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The Bill is inspired by the western view of life which attaches more value to the romance of marital relations and married life than to parenthood in which marriage attains its fruition. The Hindu system conceives of parenthood as something that is permanent, unchangeable, and inviolable . . . The Bill seeks to change popular psychology as to the sanctity of marriage and family and loosen the ties of family as the very foundations of society. It thinks more of husband and wife than the father and mother in whom they are to be permanently merged to protect the child and the future of the race.
N. C. Chatterjee.
‘You have not the courage’, Chatterjee told the law minister, ‘to be logical and to be consistent.’
‘You must bring it also for the Muslim community,’ said Kripalani. ‘Take it from me that the Muslim community is prepared to have it but you are not brave enough to do it.’
it guaranteed the state a certain autonomy; thus Article 370 specified that the president would consult the state government with regard to subjects other than defence, foreign affairs, and communications.
Crucially, those from outside the state were prohibited from buying land or property within it. This measure was aimed at forestalling attempts to change the demographic profile of the Valley through large-scale immigration.
Then, and later, it was widely believed that the arrest of Abdullah was masterminded by Rafi Ahmad Kidwai. Kidwai was a left-leaning member of the Cabinet, and a close friend of Nehru’s.
Like his predecessor, the new prime minister of Kashmir was a larger-than-life figure. He was known commonly as the Bakshi, much as his predecessor was known as the Sheikh.
India, he said, must abandon its claims to the Valley, and allow the Sheikh his dream of independence. It should withdraw its armies and write off its loans to the government of Jammu and Kashmir. ‘Let Kashmir go ahead, alone and adventurously, in her explorations of a secular state’, he wrote. ‘We shall watch the act of faith with due sympathy but at a safe distance, our honour, our resources and our future free from the enervating entanglements which write a lie in our soul.’
‘Personally, I believe you all belong to me, to India. But if you say you don’t, no one can force you.’ The Mahatma also advised his visitors that a better proof of independence was economic self-reliance; they should grow their own food and spin their own cloth. ‘Learn all the handicrafts’, said the Mahatma, ‘that’s the way to peaceful independence. If you use rifles and guns and tanks, it is a foolish thing.’
Angami Zapu Phizo,
Father of the Nagas
Busy with healing the wounds of Partition, settling refugees, integrating princely states and drafting a constitution, the political elite in New Delhi had not given these tribes much thought.
Nehru’s first extended exposure to the north-east renewed this appreciation of the tribals. As he wrote to a friend in government, his visit had been ‘most exhilarating’. He wished these areas ‘were much better known by our people elsewhere in India. We could profit much by that contact.’ Nehru found himself ‘astonished at the artistry of these so-called tribal people’, by their ‘most lovely handloom weaving’.
Another Nehru moment.
the terrain. It was indescribably beautiful: ‘The scenery was the loveliest I have seen,’ remarked one British visitor. ‘Range upon range of forested hills which change their grouping continually as we climb and climb. The tops rise out of the mist like islands in a white sea.’
Rishang Keishing,
The oldesdt MP in the world (from Manipur)
Few Indians outside the north-east knew of the Naga conflict at the time, and virtually no foreigners. Yet the conflict had serious implications for the unity of the nation, for the survival of its democracy and for the legitimacy of its government. For nowhere else in the country, not even in Kashmir, had the army been sent in to quell a rebellion launched by those who were formally citizens of the Indian state.
Sukumar Sen
Chief Eleection Commisioner of the first 2 General Elections of India.
Jayaprakash Narayan
Social Worker
The ‘Syrian’ Christians of Kerala claim to have been converted by St Thomas in the first century of the Christian era. More recently, Protestant and Catholic missionaries had also enjoyed conspicuous success. The first Muslims were a product of trade with the Arabs, and go back to at least the eighth century. These are the oldest communities of Christians and Muslims in the subcontinent.
Like Sheikh Abdullah, Master Tara Singh and A. Z. Phizo, EMS was, in this huge country, considered a mere ‘provincial’ leader.
In the summer of 1957 it introduced an Educational Bill aimed at correcting the abuses in privately owned schools and colleges. These were the norm in Kerala, with schools managed by the Church, the Nair Service Society and the SNDP. The bill sought to enhance the status of teachers by checking the powers of the management to hire and fire at will, by setting norms for recruitment, and by prescribing salaries and humane working conditions. It also gave the state the powers to take over schools that did not abide by the bill’s provisions.
E. M. S. Namboodiripad
Mrs Indira Gandhi was elected president of the Indian National Congress. She was the first woman to hold the post since Nellie Sen Gupta in 1933. Asked whether her domestic duties would suffer, Mrs Gandhi answered with asperity: ‘My household work takes ten minutes only.’
Article 356 of the constitution, whereby the president could dismiss a state government on account of a breakdown in law and order.
Six months later Kerala went to the polls again. The Congress, allied with the Socialist Party and the Muslim League, asked the voter to choose between ‘democracy and communism’.
The communist, claiming that this was a false freedom, had launched a bloody revolution against the nascent Indian state. On the other side, the RSS was mobilizing the forces of reaction in an attempt to create a Hindu Pakistan.
Rajaji felt that the Congress had become complacent in the absence of a strong opposition. In October 1956 he made public his belief that there should be an opposition group within the Congress, without which – so he feared – the party ‘would simply degenerate into a hunting ground for every kind of ambition and self-seeking’.
In May 1958 he published an article with the provocative title ‘Wanted: Independent Thinking’. This argued that ‘probably the main cause for the collapse of independent thinking’ in India was ‘the long reign of popular favourites without any significant opposition’.
Mundhra Scandal.
Read
ON THE LAST DAY of March 1959 the Dalai Lama crossed the McMahon Line into the territory of the Republic of India.
Heinrich Harrer
Dalai Llamas tutor
For some time now opposition MPs, led by the effervescent young Jana Sangh leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, had been demanding that the government place before Parliament its correspondence with the Chinese.
Nehru was ‘standing alone against the rising tide of national resentment against China’.
On 9 March the Dalai Lama appealed to the world ‘not to forget the fight of Tibet, a small but independent country occupied by force and by a fanatic and expansionist power’.
Morarji Desai.
Kairon was the uncrowned king of Punjab for the eight years he was in power. He had dash and vision; he started an agricultural university, pioneered the tube-well revolution and persuaded peasants to diversify into such remunerative areas as poultry farming. He drew out the Punjabi women, persuading them to study, work, and even – given their athleticism – participate in competitive sports.
David Astor,
Under Krishna Menon’s stewardship, said Kripalani, ‘we have lost 12,000 square miles of our territory without striking a single blow’. Army promotions, he claimed, were based not on merit but ‘according to the whims and fancies of the defence minister or what will suit his political and ideological purposes’.
When an opposition member taunted Nehru with regard to his remark that Aksai Chin was barren land, with no grass growing on it, a Congress MP added this telling supplement: ‘No hair grows on my head. Does it mean that the head has no value?’ This was widely viewed as a dig at Nehru who, of course, was completely bald himself.
I do not hold with all these cracks and mockery/ At Krishna Menon./ It is his virtues I would rather pin on./ For instance, consider his skill with crockery:/ What could be finer/ Than the loving care with which he handles china?
The implications were clear: either the diplomats should seek a treaty deal with China, or the politicians should canvass for military help from the Western bloc. But the rising tide of patriotic sentiment ruled out the first; and the non-alignment of the prime minister, strengthened by the anti-Americanism of his defence minister, ruled out the second.
The fall of Bomdi La led to panic in Assam. An Indian reporter, reaching Tezpur on 20 November, found it a ‘ghost town’. The administration had pulled back to Gauhati, after burning the papers at the Collectorate and the currency notes at the local bank.
I would request you to prepare lists of Muslim employees in your Ministry and in the offices under your control, whose loyalty to the Dominion of India is suspected or who are likely to constitute a threat to security.
‘Jana Sangh ko vote do, bidi peena chhod do/ Bidi mein tambaku hai, Kangresswala daku hai’.
The struggle in Telengana was led by Tarimala Nagi Reddy. He was a veteran of the communist movement who had spent years organizing peasants and also served several terms in the state legislature. Now, he proclaimed the futility of the parliamentary path; resigning from the assembly as well as from the CPM, he took once more to the villages.
In the rich history of Indian satyagrahas, this must surely be counted as the most bizarre: a chief minister fasting against his own government’s failure to keep the peace.
(Where there are liquor bottles, there you will find Biju and Biren).
Parts of the old Hyderabad state, merged with Andhra Pradesh in 1956, now wanted out. The movement was led by students of the Osmania University, who complained that Andhra was run for the benefit of the coastal elite. The new state they demanded would centre on the neglected inland districts. To be named Telengana, it would have Hyderabad as its capital.
The Shiv Sena was the handiwork of a cartoonist named Bal Thackeray, whose main target was south Indians, whom he claimed were taking away jobs from the natives.
In March 1968 Sheikh Abdullah was freed from house arrest in Kodaikanal and allowed to return to his Valley.
