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builders & breakers
makers of equity
thought & action
art & culture
sporting spirit
P.C Mahalanobis
Veer Savarkar &
Sadashiv Golwalkar
Ramaswami Naicker &
C.N Annadurai
E.M.S. Namboodiripad
Jyoti Basu
V.P. Singh
Rajiv Gandhi
BUILDERS & B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
BREAKERS Sheikh Abdullah
Gopinath Bardoloi
Angami Zapu Phizo &
Laldenga
J S Bhindranwale
Sam Manekshaw
INDIA TODAY
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BUILDERS & For most people, Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

BREAKERS is best known as the architect of Independent India's
industrialisation strategy that was embodied in the Second
Public Trustee Five Year Plan (1956-61). This was elaborated in his
celebrated paper "The Operational Research Approach to
Planning in India" which was published in Sankhya, the
Indian Journal of Statistics, in 1955. This became famous as icons
the Mahalanobis model. builders & breakers
makers of equity
Three distinct elements of this strategy influenced the course thought & action
of industrialisation in India: the autarchic approach of self-
reliance, emphasis on basic and heavy machine-building
art & culture
industries to maximise long-term growth and finally, the sporting spirit
dominant role of the public sector in basic and heavy
industries. This was sought to be implemented through
centralised industrial investment planning in the economy. P.C Mahalanobis
Veer Savarkar &
P.C. Mahalanobis
Sadashiv Golwalkar
If Mahalanobis were alive today, how would he have
Ramaswami Naicker &
By Suresh D. Tendulkar evaluated the economy? Being primarily a scientist and not a
blind-folded ideologue, he would have examined the C.N Annadurai
India may have struggled with his empirical evidence dispassionately. E.M.S. Namboodiripad
model for industrialisation. But as a Jyoti Basu
pioneer statistician his efforts were
On the threshold of the next millennium, India carries the V.P. Singh
more fruiitful.
dubious distinction of hosting the largest number of the Rajiv Gandhi
world's poor and illiterate mass of people. India continues to B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
be at the lowest end in terms of GDR per capita and human Sheikh Abdullah
development index. It boasts of creating the second largest Gopinath Bardoloi
stock of technically trained manpower which is not gainfully
Angami Zapu Phizo &
absorbed.
Laldenga
J S Bhindranwale
Where did we go wrong? In each of the three elements of his Sam Manekshaw
strategy, as I believe, he would have readily agreed.
International experience is unmistakable that rapid growth is
associated with competitive domestic markets and
aggressive participation in international trade. We ruled them
out through policy-induced entry restrictions and an autarchic
trade policy. Two, domestic market, with initially low-level and
later policy-induced slow growth in per capita real income,
could not have absorbed projected capacities in basic and
heavy machine- building industries. Three, political and
bureaucratic interference in indiscriminately extended public-
sector enterprises have converted them into white elephants
draining the exchequer.
Consequently, he would have supported the economic

reforms of 1991. In his original formulation, he stressed that a
model was merely a scaffolding to be discarded as soon as Indian music lovers,
the purpose was achieved. In the present context, the
purpose not having been achieved, he would have looked for click here
a different scaffolding, in the empirical evidence. Two, in his
review of Gunnar Myrdal's Asian Drama in 1969 he agreed
with Myrdal's contention that "India's promised social and
economic revolution failed to materialise".
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The area where Mahalanobis really made the difference was

in statistics. He made pioneering contributions to the then
newly evolving discipline and founded the Indian Statistical
Institute in 1931.Thanks to his National Sample Surveys and
Central Statistical Organisation, India boasts of a unique data
base for tracking socio-economic changes and a sound
statistical system.
Suresh D. Tendulkar is professor of economics, Delhi

School of Economics.
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BUILDERS & In Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, there is a slightly

BREAKERS sinister sadhu with long hair and beard, projected as the
brain behind the Mahatma's assassination. To those familiar
The with the pantheon of Hindu nationalism, the physical
resemblance between the celluloid sadhu and "Guruji"
Modernist...and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-73), head of the
icons
the Guru Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973, is
uncanny. builders & breakers
makers of equity
History, however, doesn't permit such fanciful interpretations. thought & action
True, Golwalkar was imprisoned in the aftermath of the
murder and the RSSs temporarily banned, but it was the art & culture
Maharashtrian revolutionary and Hindu Mahasabha leader sporting spirit
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) who was the
assassin Nathuram Godse's real ideological inspiration.
Although Golwalkar was exonerated by a commission of P.C. Mahalanobis
inquiry and Savarkar acquitted by the court of actual Veer Savarkar &
involvement in the conspiracy, Hindu nationalism has had to Sadashiv Golwalkar
live with the stigma of its two leading stalwarts being Ramaswami Naicker &
implicated in the Mahatma's murder. C.N Annadurai
Vinayak Damodar E.M.S. Namboodiripad
("Veer") Savarkar Jyoti Basu
It speaks volumes for the inherent appeal of this ideology that
50 years after the traumatic event, it is the self-confessed V.P. Singh
disciples of both Savarkar and Golwalkar who are at the helm Rajiv Gandhi
of politics in India. To its detractors, the RSS with its 40,000 B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
shakhas may be a "fascist" private army, but to those lakhs
Sheikh Abdullah
of swayamsevaks who turn up dutifully each morning to
salute the saffron flag, it is the harbinger of a Hindu Gopinath Bardoloi
resurgence. A small sign of a people kept in bondage for a Angami Zapu Phizo
thousand years gradually coming into its own. & Laldenga
J S Bhindranwale
In their own ways, both Savarkar and Golwalkar would have Sam Manekshaw
Madhavrao Sadashiv endorsed the winds of change blowing away the old
Gowalkar Nehruvian order. But for very different reasons. With his
flowing locks and saffron garb, Golwalkar was every inch a
"Guruji". Simple to the point of asceticism, he travelled widely
By Swapan Dasgupta inspiring his flock and spreading his version of moral
Architects of Hindu rearmament. For his followers, he was the ideal karmayogi.
nationalism, their ideology
still holds -- their self-
The thin, somewhat wiry and donnish Savarkar was a study
confessed disciples are not
in contrast. With his erudition, he fitted the description of an
at the helm of Indian
ideologue. If the idiom of Golwalkar was a blend of the
politics. traditional, Savarkar was a nationalist in the western mould. If
Golwalkar sought to rekindle the spiritual values of Hindus
through organisational zeal, Savarkar sought to transform
Hindus into mirror images of those who controlled the levers
of global power. Golwalkar was a missionary, Savarkar was a
visionary. Indian music lovers,
click here
Yet, Hindu nationalism wouldn't have been where it is today
without the complementary inputs of the two. Savarkar -- who
also inspired RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar -- put Hindutva on
the intellectual map as early as 1923. But his Hindutva was a
euphemism for aggressive, "secular nationalism of the
Hindus". It had little to do with Hinduism. "The Hindu
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Mahasabha," he said, "is not a Hindu mission. It leaves

religious questions ... to be discussed by different Hindu
schools of religious persuasion. It is not a Hindu Dharma
Mahasabha but a Hindu National Mahasabha."
To Savarkar, Hindutva was akin to a national ideology of all

those who regarded India as its pitribhumi (fatherland) and
punyabhumi (holy land). He nurtured that creature which has
come to be known as the "political Hindu" -- an
uncompromising modernist who, at the same time, shuns the
melting pot of cosmopolitanism. Whether it acknowledges it
or not, today's BJP bears the indelible stamp of Savarkar's
political Hindutva. After all, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee,
founder of the Jan Sangh (the BJP's earlier incarnation), cut
his political teeth in Savarkar's Mahasabha.
Golwalkar had a deep-seated distaste for the excessive

political thrust of Savarkar. To the architect of the RSS'
nationwide expansion, the Hindus were never short of ideas
or intelligence. What they lacked were discipline,
organisation and character. "The root cause of our national
tragedy then, a thousand years ago, and now, a thousand
years after, is the same -- utter lack of organised and unified
life among the Hindus."
So while Savarkar concentrated -- rather unsuccessfully -- on

building alternatives to the Congress and ridiculing the RSS
preoccupation with morning drills, Golwalkar shunned
politics. It was, he used to say, "never the pivot of life". Even
his endorsement of the Jan Sangh in 1951 was extremely
grudging and arose from the experience of the 1948-49 ban
on the RSS. His focus was on creating an elite corps that
would in time transform the soul of India through leadership
and moral example. It would exorcise alien influences and
recreate a robust national culture: "It is only when a nation ...
sticks to its roots of swadharma that it grows and blossoms."
Golwalkar's attempts to extend swadharma to politics proved

less enduring. He flayed the Constitution for being a cut-and-
paste exercise of imported ideals. He called for a "unitary"
government and spoke out constantly against federalism.
However, against the reality of electoral politics, his disciples
have embraced federalism enthusiastically and even the
swadeshi he advocated has been expediently reinterpreted
to imply an Indian mental orientation. Likewise, the harsh
exclusionary policies advocated by both Savarkar and
Golwalkar towards the minorities have floundered in the face
of democratic realities.
Savarkar's Hindutva and Golwalkar's cultural nationalism

haven't been reduced to mere shibboleths. If Nehruvian
secularism has been politically contested, if the idea of a
strong, not intrusive, state has found expression through the
Pokhran blasts, if there is such a thing called a Hindu "vote
bank" in existence and if there is a greater appreciation of
India's cultural identity, much of the intellectual initiatives can
be traced back to the activism nurtured by these two
stalwarts. Savarkar and Golwalkar died on the fringes.
Today, their legacy is a key feature of the mainstream.
Swapan Dasgupta is deputy editor, India Today.
INDIA TODAY
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BUILDERS & He abused Tamil as the language of barbarians and ridiculed

BREAKERS the Tamil people by claiming that he, a Kannadiga, could
become a leader of the Tamils because there was no
For the People Tamilian fit to lead them.
Looking back at the life and times of E.V. Ramaswami icons

Naicker, revered as Periyar (1879-1973), one may safely
builders & breakers
conclude that he was accepted and acclaimed as the leader
by a significant section of the Tamil population in spite of all makers of equity
his contempt for Tamil and disdain for Tamils only because thought & action
he was perceived to be a genuine individual, a rarity among
those in public life. There was no shade of hypocrisy in him art & culture
and he never attempted sophistry while propounding his sporting spirit
social philosophy. And what a philosophy it was!
P.C Mahalanobis
His message was clear. For the people to advance and Veer Savarkar &
E.V. Ramaswami Naicker prosper, they must abandon the Hindu religion, the
and C.N. Annadurai Sadashiv Golwalkar
superstitions that went with it, the idols and ceremonies
created by it, and the caste system born of it. This was the Ramaswami Naicker &
essence of the social doctrine enunciated by Periyar. His C.N Annadurai
By Cho S. Ramaswamy E.M.S. Namboodiripad
scheme of action was as simple as the doctrine itself: get rid
Both electrified Tamil Nadu with of the Brahmin. With him would go all other things associated Jyoti Basu
dynamism and easy charm. But with the Hindu religion. V.P. Singh
what's left of the Dravidian Rajiv Gandhi
movement is just a shadow of what
This unconcealed anger against the Brahmins is said to be B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
either of them dreamt and planned
for. the result of a practice in a gurukulam, a school run by a Sheikh Abdullah
Congressman in the 1920s, in which food was served to the Gopinath Bardoloi
Brahmin boys and others in different sections. If the Angami Zapu Phizo &
objectionable practice hurt the sentiments of EVR, the cold
Laldenga
indifference with which his justifiable complaint was treated
by the Congress shattered his faith in the party and made J S Bhindranwale
him believe that it was a party of Brahmins. Later EVR left Sam Manekshaw
the Congress to form the Self-Respect Movement. While in
the Congress he had actively participated in the khadi
propaganda effort, the agitation for prohibition, and led the
Vaikom Satyagraha for the temple entry of Harijans. It was a
poignant irony that having played a commendable role as a
Congressman in the Independence movement, he, in 1938,
found himself leading the Justice Party which was somewhat
of an asylum for blind supporters of the British. It was the
only party in India to have supported the infamous Rowlatt
Act; not only that, they had even the depravity to defend the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
But far from blemishing that party's chronicle of dishonour,

Periyar made his own contribution to it. The man who sold
khadi on the streets of Madras Presidency while in the
Congress, was now trying to sell the state to the British. This Indian music lovers,
craving for British rule persisted with EVR even after the click here
Justice Party was reborn as the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK),
the mother of all Dravidian parties. His hatred of the
Brahmins consumed him to such an extent that he even
abhorred Independence and pleaded with the British to retain
Madras Presidency under them even if they were to leave the
other parts of India. Fortunately for himself and his party, his
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demand was not taken seriously by anyone, including the

British.
Was EVR a success? No doubt he is hailed even today as

one of the leaders of the Tamil people but what was the fate
of his philosophy, his message? Total and complete disaster
there.
He broke the idols of Vinayaka; today the Vinayaka

procession is a gala event in Tamil Nadu. He tore pictures of
Rama and applied the chappal to it; a few years ago Tamil
Nadu sent a strong contingent of devotees of Rama carrying
bricks for the shilanyas at Ayodhya. He fought superstitions;
his followers in the aiadmk tonsured their heads for the good
health of their leader, J. Jayalalitha. He cursed the caste;
now the offshoots of his movement, the DMK led by K.
Karunanidhi and the aiadmk, are fighting elections dependent
on caste-based votes, and caste-based parties have come
up in Tamil Nadu. He poured his wrath on the Brahmin; now
the leader of DK is an unabashed trumpeter Jayalalitha, a
Brahmin. He was the apostle of secession; his followers
swear allegiance to national integration.
In spite of this failure on all fronts, Periyar is still revered

because of the solid contribution he made in the
demystification of the Brahmin from the exalted position in
society. But in his crusade against the caste system,
however, he did not concentrate on the liberation of the
Harijans, perhaps for fear of alienating his followers, mostly
from the other castes. The man who fought for the Harijans
while in the Congress, started passing over their miserable
plight once he was leading his own party. In this regard, the
worth of EVR's work could be judged by the plight of the
Dravidian parties. They are unable even today to gain the
confidence of the Dalits who have formed their own
organisations to fight for their rights. The judgement then of
the political and social history of Tamil Nadu could only be
that while Periyar the singer was admired, his song was
ignored. As a man Periyar was the embodiment of civility,
which is why he is still loved. The man was greater than his
message.
In fact, his message was so unsaleable a commodity that

C.N. Annadurai (1909-1969) had to abandon many aspects
of it when he quit the DK, to form the DMK in 1949. As with
everything concerning the Dravidian parties, the split too had
a touch of the ludicrous, as it occurred not on any policy
differences or ego clashes, but on the question of the
marriage which EVR contracted at a ripe old age, probably
for ensuring companionship and nursing. CNA and his men
condemned the marriage, quit the DK and formed the DMK.
Maybe, CNA and his colleagues were waiting for an excuse
to break free of the shackles of non-electoral functioning,
which EVR had imposed on his party.
But CNA had openly aired his differences with EVR even
earlier in 1947, when EVR called upon his followers to
observe Independence Day as a day of mourning. Though
CNA as a member of the DK had not demurred when EVR
pleaded for direct British rule for Madras Presidency, even
after they left the other parts of India, he began to cast away
the more bizarre platforms of EVR once he became a leader
in his own right. Thus for CNA's DMK it was "one God" in the
place of EVR's "no God". It was Brahminism which had to be
rooted out, not the Brahmins as was the programme of EVR.
Tamil for CNA was his first love, while for EVR it was a pet
aversion. More than all this, CNA abandoned the
Dravidanadu demand for sheer political survival in the
context of the Anti-Secession Act. Originally the slogan of the
DMK was "Let us get Dravidanadu or go to the burial
ground". Ultimately it was Dravidanadu which was sent to the
cemetery.
CNA's DMK won the 1967 elections in alliance with several

parties, including that of Rajaji's Swanthara Party. His
success was the defeat of EVR, for the latter campaigned

vigorously against the DMK, and irony of ironies, for the

Congress. It never recovered in Tamil Nadu from the kiss of
death, and the DMK grew in strength in spite of all the abuse
showered on it by Periyar. CNA, known for his wit and
sarcasm, dedicated the DMK's victory to Periyar, after
deliberately burying his most cherished goals. Though CNA
had given up the demand for Dravidanadu only to escape the
clutches of the Anti-Secession Act, he also exhibited rare
courage in doing it, for it was the foundation on which his
party had been built. But this kind of political nerve came
naturally to him. He was perhaps the only leader of any party,
who allowed a second line of leadership to emerge in his own
lifetime but even went out of the way to spot such talent and
encouraged them to develop as future leaders. This paid rich
dividends to the party, which produced a notable line of
leaders. An orator of extraordinary brilliance, a writer of
considerable merit, a parliamentarian of remarkable talent,
CNA's worth as an administrator could not be assessed as
his tenure as chief minister was cut short by his untimely
death, an event mourned by the entire state irrespective of
party affiliations. His greatest achievement was that he could
emerge as one of the respected leaders of Tamil Nadu after
having begun his political career as a mere rabble rouser
with a reputation which was at best, debatable. EVR got his
movement isolated by his attitude of obstinate confrontation;
CNA synthesised his party in the mainstream of national
politics by judicious use of the art of compromise. While the
movement of EVR stands debilitated today, the party of CNA
is still a force. What was left after CNA, of the Dravidianism
propounded by EVR got diluted still further by M.G.
Ramachandran, the founder of the AIADMK. He could be
described as an illegitimate child of the Dravidian movement,
as he was the offspring of the cohabitation between the
movement and the movies. The remnants of the Dravidian
philosophy have been entombed by Jayalalitha. She parades
the present leader of Periyar's anti-Brahmin movement as
her principal apologist. Periyar wanted to change society with
his movement; his followers have changed his movement.
The metamorphosis is complete.
Cho S. Ramaswamy is editor, Tughlak.
THE MYSORE DUO KRISHNARAJA WODEYAR

IV & M. VISVESVARAYA
If Karnataka boasts of being India's pioneering software
centre today, some of the credit must be apportioned to
Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, Maharaja of the erstwhile Mysore
state (1884-1940). But computers in the country in the early
1900s? Not exactly. Wodeyar's contribution lay in the fact
that at a time when most maharajas were content to stay in
the lap of luxury, his bold initiatives gave the state a
headstart with education and industry, among other areas.
If Wodeyar had a vision for the state, he also had an able

architect in Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1861-1962) to give shape to
it. Together they turned Mysore into an industrial, agricultural
and human- resource power centre of their times. A trained
engineer, industrialist and statesman, Viswesvaraya had
pioneered state-of-the-art water supply, drainage and
irrigation systems in townships of western India during the
late 1800s. He came to Mysore on a special request by
Wodeyar. Among the foremost planners of India,
Viswesvaraya wrote several books elucidating his ideals.
That one of them, Reconstructing India, is still considered a
reliable guide by policymakers speaks volumes for the man --
and his maharaja.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & The world is always a late Latif. It heard of E.M.S.

BREAKERS Namboodiripad for the first time only when, under his
leadership, the Communist Party won the assembly elections
Red Guard in Kerala in 1957 and formed the state government. It was
supposedly an unprecedented event, Communists winning a
free democratic poll.
E.M.S. Namboodiripad icons
builders & breakers
Political pundits sat up. For the Congress, the shock was
By Ashok Mitra akin to that unleashed by a nuclear implosion. During the two makers of equity
He consolidated the Communist years EMS was in charge of Kerala administration, he thought & action
movement in India. He also initiated reforms in education and the land- tenure system
which both frightened and alienated the entrenched classes. art & culture
initiated reforms in education and
land tenure that came to be known The dismissal of his government, in 1959, is one of the sporting spirit
as the Kerala model. darkest spots in the annals of Independent India. EMS had to
go but the dignity he exhibited in the two years he was
Kerala's chief minister enabled the Communist movement in P.C Mahalanobis
India to gain fresh momentum. In the 1962 national elections Veer Savarkar &
the Communists claimed close to 10 per cent of the votes Sadashiv Golwalkar
cast. Ramaswami Naicker &
C.N Annadurai
EMS was much more than a garden variety of a Communist E.M.S. Namboodiripad
agitator though. He pioneered the agitation of the low-caste Jyoti Basu
Ezhavas in Kerala against the taboos enforced on them by V.P. Singh
the richer classes. He was also at the head of the movement Rajiv Gandhi
for Aikya Kerala or United Kerala, which succeeded within
B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
five years of Independence in bringing into a common
administration the territories formerly belonging to the Sheikh Abdullah
princely orders and those that were under direct British Gopinath Bardoloi
governance. Angami Zapu Phizo &
Laldenga
There was a mystique of an instant communication between J S Bhindranwale
EMS and Kerala's masses. Fractured politics, which have Sam Manekshaw
held sway in Kerala in the past quarter of a century, has
stalled the advance of the Communists in the state, the
reverence for EMS is nonetheless undimmed. Frustrated
adversaries called him the Mahatma. Ironically, the sobriquet
fitted well. And yet as a practical politician EMS revelled in
weaving stratagems for wresting political initiatives for his
party at the state level.
He was equally indispensable in national politics and was

general secretary of the CPI(M) for at least 10 years. An
ardent believer in party discipline, he still had great faith in
democratic values, loving controversy and exchange of
polemics with the bourgeois press.
He sought an overhaul of the Indian Constitution, thereby Indian music lovers,

shifting the balance of Centre-state relations in favour of the
states. He was also involved in the effort to revive the click here
panchayat system. EMS' devotion to scholarship was great.
He was never away from the hurly-burly of political clashes
nonetheless found time to think and write on issues of
national relevance. A scholar, who was also an agitator, or
an agitator who was simultaneously a scholar: it is difficult to
make up one's mind. Marx, Engels and Lenin led agitations
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and plotted revolutions but they also read enormously and

wrote enormously. EMS showed again the importance of
such a dual role for a Marxist revolutionary, his impact
validating the judgement that communism will continue to be
a force in the next millennium.
Dr Ashok Mitra is a former Rajya Sabha member and was

chairman, Parliament's Standing Committee on Industry and
Commerce. He has authored Calcutta Diary and Terms of
Trade and Class Relations.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & Big commie bosses don't get out of their big chairs until God,
BREAKERS who is the hashish of the masses, doth them part. Stalin
ruled over the Soviet empire for 29 years, getting his critics
The Bhadralok executed or packed off to Siberia. His whelps were too
traumatised to believe him to be dead, and took three years
to paw out his coffin and water it. Mao Zedong reigned
behind the bamboo curtain for 27 years till his death in 1976. icons
It took China a few years more to start eating McDonald's builders & breakers
burgers, whispering that the late chairman had a ball with
makers of equity
well-shaped peasant girls, and getting down to normal
business. thought & action
art & culture
Jyoti Basu is too much of a bhadralok to be put in the same sporting spirit
league with the pistol-packing proletarian pashas. The
deadliest weapon in his arsenal is the hammer, that too as a
part of the party symbol sewn into the flag, made of cheap P.C Mahalanobis
Jyoti Basu red cloth. Veer Savarkar &
Sadashiv Golwalkar
It is too pat to link Basu's durability in power to that of Stalin Ramaswami Naicker &
By Sumit Mitra
and Mao, who were authoritarian leaders at the helm of their C.N Annadurai
He's the longest surviving chief respective nation-states. Basu was 64 when he became chief E.M.S. Namboodiripad
minister and geantleman to boot. minister and has faced four elections since then, not to be Jyoti Basu
Ideology? Take a break. ousted in any of them. During his rule, the radical has never V.P. Singh
been chic in West Bengal (it was so in the Naxalite years of Rajiv Gandhi
the late '60s). He led a team of Marxists and other leftists
who had little experience of governance, having spent their
years mostly in seedy trade-union offices drinking tea from Sheikh Abdullah
mud cups. The government that Basu has led is mediocre, its Gopinath Bardoloi
only self-serving achievement being a legislation by which Angami Zapu Phizo &
tenant farmers could not be evicted, thus making them Laldenga
fiercely loyal to the Marxists. J S Bhindranwale
Sam Manekshaw
But tenant farmers are just one constituency in the agrarian
society. On the other hand, the state's industry went through
a procession of bankruptcy and closure, while jobs in the
organised sector evaporated. The leftist labour unions made
matters worse by raising wage demands on firms already on
stretchers. How could Basu stay in power for so long? At the
top of a heap of no-brainers? Without a People's Liberation
Army at his call?
He came to power following the 1977 elections, held for both

the Lok Sabha and the state Assembly, in which the issue
was not whether there should be dictatorship of the
proletariat but whether the Emergency dictatorship of Indira
Gandhi and her son should continue. The people said it
shouldn't. As the Congress was voted out of power at the
Centre and in the states, including West Bengal, there was a Indian music lovers,
huge political vacuum. That caused the CPI(M) under Basu click here
to get hoovered up to power in Calcutta. The point is unlike
other state leaders Basu never got out of power since then.
Most of the credit should go to the Congress which has,

since B.C. Roy's death in 1963, not produced a credible
leader in the state. However, Basu too demands a share of
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the credit for having kept alive a charisma that transcends

ideology. He may be a has-been to the high-nosed Calcuttan
but to the ordinary folks in the state, he is the last link with a
bygone era when pedigreed gentlemen alone were entitled to
guide the course of politics. The lineage goes as far back as
C.R. Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. Till Basu is alive, and
in chair, Bengalis will take a long pause before they decide to
vote him out.
Sumit Mitra is senior editor, India Today
THE LEFTISTS
SHRIPAD AMRIT DANGE (1899-1991)
With a jowl like a bulldog's bulbous eyes and a capacity to
talk endlessly in the arcane phraseology of the Marxists'
literature, he could pass off as a traditional communist
aparatchik. What made the difference is his love of the
Congress. Under his leadership, the Communist Party, then
undivided, lurched so much Congressward that it got split,
with the CPI, the rump that he led, clinging to the Congress in
the hope that the tail would wag the dog. Dange died a faded
communist, developing a soft spot for the opium of the
masses, Hinduism. However, his "line" of communists tying
up with the Congress had a longer lease of life as it
influenced his detractors, the CPI(M), which now adores the
Congress.
CHARU MAZUMDAR (1915-1972)

Most communists in India forgot that their ideology was after
all about overthrowing rulers by force, not through ballot box.
But some communists stuck to the book. After an armed
uprising of peasants at Naxalbari in north Bengal, Charu
Mazumdar (left, seen here with acolyte Kanu Sanyal), then a
low-profile Marxist leader, broke away from parliamentary
leftism to create, two years later, a party wedded to violence.
It called China's chairman "our chairman" and hoped that the
Red Army would 'liberate' India. Disowned by the Chinese
leaders, and hounded by the police, Mazumdar died in 1972
in police custody a sick man who had probably lost his faith.
But 5,000 people had died in the civil strifes. The seeds of
armed rebellion kept blowing in the wind, with the breakaway
Naxalite groups still active in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, claiming 150 to 200 lives
each year. Mazumdar's followers no longer believe that a
revolution can be imported, but his call for the use of terror as
a political weapon is gaining in popularity several years after
his death.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & Few Indian political leaders have been as reviled as V.P.
BREAKERS Singh. Few have made as lasting a contribution to Indian
nation building. I refer, of course, to his decision in August
Numbers Man 1990 to implement the Mandal Commission's
recommendations and reserve 27 per cent of the jobs in
Central government for the backward classes. I was
privileged to witness the paradox at close quarters. This is icons
how it happened. builders & breakers
makers of equity
Contrary to the impression that was assiduously spread by thought & action
the media, his decision was no last minute, knee-jerk attempt
to shore up his shaky minority government. VP had art & culture
implemented the recommendations in Uttar Pradesh when he sporting spirit
was its chief minister in 1980. In 1989, when the National
Front obtained only seven seats in the south, 81 of its 144
MPs were backward-caste members of the Janata Dal. As a P.C Mahalanobis
V.P. Singh result the question of not implementing Mandal simply did not Veer Savarkar &
arise. What was knee-jerk was VP's decision to announce Sadashiv Golwalkar
the implementation of the Mandal award without any warning Ramaswami Naicker &
By Prem Shankar Jha on August 7. For this the coming confrontation with the BJP
C.N Annadurai
His decision on the Mandal report over the Ram Janmabhoomi temple issue was mainly to
blame. In the beginning of July, I was asked to join a meeting E.M.S. Namboodiripad
may be debatable but it helped
between VP and the cabinet secretary, Vinod Pande. Jyoti Basu
change the face of India.
Apparently (this was when I was not present) the government V.P. Singh
had come to know that the BJP was going to break its pre- Rajiv Gandhi
election promise not to allow the Ram temple to become an B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
issue in its continued support of the government. Sheikh Abdullah
Gopinath Bardoloi
VP had called the meeting to work out a strategy for Angami Zapu Phizo &
countering the threat to the government that this would pose. Laldenga
By then he had held around a dozen meetings with members J S Bhindranwale
of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas and the Babri Masjid Action
Sam Manekshaw
Committee (BMAC) and had got nowhere. It had become
apparent to him that the roadblock was no longer technical,
but the determination by the Sangh Parivar and the BMAC to
piggyback on the issue to build their bases among Hindus
and Muslims.
To avoid a confrontation with the BJP, VP first pinned his

hopes on squeezing a decision out of the Allahabad High
Court on the cases that had been before it for 41 years. Any
decision from it would have given him moral and legal
foundation for forcing his ruling upon the contending parties.
It would have given the BJP a fig leaf it needed to not bring
down the National Front government. But the court, which
had slept over the issue for years, continued to slumber.
Pande must have reported to him sometime in July that the Indian music lovers,
court was not willing to oblige. That was when VP decided to click here
bring forward the Mandal decision. He knew the chances of
his government surviving beyond October 30 were slight. He
wanted to implement this part of the programme before it fell,
partly because it was covered by his 61-point action
programme, and partly because it would help consolidate a
base for the Janata Dal. Where he went wrong was in the
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way he announced his decision. Instead of listening to

Pande, and his principal secretary B.G. Deshmukh, and
leaving open the proportion of reservation and other
contentious issues to be decided after a national debate, he
announced the figure of 27 per cent, and stuck to it till forced
by more than a hundred deaths to refer the issue to the
Supreme Court in October.
Hindsight also suggests that had he taken the BJP challenge

head on, accused it of breaking faith when it announced the
decision to support the temple agitation on September 14,
and dissolved Parliament he would have come back with his
strength enhanced. But he chose to present the people with
a fait accompli and fell right into the BJP's trap.
The blame for this lies to a great extent on VP's tendency to

seek reassurance from close advisers. This made him
vulnerable to sycophants. Two of his ministers, Sharad
Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, prevailed on him to go for
broke on Mandal. As Yadav told a crowd in Patna on October
8, 1990, the "Mandal rath" would crush the "Ram rath".
Ironically Yadav and Paswan are now ministers in a BJP-led
government.
In the end, however much VP may have erred in the way he

implemented Mandal, he will go down in history as a key
architect of a new, egalitarian and vibrant India. Far from
having started a rebellion that he could not control, he
stopped a revolution that would have plunged India into
anarchy and threatened its disintegration. What Mandal did
was to stop the gap between power and entitlement from
widening to the point where those who wielded the former
would smash the political system that made possible the
latter. That was the democratic Indian state.
Ever since the '60s the middle castes had been accumulating
economic power by virtue of the green revolution. But they
had been shut out of the power elite because they lacked
access to modern, English-based education. This was
available only in the cities and therefore by default to an
affluent, upper caste, bureaucratic elite. Mandal is giving
access to the cities and therefore to the elite to the newly
empowered backward classes. What is more it has started a
chain reaction in which the Scheduled Castes and Tribes
have joined. A grossly iniquitous system of stratification that
made some humans inferior to others by birth is breaking
down at a dazzling speed. And although a billion people are
involved, it is happening almost without violence.
Prem Shankar Jha is a columnist and former media adviser

to prime minister V.P. Singh.
B.P. MANDAL (1917-1982)

Former Bihar chief minister whose report on reservation
redefined class-caste stratification in India.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & No prime ministership has been as full of ironies as Rajiv

BREAKERS Gandhi's was. Here's the first one: if his government had
lasted for the two-and-a-half years that is pretty much the
Numbers Man norm these days, he would have been regarded as one of
our best prime ministers ever. By the spring of 1987, accords
were in place in Punjab, Assam and Mizoram, our foreign
policy was looking up, V.P. Singh's finance ministry was icons
being heralded for its honesty and liberalising zeal and the builders & breakers
prime minister was astonishingly popular. If his government
makers of equity
had fallen that March, then Rajiv would have been treated as
world-class statesman. thought & action
art & culture
The problem was: his government lasted five years. sporting spirit
Here's a second irony. The very factor that got him elected P.C Mahalanobis
ensured that he was seen as a failure by the end of his term. Veer Savarkar &
Rajiv Gandhi In 1984, his youth, his political inexperience and his air of
Sadashiv Golwalkar
cheerful amateurishness turned him into an icon in a nation
that was fed up of professional politicians and their sleazy Ramaswami Naicker &
By Vir Sanghvi
shenanigans. By 1989, the same people who had loved him C.N Annadurai
1944: Born in Mumbai. for his naivete were now dismissing him as a dilletante who E.M.S. Namboodiripad
1960s: Returns to India from Trinity did not understand politics. Even today, when we talk of Jyoti Basu
College, Cambridge, without a Rajiv, we speak of wasted mandate. The man could have
degree. Joins Indian Airlines as a V.P. Singh
transformed India, we say, but he did nothing. Contrast this
pilot. Rajiv Gandhi
with P.V. Narasimha Rao who changed everything, though
1968: Marries Sonia. B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
he didn't have a majority.
1981: After Sanjay's death, he Sheikh Abdullah
quits IA to join politics. Gopinath Bardoloi
1984: Becomes PM after Indira's In saying this, we miss the irony. The only reason Rajiv got
Angami Zapu Phizo &
death. that mandate was because he was not Narasimha Rao. Of
course, he lacked Narasimha Rao's political skills -- but that's Laldenga
1985-86: Ushers in economic
reforms. Signs Punjab, Assam, exactly why he won the election. J S Bhindranwale
Mizo Accords. Sam Manekshaw
1987: Signs Indo-Sri Lankan
In 1990, a few months after he had moved out of Race
peace pact which results in the
Course Road, I asked Rajiv why he thought he had won the
IPKF misadventure. Bofors
1984 mandate, the biggest ever accorded to an Indian prime
scandal unfolds.
minister. He looked genuinely bemused. "I don't know," he
1989: Defeated in Lok Sabha
said. "Perhaps, it was because nobody really knew me so
elections.
they were able to see whatever they wanted in me."
1991: Assassinated in
Sriperumbudur.
He was right, of course. The notion that a country that has
been driven to the brink of disaster by an imperious prime
minister, during whose term militancies have threatened to
turn into civil war, should elect as her successor her
completely inexperienced son without knowing what he
stands for is so preposterous that it defies reason. And yet,
Rajiv benefited from a wave, the likes of which India had
never seen before. It wasn't so much that he was his Indian music lovers,
mother's son, more that he offered an alternative to
everything that she had stood for. click here
Indira believed in confrontation. Rajiv believed in conciliation.

Indira was arrogant. Rajiv was charming. Indira was
surrounded by obsequious courtiers. Rajiv depended on well-
educated school and university buddies. For a nation
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traumatised by five years of Indira's misrule and shell-

shocked by her assassination at the hands of her own
security guards, Rajiv offered an irresistible combination:
change but with continuity.
And, of course, as he finally realised, everybody projected

their own aspirations and wishes on him. He was every
young person's chosen candidate. He was every middle-
class person's role model: the first prime minister in history to
have ever held a salaried job with a large corporation.
Because his early image was so bland, he began with a
clean slate, a slate on which everybody wrote whatever they
wanted.
Nobody could have delivered on those expectations. Too

many people wanted too many things. And even if Rajiv had
tried to give them what they wanted, there was another
problem: he didn't know how to do it. In the course of that
same conversation in 1990, he was both reflective and
defensive. "Yes, yes, I made mistakes. But you know if any
one of you guys (the journalists who attacked him) had got
the job, you would have made the same mistakes. It takes
time to learn how the system works."
To his credit, he tried his best. His early agenda was

determined by the circumstances of his accession. India was
falling apart. It was his job to try and put it together again.
The Punjab Accord may not have been the success that he
had hoped for but equally, it is hard to deny that in 1984
when Rajiv took over, Khalistan seemed like a real
possibility, while by 1989, it was an empty slogan. With the
Assam Accord he managed what his mother had failed to do:
he brought the state back to the national mainstream. In
Mizoram, he ended a militancy that had raged for 50 years.
Similarly, while his Sri Lanka policy eventually failed,
Colombo recognised that he had abandoned Indira's agenda
of creating trouble for all our neighbours.
Unfortunately after he had spent two years doing the obvious

things, he ran out of steam. His drawback was that he had no
unified vision of the India he wished to create. When he was
elected, that did not seem so important. At that time, the
priority was to save the India we had, not to create a new
one. Moreover, his laidback charm and easy wit helped cover
up for the lack of vision. Asked about his priorities at an early
press conference, he dodged the question with a one-liner.
"Your mother gave us a government that worked. What will
you give us?" asked a reporter. "A government that works
faster."
Working faster. For the first two years, that was what it was
all about for Rajiv. He had no desire to change the system,
he just wanted to make it move more swiftly. If you look back
at the things he said during that period, they were all the
kinds of things that any educated middle-class person of his
background would have said. There was too much
bureaucracy. We needed to cut down on red tape. Politicians
should be better educated. We should all learn to use
computers. We should look for managerial solutions to such
problems as the population explosion. Market research would
tell us what the people of India wanted.
The sad reality is that you cannot transform India with an

agenda that could have appeared in the pages of the Doon
School Weekly. By his third year in office, Rajiv had learnt
the limitations of Doscospeak. But he was still groping for a
vision, for a new way to go forward. When he did come up
with an alternative agenda, there were two problems. One:
his chosen vision centred on Panchayati Raj (a vision so far
removed from the managerial solutions of his first year that it
made no sense to his middle-class constituency) which he
was unable to sell to his party, let alone the country.
But it was the second problem that was the clincher: it was
simply too late. By the summer of 1987, the Rajiv mandate
had begun to collapse. The electorate admitted that he had

restored stability to India, but complained that he had failed

to make the country a much better place to live in. The
extravagant expectations that had created the mandate now
tore it apart. When V.P. Singh revolted, and allegations of
corruption were hurled at Rajiv, the government simply did
not know how to cope.
Deserted by the press that had glorified him for two-and-a-

half years, and abandoned by the middle class, Rajiv went
back to his mother's people and asked them for advice. From
then on, he ceased to be his own man and fell back on such
Indira-strategems as the claim that all opposition to the prime
minister was, by definition, foreign inspired.
Just as his mother invoked the foreign hand, Rajiv quoted the
destabilisation theory. Far from trying to win back support of
the press, he opted for pressure tactics: raids on The Indian
Express and an ultimately abortive Defamation Bill.
That there would be no happy ending was inevitable. The

prime minister who could do no wrong for the first half of his
term, could do nothing right for the next two years. Worse
still, he never again seemed like the Rajiv of old. He became
an imperious, aloof figure who tried hard to bluster that he
was in control of events while actually being swept away by
forces he could not handle. When he lost in 1989, some were
sad but nobody was really surprised.
And here's the final irony. Rajiv spent all of 1990 trying to
work out where he had gone wrong. He recognised that
neither approach -- the public school solutions of 1984-87 or
the hardline of 1987-89 -- would be successful if he ever
came back to power. For the first half of 1991 he spent his
time with position papers and research back-up. If he came
back, he said, he would get it right.
And then, just as it was all on the verge of coming together

again, it fell apart forever.
Vir Sanghvi is editor, The Hindustan Times
P.V. NARASIMHA RAO

Born 1901: Indira Gandhi's trusted lieutenant will be
remembered for large-scale economic liberalization he
initiated in 1991. Though always more comfortable in the role
of foreign minister, this scholar who became prime minister
faded at the end of his term in 1996. So did reforms.
INDIA TODAY


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BUILDERS & For years now there has been serious discontent about the
BREAKERS progressing decline in the governance of the country, and
about the widespread corruption that permeates the
The Supercrats functioning of the elected representatives and the
bureaucracy. Today, the public believes that political
influence and bribes can get virtually anything done,
notwithstanding the law or the laid-down policies. icons
builders & breakers
The responsibility for delivering good governance rests on makers of equity
the performance of the executive. The bureaucracy is thought & action
required to function under political direction. However,
whenever failures take place politicians tend to attribute them art & culture
only to the lapses of the bureaucracy. sporting spirit
As we look back at the course of the outgoing century, it P.C Mahalanobis

would be of interest to reflect upon the approaches of two Veer Savarkar &
P.N. Haksar distinguished civil servants: the late P.N. Haksar -- he passed
Sadashiv Golwalkar
away in 1998 -- and B.K. Nehru (both Kashmiris; both born
on September 4, in 1913 and 1909, respectively). Both Ramaswami Naicker &
attended Allahabad University, London School of Economics C.N Annadurai
and the Inns of Law and were influenced by Harold Laski's E.M.S. Namboodiripad
political thought. Jyoti Basu
V.P. Singh
Haksar, who had already made his mark as a brilliant lawyer, Rajiv Gandhi
was inducted into the ifs in 1947. After two decades of B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
outstanding diplomatic service he was recalled to serve as Sheikh Abdullah
secretary, and later as principal secretary, to the prime Gopinath Bardoloi
minister. Till he fell out with Indira Gandhi's approaches and
Angami Zapu Phizo &
left her (1973) he exercised potent influence on the shaping
of domestic and foreign policies. Laldenga
J S Bhindranwale
B.K. Nehru
Sam Manekshaw
On issues of maladministration, Haksar refused to consider
piecemeal approaches. A political thinker and social scientist,
By N N Vohra
he was more concerned with systemic changes. Convinced
They helped run the country that "old thought structures will not do" he sought to delineate
through its initail years, set the how India could become "cohesive and coherent" and be
pace for the bureaucracy and the able to carry out the "historic task of our country's political,
tone for the debate with politicians. economic, social and cultural transformation". On the minister-
civil service relationship Haksar held the view that "ministers
must have the skill, the will and sense of direction for riding
the bureaucratic horse ... this will require not merely ability
but character and integrity".
Nehru, a Punjab civilian, joined the ICS in 1934 and enjoyed

a distinguished career: as an expert in financial and
economic affairs, a successful diplomat and an outstanding
governor of the north-eastern states, Jammu and Kashmir Indian music lovers,
and Gujarat.
click here
Convinced about the vital role of the bureaucracy, Nehru
holds that a modern civil service is linked with democracy
and the rule of law which is one of its prime functional
features. He concedes that over the years the position of the
all-India services has changed significantly. Today, the
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politicians value only those functionaries who unquestioningly

carry out their orders and marginalise those who work
according to the law and rules. The ministers have limited
experience of administration and fail to realise that good
governance can be delivered only by a competent and
honest civil service; and good laws passed by the
legislatures cannot automatically enforce themselves.
Our Constitution is based on ideas of western origin whereas

for thousands of years the Indian tradition of governance has
been that of "raja and praja". The powers of the ruler are
absolute. In this ethos the civil servant's duty to enforce the
law is viewed by the politician as an unacceptable check on
his power. Hence, Nehru explains, the continuous strife
between ministers and civil servants, resulting in repeated
transfers and harassments. He laments that while there is no
shortage of good laws the means of implementing them
stand destroyed; there is no political will to reform the
governmental machine; valuable recommendations of earlier
reform commissions have remained unimplemented for
decades.
The onset of coalition governments at the Centre has seen

the enhanced role of regional and sub-regional political
parties and, consequently, increasing importance attaching to
their demands. Many states have often complained that they
need to provide larger opportunities for the sons of the soil
who man the state civil services and, therefore, do not
require any more IAS and IPS officers. Vallabhbhai Patel's
vision of the key positions in the states and the Centre being
manned by competent officers of apolitical all-India services,
selected from among the best talent available in the country,
seems to have become defunct.
If the Centre proceeds with its intention to establish a

Constitutional Reforms Commission, it would be important
that this body redefines the future role, if any, of all-India
services in the administrative apparatus.
Former home secretary N.N. Vohra is director, India

International Centre, Delhi.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & My association with Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah began with

BREAKERS a triple coincidence, almost 60 years ago. As soon as I
completed my ma exams in March 1941, I went to meet Bill
Lion in Winter Bustin, editor of the Civil & Military Gazette of Lahore, to say
that I wanted to join the newspaper. He first floored me with a
quick "yes" and then, as though starting an interview, asked
what I thought of the demand Sheikh Abdullah had made a icons
few days earlier, that the Maharaja of Kashmir must make builders & breakers
way for a popularly elected government. I said Nehru had
makers of equity
already supported the demand, Jinnah was bound to oppose
it, and this would soon become another divide in Indian thought & action
politics. The government needed to worry more about that art & culture
than about the demand itself.
sporting spirit
A few days later, Bustin asked me to go to Jalandhar, to

cover a speech Jinnah was to make at a Muslim League P.C Mahalanobis
Sheikh Muhammad conference. I was less impressed by the speech than by the Veer Savarkar &
hold Jinnah displayed over a crowd bursting with the "Islam Sadashiv Golwalkar
Abdullah
in danger" rhetoric. Half way through his speech the call to Ramaswami Naicker &
mid-day prayers came from a nearby minaret, and while the
C.N Annadurai
By Pran Chopra whole crowd genuflected Jinnah sat on, smoking a cigar. As
soon as the prayer ended he stirred the pot again, rousing E.M.S. Namboodiripad
1905: Born in Soura, Srinagar. Jyoti Basu
the crowd by holding forth on Pakistan as the shield of Islam
1932: Elected president of Muslim
and Jinnah as the sword. V.P. Singh
Conference which later became
National Conference. Rajiv Gandhi
1947-48: Persuades Nehru to send The train back to Lahore was crowded with people returning B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
troops to Kashmir. Becomes the from the same meeting and still breathing the same rhetoric. I Sheikh Abdullah
state's Prime Minister. began to recount the cameo of Jinnah and the cigar to some Gopinath Bardoloi
1949: Joins Constituent Assembly fellow journalists when some passengers became agitated. Angami Zapu Phizo &
of India. They thought I was defaming Jinnah and Islam. I started to Laldenga
1953: As CM, he is dismissed and explain myself but stopped when a passenger of impressive J S Bhindranwale
arrested for "advocating Kashmir's bearing stood up to his full height, challenged everyone else
separation". Sam Manekshaw
to a Quran-reading contest, denounced the League as the
1971: Externed from state. rich man's junta and Jinnah as someone who did not know
1975: Signs the Kashmir Accord. what was good for Islam and the Muslims.
1977: Returns to power.
1982: Dies in Srinagar.
That was Sheikh Abdullah, as I learnt when a passenger
introduced me to him. Our paths had never crossed till then,
though we were contemporaries on the campus.
Sheikh Abdullah was full of faults -- impatience, arrogance,

vanity, complexities which made him seem unpredictable,
even unreliable. But he was always a man of consequence,
the cause of events, not their byproduct. Always, except
during the closing years of the dying lion.
Time and again, lesser people lured him into a compromise Indian music lovers,
and then pulled the rug from under his feet. But never more
so than in 1975, when he signed the Kashmir Accord. The click here
story of Kashmir would have been very different if faith had
been kept with him then. But it was not, and it was too late for
him to do anything about it because life had begun to ebb
away from him.
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He had always been opposed to accession to Pakistan, and

had vigorously fought and defeated those who favoured it.
He was the principal reason why Jinnah retreated from
Kashmir as an embittered man in the early 1940s, and later
in the decade supported rule by the Maharaja, not by the
people. It was Abdullah who persuaded Nehru to support
Vallabhbhai Patel in sending troops to Kashmir, against the
advice of Mountbatten, to beat back the invasion from
Pakistan. His popularity was the reason why Pakistan shied
off from a plebiscite, refusing to carry out the UN's conditions
for holding it, while India agreed to its part of the bargain.
Suddenly his standing was undermined by a rumour that

when Adlai Stevenson called on him in Srinagar in the
summer of 1953, he had offered Kashmir as a base for
American operations against the Soviet Union in exchange
for recognition of Kashmir as an independent state. The
rumour mongers forgot that even at the height of the
suspicion against Abdullah, he stood by the limited accession
he himself had accepted and opposed only, but openly, the
creeping expansions of it which had been brought about by
his successors. This he affirmed repeatedly to me.
Unfortunately conversations with him dwindled thereafter on

account of the long years he was to spend in jail and my
departure from Delhi. Otherwise I would have tried to
understand more closely two episodes in his life: his talks
with President Ayub in 1964, when he went to Pakistan with
Nehru's blessings; and the Kashmir Accord. But such
understanding as I could gather from him and others showed
the former to be an insubstantial event, the latter to be
disgraceful.
I was thrilled when news of the accord reached me. In

substance, the news was that the government would
consider any request by the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly to
roll the accession back to the level Abdullah had accepted
himself. I thought peace was at hand because the dispute
was not about the fact but about the extent of the accession
and some subsequent expansions. But no request came
from the Assembly. The mystery was impenetrable from a
distance. The pieces fell into place later.
The first piece was the accord itself. Its language was as
ambiguous as the clever lawyers around the Sheikh and
Indira Gandhi could make it. The second piece was the
advice they gave him. It was so elliptical and convoluted that
he could not cut any path through it. The third was Mrs
Gandhi. Caught up in the problems of the Emergency, she
went along with those who wanted to use the accord for
burying the problem instead of solving it.
But the centre piece was Abdullah himself. When the time
came to move the state assembly, he was no longer able to
move himself. Heart, diabetes and other ailments had laid
him low. He was still the chief minister when I met him again,
but neither in mind nor in body was he the man he used to
be. He had become the classic picture of an ailing Sultan
manipulated by cunning courtiers.Those years were an
unbefitting end to a life which till then had been so significant.
Former chief editor of The Statesman, Pran Chopra is

political analyst, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi.
INDIA TODAY
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BUILDERS & In 1999, the Government of India announced that it was

BREAKERS awarding the Bharat Ratna to two persons, Mother Teresa
and Gopinath Bardoloi. While many in India are familiar with
The Protector the first name, few have heard of the second.
This is tragic for Bardoloi, the statesman who ensured that icons
Assam remained in India in the critical months leading up to
builders & breakers
Partition. A lawyer, tennis player, diarist (in prison and out of
it), angler and patron of music, Bardoloi's ascendancy in the makers of equity
provincial Congress Party in Assam began in the late 1920s thought & action
and continued, with a brief intermission, until his death in
1950. art & culture
sporting spirit
Like other loyal Congressmen, Bardoloi was arrested several
times for his participation in campaigns against the British. P.C Mahalanobis
His early years as a political leader were marked by frequent Veer Savarkar &
Gopinath Bardoloi clashes with Sir Syed Mohammed Saadulla of the Muslim
Sadashiv Golwalkar
League. Bardoloi succeeded Saadulla when the latter's first
regime fell in September 1939. The Congress lasted barely a Ramaswami Naicker &
By Sanjoy Hazarika
year in office and resigned as part of the anti-war position of C.N Annadurai
If it had not been for his efforts, the Congress Working Committee. Bardoloi had formed his E.M.S. Namboodiripad
Assam would have long ceased to first government in the teeth of opposition from Maulana Abul Jyoti Basu
be a part of India. Kalam Azad but with the support of Subhas Chandra Bose V.P. Singh
and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Rajiv Gandhi
He was to wait for nearly seven years before he could wrest Sheikh Abdullah
political power from the pro-British Saadulla. During that
Gopinath Bardoloi
period, the Muslim League government pushed through a
Angami Zapu Phizo &
series of measures that continue to devastate Assam and the
North-east. Among them was the 1941 Land Settlement Laldenga
Policy that encouraged land-hungry immigrant peasants from J S Bhindranwale
East Bengal to pour into Assam and hold as much as 30 Sam Manekshaw
bighas or more for each homestead.
The Congress under Bardoloi fiercely opposed the policy

which was to transform the demographic profile of the state.
Saadulla was to boast in a letter to Liaquat Ali Khan, at the
time Mohammad Ali Jinnah's right hand man, that "in the four
lower districts of Assam Valley, these Bengali immigrant
Muslims have quadrupled the Muslim population".
Bardoloi's greatest test came in 1946: he had just become

premier of Assam on an anti-immigrant platform, a position
that was reversed by later politicians. The Cabinet Mission
had travelled to the subcontinent, mandated to hammer out a
compromise formula for Indian independence.
Indian music lovers,
After weeks of stalemated discussions, it announced its plan, click here
advocating that Indian provinces be grouped into three
sections. One section clubbed Muslim-majority Bengal with
Hindu-dominant Assam. Under the framework of its plan,
each section was mandated to draw up the constitution for
the provinces in these groups and then assemble them
together to draw up the Constitution of India.
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This plan would have handed over Assam on a platter to the

future East Pakistan (because Bengal had more members).
Bardoloi and his team, backed by the Mahatma, stood firm
and campaigned even against Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel
on the issue. The Mission plan as a result collapsed. Bardoloi
administered Assam for four more years. His zeal has not
been matched since: Assam's first university at Guwahati as
well as its first engineering, medical, agricultural and
veterinary colleges were set up during this time. His
paternalistic attitude to hill communities drew suspicion from
their leaders. While agreeing that the traditions of hill groups
needed protection, Bardoloi advocated the opening up of the
region to direct political representation.
It would be in the fitness of things if his portrait inaugurated

with such pomp years ago in Parliament, but has been
gathering dust since, be given a place of honour.
Sanjoy Hazarika is senior fellow, Centre for Policy

Research, Delhi. A former reporter with the New York Times,
he has authored Strangers of the Mist, Tales of War and
Peace from India's North-East.
INDIA TODAY

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www.123india.com
BUILDERS & When I was 18 and studying journalism in London, I received

BREAKERS an invitation to dinner from Angami Zapu Phizo, the leader of
Naga insurgency. As I stepped into his tiny study to shake his
Banner of Revolt hand, the first impression was, "How small he is!" Yet, one
could not but marvel at the passion, energy and commitment
which fired this slight figure.
icons
builders & breakers
Through that long evening, we -- the leader of the most
powerful rebellion to trouble India then, and now, and the makers of equity
scion of a prominent Assamese political family -- spoke of thought & action
India and Indira Gandhi, of promises made and broken, of
the taste of Assamese food. We chatted in English and even art & culture
in Nagamese, a combination of Assamese and Naga sporting spirit
dialects. He treated me not as a teenager but as an adult,
with dignity and took my opinions seriously.
P.C Mahalanobis
Angami Zapu Phizo & Veer Savarkar &
More than a quarter century later, it is difficult to remember
Laldenga Sadashiv Golwalkar
his exact words as he said farewell but they were along these
lines: "The Assamese are our brothers. India too will treat Ramaswami Naicker &
you as they have treated the Nagas. Only then will you C.N Annadurai
By Sanjoy Hazarika
understand our struggle and speak my language." E.M.S. Namboodiripad
He touched the hearts of the Jyoti Basu
Nagas but in the process inflicted
I smiled at the time, in the confidence of youth, thinking how V.P. Singh
disaster on them. His movement is
dogged by the sane ethnic wrong he was. But Phizo was prophetic: he foresaw the birth Rajiv Gandhi
tensions he sought to quell. of the United Liberation Force of Asom, the Bodo militant B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
groups, the many fighting forces in Manipur and Tripura. Sheikh Abdullah
These movements, though waning in part, continue to tie
Gopinath Bardoloi
down large numbers of Indian security forces, including the
army, paramilitary and police with ambushes and occasional Angami Zapu Phizo &
strikes. Laldenga
J S Bhindranwale
Sam Manekshaw
Yet, I doubt whether he believed that, in his lifetime, his own
Naga movement would become as fractured and embittered
as it has. These days, Naga guns and bullets are not trained
on Indian troops but against fellow Nagas, on the basis of
ethnic, ideological and personal loyalties. It is especially
tragic among a deeply religious people who take the
teachings of the Church very seriously.
It was a Phizo acolyte who tapped the China factor. The man
chosen for the job was a young graduate named
Thuengelang Muivah, then general secretary of the Naga
National Council (NNC). Muivah and General Thinsolie
Keyho, on their own version of the Long March, slogged
through jungles and hills in Myanmar (then Burma) to
Yunnan Province. They established contact with the Chinese
leadership which promised them training, logistical support Indian music lovers,
and arms. In addition, the Nagas established links with the
Pakistanis which continue to this day. click here
Those were Phizo's days of glory and power: this little man,
who slipped out of India and turned up in London on a
Peruvian passport, had let loose a prairie fire that engulfed
the Naga hills and stunned Delhi, forcing it to launch a full-
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scale army operation, with the backing of military aircraft,

against the rebels. He had opened a Burma front with S.S.
Khaplang, a Konyak chief, heading the Eastern Naga
Revolutionary Council since the 1950s.
The Nagas suffered terribly at the hands of the security

forces: entire villages were torched, their inhabitants forced
to flee into the jungle for safety, men taken prisoner, women
were raped and molested. The innocents wept and were
traumatised. There were no human-rights groups those days,
no National Human Rights Commission to run to, no public-
interest petition which has become so chic these days. The
story of those years of violence and brutality have not been
fully told. Yet, it would be foolish not to acknowledge Phizo's
role in inflicting this disaster on his own people.
Phizo's hold over his movement weakened after ethnic

divisions began surfacing in the mid-'60s. These divisions
have been the bane of the Nagas for long; until less than a
century ago, tribes fiercely protected their own lands and
aggressively led raids on others, to collect "heads" and exact
tribute as well as take slaves.
Those divisions have grown since 1975 when a faction of the

Naga movement signed a Peace Accord with the
Government of India at Shillong. The signatories included
Phizo's brother, Keviyalley. Muivah denounced the accord
but Phizo, while making known his disapproval of what had
happened, never publicly attacked the peacemakers.
Muivah and Issak Chishi Swu later broke away from the NNC
to form the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)
which has also split -- between the Muivah-Swu faction on
one side and Khaplang on the other. Again the divide is on
ethnic lines.
The violence continues in Nagaland though talks have

opened between the Indian Government and Phizo's
successors in the movement. The China connection is
closed, the Pakistani link is cracked but ties with other
"liberation groups" in the North-east continue. Indeed the
NSCN(I-M) is described as the "mother" of insurgencies in
the North-east.
Phizo is remembered not simply because he maintained his

prophetic separateness till his death in 1992. He had an
appeal that transcended ethnic fissures and touched the
hearts of all Nagas.
LALDENGA
If Phizo's followers have muddled his legacy, that of
Laldenga in neighbouring Mizoram is intact. Laldenga, a
bank clerk in Aizawl, had followed Phizo's campaign closely.
He too advocated the view that the Mizos were not Indians
since they had been virtually left alone by the British.
His demands for separation became popular after the great

famine of the late 1950s when starvation stalked the hills
following the mautham or the flowering of the bamboo, an ill-
omen that signals high fertility among rats which then
overwhelm standing crops and stored grain. Assam failed to
rush the needed supplies in time to its eastern most district,
creating both bitterness and the foundation for Laldenga's
Mizo National Front (MNF).
In February 1966, the MNF launched an audacious attack on

the district's major towns, declared independence and called
on Mizos to rise against Delhi. The Indian Government
responded by sending troops and aircraft on bombing and
strafing missions. Villagers were uprooted from the hills and
sent to Regrouped Villages built along the highways. The
hardship and brutality faced by the Nagas was repeated in
Mizoram.

For the next 20 years, violence continued in the Mizo hills

with the fighters camping in East Pakistan. With the fall of
East Pakistan in 1971, Laldenga's men scattered to
Myanmar while he moved to Pakistan. After secret meetings
in Europe with Indian officials, he returned seeking a
peaceful resolution of the problem.
The talks stuttered alonguntil 1986 when Rajiv Gandhi

hammered out a deal that ended the fighting. Mizoram
became a full Indian state and Laldenga its interim chief
minister before his MNF won the first elections to the state
legislature. However, defections toppled him from office. He
died soon after but his state has an enviable record: it is
among the most peaceful areas in the country and has even
pipped Kerala as the state with the highest literacy rate in
India.
Sanjoy Hazarika
INDIA TODAY


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BUILDERS & It will remain one of history's great puzzles why a man who
BREAKERS lived by hatred and violence should have become a legend in
his own lifetime. Prophet of hate for some, messiah for others
Prophet of Hate but legend all the same. When Sant Jarnail Singh
Bhindranwale's body was found lying amid the debris of the
Akal Takht on the morning of June 6, 1984, his followers
refused to believe he was dead. Even as the Indian Army icons
took control of the Golden Temple, rumours spread through builders & breakers
the villages of Punjab that Bhindranwale had escaped and
makers of equity
would return at the appropriate moment to once more lead
the movement for Khalistan. thought & action
art & culture
The legend grew to mighty proportions when word also sporting spirit
spread that the fighting had destroyed the Akal Takht which,
since Mughal times, had been the symbol of Sikh resistance
against the throne of Delhi. It was here, in the white marble P.C Mahalanobis
J S Bhindranwale forecourt that separates the Akal Takht from the Golden Veer Savarkar &
Temple, that they found Bhindranwale's body. Following Sadashiv Golwalkar
press censorship and a secret cremation, the rumour was Ramaswami Naicker &
By Tavleen Singh perceived as truth and the legend grew larger still.
C.N Annadurai
1947: Born in Malwa region, Eyewitnesses who claimed to have been with him till the end
said he could have escaped had he wanted. But when he E.M.S. Namboodiripad
Punjab 1970s: Preacher in pursuit
saw how badly the Akal Takht was damaged he chose to die Jyoti Basu
of pure Sikhism.
1978: Clash with Nirankaris results with his loyal lieutenants, Amrik Singh and Shabeg Singh, the V.P. Singh
in his entry into politics. former war hero who helped him turn the Golden Temple into Rajiv Gandhi
1979: Defeated in SGPC elections. a fortress. B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
1981-83: Leads terrorist, Sheikh Abdullah
subversive activities. Bhindranwale's legacy of hatred between Sikhs and Hindus Gopinath Bardoloi
1984: Operation Bluestar. Is killed survived his death with many of those responsible for the Angami Zapu Phizo &
in Golden Temple which he had Sikh pogroms that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination
turned into his fortress. Laldenga
admitting that they were only taking revenge for what
J S Bhindranwale
Bhindranwale had done. They had heard, they said, that he
Sam Manekshaw
made mincemeat out of Hindu babies and ordered the rape
of Hindu women. The stories were untrue as were those
about him ordering assassinations by picking names, lottery
style, out of earthen pots.
The myth of Bhindranwale was so much bigger than the man

that it always came as a shock to actually meet him and
discover that he was only a semi-literate village preacher. If it
had not been for the intervention of politics he would
probably have remained a village preacher.
Sometime in the late '70s he began making a name for

himself in the villages of Punjab for his aggressive approach
to enforce what he considered pure Sikhism. He would
wander about telling youths not to trim their beards, ordering
them to give up intoxicants for studying the scriptures. Indian music lovers,
Abstinence was the essence of his own philosophy and, click here
unusually for a Jat Sikh, he was even a vegetarian. His
followers took pride in telling people that their Santji did not
even drink tea because in his view it fell into the intoxicants'
category.
It was in his pursuit of pure Sikhism that he first caught
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national attention. On April 13, 1978 there was a violent clash

between his followers and a group of Nirankaris whom he
considered untrue Sikhs. Several people were killed and
Bhindranwale approached a group of amateur politicians who
claimed proximity to Sanjay Gandhi. Through connections in
the All India Sikh Students' Federation, they managed to
persuade him to set up his own candidates against the Akali
Dal in the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee
elections of 1979. He was badly defeated but by then other
important politicians made the mistake of thinking they could
also use him.
In 1981 Lala Jagat Narain, owner of the Punjab Kesri group

of newspapers, was shot dead in the first of a series of
assassinations in Punjab. Bhindranwale was wanted for
questioning but was allowed, for unexplained reasons, to
choose the moment of his arrest. So, he drove through Delhi
with a busload of armed followers till he arrived at Chowk
Mehta in Punjab, and only allowed himself to be arrested
after a gun battle with the police.
His reputation as an upholder of Sikh rights grew and was

enhanced when in 1982, ostensibly to prevent terrorist acts
disrupting Delhi's Asian Games, respectable Sikhs, including
senior army officers, were stopped from entering Delhi and
mistreated in the process.
By 1982 Bhindranwale had moved himself, and a large group

of his followers, into a guest house called the Guru Nanak
Niwas, in the precincts of the Golden Temple. It was from
here that he began to build himself into a media star.
International television crews began to descend on him as
the violence in Punjab grew and took a communal turn with
innocent Hindu travellers being targeted.
When reporters asked Bhindranwale what he had to say

about the massacres he would make it clear that he did not
think there was any harm in killing Hindus. When Darbara
Singh resigned as chief minister of Punjab after the first
massacre on October 6, 1983 he said that it was obvious that
Hindu lives were more important than Sikh ones. "Hundreds
of Sikhs have been killed," he told reporters, "but the
government only falls when six Hindus get killed."
Bhindranwale also made his contempt for Indira Gandhi clear

by referring to her disparagingly as "that daughter of a
pandit". His original anger may have been against the police
and the state government but he converted it into a rage
against Hindus in general and from this was bred the idea
that Sikhs had always been discriminated against in India
and so needed their own country. He never made the
mistake of actually making a secessionist remark himself but
the Sikh youths, who constituted his main following, had no
hesitation in admitting that their fight was for Khalistan.
The biggest political victims of Bhindranwale's emergence

were the Akalis. In a half-hearted attempt to win more
autonomy for Punjab they had started a dharamyudh morcha
(religious fight) from the Golden Temple and appointed the
mild-mannered sant Harchand Singh Longowal as their
leader. Bhindranwale hijacked the movement and announced
that it would not end until all the demands in the Anandpur
Sahib Resolution were met.
This document, which contained religious demands as well

as demands for more autonomy, was adopted by the Akali
Dal in 1977 but had been ignored since. Bhindranwale made
it fundamental to his cause because the autonomy demand
was worded in such a way that would have given Sikhs more
authority than Hindus in Punjab.
The irony is that it was through his death that Bhindranwale

succeeded in achieving his objective. Not by dying but
because in order to win their battle against him the Indian
Army had to destroy the Akal Takht. After Operation Bluestar

soldiers targeted Sikh youths in Punjab villages in a mopping-

up exercise codenamed Operation Woodrose. It was after
this that a large number of Sikh youths fled to Pakistan.
Bhindranwale remained their hero and leader just as to
Hindus he remained a prophet of hate.
Tavleen Singh is a columnist and author of Lollipop Street

and Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors.
INDIA TODAY


www.123india.com
BUILDERS & In 1942 at the height of the World War II a fierce battle was
BREAKERS raging in Myanmar, then Burma, at the Sittang Bridge. A
company of the Indian Army was engaged in hand-to-hand
Prophet of Hate combat with the invading Japanese forces for the capture of
a position, which was critical for the control of the bridge. The
young company commander was exhorting his troops when
his stomach was riddled by a machine gun burst. Afraid that icons
his company would be left leaderless if he were evacuated, builders & breakers
he continued fighting till he collapsed.
makers of equity
thought & action
His company won the day and the general commanding the
Indian forces arrived at the scene to congratulate the art & culture
soldiers. On seeing the critically wounded commander, he sporting spirit
announced the immediate award of the Military Cross -- the
young officer was not expected to survive much longer and
the Military Cross is not awarded posthumously. Thus began P.C Mahalanobis
Sam Manekshaw a historic military career that spanned the Indo-Pak wars and Veer Savarkar &
the Sino-Indian conflict, the wounded captain surviving to Sadashiv Golwalkar
become India's first field marshal. Ramaswami Naicker &
By A S Kalkat
C.N Annadurai
1914: Born in Amritsar. In 1947 when Pakistan invaded Kashmir, Sam Manekshaw E.M.S. Namboodiripad
1933: Joins the Indian Military was the colonel in charge of operations at the Army Jyoti Basu
Academy. Headquarters. His incisive grasp of the situation and his
1934: Commissioned into the V.P. Singh
acumen for planning instantly drew the attention of his
army. 1947: Pakistan invades Rajiv Gandhi
superiors and Manekshaw's rise was spectacular, though not
Kashmir. Is colonel in charge of without controversy. He was outspoken and stood by his B.K. Nehru & P.N Haksar
operations. 1962: Sent to NEFA to convictions. This, coupled with his sense of humour, often Sheikh Abdullah
check further Chinese intrusion. got him into trouble with politicians. Gopinath Bardoloi
1965: Commander, Eastern
Angami Zapu Phizo &
Command during the Indo-Pak
war. 1969: Appointed chief of the In 1961, for instance, he refused to toe the line of the then Laldenga
army staff. defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon and was sidelined. He J S Bhindranwale
1971: Indo-Pak war. Steers India was vindicated soon after when the Indian army suffered a Sam Manekshaw
to victory. and Bangladesh is humiliating defeat in nefa the next year, at the hands of the
created. 1973: Given the rank of Chinese, resulting in Menon's resignation. Prime minister
Field Marshal. Jawaharlal Nehru rushed Manekshaw to nefa to command
the retreating Indian forces. This had an electrifying effect on
the demoralised officers. In no time, Manekshaw convinced
the troops that the Chinese soldier was not "10 ft tall". His
first order of the day characteristically said, "There will be no
withdrawal without written orders and these orders shall
never be issued." The soldiers showed faith in their new
commander and successfully checked further ingress by the
Chinese.
The Indo-Pak war of 1965 saw Manekshaw as army

commander, Eastern Command. When India was forced to
launch operations in the west, Manekshaw was against
attacking in the east since the main sufferers would be the Indian music lovers,
people of East Pakistan. The wisdom of his advice dawned click here
when the Indian forces fought the Pakistan army in East
Pakistan in 1971.
This was Manekshaw's finest hour. As army chief and

chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, he planned the
operation meticulously refusing to be coerced by politicians
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to act prematurely. His strategic and operational finesse was

evident when Indian pincers cut through Pakistani forces like
knife through butter, quickly checkmating them.
When the prime minister asked him to go to Dhaka and

accept the surrender of the Pakistani forces, he declined,
magnanimously saying the honour should go to his army
commander in the east. He would only go if it were to accept
the surrender of the entire Pakistan Army.
Manekshaw's competence, professional standing and public

stature was such that the politician and the bureaucrat alike
crossed his path only at their peril. On one occasion, he
found that the defence secretary had penned his own
observations on a note he had written to the prime minister
and defence minister. Infuriated, Manekshaw took the file
and walked straight into Mrs Gandhi's office. He told her that
if she found the defence secretary more competent than him
to advise her on military matters she did not have a need for
him. The defence secretary was found a new job.
As a commander, he was a hard taskmaster. He encouraged

his officers in the face of adversity but did not tolerate
incompetence. That is perhaps Manekshaw's greatest
contribution, to instil a sense of duty, efficiency,
professionalism in a modern Indian army and to stand up to
political masters and bureaucratic interference.
In a way, he was following the path of other army chiefs, K.S.

Thimayya K.M. Cariappa. A holy terror, there are many tales
of the power of his whiplash. Following Pakistan's surrender
in the east, Manekshaw flew into Calcutta to compliment his
officers. The ceremonial reception over at Dum Dum airport,
he was escorted to a car -- a Mercedes captured from the
enemy. Manekshaw refused to sit in it, leaving the officers
red-faced.
On another occasion, a general accused of misusing funds

was marched up to him. "Sir, do you know what you are
saying?" asked the general. "You are accusing a general of
being dishonest." Replied Manekshaw: "Your chief is not only
accusing you of being dishonest but also calling you a thief. If
I were you I would go home and either shoot myself or
resign. I am waiting to see what you will do." The general
submitted his resignation that evening.
Lt-General A.K. Kalkat is a former army commander and

belongs to Manekshaw's regiment, 8 Gorkha Rifles.
INDIA TODAY

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BUILDERS & For most people, Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis

Consequently, he would have supported the economic

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The area where Mahalanobis really made the difference was

Suresh D. Tendulkar is professor of economics, Delhi

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BUILDERS & In Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, there is a slightly

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Mahasabha," he said, "is not a Hindu mission. It leaves

To Savarkar, Hindutva was akin to a national ideology of all

Golwalkar had a deep-seated distaste for the excessive

So while Savarkar concentrated -- rather unsuccessfully -- on

Golwalkar's attempts to extend swadharma to politics proved

Savarkar's Hindutva and Golwalkar's cultural nationalism

Swapan Dasgupta is deputy editor, India Today.

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BUILDERS & He abused Tamil as the language of barbarians and ridiculed

Looking back at the life and times of E.V. Ramaswami icons

But far from blemishing that party's chronicle of dishonour,

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demand was not taken seriously by anyone, including the

Was EVR a success? No doubt he is hailed even today as

He broke the idols of Vinayaka; today the Vinayaka

In spite of this failure on all fronts, Periyar is still revered

In fact, his message was so unsaleable a commodity that

CNA's DMK won the 1967 elections in alliance with several

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vigorously against the DMK, and irony of ironies, for the

Cho S. Ramaswamy is editor, Tughlak.

THE MYSORE DUO KRISHNARAJA WODEYAR

If Wodeyar had a vision for the state, he also had an able

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BUILDERS & The world is always a late Latif. It heard of E.M.S.

He was equally indispensable in national politics and was

He sought an overhaul of the Indian Constitution, thereby Indian music lovers,

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and plotted revolutions but they also read enormously and

Dr Ashok Mitra is a former Rajya Sabha member and was

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He came to power following the 1977 elections, held for both

Most of the credit should go to the Congress which has,

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the credit for having kept alive a charisma that transcends

Sumit Mitra is senior editor, India Today

CHARU MAZUMDAR (1915-1972)

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