even think of withdrawing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the state. The Kashmir situation continues to simmer.

The country went to the polls in April–May 2009 to elect the 15th Lok Sabha. Posters for the Congress campaign showed three faces: those of Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi (party president), and her son, Rahul Gandhi (who had become general secretary of the party in 2007), confirming the hold of the ‘First Family’ and the dynastic trend in the party. The main opposition party, the BJP, projected L.K.

Advani as the prime ministerial candidate. (Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not keeping well by this time.) Several regional parties too were in the fray, some of them allied with the BJP and some ready to support the Congress if the occasion demanded. The election results showed that the Congress was able to increase its tally of seats, though it could not get a majority on its own.

The reasons for the endorsement probably were that the middle classes were satisfied with the economy which was doing quite well, and they favoured the nuclear deal with the US; the welfare schemes initiated by the government at the behest of the NAC under Sonia Gandhi appealed to many in the rural sector, especially the women and the underprivileged, and had begun to show positive results; and Rahul Gandhi was expected to and, probably did, appeal to the younger voters. The UPA was once again in a position to form the government.

Manmohan Singh was sworn in as the prime minister on May 22; as per norms, he had submitted his resignation on May 18 to President Pratibha Patil. Manmohan Singh, thus, became the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962 to be re-elected after completing a full term. Telangana Issue The second term of the UPA government was marked by the agitation for a separate state for Telangana. Before the 2004 elections, the Congress had allied with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and promised to create a separate state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh if it came to

power at the Centre. The Congress did very well in Andhra Pradeshin the2009 elections, but the chief architect of that victory, Y.S.R. Reddy, who was the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, was totally opposed to the bifurcation of the state. In the circumstances, the Congress government, now in power at the Centre, went back on its promise on Telangana. [Also ignored was another promise—that a fresh states reorganisation committee would be formed to divide up some of the larger states.

This was because the Left, without whose support the government would not have survived, was strongly opposed to the idea.] Y.S.R. Reddy died in an air crash, and the agitation for Telangana got a fresh lease of life, with the movement being led by K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR). In November2009, KCR went on a fast unto death in the cause of Telangana as a separate state; life in Hyderabad was badly disrupted, with KCR’s supporters coming out in thousands to protest.

The government at the Centre gave in and, in December 2009, announced that the process to form the state was being initiated. The decision caused much resentment among the Congress MPs from coastal Andhra, but it had to be accepted in the end. The Centre appointed a commission headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court, B.N. Srikrishna, to look into the matter of bifurcation. The commission submitted its report in December 2010, but it was rejected by the TRS.

After much negotiation, Parliament cleared the Telangana Bill in February 2014. As per the act, Andhra Pradesh was formally divided to form the new state of Telangana. While the two states were to share Hyderabad as capital for ten years, the Centre was to provide funds to Andhra Pradesh (also Seemandhra) to build a new capital. [It was only in June 2014, after a new government took over at the Centre, that Telangana actually came into existence, with KCR as the chief minister.] Incidentally, in May 2011, there was a historic development on the state government level.

West Bengal, where the Left Front had ruled without break since 1977 (itself constituting a record), decided to switch allegiance, and put the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in power. Mamata Banerjee, who had once been in the Congress but had broken away to form and lead the TMC, became the new chief minister of the state. Social Welfare Measures and Legislations The UPA government brought in some important social welfare measures in its second term.

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, known as the RTE Act, came into being in 2009. The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 had already inserted Article 21-A in the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right in such a manner as the State may, by law, determine.

The RTE Act, 2009 put in place what is envisaged under Article 21-A; it means that every child has a right to full-time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school, which satisfies certain essential norms and standards. All private schools (except those recognised as ‘minority’ educational institutions) are required to enrol children from weaker sections and disadvantaged communities in their incoming class to the extent of 25 per cent of the school enrolment, through the means of simple random selection.

These children are to be treated on par with other children in the school, but they will be subsidised by the State. Article 21-A along with the RTE Act came into effect on April 1, 2010. An attempt was made to get the bill on reserving 33 per cent of seats in the union and state legislatures passed; the bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha, but the government was compelled to shelve it as its own allies, especially the Rashtriya Janata Dal, refused to support it. The government was, in a way, forced to formulate the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013

to deal with sexual offences against women. One night in December 2012, a horrific gang rape of a young woman took place in Delhi. Jyoti Singh, accompanied by her friend, got on to a private bus, which had some other men in it. These men, one of whom was a juvenile, with the collusion of the driver and the conductor, brutally raped and tortured the woman and beat up the young man accompanying her as the bus travelled around, even passing police check posts.

In the end, the woman and her friend were thrown out on to the roadside. They were found by a passerby who notified the police, and the victims were taken to hospital. Doctors could not save Jyoti. According to police reports, Jyoti had bravely attempted to fight off her attackers, hence she came to be called ‘Nirbhaya’ in the media as the real name of the rape victim could not be published. (Her real name was later revealed openly by her mother.) The police were quick to arrest the six culprits.

In March2014, the Delhi High Court found all the defendants guilty of rape, murder, unnatural offences, and destruction of evidence. The high court confirmed death sentence for all four men convicted earlier. (The juvenile was tried under a different law and escaped with a few years in prison, and one of the accused died in jail.) The case went in appeal to the Supreme Court. [It was not till 2018 that the case was finally settled.

In May2017, the Supreme Court rejected the convicts’ appeal and upheld the death sentence of the four who had been charged in the murder.

The convicts exercised their right to file a review petition to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court rejected the review petition in July 2018.] The gang rape incident led to widespread protests in Delhi and in many other places in India, in spite of the police arresting the culprits quickly. (Incidentally, the protests in India sparked protests across South Asia; marches and rallies took place in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.) The demonstrators who came from all walks of life, but mostly from among the youth, wanted the death penalty to be meted out to the criminals.

The protestors in Delhi turned violent and clashed with the security forces. The government was initially high-handed, but ultimately it was forced to climb down. The government appointed a three-member judicial committee on December 22, 2012. It was headed by J.S. Verma, a former Chief Justice of India and an eminent jurist, and was asked to recommend amendments to the criminal law so as to provide for quicker trial and greater punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women.

In its report, submitted in January 2013, the committee was critical of the government, the police, and even the public for its apathy. It identified ‘failure of governance’ as the fundamental cause for sexual crime. The committee made recommendations on laws related to rape, sexual harassment, trafficking, child sexual abuse, medical examination of victims, police, electoral and educational reforms.

The committee did not recommend the death penalty for rapists. It suggested a range of prison sentences—from seven years to life—for different situations arising from rape and gang rape. Recognising the need to curb all forms of sexual offence, the committee recommended suitable punishments for acid attacks and trafficking. It made it incumbent on the police to register every complaint of rape. It called for the police to be sensitised and trained to handle sexual assault cases appropriately.

Civil society, it said, should report every case of rape that came to its knowledge. It wanted all marriages to be registered. Under the Indian Penal Code, though sexual intercourse without consent is prohibited, an exception is made for sexual intercourse without consent within marriage. The committee recommended that there should be no such exception to marital rape.

Besides suggesting time-bound trials for rape cases and the need for stringent punishment for all forms of sexual harassment, including stalking and groping, the committee also called for a review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in conflict areas so that sexual offences by those in the forces are brought under ordinary criminal law. The panel strongly recommended that ‘law enforcement agencies do not become tools at the hands of political masters’.

It pointed out that members of the police force must understand ‘their accountability is only to the law and to none else in the discharge of their duty’. The committee also observed that the primary responsibility of the judiciary is to enforce fundamental rights. It called upon the judiciary to be vigilant. Calling for reforms to deal with criminalisation of politics, the committee suggested that a candidate be disqualified from participating in the electoral process for sexual offences, and that filing of a charge sheet and cognisance by the court should be sufficient for disqualification of a candidate.

The committee wanted education facilities to be provided by the State to the homeless and abandoned children. In February 2013, the government promulgated an ordinance amending the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act in matters relating to sexual offences. In March 2013, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act was passed by Parliament to replace the ordinance.

Several new sections were inserted in the existing laws to define and bring within the ambit of law such offences as acid attack, which would attract a 10-year jail term extendable to life imprisonment or fine or both; sexual harassment, with punishment of imprisonment ranging from 1 year to 3 years, fine or both; voyeurism, punishable with imprisonment from 3 years to 7 years; stalking, punishable with imprisonment of 1 year to 5 years; and gang rape, punishable with imprisonment up to 20 years extendable to life imprisonment. The age of consent has been increased from 16 years to 18 years.

Repeat offences in certain cases have been made punishable with life imprisonment or death. Besides, a quick trial and conviction is called for in cases of rape. The law has been criticised mainly for not bringing marital rape within its ambit, and for doing away with gender neutrality in the cases of sexual offences and rape because it recognises these offences only against women. In 2013, the government pushed through the National Food Security Act and the Right to Food Act.

This was aimed at providing subsidised food grains to the beneficiaries of the targeted public distribution system. Though it was pointed out that this kind of distribution may not reach the targeted population due to the corrupt and inefficient functioning of the public distribution system, NAC did not favour the idea of cash transfers/ food coupons. As one critic has observed, the contribution of the NAC to the agenda of ‘inclusive growth’ was to ensure that inclusiveness was to be through patronage and protection rather than promotion of livelihood and employment opportunities for the poor.

Clearly, the government faced some difficulties is reconciling its own priorities with those of the NAC. Space Venture to Mars Amidst all the negative aspects that occupied the political discussion, it was heartening to watch the success of Indian space scientists. In November2013, the first interplanetary mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), officially called the Mars Orbiter Mission and

popularly known as Mangalyaan, was launched. [On September 24, 2014, India’s space agency became the fourth agency to have launched a spacecraft that was successful in reaching Mars orbit, after the Russian, American, and the European space agencies. What is more, India became the first country to have succeeded in reaching Mars in its very first attempt, and at a remarkably low cost.] Corruption Charges and Lokpal Act The UPA government in its second term could also be credited with having got the Lokpal and Lokayuktas bill passed in December 2013.

But here too it was compelled by circumstances to do so. The second term of the UPA government was fraught with allegations of corruption against it. There was a controversy over the allocation of the 2G and 3G spectrum (telecom licences), which were alleged to have been given away at very low rates. In 2010, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report seemed to confirm this. Then came the Commonwealth Games scandal, with reports of huge sums of money changing hands for the procurement of contracts for various infrastructure projects.

While the 2G/ 3G scam could be laid at the doors of an ally of the Congress, the Commonwealth Games scam led to a Congress minister. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2012 charged that coal block allocations had led to a loss to the exchequer because the allocations were based on favouritism; this report actually cast an aspersion on Manmohan Singh’s reputation, which had always been that of a clean politician, as the allocations had been made when the coal portfolio was with him (2006–09).

The corruption stories were extensively covered and debated on the numerous television channels and brought the subject to a large number of people. Anti-corruption movements became prominent in 2011. Anna Hazare, a well-known social worker from Ralegaon Siddhi village in Maharashtra, came to Delhi in April 2011 and sat on a 12-day fast to protest against the corruption in government and the failure to tighten anti- corruption legislation.

His specific demand was that a Lokpal be established. Many activists joined him in the protest. ‘India Against Corruption’ was an organisation created to support Anna Hazare in his efforts. One of its main founders was Arvind Kejriwal, a Magsaysay Award winner and an activist for the right to information movement. Many of its members were prominent persons in public life–lawyers, civil servants, and academicians.

Large numbers of people, including celebrities, came out to support Anna Hazare. And the media coverage added to the importance of the event. The 2011 movement was significant in Indian political history in that it provided people the opportunity to express frustration. Most people had experience of having had to bribe officials and politicians for getting even legitimate work done. A series of demonstrations and protests against official corruption took place across India.

The government seemed to be rattled by the protests and responded by announcing that it would set up a committee to hammer out a lokpal bill. It said the committee would have five cabinet members and five persons nominated by India Against Corruption. Anna Hazare broke his fast and expressed the belief that the bill would be passed before Independence Day that year. The committee, however, failed in its effort as there was deep distrust between the government representatives and the activists, and they could not agree on some major aspects.

Soon there was another protest meeting, this time led by the yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, demanding the repatriation of unaccounted money from Swiss and other foreign banks. Though he was not like Anna Hazare in that he had political ambitions (he was considered close to the

BJP), he had a large following. Once again, there were large numbers joining in the protest. The government came down hard on the protestors after its efforts at conciliation failed. Ramdev was ordered to stay out of Delhi. The Lokpal Bill, approved by the government in July 2011, was rejected by the activists on the ground that it excluded several high functionaries from the ambit of the lokpal’s jurisdiction.

Anna Hazare declared that he would once again go on a fast in the cause of a better lokpal bill. Now a fiasco occurred, with the government arresting him. Anna Hazare willingly went to jail and refused bail, and began his fast right there, putting the officials in a quandary. The streets of Delhi filled with protestors supporting him. The government had no option but to release him. Anna Hazare continued his fast at the Ramlila Grounds.

A throng of supporters gathered to express solidarity. The protests were, on the whole, nonpartisan, with most protesters unwilling to let political parties make use of them in pushing political agendas. The movement was nowhere near Jaya Prakash Narayan’s ‘Sampurna Kranti’ (total revolution) agitation of 1974–77. The difference was that the protest in 2011 was held in full media glare; after all, the era of the 24×7 television had arrived.

The government failed in its efforts to move Anna Hazare from his position. In the end, towards the end of August, Parliament passed a resolution moved by the then finance minister, Pranab Mukheree, that a revised Lokpal Bill would be passed, which would meet the main demands made by Anna Hazare and his supporters. This led to Anna Hazare breaking his fast. The Anna Hazare protest did not succeed in making the government to immediately legislate on the lokpal.

Also, the supporters split on the issue of forming a political party. Anna Hazare and some of the protesters were not ready to enter the political arena. However, Arvind Kejriwal was in favour of entering politics. Kejriwal and some others formed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on November 26, 2012. It was going to create history by getting a stupendous majority in the Delhi Assembly elections of 2015, decimating the Congress and reducing the BJP to a few seats.

The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill was first tabled in the Lok Sabha in December 2011 and, after being passed, was tabled in the Rajya Sabha in the same month. The vote failed to take place after a marathon debate. In May 2012, the bill was referred to a select committee of the Rajya Sabha. In December 2013, it was passed by both the Houses of Parliament. On January 1, 2014, it received assent from President Pranab Mukherjee (who had been elected President of India in 2012).

The Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013 mandates the establishment of Lokpal for the Union and Lokayukta for states to enquire into allegations of corruption against certain public functionaries and for related matters. The act extends to whole of India, including Jammu and Kashmir, and is applicable to ‘public servants’ within and outside India. The act laid out the organisation, jurisdiction, and powers of the Lokpal.

The jurisdiction of the Lokpal will include the prime minister. If, however, a complaint is filed against the prime minister, certain conditions will apply. The Lokpal will also have jurisdiction over ministers and MPs but not in the matter of anything said in Parliament or a vote given there. The Lokpal’s jurisdiction will cover all categories of public servants. The Lokpal’s own members have been included in the definition of ‘public servant’. Critics have found two important shortcomings in the Lokpal Act: the Lokpal was not made a

constitutional body; and the judiciary was excluded from the ambit of the Lokpal. Conditions Before General Election When the country went to the general elections in April– May 2014, much of the positive achievements of the UPA in its second term was relegated to the background, while the corruption allegations remained in most people’s minds. The rural sector faced problems. Farmers committed suicide on a large scale, mainly due to indebtedness, crop failure, drought, and socio-economic factors.

Farmer distress did not seem to have come down even though the UPA government in 2008 had announced a loan waiver of Rs 70,000 crore. The UPA government rolled out several socio-economic programmes, but their implementation was poor in most cases. There was also dissatisfaction on a more general level. Common people were hit by price rise and unemployment, not to say lack of development. There was what analysts called ‘a policy paralysis’ in the second term of the UPA that led to stagnation on the development front, and many progressive economic ideas remained on paper.

The fiscal deficit and a sharp downslide of the rupee led to instability in the economy. It did not seem as if the UPA was coming back to power in 2014.

The 2014General Election, according to many analysts, was fought as if it were a presidential election. However, most of the elections to the Lok Sabha down the years have been based on projecting a strong personality: it was Jawaharlal Nehru’s campaigning which, in the main, drew the people’s support; then Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi too were the main draws. Even Sonia Gandhi when she took over the Congress leadership and campaigned was considered to be the future prime minister, though there were rumblings about her ‘foreign origin’.

In those times, however, the other parties lacked a matching figure to project. The Congress now fielded Rahul Gandhi as the face of the party, who, if the party won, would be the prime minister. Manmohan Singh had clearly stated that he was not ready to be prime minister again. Rahul Gandhi had been appointed vice-president of his party in January 2013, reinforcing the perception that the party followed the dynastic path and was full of sycophants.

The BJP, on the other hand, did have a more credible party structure in place: party decisions were based on discussion rather than on what a single individual said, party posts were filled through elections, and at this point of time, there were several young leaders, including state chief ministers, who could be projected as a future leader of the country. It was Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, who was chosen as the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP.

Rahul Gandhi, as an opponent of Narendra Modi, had little political experience and was a lackadaisical politician lacking the skills of an effective speaker. In his years in the Lok Sabha, he had made no noteworthy contribution. He was no match for Modi’s oratory skills and his indefatigable energy as he campaigned through the country. Even as Modi referred more than once to the dynastic nature of the Congress leadership, the lustre of the ‘First Family’ was fading, on the whole, in the public mind.

Modi pushed sectarian concerns that were associated with the BJP to the back burner and made ‘development’ the plank of his campaign. The methods of campaigning adopted by the BJP were also modern; the party made wide and effective use of the social media, hiring professionals who gave striking slogans and brought the

latest electioneering methods to work for the BJP. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadres went all out to help the BJP. Also, the BJP fought the elections as part of the NDA. It made effective alliances with the regional parties, which were part of the NDA. The electorate was slowly but steadily changing. The public, especially the youth, had a new outlook. With growing urbanisation and accompanying migration, caste equations had changed.

Modi minimised appeals for votes on the basis of caste. Modi’s firm commitment to development, industrialisation, and job creation appealed to the young and inspired hope in the public. The country went to the polls to elect the 16th Lok Sabha in April–May 2014. When the votes were counted, the BJP emerged with a majority on its own, with 282 seats. The Congress won just 44 seats, its worst performance in elections so far.

The BJP showed remarkable success in most states; the exceptions were West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. Its vote share on all-India basis increased from about 19 per cent to about 31 per cent.

(May 2014 –May 2019) Though the BJP had a majority on its own, it did not ignore its allies; it was the NDA that formed the government on May 26, 2014. Narendra Modi took his oath as prime minister along with some members of his council of ministers; the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, administered the oath of office. The venue was the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. The swearing-in ceremony was the first where all SAARC heads were invited, and all attended.

A non-Congress government was in power after 10 years, and a single party had a full majority after a long while. The Modi government declared its intention to adopt a developmental agenda–Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas (roughly translated, ‘together with all, development for all’). There was to be greater inclusion, social and financial, and better accountability and transparency of government working.

There was to be less government and more governance. The government said it would work for cooperative federalism, economic prosperity, and improving the image of India in the world. Its work at the end of five years was a mix of positives and negatives.

One of the basic aims of the Modi government was to encourage electronic governance. Considering the importance of reducing the paperwork involved in the public-government interface and thereby lowering the corruption levels, the Modi government launched the Digital India campaign within three months of taking office, in August 2014. The success of several socio-economic and governance programmes, existing as well as intended to be launched, depended upon the efficacy of Digital India.

The idea was to electronically empower the Indian citizen and the economy. The programme was designed to get all government departments and the people of India to connect with each other digitally or electronically, so that governance could be improved. The government also intended to enhance and improve connectivity of all villages and rural areas through internet networks. There is no doubt that e-infrastructure, e-participation, and government e-services were put in place and made to work to improve transparency. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a

payment system allowing mobile-enabled money transfers between bank accounts, and the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) for a less-cash economy were developed and put to good use, and certainly proved helpful to the citizens.

The NDA government under Narendra Modi took some noteworthy steps in the economic field. While some of the policies leveraged past ideas, such as Aadhaar or the Goods and Services Tax (GST), other ideas, like demonetisation and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, were new. Disbanding Planning Commission and Setting up NITI Aayog Almost one of the first acts of the NDA government was to scrap the Planning Commission and set up in its place the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog.

The Independent Evaluation Office submitted an assessment report to Prime Minister Modi on May 29, 2014, recommending that the Planning Commission be replaced with a ‘control commission’. The union cabinet scrapped the Planning Commission in August 2014. On January 1, 2015, after a cabinet resolution was passed to replace the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog, the formation of the NITI Aayog was announced by the Government of India.

This body, too, like the Planning Commission was established by executive order. The NITI Aayog was conceived as a policy think tank of the Government of India. Its aim was to enhance cooperative federalism by fostering the involvement and participation of state governments of India in the economic policy- making process using a bottom-up approach. It, unlike the Planning Commission, would not allocate funds to the states for different programmes.

NITI Aayog comprises, in the main, the Prime Minister of India as the chairperson and a governing council comprising the chief ministers of all the states and lieutenant governors of union territories. JAM Trinity: Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile The NDA government was instrumental in bringing about an important reform which was given a catchy abbreviated form, JAM, for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar, and mobile number.

The reform was to directly transfer subsidy to the beneficiary. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was announced by the prime minister in his Independence Day speech, and it was launched on August 24, 2014. It was one of the largest schemes in the world for financial inclusion, directed towards helping those persons so far without a bank account to open a bank account (without minimum balance requirement), get a debit card, and access to social security schemes like insurance and pension.

There is no doubt that the scheme served to bring about a huge increase in bank accounts being opened, and over the years bring in a considerable amount of money into the formal banking system. The first steps of moving unbanked Indians towards organised finance were thus taken. Criticism that privacy and security are affected need to be addressed, but the advantages of the poor getting access to modern finance cannot be denied.

A tool for identity mapping that was launched by the UPA in January 2009, Aadhaar was strengthened and institutionalised by the new government. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established as a central government agency with the objective of collecting the biometric and demographic data of residents, storing them in a centralised database, and issuing a 12-digit unique identity number called Aadhaar to each resident.

Aadhaar was put to use by the NDA government in improving the delivery of services to the citizens. The NDA government managed to get Parliament to enact the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act in March 2016. The Centre began identifying the

recipients of the LPG subsidy by insisting that consumers link their gas connections and bank accounts to their Aadhaar. Though the Supreme Court restricted the use of Aadhaar to welfare schemes in which the people receive benefits from the government, the system brought down wastage and corruption in the transfer of benefits. Several subsidy schemes that had been designed to ensure a minimum standard of living to the poor took different routes to reach the beneficiary.

The Centre and the states supplied rice, wheat, pulses, cooking oil, sugar, and kerosene at heavily subsidised prices through the PDS. Power, fertilisers, and oil were sold below market prices to certain sections of the population. The MGNREGA operated through the panchayats which paid minimum wages to the workers. As these subsidies made their way to the target beneficiary, there were leakages on the way, with corruption and inefficiencies reducing the final amounts.

The JAM trinity was intended to reduce the leakages and ensure that the real beneficiaries got their due by doing away with the intermediaries: Aadhaar would help in foolproof identification of the correct citizens, while Jan Dhan bank accounts and mobile phones would facilitate direct transfers of funds into the targeted person’s accounts. To get the money into people’s hands, greater use of mobile payments technology was to be used.

Transfer of money could be quick as well as secure and convenient through use of mobiles. Over time, if leakages are stopped and savings for the government increased, the burden on the taxpayer would go down. Moreover, with lower subsidies and fiscal deficit, India’s international credit standing would improve. Health Policy A new National Health Policy was launched in January 2015. Government spending was not increased; instead, the role of private healthcare organisations was emphasised.

In this, the Modi government showed a different path from that of the UPA government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals. Several national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting health care for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In2018, the Ayushman Bharat programme, a government health insurance scheme, was launched.

On October 2, 2014 was launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission), Prime Minister Modi’s flagship sanitation campaign, the belief being that sanitation was basic to ensuring good health. It was a nationwide campaign in India aimed at cleaning up the streets, roads, and infrastructure of India’s cities, towns, and rural areas, and doing away with manual scavenging. The main aim was to make the country free of open defecation to which purpose government encouraged the building of toilets.

In 2018, the World Health Organisation said thousands of deaths from diarrhoea were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation mission. Steps Directed Towards Economic Reform The Modi government’s economic policies focused on liberalising the economy. The foreign direct investment policies were liberalised to allow more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways.

Well aware that the job situation was not good and that India’s demographic dividend could rapidly turn from an asset to a liability, the Modi government initiated the Make in India scheme in September 2014. It was a flagship programme to boost the domestic manufacturing industry and attract foreign investment in the Indian economy. Along with it, many other

programmes were also put in place, such as Start Up India, Stand Up India, Skill India, and so on. The success of these programmes was not up to expectations, but they did make some progress. Parliament amended the Arbitration and Conciliation Act1996 to expedite the arbitration of commercial disputes. The amended law tackled issues of conflicts of interest and brought disclosures by arbitrators into the ambit of the law.

Time limit was set on the arbitration procedure. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code was a new law enacted in 2016 to consolidate the existing laws related to insolvency in India and to simplify the process of insolvency resolution so as to enable easy exit in cases of insolvency of individuals and companies.

This law replaced several overlapping provisions contained in various laws, such as the Sick Industrial Companies (Special Provisions) Act, 1985, the Recovery of Debts Due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act, 1993, the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (also known as the Sarfaesi Act), and the Companies Act, 2013, among others.

With the new law in place, banks and other creditors could hope to recover their loans from the bankrupt companies in a time-bound and efficient way, entrepreneurship could be promoted, availability of credit could be maximised, and a balance of the interests of all the stakeholders maintained. Unaccounted money has been a bane of Indian economy. The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act of2016 tightened the law in the use of unaccounted, taxevaded money for what is known as ‘benami’ transactions through the purchase of property.

Under the amended law, authorities were empowered to provisionally attach and eventually confiscate benami properties. Jail terms of between one and seven years and a fine are prescribed for offenders. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act of2016 was another policy initiative of the NDA government. As per the law, a regulator—the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA)—was to be established in every state to oversee the sector and “protect the interest of consumers in the real estate sector” through an adjudicating mechanism and appellate tribunal.

It was made mandatory for every real estate project to be registered with its state’s RERA. Unfortunately, this law required to be enforced by state governments. The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA), which came into force in April 2018, was required to tackle the large fraud cases reported by banks. Under the law, if an economic offender flees the country to avoid due process, he/she can be declared a ‘fugitive economic offender’ and their properties can be confiscated and auctioned to recover at least part of the debt.

The government adopted the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) in 2016, with the major guiding principles of enhancing domestic oil and gas production; bringing substantial investment; generating sizeable employment; enhancing transparency; and reducing administrative discretion.

The policy envisaged providing a uniform licence for exploration and production of all forms of hydrocarbon, such as oil, gas, coal bed methane, etc., instead of the earlier system of issuing separate licences for each kind of hydrocarbon; an open acreage policy, i.e., giving the option to a hydrocarbon company to select the exploration blocks throughout the year without waiting for the formal bid round from the government; easy-to-administer revenue sharing model; and the freedom to market and price the crude oil and natural gas produced

(subject to a ceiling price). This policy was in keeping with government’s stated intention of ‘Minimum Government Maximum Governance’. On November 8, 2016, a controversial and the most criticised step of the Modi government was taken when the prime minister in a sudden address to the nation announced that the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes would cease to be legal tender with effect from that midnight.

The step of demonetisation was taken suddenly so as to catch on the backfoot the corrupt who held on to unaccounted money, and to curb the fake notes and terror financing from across the border. The impact of the project was mixed at best. Sudden withdrawal of notes led to problems on the ground besides the hardship borne by ordinary people as they sought to exchange the old notes for new. Real estate was adversely affected, growth slowed due to reduced demand, supply chains were disrupted, and uncertainty increased, at least in the short term.

There was a decline in cash-sensitive stock market sectoral indices like realty, fast-moving consumer goods and automobiles, small and medium enterprises, and the informal, cash-driven economy suffered greatly. The agricultural sector was also adversely affected because transactions in this sector are heavily dependent on cash. Critics pointed out that, in essence, demonetisation had not met the government’s goal of wiping out black money from the Indian economy.

But the move succeeded in that it brought most of the cash into the formal system. At least some of it could have been unaccounted, which could now be tracked. Among the positive impacts of demonetisation, one can point to the increase in AUM (assets under management) of mutual fund industry. The government managed to widen its tax base, leading to an increase in the tax revenue. People began to increase bank balances instead of hoarding cash (even if legitimate) in different corners of the house.

People also began to turn to the digital payment systems. At another level, demonetisation proved that Indians can adapt to changes, and it made people financially aware about the different spending options. Even the local traders selling from their carts quickly and smoothly switched over to e-commerce payment systems. The Modi government tried to bring in black money through several schemes, none of which were amnesty schemes.

One was the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) in 2016. The other option was the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) launched in December 2016 after demonetisation, which provided an opportunity to declare unaccounted wealth and black money in a confidential manner and avoid prosecution after paying a fine of 50 per cent on the undisclosed income. Reportedly, a total 64,275 people disclosed Rs 65,250 crore under the IDS, while assets worth Rs 5,000 crore were declared under the PMGKY.

In 2015, the government had enacted the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act under which the government provided a one-time window for compliance. It is doubtful if demonetisation had an adverse effect on the BJP politically. In elections to state assemblies held in 2017, the BJP and its allies won the required majorities to form the government in six out of seven state legislative assemblies, and among these was the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

The biggest reform push of the Modi government came in the form of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). It overhauled the Centre-state financial relations in a major way. The move towards GST began long ago, but was expressed by the then union finance minister under the UPA in his budget speech for 2006–07. At the time, the proposal was opposed by many political parties, including the BJP. The government then could not push it through. The NDA government

achieved something noteworthy in getting the states to cooperate in the effort to introduce GST, considered to be the biggest tax reform since independence. It was in 2016 that the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act could be enacted after duly being ratified by the required number of states, after which the GST could be launched. It changed the system of how the Centre and states taxed goods and services and shared the revenue.

After the GST was in place, imposition of taxes on goods and services was not to be through legislation but was placed in the domain of the GST Council that consisted of the central and state finance ministers. GST replaced a number of central and state taxes and eased the flow of goods across state borders. It, however, left five petroleum products and alcohol for human consumption out of its ambit.

There were glitches in implementation, and frequent changes as directed by the GST Council. It was criticised for the inept implementation as well as for the huge compliance burden for small enterprises in its initial launch. But such a major step was bound to have certain problems. Efforts were also made to tackle the non-productive assets of public sector banks. Farmers Problems in the agriculture sector increased over the years.

So many years after independence, Indian agriculture still depended on monsoons and proved to be a gamble. The Narendra Modi government had declared its intention of doubling farmers’ income in real terms by 2022, moving away from the historical focus on increasing production. New crop insurance scheme and higher funding for irrigation to counter weather risks were announced by the NDA government.

Several schemes were rolled out for the agriculture sector. The government tried introducing some new ideas at the beginning of the term, such as neem-coated urea, soil health cards, and crop insurance, but the crisis in agrarian sector was not resolved. A number of marketing reforms were initiated to create ‘one nation, one market’ in agriculture. An attempt was made to get farmers to sell online.

But as the subject of agriculture is a state subject, reforms needed to be endorsed by the states. The APMC Act could not be reformed. The government agreed to the demand for a higher minimum support price. In 2019, it announced the central sector scheme, ‘Pradhan Mantri KIsan SAmman Nidhi (PMKISAN)’. The aim was to supplement the financial needs of the farmers in procuring various inputs to ensure proper crop health and appropriate yields, commensurate with the anticipated farm income.

This followed the announcement in the interim budget of February 2019 that farmers with less than five acres each, who account for over 85 per cent of India’s farm holdings, would get Rs 6,000 each annually. Over the years, India became self-sufficient in food grains, but a large number of farmers remained impoverished. The sector suffers from some basic problems, which no government has been able to tackle.

The young gradually left farming as an occupation, preferring to migrate to the towns and cities. Suicides by farmers, mainly because of indebtedness and crop loss due to vagaries of weather, did not abate. Infrastructure The Modi government did well in the infrastructure sector: the speeding up of highway construction, the new Bharatmala and Sagarmala projects, the building or revival of regional airports and regional air connectivity, the Udaan scheme, and much work on modernising and expanding railways are all achievements to its credit.

The Ujala LED bulb scheme may have been started by the previous regime, but the Modi government expanded the scheme and halved the price of each bulb.

Welfare Schemes The NDA government delivered on a large number of important public goods schemes, some of which were built on the initiatives of the previous government, and others of its own design. The major positive aspect of the programmes conducted by the NDA government lay in its implementation which was more efficient. As part of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana initiative, the number of rural houses built increased considerably, with several beneficiaries getting their due.

There was also a large push on rural electrification to ensure all villages had an electricity connection by 2018 under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana.Under the Ujjwala Yojana, the government aimed to provide LPG connections to below poverty line households in the country to replace polluting cooking fuels used in rural India with the clean and more efficient liquefied petroleum gas. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched in 2015 with the aim of reducing the female infanticide rate by encouraging education and welfare of the girl child.

Also launched in 2015 was the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, the primary objective of the scheme being the promotion and implementation of the welfare programmes for the girl child. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) had been criticised by Modi when the UPA was implementing it. But after coming to power, the Modi government did not discontinue the scheme, but improved it in various ways, especially by focusing on productive work to be undertaken, geo-tagging the assets created under the scheme in an attempt to bring transparency at the click of a button and check leakages.

Several pension schemes which had been initiated by earlier governments were continued with modifications, and some new ones were begun.

Tackling Maoists The Maoist threat seems to have been suppressed in many regions where they were operating earlier. Chhattisgarh, however, faced Maoist attacks every now and then. But the situation improved in recent years. While Maoist-led violence remained a major concern in Bastar division, significant progress has been made in restricting Maoists to the state’s southern districts. Improved road connectivity and better equipped and trained security forces helped to improve the situation.

In 2015, the government had launched a National Policy and Action Plan for the security and development of areas affected by Naxalite/Maoist insurgency, and for improving the training and equipment of the security forces. In the wake of the demonetisation drive, there was a halt in insurgent activity, as funds had, indeed been squeezed out. In May2019, however, an IED blast was carried out by Maoists in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.

The Maoists targeted an anti-insurgency operations team. Gadchiroli and Gondia have areas contiguous with the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh. Kashmir Situation and the Pakistani Involvement The situation in Kashmir cannot be discussed without considering the actions of Pakistan. The volatile security scenario in the Indian state is a manifestation of Pakistan’s proxy war with India, combined with the unsettled political issues of the state.

In November–December 2014, elections were held to elect the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly. The regional People’s Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as the single largest party but could not form a government on its own. It was only in February 2015 that the BJP and the PDP decided to join together to form a government. In March, the coalition government was sworn in, and for the first time, the BJP was part of a government in the state.

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the PDP became the chief minister. But in January 2016, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed died, and this created problems for the coalition as the mufti’s daughter and successor as head of the PDP, Mehbooba Mufti, was not keen to take the post of chief ministership in association with theBJP. As the alliance seemed to be in a crisis, Governor’s rule was promulgated. With the problems somewhat ironed out, Mehbooba Mufti took her oath as chief minister of the state in April 2016, the first woman to hold the position in the state.

Street protests started in Kashmir in July 2016 following the killing of Burhan Wani, a commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, by security forces. Curfew was imposed, but the protesters defied curfew and indulged in stone pelting against security forces and police. Indian security forces, trying to control the protesters, used pellet guns, which, although considered ‘non-lethal’, caused permanent eye damage in many cases.

This only worsened the situation. In August2017, Abu Dujana, the Pakistani commander of banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and his aide Arif Nabi Dar, were killed after a gun battle with government troops in Kashmir’s Pulwama district. There were violent protests over this too. Differences in the coalition government came to the fore. Ultimately, the uneasy coalition came to an end in June 2018 when the BJP pulled out of the government.

The immediate cause for the break between the two parties lay in their differences over the continuation of the Ramzan ceasefire. The militants continued with their terror tactics even during the ceasefire: the several terror incidents included the murders of journalist Shujat Bukhari and of army jawan, Aurangzeb. The union home minister was firm that terrorism had to be dealt with, ceasefire or no ceasefire.

The alliance, in any case, had no ideological affinity and even lacked functional coordination. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti tendered her resignation. The state was later placed under Governor’s rule again. In the meanwhile, terrorist attacks on Indian forces took place every now and then. The Pathankot Air Force Station was attacked in January 2016, purportedly by terrorists belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed.

On June 25, 2016, a Central Reserve Police Force convoy was ambushed en route from Pantha Chowk to the town of Pampore, in Pulwama district, for which the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba subsequently claimed responsibility. Early morning on September 18, 2016, four heavily armed persons entered the administrative block of the army camp in the Uri sector, some 100 km from Srinagar, and killed a number of soldiers.

It was the most serious attack on an army camp in 26 years. After a gun battle, all four terrorists were killed. Jaish-e- Mohammed was suspected of being involved in the attack. India conducted surgical strikes in retaliation on September 29, 2016, against terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian Army said that a number of militants were neutralised in the operation.

However, this did not act as much of a deterrent as, on the night of October 3, 2016, terrorists fired at and lobbed grenades on a Rashtriya Rifle battalion in Baramulla. The attackers were reported to have been Pakistani nationals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad. The border continued to be tense for some time, with several attacks being perpetrated by the Pakistanis and the Indian side forced to return fire. On February 14, 2019, a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was the target of a

bomb blast when it was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber in the Pulwama district on the Jammu Srinagar Highway. The attack, said to be the deadliest against Indian forces in Kashmir in decades, killed 40 CRPF personnel besides the attacker. The Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the attack. In the early hours of February 26, Mirage fighter jets of the Indian Air Force (IAF) took off from various air bases in India and crossed the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, and targeted the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot in the Khyber Pakhtunwa province with missiles.

India termed the airstrike an ‘intelligence-led, non-military, pre-emptive’ operation. According to IAF briefings to the government, 80 per cent of the bombs had been successful in hitting the targets and had inflicted the requisite damage to the enemy locations. Pakistan’s military, however, said that the damage was just to an uninhabited wooded hilltop area near Balakot. International media too said that the attacks did not hit the said target, as satellite pictures showed structures standing intact.

There was some confusion on the issue as media was not allowed near the said spot by the Pakistani authorities till April. In its report, the IAF observed that the Spice bomb that was used in the attack penetrates a target, killing people inside rather than inflicting damage to the outside of a building. So, the IAF did not have much evidence by way of pictures to prove that the Balakot strikes actually took place, the report said.

A fragmentation bomb would have flattened the structures that would have been easier to present as evidence, it said. The Balakot airstrike pushed India and Pakistan to the brink of an armed conflict. Pakistan Air Force attempted retaliatory strikes on February 27, 2019. The IAF scrambled its fighter jets in response, leading to a dogfight between the Indian and Pakistani jets in the skies over Jammu and Kashmir.

An IAF MiG-21 Bison fighter jet shot down a Pakistani F-16 during the dogfight. But the MiG too was shot down and its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was captured by Pakistani forces. He was released two days later, thus lowering the tension between India and Pakistan. In the wake of the skirmish, both Pakistan and India blocked airspace for each other. The closure of Pakistani airspace led to considerable losses for carriers—Indian and international—flying to the west of India as the flights were forced to take a longer route.

Pakistan also lost the money that it would otherwise have earned from route navigation and airport charges levied on flights using its airspace or landing for maintenance or refuelling. It was in July 2019 that the airspace was opened.

India’s foreign policy did not shift drastically on the NDA government’s coming to power in 2014. However, a subtle shift did develop over the years. As India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, observed, “India has moved on from its nonaligned past. India is today an aligned state —but based on issues.” Sushma Swaraj, one of the senior-most leaders of BJP, was placed in charge of the external affairs ministry in 2014, becoming the first woman in India to hold independent charge of the ministry.

However, the prime minister was always closely overviewing the sector. Not only Sushma Swaraj but also Prime Minister Modi visited several foreign states and attended international summits. An important plank of Modi’s foreign policy was to improve relations with neighbouring countries. The government’s ‘neighbourhood diplomacy’ was successful in improving relations

with Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh in the matter of some enclaves, which had been initiated by the UPA government but left pending. But relations with Pakistan saw a plunge, as discussed in the previous section. With China, there were glitches, but the talks between the two countries were maintained and the situation kept under control.

A major stand-off between India and China came in 2017 over Doklam. Doklam is an area of some 100 square kilometres, comprising a plateau and a valley, located at the junction between India, Bhutan, and China. The Chumbi Valley of Tibet, Bhutan’s Ha Valley and Sikkim surround it. In 2017, the Chinese tried to construct a road in the area, and Indian troops, called in by their Bhutanese counterparts, objected to it, resulting in the stand-off.

Doklam is strategic for India as it is close to the Siliguri Corridor, which connects mainland India with its north-eastern region. Bilateral ties were also affected over the US$ 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project pushed by President Xi Jinping of China to consolidate China’s influence in the world. With the United States, relations had already been improved by the earlier governments.

Modi used his decisive mandate to further the partnership with the US. He was able to get the US president, Barack Obama, to visit India and gave an impetus to bilateral relations to get that country to invest its capital and technology in India’s development effort. Modi succeeded in getting the US to sign the bilateral Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement in 2016 for facilitating logistical support, supplies, and services between the militaries of the two countries.

Then, in 2018, the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) was signed to facilitate access to advanced defence systems. With the advent of Donald Trump to the post of US president, the protectionist turn in US trade policies, to an extent, tempered Indo-US relations. Even so, the US remained supportive of India, and the bilateral relationship survived. India agreed to be part of the quadrilateral involving the United States, Japan, and Australia.

Though the early steps towards a partnership with Tokyo began under the Manmohan Singh government, the relationship progressed greatly under Modi. Japan and India have become indispensable partners in the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, and this is important to the United States as well. Japanese security is, no doubt, founded in its alliance with the US, but in counterbalancing China, Japan sees in India a vital complementary partner.

The proactive nature of the NDA government’s foreign policy is to be seen in turning the ‘Look East Policy’ into ‘Act East Policy’, which envisages the need to expand the Indian influence in East and Southeast Asia. In West Asia, India managed to maintain a balance between Palestine and Israel without preference. India succeeded in getting invited to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for the first time since its inception.

India reached out boldly to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with the idea of gaining politically and economically. In the long term, India, fighting the threat from cross-border terrorism, was bound to gain from the Gulf monarchies’ growing opposition to Islamist terrorism. India joined the Australia Group, which aims to prevent proliferation of biological and chemical weapons, and will ensure a more secure world.

With this, India had become a member of three of the four nuclear export control regimes. Earlier, India joined the Missile Technology Control

Regime (MTCR) in 2016 and the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) in 2017. India’s membership bid for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was pending as China opposed India’s bid. India took a leading role in the establishment of the International Solar Alliance along with France to tackle the challenge that faces the planet—global warming and climate change. Opponents of Modi may snigger at the bear hugs and the selfies with world leaders, but beneath all that lay an astute approach to foreign relations.

The Modi government “redefined strategic autonomy as an objective that is attainable through strengthened partnerships rather than the avoidance of partnerships”. The global scenario today is complex, and a country’s approach has to be flexible. So, India’s engagement with the so-called Quad enhances its strategic autonomy with regard to China, and when it confers with Russia and China for a trilateral, it enhances its strategic autonomy in relations to the Trump administration which seeks to challenge the basic tenets of the global economic order.

Communal riots were practically nil in the Modi regime, but there is a clear perception that the activities of a number of Rightist Hindu nationalist organisations increased and occupied centre stage after Modi became prime minister, and it seemed with the tacit support of the government. A programme for Hindu religious reconversion (Ghar Wapasi), a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of what was termed ‘love jihad’, and sporadic praise for Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, were some activities that adversely affected the social fabric.

The anti-Romeo squads in Uttar Pradesh were raised ostensibly to protect women from harassment, but indulged in moral policing. Campaigns against so-called love jihad, though short-lived, were an infringement on the freedom of choice. Individual Muslims were increasingly targeted for violent attacks for alleged cow slaughter in the main, but also for other reasons. Non-Muslims—especially Dalits and tribals— were also attacked on flimsy charges.

A disturbing aspect of these attacks was that sympathetic observers videoed the lynching and uploaded it on social media. Some rightist fringe elements certainly assumed that they had the tacit support of the government in this violence. But in-depth historical research is needed before one can categorically assert that lynching increased under the Modi dispensation. If society was polarised between Hindus and Muslims by the BJP, only Muslims should have been lynched and only for cow slaughter.

But one cannot then explain the rise of lynching of individuals on charges such as ‘child-theft’ and witchcraft. The stupendous increase in the internet use coincided with the rise of BJP to power. The ubiquitous use of the smartphone and cheap internet connections became a common phenomenon only after 2010. In some cases, it appeared as if the entire episode of lynching was being played out for an audience.

As, indeed, it was, because a video would be uploaded for everyone’s edification. Before the era of handheld mobiles, it would take hours, if not days, for messages to spread about ‘wrongdoings’ of any person. However, post-mobile revolution, in just a few minutes the message gets spread. Hence, mobilisation is quicker. WhatsApp was made use of in the most deplorable way to spread such messages. The proliferation of ‘fake news’ also became common.

Hyper-nationalism seemed very visible. On the social media, trolling and rise of vigilante groups with little regard for human life were evident. Vigilante groups mushroomed with political agendas to attack minorities.

The Supreme Court intervened and directed the government to take firm action on lynching and give guidelines to the authorities on steps to take to prevent it, and what to do when such incidents took place. It called for accountability from the officials. Amidst all this, the prime minister remained silent for too long. Maybe things would have been different if he had reined in the fringe elements and reassured those facing violence at the first sign of trouble. Some political commentators have suggested, however, that the violence by some radical Hindu nationalists was aimed at undermining Modi’s authority. In spite of stricter laws, greater awareness and even campaigns, violence against women was unabated. Cases of child rape shocked the nation. The government responded by introducing the death penalty for rape of minors below 12 years, and provided for all rape cases under the stringent POCSO Act to be fast-tracked. However, law can only do so much in cases of rape and violence against women and children; attitudes of people and society in general need to change. Furthermore, law enforcement agencies need to be sensitised. Several socially important legislations were passed under the NDA government, such as that on juvenile justice, child and adolescent labour, and mental health which decriminalised attempt to commit suicide. Another landmark was the decision by the Supreme Court constitutional bench marking the first step in the struggle by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community to gain social legitimacy. Homosexuality, as embodied in Article 377, much of which was a relic of Victorian British times, was decriminalised by the court. It was in 2001 that the issue of constitutional legality of Article 377 was first raised by the Naz Foundation in the Delhi High Court, which held the penal provision to be illegal in 2009, but that judgement was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013. In 2018, the apex court overturned its own earlier stance. An August 2017 judgement of the Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy, and this laid the legal ground for a fresh interpretation of Article 377 in the matter of decriminalising homosexuality. However, other issues such as same-sex marriage, inheritance of property, and civil rights were not considered. Surprisingly, most political groups welcomed the decision, which marked a change from earlier times. The judgement of Supreme Court in the Sabarimala Temple case got a mixed response. The decision allowed women of all ages to go on the pilgrimage. While this certainly supported the constitutional principle of equality, it went against age-old traditions. Opposition to the judgement was vocal and led to widespread protests in Kerala. The Supreme Court also decided that the practice of triple talaq among Muslims was not to be allowed. While women generally welcomed this, conservative elements opposed it. The government’s effort to legislate on it to make the practice unlawful did not succeed, and it took the ordinance route. All this shows the Indian society in transition. On another level, the Modi government disappointed. In the matter of job creation, there was little progress. A large proportion of India’s labour force continued to be unskilled and poor. Unemployment rate was reported to have reached a very high level. The government did not succeed in rejuvenating the manufacturing sector in industry to create jobs in spite of the Make in India initiative. But here too, like in agriculture, the reasons were many and complex. The low levels of skills among India’s workers, available jobs being low paid, poor infrastructure, and

India’s antiquated labour laws were some factors.

General Election And Return Of TheNDA April–May 2019 saw the Indian electorate casting votes to elect the 17th Lok Sabha. The elections were held in seven phases, and the votes began to be counted on May 23. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) got an overwhelming majority, winning 353 seats; the BJP on its own garnered 303 seats, a majority on its own. This was better than their performance in the 2014 elections, a feat none could have predicted.

The BJP, for the first time, made striking inroads in West Bengal. Also, it did well in states which had just recently ousted the BJP in favour of the Congress in assembly elections. This reflected in the main the voters’ perspicacity: they were clear about who would be better at the state level and who they wanted at the national level. The Congress did better than in 2014 by winning 52 seats, while its other UPA allies won 33, but the picture was clear: the NDA had returned to power at the Centre.

A landmark was achieved in 2019: not only did the largest number of female candidates stand for election, the number of women who actually won was also the highest ever. This was the first time a non-Congress government that had completed a full term returned to power for a second consecutive term with a majority in the Lok Sabha. Modi was the first BJP leader to have been elected for the second time after completion of a five-year tenure, a feat achieved before him only by two Congress leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Manmohan Singh also was prime minister for two terms, but his party had not won a majority on its own. Narendra Modi was administered the oath of office as prime minister by President Ram Nath Kovind on May 30, 2019 in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Guests from abroad included leaders of the BIMSTEC, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Mauritius. Even though the BJP had the required numbers to form the government on its own, it decided to accommodate its allies in the council of ministers.

One surprise was the induction of S. Jaishankar, former foreign secretary, as foreign minister, but then he was well known for his diplomatic skills and had played a crucial role in foreign policy even under the Manmohan Singh government. Amit Shah, BJP president and Narendra Modi’s close associate, who must be credited with leading the BJP to impressive victories in election after election, was also included in the cabinet as home minister.

Narendra Modi, in his speech to the new MPs, asked the members to work in the government without discriminating against anyone and win the trust of minorities. He said that the minorities had been cheated by the other parties for generations. Pointing out that the minorities had been made to live in an ‘imaginary fear’ for long, he said that this should be changed; he affirmed the need to win the ‘vishwas’ (trust) of Muslims.

Sabka Vishwas would be added on to Sabka Satth, Sabka Vikas. Apparently, Modi had become far more self-confident of steering his party and his government in the direction he wanted without the constraints of the ideological rigidities of the Sangh Parivar in this respect. In this context, it may be recalled that, as Gujarat’s chief minister for three terms, he had subdued the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other such organisations in the state.

He had already made a crucial statement—that everyone should be taken along, even those who had not voted for the ruling alliance and had been its vociferous critics.

The NDA victory for a second consecutive term was no doubt won mainly through the hard work of the cadre of the BJP directed by the strategy devised by Amit Shah. The BJP was also able to take its allies along with it, despite disagreements expressed by some of them before the polls. The BJP had an undisputed leader in Narendra Modi, its prime ministerial face. The opposite alliance, if it could be called that, had no alternative to project as Rahul Gandhi of the Congress was not a unanimous choice.

Nor could the opposing parties agree on a credible alternative. Nor did all the opposing parties agree to join an alliance. The campaign was not just aggressive but often degenerated into the abusive. But perhaps the Congress’ favourite slogan of ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ indicating that the prime minister was a thief, did not go down well with the public which thought it showed disrespect to the country’s prime minister and not just the individual, Modi.

To an extent, this backfired on the Congress, especially as the perception of the prime minister in the public mind was one of a hard working non-corrupt man. The Rafale deal somehow did not seem such a great disaster or something that had led to Modi making money out of it. The welfare schemes that the Modi government implemented fairly efficiently certainly helped the NDA win a second term. True, the promises fell short, but even the people who had so far not got a gas connection or a toilet built had hope that if some people had benefited, in time others too would get there.

A large section of the population were convinced that the other parties wooed the minorities just for votes, and in the process ‘appeased’ them. The Hindutva plank certainly played a role in the support enjoyed by the BJP. But it is also to be noted that the BJP was able to cut across caste divisions to get the majority it did. The firm way in which the government seemed to have handled Pakistan—the surgical strikes and later the air force strike in Balakot in February 2019—turned the tide in favour of the NDA in a big way.

There is no doubt that national security was a big issue pushing into the background important issues, such as slowing economic growth, joblessness, and farmers’ distress. It did not help the opposition in that it chose to question the government on its achievement; it seemed as if it was questioning the army’s capability. The huge victory of the NDA, however, should not blind us to the fact that the opposition in Parliament has been reduced commensurately. A democracy can be healthy only if there is a strong opposition to question and keep in check the executive.

1. Personalities Associated With Specific Movements

Lokmanya Tilak spread the message of swadeshi to Poona and Bombay and organised Ganapati and Shivaji festivals to arouse patriotic feelings. He stressed that the aim of swadeshi, boycott, and national education was the attainment of swaraj. He opened cooperative stores and headed the Swadeshi Wastu Pracharini Sabha. Lala Lajpat Rai took the movement to Punjab and parts of northern India. He was assisted in his venture by Ajit Singh.

His articles, which were published in Kayastha Samachar, endorsed technical education and industrial self-sufficiency. Syed Haider Raza popularised the Swadeshi Movement in Delhi. Chidambaram Pillai, who joined politics following the partition of Bengal, spread the Swadeshi Movement to Madras and organised the strike of the Tuticorin Coral Mill to protest against the working conditions in the mills.

He founded the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company in Tuticorin on the east coast of the Madras Province to break the trade monopolly of the British India Steam Navigation Company. He bought the SS Lavo and SS Galia from France and started regular services between Tuticorin and Colombo (Sri Lanka) though the British tried their best to suppress his efforts. His ships flew flags emblazoned with ‘Vande Mataram’.

In 1908, he was sentenced to two life terms for sedition for his political activities. He was not seen as a political prisoner but was reportedly put to hard labour and even tortured. Though his sentence was reduced by the Madras High Court and he was released in 1912, he faced hardship as his lawyer’s licence had been revoked and he could not practise. He opened a shop for a livelihood. An erudite scholar, he wrote his autobiography in Tamil verse.

He also wrote a commentary on the Thirukural and compiled the ancient works of Tamil grammar, Tholkappiam. Bipin Chandra Pal of the Extremist clan played a major role in popularising the movement, especially in the urban areas. He was the editor of New India. Liaquat Hussain of Patna suggested boycott and organised the East Indian Railway strike in 1906. He also wrote fiery articles in Urdu to rouse nationalist sentiments in Muslims.

He was supported by other Muslim swadeshi agitators like Ghaznavi, Rasul, Din Mohammed, Dedar Bux, Moniruzzaman, Ismail Hussain, Siraji, Abdul Hussain, and Abdul Gaffar. Shyamsundar Chakrabarti, a swadeshi political leader, helped in organising strikes. He was one of the ‘Pabna Group’ of Bengali revolutionaries. He was a nationalist journalist who was the sub-editor of the revolutionary journal Sandhya, later joining the Bengali nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram as an assistant to its editor Aurobindo Ghosh, afterwards becoming its editor.

He was deported to Burma in 1908 for his political activities. Much later, he became a supporter of the non-violent methods of the Indian National Congress. Ramendra Sunder Trivedi called for observance of arandhan (keeping the hearth unlit) as a mark of mourning and protest on the day the partition was put into effect. Rabindranath Tagore composed several songs to inspire freedom struggle and revived Bengali

folk music to rouse national pride. He also set up some swadeshi stores and called for the observance of raksha bandhan (tying of threads on each other’s wrists as a sign of brotherhood). Aurobindo Ghosh was in favour of extending the movement to the rest of India. He was appointed as the principal of Bengal National College founded in 1906 to encourage patriotic thinking and an education system related to Indian conditions and culture.

He was also the editor of Bande Mataram and through his editorials encouraged strikes, national education, etc., in the spirit of the Swadeshi Movement. He was assisted by Jatindranath Bannerji and Barindrakumar Ghosh (who managed the Anushilan Samiti). Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar hailed from Maharashtra but was domiciled in Bengal. He was a close associate of Aurobindo Ghosh and a good writer in Bengali.

He is probably best known for his book, Desher Katha, that described the British exploitation of India. In this book, Deuskar considered the state of the country and the good and evil of British rule, the mental degradation of the people of this country who had been hypnotised and their minds conquered by the British (or the West), the ruin of the peasants and the artisans of Bengal, and the decline of indigenous industries.

Deuskar was influenced by the writings of Naoroji and Dutt on the economic conditions of India under British rule, and wrote in the vernacular to spread the idea among the masses. The book proved immensely popular and served as an inspiration to the Swadeshi Movement. The government banned the book in 1910 and confiscated all the available copies but, by then, it had been read by innumerable people.

Deuskar is reputed to have introduced the Shivaji festival in Bengal. The earliest modern political use of the word ‘swaraj’ is considered to have been by Deuskar in his pamphlet on Shivaji (1902). Sarala Devi Ghoshal (Chaudarani), daughter of Janakinath Ghoshal, one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress, was Rabindranath Tagore’s niece. A bright student, she pursued higher education at Bethune College under Calcutta University to become the first woman to achieve the highest marks in that university and receive the ‘Padmaboti Swarnapodok’, the gold medal.

She worked for a while as assistant superintendent at the Maharani Girls School in Mysore before returning to Calcutta where she edited the Bengali magazine, Bharati Patrika. She wrote a book, Ahitagnika, to generate awareness concerning the freedom struggle among school children and also launched an underground revolutionary group as she believed aggression and violence to be the only way to get freedom from the British.

She is considered to have contributed to the music of Bande Mataram, the national song, and written several other songs used by revolutionaries. She was among the first to promote the use of swadeshi products and opened a shop called Lakhir Bhandar in the Bowbazar neighbourhood of Calcutta that sold only swadeshi products. Sarla Devi founded the Bharat Stree Mahamandal, the All India Women’s Organisation, a pioneering venture; it was a semi-revolutionary group in Allahabad, Lahore, Amritsar, Delhi, Karachi, Hyderabad, Kanpur, and Calcutta.

Married to Rambhaja Dutta Chowdhury, a noted freedom fighter from Punjab, she moved to Lahore with her husband. She continued with her revolutionary work in Punjab besides opening several associations and organisations for women, one of which was a home for widows. She was associated with the newspaper Hindusthan as editor and publisher. Towards the end of her life, she was involved in writing her biography, Jiboner Jhora Pata (the ‘Scattered Leaves of My Life’).

Surendranath Banerjea, who held moderate nationalist opinion, launched powerful press campaigns through newspapers like The Bengalee and addressed mass meetings. He was assisted by Krishnakumar Mitra and Narendra Kumar Sen.

Ashwini Kumar Dutt, a schoolteacher, set up Swadesh Bandhab Samiti to propagate the Swadeshi Movement and led the Muslim peasants of Barisal in their protests. Promotha Mitter, Barindrakumar Ghosh, Jatindranath Bannerji founded the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta. G.K. Gokhale, president of the Benaras session of the Indian National Congress, 1905, supported the Swadeshi Movement. Abdul Halim Guznavi, a zamindar and a lawyer, set up swadeshi industries and helped Aurobindo Ghosh to extend revolutionary activities outside Bengal.

He was assisted by Abul Kalam Azad. Dadabhai Naoroji at the 1906 Congress session declared that the goal of the Congress was to attain swaraj. Acharya P.C. Roy, in order to promote swadeshi, set up the Bengal Chemicals Factory. Mukunda Das, Rajanikanta Sen, Dwijendralal Roy, Girindramohini Dasi, Sayed Abu Mohammed composed patriotic songs on swadeshi themes. Girishchandra Ghosh, Kshirode Prasad Vidyavinode, and Amritlal Bose were playwrights who contributed to the swadeshi spirit through their creative efforts.

Ashwini Coomar Banerjee, a swadeshi activist, led the jute mill workers to form an Indian Millhands’ Union at Budge-Budge in August 1906. Satish Chandra Mukherji through his Dawn Society promoted an education system under indigenous control. Motilal Ghosh of the Amrit Bazar Patrika group contributed several fiery articles in the paper to arouse patriotic sentiments and was in favour of Extremism. Brahmabandhab Upadhyay through his Sandhya and Yugantar (brought out by a group associated with Barindrakumar Ghosh) popularised swaraj and the Swadeshi Movement.

Jogendrachandra set up an association in March 1904 to raise funds to facilitate students to go abroad for technical and industrial training. Manindra Nandi, a zamindar from Kasim Bazar, patronised several indigenous industries. Kalisankar Sukul brought out several pamphlets on Swadeshi Movement and argued that a new kind of business class should be built to promote national interests. Sunder Lal, a student from UP, was drawn towards terrorism.

Kunwarji Mehta and Kalyanji Mehta began organisational work through the Patidar Yuvak Mandal. Lala Harkishan Lal promoted Swadeshi Movement in Punjab through the Brahmo-leaning group which began the Tribune newspaper. He also founded the Punjab National Bank. Muhammed Shafi and Fazal-i-Husain were leaders of a Muslim group in Punjab involved in constructive swadeshi, rather than boycott. V. Krishnaswami Iyer headed the ‘Mylapore’ group in the Madras Presidency. G. Subramaniya Iyer, T. Prakasam, and M. Krishna Rao were other leaders in the south but

were opposed to V.K. Iyer. Prakasam and Krishna Rao started Kistnapatrika in Masulipatnam in 1904. Subramaniya Bharati, a member of Tamilian revolutionary group and an eminent poet, played a significant role in arousing nationalism in the Tamil areas. Prabhat Kusum Roy Chaudhuri, Athanasuis Apurbakumar Ghosh were lawyers who helped in organising labour; Premtosh Bose was another pioneer labour leader.

Hemachandra Kanungo was one of the first revolutionary leaders, and after his return from Paris (he had gone there to get military training), a combined bomb factory and religious school was set up in Calcutta. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki, two revolutionaries, murdered Kennedy on April 30, 1908. Pulin Das organised the Deccan Anushilan, with the Barrah dacoity as its first major venture. Madan Mohan Malaviya and Motilal Nehru were in favour of cooperation with provincial governments and non-political Swadeshi Movement.

Sachindranath Sanyal emerged as a revolutionary leader in Benaras through contacts with Mokhodacharan Samadhyay (the editor of Sandhya after the death of Brahmabandhab). The Savarkar brothers founded the Mitra Mela in 1899 and were directly involved in extremism in Maharashtra. Dinshaw Wacha persuaded mill-owners in Maharashtra to sell dhotis at moderate prices.

M.K. Gandhi issued a manifesto in March 1920, announcing his doctrine of non-violent Non- Cooperation Movement. He was the main force behind the movement and urged the people to adopt swadeshi principles and habits including hand spinning, weaving and work for removal of untouchability. He addressed lakhs of people during his nation-wide tour in 1921. He suspended the movement after an outburst of violence at Chauri Chaura in UP in February 1922.

C.R. Das moved the main resolution on non-cooperation in the annual session of the Congress in Nagpur in 1920 and played a major role in promoting the movement. A successful lawyer, he boycotted the law courts and gave up a lucrative practice. His three subordinates and supporters, Birendranath Samsal in Midnapore, J.M. Sengupta in Chittagong and Subhash Bose in Calcutta played a major role in uniting the Hindus and Muslims.

Jawaharlal Nehru carried on the non-cooperation propaganda and encouraged the formation of kisan sabhas to take up the cause of the peasants exploited by government policies. He was against Gandhi’s decision to withdraw the movement. J.M. Sengupta, a Bengali nationalist leader, supported the labourers on tea plantations in Assam in their protests and strike. Basanti Debi, wife of C.R. Das, was one of the first women volunteers to court arrest in 1921.

Birendranath Sasmal organised the anti-union board agitation in the Contai and Tamluk sub- divisions of Midnapore. In November– December 1921, Samsal initiated a no-tax movement among the Mahishya substantial tenantry of Midnapore.

Jitendralal Banerjee organised the peasants in 1921–22 to resist settlement operations in Bogra, Pabna, and Birbhum. Subhas Chandra Bose supported the movement and resigned from the civil service. He was appointed the principal of the National College in Calcutta. Ali brothers (Shaukat Ali and Muhammed Ali) who were the foremost Khilafat leaders vehemently supported Gandhi in his nationwide tour to spread the movement.

At the All India Khilafat Conference, Muhammed Ali declared that ‘it was religiously unlawful for the Muslims to continue in the British Army’. The Ali brothers were arrested later. Motilal Nehru renounced his legal practice in response to the non-cooperation call by Gandhi. He was arrested in 1921. Other notable lawyers who gave up their practice included M.R. Jayakar, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Vallabhbhai Patel, C.

Rajagopalachari, T. Prakasam, and Asaf Ali. Their sacrifice inspired many others, who boycotted government jobs and entered the mainstream of freedom struggle. Lala Lajpat Rai was initially not in favour of the policy of non-cooperation (he was against the boycott of schools), but later he supported the movement. In fact, he protested against its withdrawal in 1922. Rajendra Prasad actively supported the Gandhian movement in Bihar.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel spread the movement in Gujarat and regarded non-cooperation as a feasible alternative to revolutionary terrorism to fight against a colonial government. Motilal Tejawat organised the Bhils, and the Bhil movement strengthened the non-cooperation activities. Alluri Sitaram Raju led the tribals in Andhra and combined their demands with those of the Non-Cooperation Movement. Hasrat Mohani, a Khilafat leader, condemned the arrest of the Ali brothers and demanded complete independence.

Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Cowasji Jehangir, Phroze Sethna, and Setalvad, all of whom belonged to the industrialist section, launched an Anti-Non-Cooperation Association in 1920. Kunjahammed Haji, Kalathingal Mammad, Ali Musaliar, Sithi Koya Thangal, and Imbichi Koya Thangal acted as presidents of the Khilafat Republics set up at a number of places. K. Madhavan Nair, U. Gopala Menon, Yakub Hasan, and P.

Moideen Koya were the Khilafat leaders and supporters of the Non-Cooperation Movement. They were arrested in February 1921. Muhammad Osman, another Khilafat agitator, organised volunteer groups and trade unions in Calcutta. Swami Vishwanand (supported by Ramjas Agarwala, a Marwari mine owner) and Swami Darsananand organised the coal miners of the Raniganj-Jharia belt for the Non-Cooperation Movement.

Kishan Singh and Mota Singh called for no-revenue movements and headed the ‘Babbar Akali’ group, which emerged as a dissident of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee, in 1921

in Jullundur and Hoshiarpur. Jairamdas Daulatram was a close associate of Gandhi and promoted the Non-Cooperation Movement. Swami Govindananda, a supporter of Gandhi, was jailed for five years on charges of sedition in May 1921. He later became a critic of the Congress. S.A. Dange, R.S. Nimbkar, V.D. Sathaye, R.V. Nadkarni, S.V. Deshpande, and K.N. Joglekar were members of a radical student group and promoted the movement although they were not in line with Gandhi’s views.

They were influenced by R.B. Lotwalla, a millionaire with a socialist leaning. Dange, in April 1921, wrote Gandhi versus Lenin and was in favour of swaraj which would nationalise factories and distribute zamindari land among farmers. Thiru Vika supported the labour uprising and strike at the Buckingham and Carnatic textile mills from July to October 1921. Singaravelu Chettiar was a lawyer and labour organiser in Madras and played a significant role in merging the labour and freedom movements.

He was the first communist in South India and was in favour of using non-violent non-cooperation against ‘capitalistic autocracy’. Konda Venkatappaya, A. Kaleswara Rao, T. Prakasam, and Pattabhi Sitaramaya led the Non-Cooperation Movement in the Andhra delta region. Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya inspired the inhabitants of the small town of Chirala-Parala in Guntur district to resist the government’s plan to make the town a municipality and the hike in local taxes.

Nabin Chandra Bardoloi, freedom fighter and political leader from Assam, favoured non- cooperation but was against strikes in plantations, as he himself was a planter. After the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, he gave up his law practice and joined the freedom movement. He was popularly known as Karamveer. ‘Assam Kesari’ Ambikagiri Roy Chaudhuri’s poetry had a profound impact on the Assamese and helped in arousing nationalist spirit in them.

Muzaffar Ahmad formed the pioneer communist group in Calcutta. He was influenced by M.N. Roy and Nalini Gupta. Someshwar Prasad Choudhury, a student in Calcutta, organised the peasants protesting against indigo cultivation on the Rajshaski-Nadia and Pabna-Murshidabad border. Purushottamdas Tandon, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Govind Ballabh Pant, and Lal Bahadur Shastri began their political careers in 1920–21, with the onset of the Non- Cooperation Movement.

Premchand, a well-known novelist, resigned his post in a Gorakhpur government school in February 1921 and started contributing to the journal Aaj. His novels Premasharam, Rangbhumi etc., reflect Gandhian principles and values and endorse noncooperation as an effective weapon to gain freedom. Baba Ramchandra organised peasants’ revolt in south and south-east Awadh and helped merge the peasants’ revolt with the Non-Cooperation Movement. He was arrested in February 1921. A. Shah Naim Ata announced himself ‘King of Salon’ and initiated no-taxes movement.

M.N. Roy, a communist leader, was the editor of the communist journal Vanguard. He condemned the sessions court’s sentence to death to 172 of the 225 accused in the Chauri Chaura incident (later, 19 were hanged and the rest transported) as against 22 policemen killed. Bhagwan Ahir, an army pensioner in Gorakhpur village, was beaten up by the British police. The incident flared up nationalist sentiments in the village, which then led to the killing of 22 policemen in Chauri-Chaura, by the peasants.

M.K. Gandhi formally launched the Civil Disobedience Movement on April 6, 1930 by picking a handful of salt after the completion of the historic ‘Dandi March’ from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, thus breaking the salt law imposed by the government. He was the major force behind the movement and inspired grassroots participation in the freedom struggle. C. Rajagopalachari led a salt march from Trichinopoly to Vedaranniyam on the Tanjore coast in Tamil Nadu, in support of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

He was arrested on April 30, 1930. K. Kelappan, a Nair Congress leader, launched the Vaikom Satyagraha and marched from Calicut to Payanneer in defiance of salt laws. Jawaharlal Nehru was actively involved in the movement and was arrested on April 17, 1930 for defiance of the salt law. He formulated a radical agrarian programme and suggested formation of the Constituent Assembly as the prime political slogan.

P. Krishna Pillai defended the national flag and resisted lathicharge on the Calicut beach on November 11, 1930. He later founded the Kerala Communist Movement. Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan formed a clan of non-violent revolutionaries, the Khudai Khidmatgars (known as Red Shirts), who played an active role in the movement. Sarojini Naidu, the first Indian woman to become the president of the Congress, was involved in a march towards the Dharsana Salt Works, a government salt depot.

Other leaders who participated in this total non-violent affair were Imam Saheb, Gandhi’s comrade of the South African struggle, and Manilal, Gandhi’s son. Surya Sen’s Chittagong Revolt Group carried out a raid on two armouries and declared the establishment of a provisional government. He issued a manifesto in the name of Indian Republican Army and called on the Indians to revolt against the British rule.

Abbas Tayabji, a leader of the nationalist Muslims in Bombay, took the place of Gandhi in the movement after the latter’s arrest. However, he too was arrested by the government. Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lakhai gave their cooperation to Motilal Nehru in removing the barriers between the Congress and the Bombay mill-owners and industrialists. Industrialists such as G.D.

Birla (who donated between one lakh rupees and five lakh rupees), Jamnalal Bajaj (who served as the AICC treasurer for several years and represented Gandhian leadership in Bombay), Homi Modi, Walchand Hirachand, Lalji Naranji, Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Lala Sri Ram, etc., supported the movement in its first phase. Homi Modi, in his presidential speech to Bombay Mill-owners’ Association in March 1931 said that though the Swadeshi Movement had helped the Indian industry, frequent strikes had dislocated trade and industry. Naranji and Thakurdas, who had remained indifferent to the nationalist struggle in

1921, demanded Indian control over finance, currency, fiscal policy, and railways. However, from September 1930, there was a sharp decline in support from the industrialists and traders, with the prominent businessmen having differences of opinion with the Congress. Chandraprabha Saikiani instigated the aboriginal Kachari villagers in Assam to break forest laws. Subhas Bose and J.M. Sengupta led the faction group in Bengal Congress and set up rival organisations to conduct civil disobedience.

Bose criticised Gandhi, when the latter suspended the movement in May 1933. He was supported by Vithalbhai Patel. Bonga Majhi and Somra Majhi led the movement in Hazaribagh along the sanskritising lines with the Congress. Kalka Prasad, a local leader in Rai Bareilly, promoted the no-rent campaign. Santi and Suniti Chaudhari assassinated the district magistrate of Tippera, Stevens. Their action marked the entry of women in the revolutionary movement.

Seth Achal Singh, a nationalist landlord, financed the Gram Seva Sangh in Agra and remained indifferent to riots in the area, while strictly following the policy of non-violence. Sheikh Abdullah, a Muslim graduate, started an agitation and attacked the Srinagar jail on July 31, 1931 where 21 persons were killed in police firing. He also developed close contacts with a group of anti-autocratic Jammu Hindus led by P.N.

Bazaz. Muhammed Yasin Khan, a Muslim leader in Punjab, organised the Meos (semi-tribal peasant community with leanings towards Islam) to protest against Maharaja Jaisingh Sawai’s hike in revenue, begar, and reservation of forests for the purpose of hunting. K.M. Ashraf, who became India’s first Marxist historian, was associated with the movement. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, who was an upholder of Gandhian policies since 1920s, began to drift away with the launch of Harijan campaign by Gandhi.

He started a breakaway Congress Nationalist Party. Satyamurthi, Bhulabhai Desai, M.A. Ansari, and B.C. Roy demanded a return to electoral politics by way of a revived Swaraj Party. Jayaprakash Narayan, Achhut Patwardhan, Yusuf Mehrali, Ashok Mehta, and Minoo Masani wanted the Congress to have affinity with left-wing. Sampurnanand formulated ‘A Tentative Socialist Programme’ for India, and a Congress Socialist Party was started in 1934, which was supported by Narendra Dev.

K.F. Nariman and Yusuf Meher Ali led the Congress youth wing and later emerged as socialist leaders. Swami Govindanand led the movement in Karachi and Sindh. N.V. Gadgil with his socialist leanings lent support to a temple entry movement in 1929 and established friendly ties with the nonbrahmin Satyashodhak Samaj (represented by Keshavrao Jedhe of Poona). B.R. Ambedkar, who was the leader of the untouchable Mahars, attended the Round Table Conference in 1930. However, the Congress failed to win over the political agitation of the Mahars.

Gopabandhu Chaudhuri popularised the movement in Orissa and led the salt satyagraha in the coastal areas of Balasore, Cuttack, and Puri districts. Tarunaram Phookan and N.C. Bardoloi, two prominent Congress leaders, were against the movement in Assam. They refused to take up forest satyagraha officially. Jadunandan Sharma activated the Kisan Sabha Movement in Gaya district of Bihar. Duggirala Balaramakrishnaya of the Krishna district initiated a no-revenue campaign in 1931 in coastal Andhra.

He also wrote a Telugu ballad Gandhi Gita which aroused patriotic sentiments. N.V. Rama Naidu and N.C. Ranga organised a forest satyagraha in Venkatagiri estate in Nellore in 1931. A.K. Gopalan, a schoolteacher, was a popular activist at Guruvayoor in Kerala and later became Kerala’s most popular communist peasant leader. Mannu Gond and Chaitu Koiku offered forest satyagraha in Betul in Central Provinces.

Maulana Bhasani, organised a large praja sammelan at Sirajgunj and demanded abolition of zamindari and reduction in debts. B.T. Ranadeve and S.V. Deshpande in Bombay and Abdul Halim, Somnath Lahiri, and Ranen Sen in Calcutta were the young communist militants who organised several labour strikes. V.B. Karnik, Maniben Kara, Rajani Mukherji, and Niharendu Dutta were other leaders who started trade union activities. M.N. Roy and his followers popularised socialist ideas in the villages and a no-tax campaign was started in Awadh.

M.K. Gandhi planned an all-out campaign to compel British withdrawal from India, after the failure of the Cripps Mission to reach a compromise. At the historic August meeting at Gowalia Tank in Bombay, Gandhi proclaimed his mantra—‘do or die’. He was arrested on August 9, 1942. He undertook a 21-day fast in February 1943 to protest against the government actions against Indians involved in the movement.

Jayaprakash Narayan was a member of the Congress Socialist group and played a prominent role in the movement. Ram Manohar Lohia, Aruna Asaf Ali, Sucheta Kripalani, Chhotubhai Purani, Biju Patnaik, R.P. Goenka, and Achyut Patwardhan were leaders associated with the underground movement and revolutionary activities in support of Quit India Movement. Chittu Pande, who called himself a Gandhian, formed a parallel government and captured all the 10 police stations in Ballia, in east UP in August 1942.

Usha Mehta actively supported the movement and was an important member of a small group which ran the Congress Radio. Jawaharlal Nehru initially supported the arch Moderates, who were opposed to Gandhi’s plan, but later, he moved the Quit India Resolution on August 8, 1942. Sumati Morarjee helped Achyut Patwardhan in his underground activities. She later became

India’s leading woman industrialist. Rashbehari Bose, a revolutionary activist, was elected the president of the Indian Independence League (formed in March 1942) in June 1942. He was living in Japan since 1915 as a fugitive. He mobilised Indian soldiers taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese forces (after the British was defeated in South East Asia) for an armed rebellion against the British colonial rule. Captain Mohan Singh, an Indian soldier fighting on behalf of the British, was taken as prisoner of war by the Japanese. He was persuaded by a Japanese army officer to work with the Japanese for India’s freedom. He was appointed the commander of the Indian National Army. Subhas Chandra Bose joined the Indian National Army in 1943. One of his most famous declarations was “Tum mujhe khoon do, mai tumhe azadi doonga” (You give me blood, I will give you freedom.) The INA played a significant role in the independence struggle under the leadership of Subhas Bose. C. Rajagopalachari and Bhulabhai Desai were the arch- Moderates, who were in favour of recognising the rights of Muslim majority provinces to secede through plebiscites after independence had been gained. They resigned from the AICC in July 1942. K.G. Mashruwalla brought out two militant issues of Harijan (after the arrest of Mahadev Desai) to arouse the sentiments of people. K.T. Bhashyam, a Congress leader in Bangalore, played an active role in the trade union field and organised strikes by about 30,000 workers. Satish Samanta, a local Congress leader and the first sarbadhinayak of the Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar, helped in establishing a rebel ‘national government’ in Tamluk sub-division of Midnapore. Matangini Hazra, a 73-year-old peasant widow in Tamluk, was killed in violence on September 29, 1942, when the Sutahata police station was captured. Matangini kept the national flag aloft even after being shot. Lakshman Naik, an illiterate villager, led a large tribal population from Koraput to protest against the Jeypore zamindari and attack police stations. Lakshman Naik was hanged on November 16, 1942 for allegedly murdering a forest guard. Nana Patil headed a rebellion in Satara.

2. Governors-General And Viceroys Of India: Significant Events In Their Rule

1. Warren Hastings1773–85 (i) Regulating Act of 1773. (ii) Act of1781, under which the powers of jurisdiction between the governor-general-in-

council and the Supreme Court at Calcutta, were clearly divided. (iii) Pitt’s India Act of 1784. (iv) The Rohilla War of 1774. (v) The First Maratha War in 1775–82 and the Treaty of Salbai in 1782. (vi) Second Mysore War in 1780–84. (vii) Strained relationships with Chait Singh, the Maharaja of Benaras, which led to Hastings’ subsequent impeachment in England. (viii) Foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784). 2.

Lord Cornwallis 1786–93 (i) Third Mysore War (1790–92) and Treaty of Seringa-patam (1792). (ii) Cornwallis Code (1793) incorporating several judicial reforms, and separation of revenue administration and civil jurisdiction. (iii) Permanent Settlement of Bengal, 1793. (iv) Europeanisation of administrative machinery and introduction of civil services. 3. Sir John Shore 1793–98 (i) Charter Act of 1793. (ii) Battle of Kharda between the Nizam and the Marathas (1795).

4. Lord Wellesley 1798–1805 (i) Introduction of the Subsidiary Alliance System (1798); first alliance with Nizam of Hyderabad. (ii) Fourth Mysore War (1799). (iii) Second Maratha War (1803-05). (iv) Took over the administration of Tanjore (1799), Surat (1800), and Carnatic (1801). (v) Treaty of Bassein (1802). 5. Sir George Barlow 1805–07 Vellore Mutiny (1806). 6. Lord Minto I 1807–13 Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh (1809).

7. Lord Hastings 1813–23 (i) Anglo-Nepal War (1814–16) and the Treaty of Sagauli, 1816. (ii) Third Maratha War (1817–19) and dissolution of Maratha Confederacy; creation of Bombay Presidency (1818). (iii) Strife with Pindaris (1817–18). (iv) Treaty with Sindhia (1817). (v) Establishment of Ryotwari System by Thomas Munro, governor of Madras (1820). 8. Lord Amherst 1823–28

(i) First Burmese War (1824–26). (ii) Capture of Bharatpur (1826). 9. Lord William Bentinck 1828–35 (i) Abolition of sati and other cruel rites (1829). (ii) Suppression of thugi (1830). (iii) Charter Act of 1833. (iv) Resolution of 1835, and educational reforms and introduction of English as the official language. (v) Annexation of Mysore (1831), Coorg (1834), and Central Cachar (1834). (vi) Treaty of ‘perpetual friendship’ with Ranjeet Singh. (vii) Abolition of the provincial courts of appeal and circuit set up by Cornwallis, appointment of commissioners of revenue and circuit.

10. Lord Metcalfe 1835–36 New press law removing restrictions on the press in India. 11. Lord Auckland 1836–42 (i) First Afghan War (1838–42). (ii) Death of Ranjit Singh (1839). 12. Lord Ellenborough 1842–44 (i) Annexation of Sindh (1843). (ii) War with Gwalior (1843). 13. Lord Hardinge I 1844–48 (i) First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–46) and the Treaty of Lahore (1846). (ii) Social reforms including abolition of female infanticide and human sacrifice.

14. Lord Dalhousie 1848-1856 (i) Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–49) and annexation of Punjab (1849). (ii) Annexation of Lower Burma or Pegu (1852). (iii) Introduction of the Doctrine of Lapse and annexation of Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambhalpur (1849), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853), Nagpur (1854), and Awadh (1856). (iv) “Wood’s (Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control) Educational Despatch” of 1854 and opening of Anglo-vernacular schools and government colleges. (v) Railway Minute of 1853;

and laying down of first railway line connecting Bombay and Thane in 1853. (vi) Telegraph (4,000 miles of telegraph lines to connect Calcutta with Bombay, Madras, and Peshawar) and postal (Post Office Act, 1854) reforms. (vii) Ganges Canal declared open (1854); establishment of separate public works department in every province.

(viii) Widow Remarriage Act (1856). 15. Lord Canning1856–57 (i) Establishment of three universities at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in 1857.

1. Lord Canning 1858–62 (i) Transfer of control from East India Company to the Crown, the Government of India Act, 1858. (ii) ‘White Mutiny’ by European troops in 1859. (iii) Indian Councils Act of 1861. 2. Lord Elgin I 1862–63 Wahabi Movement. 3. Lord John Lawrence 1864–69 (i) Bhutan War (1865). (ii) Setting up of the High Courts at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras (1865). 4.

Lord Mayo 1869–72 (i) Opening of the Rajkot College in Kathiawar and the Mayo College at Ajmer for political training of Indian princes. (ii) Establishment of Statistical Survey of India. (iii) Establishment of Department of Agriculture and Commerce. (iv) Introduction of state railways. 5. Lord Northbrook 1872–76 (i) Visit of Prince of Wales in 1875. (ii) Trial of Gaekwar of Baroda. (iii) Kuka Movement in Punjab.

6. Lord Lytton 1876–80 (i) Famine of 1876–78 affecting Madras, Bombay, Mysore, Hyderabad, parts of central India and Punjab; appointment of Famine Commission under the presidency of Richard Strachey (1878). (ii) Royal Titles Act (1876), Queen Victoria assuming the title of ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ or Queen Empress of India. (iii) The Vernacular Press Act (1878). (iv) The Arms Act (1878). (v) The Second Afghan War (1878–80).

7. Lord Ripon 1880–84 (i) Repeal of the Vernacular Press Act (1882). (ii) The first Factory Act (1881) to improve labour conditions. (iii) Continuation of financial decentralisation. (iv) Government resolution on local self-government (1882). (v) Appointment of Education Commission under chairmanship of Sir William Hunter (1882). (vi) The Ilbert Bill controversy (1883–84). (vii) Rendition of Mysore.

8. Lord Dufferin 1884–88 (i) The Third Burmese War (1885–86). (ii) Establishment of the Indian National Congress. 9. Lord Lansdowne 1888–94 (i) Factory Act (1891). (ii) Categorisation of civil services into imperial, provisional and subordinate. (iii) Indian Councils Act (1892). (iv) Setting up of Durand Commission (1893) to define the Durand Line between India and Afghanistan (now between Pakistan and Afghanistan; a small portion of the line touches India in Pakistan occupied Kashmir).

10. Lord Elgin II 1894–99 Two British officials assassinated by Chapekar brothers (1897). 11. Lord Curzon 1899–1905 (i) Appointment of Police Commission (1902) under Sir Andrew Frazer to review police administration. (ii) Appointment of Universities Commission (1902) and passing of Indian Universities Act (1904). (iii) Establishment of Department of Commerce and Industry. (iv) Calcutta Corporation Act (1899). (v) Ancient Monuments Preservation Act (1904). (vi) Partition of Bengal (1905). (vii) Curzon-Kitchener controversy. (viii) Younghusband’s Mission to Tibet (1904).

12. Lord Minto II 1905–10 (i) Popularisation of anti-partition and Swadeshi Movements. (ii) Split in Congress in the annual session of 1907 in Surat. (iii) Establishment of Muslim League by Aga Khan (1906). 13. Lord Hardinge II 1910–16

(i) Creation of Bengal Presidency (like Bombay and Madras) in 1911. (ii) Transfer of capital from Calcutta to Delhi (1911). (iii) Establishment of the Hindu Mahasabha (1915) by Madan Mohan Malaviya. (iv) Coronation durbar of King George V held in Delhi (1911). 14. Lord Chelmsford 1916–21 (i) Formation of Home Rule Leagues by Annie Besant and Tilak (1916). (ii) Lucknow session of the Congress (1916). (iii) Lucknow pact between the Congress and Muslim League (1916). (iv) Foundation of Sabarmati Ashram (1916) after Gandhi’s return; launch of Champaran Satyagraha (1916), Kheda Satyagraha (1918),

and Satyagraha at Ahmedabad (1918). (v) Montagu’s August Declaration (1917). (vi) Government of India Act (1919). (vii) The Rowlatt Act (1919). (viii) Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre (1919). (ix) Launch of Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movements. (x) Foundation of Women’s University at Poona (1916) and appointment of Saddler’s Commission (1917) for reforms in educational policy. (xi) Death of Tilak (August 1, 1920). (xii) Appointment of S.P. Sinha as governor of Bihar (the first Indian to become a governor).

15. Lord Reading 1921–26 (i) Chauri Chaura incident (February 5, 1922) and the subsequent withdrawal of Non- Cooperation Movement. (ii) Moplah rebellion in Kerala (1921). (ii) Repeal of the Press Act of 1910 and the Rowlatt Act of 1919. (iii) Criminal Law Amendment Act and abolition of cotton excise. (iv) Communal riots in Multan, Amritsar, Delhi, Aligarh, Arvi, and Calcutta. (v) Kakori train robbery (1925). (vi) Murder of Swami Shraddhanand (1926). (vii) Establishment of Swaraj Party by C.R.

Das and Motilal Nehru (1922). (viii) Decision to hold simultaneous examinations for the ICS both in Delhi and London, with effect from 1923. 16. Lord Irwin 1926–31 (i) Visit of Simon Commission to India (1928) and the boycott of the commission by the Indians. (ii) An All-Parties Conference held at Lucknow (1928) for suggestions for the (future) Constitution of India, the report of which was called the Nehru Report or the Nehru Constitution. (iii) Appointment of the Harcourt Butler Indian States Commission (1927). (iv) Murder of Saunders, the assistant superintendent of police of Lahore; bomb blast in

the Assembly Hall of Delhi (1929); the Lahore Conspiracy Case and death of Jatin Das after prolonged hunger strike (1929), and bomb accident in train in Delhi (1929). (v) Lahore session of the Congress (1929); Purna Swaraj Resolution. (vi) Dandi March (March 12, 1930) by Gandhi to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement. (vii) ‘Deepavali Declaration’ by Lord Irwin (1929). (viii) Boycott of the First Round Table Conference (1930), Gandhi-Irwin Pact (1931), and suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement. 17.

Lord Willingdon 1931–36 (i) Second Round Table Conference (1931) and failure of the conference, resumption of Civil Disobedience Movement. (ii) Announcement of Communal Award (1932) under which separate communal electorates were set up. (iii) ‘Fast unto death’ by Gandhi in Yeravada prison, broken after the Poona Pact (1932). (iv) Third Round Table Conference (1932). (v) Launch of Individual Civil Disobedience (1933). (vi) The Government of India Act of 1935. (vii) Establishment of All India Kisan Sabha (1936) and Congress Socialist Party by Acharya Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan (1934). (viii) Burma separated from India (1935). 18.

Lord Linlithgow 1936–44 (i) First general elections (1936–37); Congress attained absolute majority. (ii) Resignation of the Congress ministries after the outbreak of the Second World War (1939). (iii) Subhas Chandra Bose elected as the president of Congress at the fifty-first session of the Congress (1938). (iv) Resignation of Bose in 1939 and formation of the Forward Bloc (1939). (v) Lahore Resolution (March 1940) by the Muslim League, demand for separate state for Muslims. (vi) ‘August Offer’ (1940) by the viceroy;

its criticism by the Congress and endorsement by the Muslim League. (vii) Winston Churchill elected prime minister of England (1940). (viii) Escape of Subhas Chandra Bose from India (1941) and organisation of the Indian National Army. (ix) Cripps Mission’s Cripps Plan to offer dominion status to India and setting up of a Constituent Assembly; its rejection by the Congress. (x) Passing of the ‘Quit India Resolution’ by the Congress (1942); outbreak of ‘August Revolution’; or Revolt of 1942 after the arrest of national leaders. (xi) ‘Divide and Quit’ slogan at the Karachi session (1944) of the Muslim League. 19. Lord Wavell 1944–1947

(i) C. Rajagopalachari’s CR Formula (1944), failure of Gandhi- Jinnah talks (1944). (ii) Wavell Plan and the Shimla Conference (1942). (iii) End of Second World War (1945). (iv) Proposals of the Cabinet Mission (1946) and its acceptance by the Congress. (v) Observance of ‘Direct Action Day’ (August 16, 1946), also known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings, by the Muslim League. (vi) Elections to the Constituent Assembly, formation of Interim Government by the Congress (September 1946). (vii) Announcement of end of British rule in India by Clement Attlee (prime minister of England) on February 20, 1947.

20. Lord Mountbatten 1947–1948 (i) June Third Plan (June 3, 1947) announced. (ii) Introduction of Indian Independence Bill in the House of Commons. (iii) Appointment of two boundary commissions under Sir Cyril Radcliff for the partition of Bengal and Punjab.