Innholdsfortegnelse for September 25, 2017 i India Today

A pracharak who became one of India’s most inclusive prime ministers, running a successful coalition. Another pracharak who came to power in a historic election which redefined campaigning. A visionary prime minister whose daughter, also a prime minister, changed the way politics was conduc ted. A musician who took the sitar to the world, a yogi who made transcendental meditation a global brand, a Carnatic musician—daughter of a devadasi—whose bhajan moved Mahatma Gandhi to tears. A princess who founded institutions dedicated to healthcare, sport and women’s rights. An entrepreneur who taught India that creating wealth was most egalitarian; a batsman who convinced a nation it could win in cricket; and an actor whose fear of failure makes his work ethic inspirational and renders him relevant in every era. India’s history…

The Karnataka government has offered a reward for any information about the killers of Gauri Lankesh, editor of Lankesh Patrike. A police investigation has been ongoing since her murder on September 5. While there has been speculation about links between Lankesh’s murder and that of Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi, the police has refused to be drawn on suspects. Kalburgi was murdered just over two years ago, in Dharwad, Karnataka. No one has been arrested and the trail appears to have gone cold. Despite relative press freedom (in comparison with China or North Korea, for instance), India scores poorly on a number of indices. Journalists on duty have been attacked and some have even been killed. Only a small proportion of the attackers have been arrested, let alone convicted. Advocacy group…

@ShougatDasgupta Ironic, Don’t You Think? BJP president Amit Shah has been telling young people in Gujarat to watch out for propaganda on Facebook and WhatsApp. Apparently, there are trolls out there looking to spread fake news; trolls who hunt in packs, whose tactical armoury comprises little more than taunts, threats and invective. The sort of people, Shah might have heard, who the BJP pays to patrol social media—a slavering, snapping, attack-dog army who Rahul Gandhi, currently on his grand tour, described as a machine built to spread lies and abuse. The chief of this army is Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’s IT cell. Malviya recently tried to spin the prime minister’s following of several deeply unpleasant Twitter handles as an example of his commitment to free speech. Why…

KAUN BANEGA PRIZE IDIOT A n innocuous question in the September 9 episode of game show Kaun Banega Crorepati has sparked off a war of words between the BJP and Congress in Madhya Pradesh. The BJP hailed the question—‘the CM of which state is fondly called mama (uncle)?’—as a sign of Chouhan’s popularity. A sullen MP Congress accused KBC host Amitabh Bachchan of cosying up to the BJP, with Congress leaders tweeting— ‘Moongfali mein dana nahin, Shivraj Chouhan mama nahin’—a reference to the state’s failure to tackle the drought-like situation. Another Congress leader said the Rs 40,000 prize for the question was a truer measure of the CM’s importance. RISE AND FALL West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee not only commands respect, she demands it as well. As newly elected…

I want all Indians to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians, said B.R. Ambedkar, whose great contributions to democracy have been viewed through the narrow prism of caste in post-Independence India. Competitive loyalty, he felt, should not overwhelm our national identity, whether that loyalty arises out of religion, culture or language. Unfortunately, modern India has grown in quite a different trajectory. All manner of anarchic and arcane identities have taken over, unleashing conflicts that the national fabric is yet to recover from. Indians have found themselves trapped in a witch’s curse, at the mercy of a constantly boiling pot of trouble and toil. Despite a Constitution which is not a mere lawyers’ document but a vehicle of life, and a spirit always the spirit of age,…

The man who understood Jawaharlal Nehru best was Mahatma Gandhi. The shrewd saint and shrewder baniya that he was, Gandhi realised no one else in the Indian pantheon of nationalist heroes could serve as his successor. A whole host of heroes did recommend themselves, but they lacked the alchemical chutzpah required for the role. The secondariness of everyone else was obvious to Gandhi. The uniqueness of Nehru, for Gandhi, lay in his ability to enact the modernity narra tive. No one else could display his epic quality and novelistic nuance. Nehru became modernity incarnate. No man embodied its political, aesthetic and ethical dimensions so immaculately. More endearing was the charm and sheer vulnerability he brought to it. If there were an Oscar for modernity, he’d have swept it every year.…

Vallabhbhai Patel’s finest hour came when he put himself to the task of securing the accession into the Indian Union of over 550 scattered principalities. It was a combination of tact, persuasion and force that made this impossible feat possible with the able help of V.P. Menon, assigned to him by Lord Mountbatten. When the Nizam of Hyderabad presented a serious obstacle, instigating violence and seeking external intervention, Patel turned to the army’s help which resolved the issue swiftly. Kashmir, on the other hand, after acceding to India, became a battleground of Pakistan’s marauders whom Nehru hesitated to drive away completely using force, choosing instead to raise the matter with the United Nations where the matter remains unresolved. It is futile to judge history in hindsight. But it is worth…

Jayaprakash Narayan’s idea of change was not limited to political shift. His total revolution was aimed at transforming the system. He was the strongest supporter of democratic means and fundamental rights. With his leadership, JP, a hero to everyone, turned India away from misguided individualism to the truths of democratic values. He was not the finest of public speakers. An intellectual who never resorted to dramatics in his discourses, JP never shied away from discussing policies during his speeches at mass meetings. Such a speech and delivery might have turned off the crowd, had anyone else touched those issues in a voice that was two octaves lower than others. But it was JP’s credibility— someone endowed with fierce selflessness, public spirit, and above all, the desire for empowerment of the…

From the beginning of his full term as prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi focused on ‘responsive administration’ for the common man as the need of the hour. Initially, he appears to have been in favour of a managerial solution to this issue, exemplified by two innovations that the district collector of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra had introduced: a ‘single window’ for the receipt and disposal of petitions from the common man and a grievance redressal system which had at its fulcrum a day in the week when the collector, accompanied by all his senor officials, would receive the general public in the open under a tree and attempt to dispose of problems on the spot (rather in the manner of the Diwan-e-Aam, the assemblage of the common people, in the Mughal court).…

Ram Manohar Lohia’s cultural politics is more relevant today than ever before as we face the most insidious attempt to hijack Indian nationalism. The modernist, constitutional language of liberal secularism is simply unable to counter this jingoist and communal onslaught. Lohia’s formulation that “politics is short-term religion and religion is long-term politics” opens the door for drawing upon the resources of Hinduism and other religious traditions for reshaping politics. Lohia brought to life the contemporary message of Hindu cultural ideals and mythologies including Ramayana and Mahabharata. He drew upon Rama, Krishna and Shiva to reconstruct a model for political action in modern India. He posited Draupadi as an ideal of Indian womanhood. He planned a Ramayan Mela where multiple versions of the great epic could be celebrated. He viewed politics…

Sheikh Abdullah was, and remains, the tallest Kashmiri leader ever. It was only because his politics was not religionbased that he stood up to Mohammad Ali Jinnah and refused to throw in his lot with Pakistan. This made it possible for India to refute in practical terms the pernicious two-nation theory and secure the voluntary accession to the Indian Union of the 70 per cent Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, for this reason, Jawaharlal Nehru made it a precondition of the resolution of the issue of accession that Sheikh Abdullah be released by the Maharajah of Kashmir from detention By 1953, however, while Sheikh sahib continued to reject any merger with Pakistan, he seems to have been encouraged by the United States, and Adlai Stevenson in particular, to…

Childhood is a time when your home is your world. In my case my home, Anand Bhavan in Allahabad, reflected a wider world in which my parents and thousands of men and women like them were fighting for freedom from British rule. The young and old who came to Anand Bhavan had pledged their lives to a cause that left them little time for the luxury of private life. Many, known and unknown, among them, spent months and years in jail. Yet the memory I have of growing up during those years is of the unquenchable optimism and energy that surrounded me, and the laughter that made light of what in reality was a long, hard, and often heart-breaking struggle. Sarojini Naidu was a frequent visitor to our home, and…

There was a stupefied silence in the group once the figure of its gains crossed all expectations. The men, glued to a small radio in a modest house with just a 25-watt bulb for light, were too overwhelmed to react. Perhaps the announcer had got the figures wrong due to fatigue—it was past midnight, and the election ballots were still being counted Annadurai, or Anna to his followers—the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which was contesting the assembly elections— noticed the great excitement and jubilation expressed by everyone as results started pouring in. But as the DMK’s gains crossed 60, signs of disbelief and dismay began to appear on his face. Then, the final announcement confirmed the abysmal defeat of the Congress party to the DMK, which had won…

Be it Dhirubhai or John D. Rockefeller, every entrepreneur with dragon spirit (as different from Keynes’s ‘animal spirit’ in which the drive to take risks is tempered with trust), has to reach a deadlock with the state at some stage. Rockefeller, being born a hundred years before Dhirubhai, in a new nation where socialism had no space, had a much longer run for his Standard Oil until it hit the final barricade of anti-trust laws. But being a big fish in India’s small pond, Dhirubhai, or his children, are circumscribed not so much by public protest but by the limited size of their market. But, despite the limitations of geography, Dhirubhai was able to put into the psyche of his people a new and welcoming attitude to wealth, not as…

When Ratan Tata took over as chairman of Tata Sons from J.R.D. Tata, he was filling the shoes of a living legend. It was seen as a huge challenge. A few actions stand out that not only positioned the Tata Group differently but had a great impact on how firms and nations viewed India and Indian industry. First, the number of foreign joint ventures and collaborations the Tata group entered into. It was significant that these were in new areas of business. Second, the acquisition of firms such as Daewoo, Tetley, Corus, Jaguar Land Rover. This was a watershed as it not only created a belief that Indian firms could operate multiple global businesses but also fuelled the aspiration that Indian businesses could have a global footprint. Third, the Nano…

When Narayana Murthy started Infosys, nobody believed that software services could be such a big opportunity, or that India had the skill base to offer such high-end services to the developed world. But Murthy broke global myths and built Infosys as a highly credible, technology-led, world-class enterprise. Murthy’s leadership blueprint is all about excellence. It’s about inspiring people to give their best, to outperform and to earn the respect of all stakeholders. Right from its inception, Murthy ensured that Infosys adopted global best practices and international benchmarks in corporate governance, quality standards and financial disclosures. I truly believe Murthy is amongst the greatest entrepreneurs of our country. He is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, who has battled the odds, made personal sacrifices and stood by his principles in building Infosys. He has…

Amartya Sen has had a strong influence on the way we look at human progress and development. He defines development as a process of expanding the real capabilities and freedoms that people enjoy, not narrowly as an expansion of incomes. Freedoms depend not only on individual incomes but also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements, and political and civil rights. As he puts it, the “value of the living standard lies in the living, and not in the possessing of commodities, which has derivative and varying relevance”. In this context, Sen’s contribution to the construction of new indices has led to a better understanding of poverty and human development. Sen has written extensively on issues of identity and highlights the real danger in uniquely categorising people on…

Elaben revealed to us a different world. She revealed the humanity of the poor, made them into people like all of us. People who had families, who laughed and cried, who had aspirations and disappointments and who worked hard at the base of society, supporting the superstructure, the same one that gave us our privileges. For Elaben, the poor women were her companions, her guides in the quest for a better world. Soopa Gopa was her first ‘comrade- in-arms’, a migrant from Khandesh, she carried bales of cloth on her head and was paid two rupees per trip. “She showed me the myriad forms of exploitation and taught me my first lesson in collective bargaining,” Elaben used to say. Chanda Papu, who repaired and sold old clothes, took her every…

AP.J. Kalam kept reinventing himself, training his sights on new horizons even after he turned 69—as principal scientific advisor to the government of India in 2000 and then as the President of India in 2002 (the “people’s president”). Naturally, he emphasised the applications of science and technology (S&T) and enthused the youth to dream big. He also went beyond S&T and economic growth and tried to promote harmony amidst religious groups in India. Looking at the beginning, credit goes to ISRO and to the leaders and teams there who shaped people like Kalam. In all these cases, the indomitable spirit to keep on with productive actions, irrespective of problems or age considerations, was the hallmark of these great people. India can do more, if more Indians follow these basic principles:…

The Green Revolution in India is seen as spanning different epochs and it is interesting to walk with M.S. Swaminathan through them. The first phase of the introduction of the high-yielding technology is attributed to the initiative of the political leader C. Subramaniam, civil servant B. Sivaraman and M.S. Swaminathan in the second half of the mid-1960s, a ‘ship-to-mouth’ phase of grains shortage and large grains imports as PL-480 aid from the US. They took the risk of importing the dwarf varieties of wheat from the International Wheat Research Institute (IWRI) in Mexico and Swaminathan and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) teams provided the scientific backup for the decision and then in replicating the seeds. It was a bold and, in those times, a controversial decision—an event which…

Many people believed Mother Teresa to be a saint, well before Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, conferred formal sainthood on her on September 4, 2016. Saint Teresa of Calcutta symbolised the concept of daridra narayan, or God in the poor. She was a karma yogini par excellence. Not for her the gyan yoga nor even the raj yoga, but the bhakti yoga manifested through service to the suffering. Although not born an Indian, she came to be accepted within the broad Hindu rubric of service to the poor and suffering. Saint Teresa’s strength lay in her voluntary espousal of poverty, and in this regard, she fit into the tradition of voluntary renunciation of wealth exemplified by sages in the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions. (The writer is…

Rukmini Devi, as she was known, relentlessly pursued her interests, be it the arts, crafts and textiles, weaving, vegetarianism or animal welfare. She rose to head international bodies on the last two, fighting the government of the day headed by Jawaharlal Nehru (she was an MP) against the unmindful export of monkeys for experimentation. She spent her years in Parliament studying the pathetic condition of animals in India, their slaughter for meat and the laws that might protect them. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Bill, first presented by her in 1953, was passed in 1960 entirely due to her perseverance in an India that found this subject largely irrelevant. She also headed the relief committee set up for the Dalai Lama and his people in 1959. Indeed, she took…

Lata Mangeshkar is to the Hindi film song what Ghalib is to Urdu poetry, what M.F. Husain is to painting. She is the very best of the many titans that worked in her field, which included names like Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Manna Dey and her own sister, Asha Bhosle. And she outlived them all, producing hit song after song, giving Indians something to remember her with over seven decades. She was the ghazal in Madan Mohan’s compositions, the pride of Naushad’s melodies. When we close our eyes and recall the beautiful, doe-eyed Sharmila Tagore in ‘Kuchh dil ne kaha’, it is Lata, with the ever so delicate quiver in her voice, who best exemplifies the actor’s coy, reticent character in the film (Anupama). And yet the same Lata…

She was the first singer to be a Bharat Ratna awardee, she was the first Magsaysay awardee, the first to perform at the United Nations, and she was also the first and probably the only one to give it all up. This was when she was at the peak of her career and if you had to book a concert with her, she would request a receipt of a cheque made in the name of any charitable trust as payment. Once at a dinner, she removed her diamond earrings and handed them to the organiser to start a fund for the needy. Her diamonds were for us, her fans, to enjoy their shimmer and beauty, but for her these were superficial adornments. One tends to talk only about her spirituality…

My father, Khushwant Singh, passed away a little over three years ago. He was 99, but clear-minded right till the end. He was doing his usual morning crossword puzzle when his heart gave way. As word got around, a succession of people turned up at his modest two-bedroom New Delhi flat to pay their last respects, from top politicians like Dr Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and L.K. Advani, to leading academics and writers, right down to the humblest of folks. His appeal cut through political, religious and social differences. He had the knack of bridging all kinds of chasms. He felt just as at ease with a prime minister or a president as he did with a simple villager. And they felt at ease with him too, a rare trait…

Not only did Salman Rushdie stake his claim to India, he staked his claim to a place in English literature. In his essay Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist, Rushdie argued that this kind of taxonomy, the urge to separately define writing in English coming out of former colonies (only certain colonies, mind) served only to “change the meaning of the far broader term ‘English literature’... into something far narrower, something topographical, nationalistic, possibly even racially segregationist”. Rushdie’s novels were a rousing rejection of ersatz authenticity. The anthem of the Rushdie nation, a song Gibreel Farishta sings in the opening pages of The Satanic Verses, is ‘Mera joota hai japani’ from Shree 420, starring a Chaplinesque Raj Kapoor. Rushdie made it not just alright but desirable to be ‘inauthentic’, for identity…

More ink has been spilt discussing Amitabh Bachchan’s part in the change that occurred in Indian cinema in the 1970s than vegetable carts have been overturned in filmi fight scenes. The received wisdom goes something like this: up to 1973 and the release of Zanjeer, which saw Amitabh Bachchan playing a police officer with unusual levels of self-doubt, Indian cinema had skipped along merrily in a carefree fashion for decades. First through a post-Independence self-conscious mission to help everyone be better citizens and then through the confident outward-looking 1960s, when being an Indian abroad was celebrated in glorious technicolour and increasingly tight salwar kameez. Legend has it that one shot of Bachchan’s red-rimmed tortured eyes staring balefully from the screen was supposedly all it took to trigger a national awakening…

Ashis Nandy’s observation that Satyajit Ray had a ‘plurality of selves’ is a neat expression of his cultural complexity. Like other figues from the Bengali intellectual elite of his time, Ray grew up with western culture. This was not just a middlebrow level of nodding acquaintance with famous names and works but a profound understan ding of western music, literature, and, of course, cinema. Ray’s knowledge of and love for European realistic cinema are manifested throughout his films, and famously he collaborated with Jean Renoir on The River (1951). Ray said he learnt about Bengali culture only later in his life when he studied in Shantiniketan. However, his familiarity with a wide range of Bengali culture, from the high to the low, is striking. He was a sensitive interpreter of…

DRAPE THE TABLE IN TRADITIONAL HUES When in doubt, opt for classics. Just like this dining room setting. “With opulent jewel tones and gold accents, the setting reflects the mood of the season. Further the linen highlights traditional craft techniques such as block printing and zardosi,” says Sharika Bhan, Chief of Business, Home & Lifestyle, Fabindia. Don’t miss the brass flatware and accessories that make the room gleam. LIVE OUT LOUD Use large furniture and bold colours for an instant festive facelift in the living room. “Jewel colours like red and gold create a luxurious feel. Art in rich hues and floral fabrics bring in the vibrancy while creatively using decorative lighting like candles and fairly lights on silver thalis looks alluring,” says Aditi Sawhney, Principal Designer and Creative Director,…

Prodcut designer, Vera Fritsch Fusion, the buzzword for haute plates and even hotter chefs across the globe, has finally made its way to Indian interiors. But unlike its culinary counterparts, in the design world it means a focus on European aesthetics celebrating Indian crafts and techniques. And who better than Austria- born (and brought up), monsoon-loving, Vera Fritsch to marry the two worlds. “I studied economics, which took me to France, UK, Italy and Sweden. But it was only when I accepted a job in 2007 at a diplomatic mission in New Delhi that I entered the ultimate adventure of my lifetime. Since then India has been my home,” says Fritsch, who always had a passion for fabrics, design and interiors but it was only in India that she felt…

In September 2013, when Dr RAGHURAM RAJAN took charge at the RBI, inflation was soaring and the rupee was weak. By the time he left in September 2016, inflation had been reined in and the rupee stabilised. Rajan recently launched I Do What I Do, a book of his essays and speeches as RBI governor. Excerpts from an interview with DEVANGSHU DATTA where he talks about the trajectory of the global economy and India’s most pressing priorities. Q1. What do you think of the current direction of the global economy and is India a bit out of step? A. Expansion continues in the US. Europe is doing better than anybody expected. The vast stimulus created must now be tapered carefully to tighten without panic. The Fed (the US Federal Reserve)…

IN A NEW PAPER, economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty argue that the “share of national income accruing to the top 1% income earners is now at its highest level since the creation of the Indian Income-tax [Act] in 1922”. There is some nitpicking over figures, whether the duo overestimated the wealth of the rich (and underestimated that of the poor), but there is no denying the rise in Indian inequality. Various household surveys have shown that growing inequality and concentration of wealth is a significant concern. Piketty and Chancel called for more transparency in tax data, describing the 2000s as the “black decade... during which India entered the digital age but stopped publishing tax statistics”. 22% Share of national income earned by the top 1%, compared with just 6%…

Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian since the Buddha, revolutionised India’s nationalist movement after he returned from South Africa by launching his first nationwide satyagraha on August 1, 1920, inspiring millions of illiterate peasants and brilliant intellectuals to follow him with his passionate promise that fearless tapasya (suffering) would, after one year, bring them national freedom or swaraj (self-rule) from British imperial tyranny. That did not, of course, happen so swiftly, but Gandhi never abandoned his faith that satya (Vedic truth) joined with Buddhist ahimsa (non-violence)— which he believed to be god and love—would together “move the world”. And that did happen, more than two decades later, after the half-naked “great soul” led his final satyagraha, ordering every British official to quit India, adopting as his most powerful mantra, “Karenge ya…

Subhas Chandra Bose was a legend in his lifetime. He is a myth after death, revered for what imagination wants him to be, his memory kept alive by those who batten on his name. The irony is that reality offers so much to admire and emulate there is no need for fantasy. Bose was the ultimate Indian, refusing to attend a religious ceremony at Singapore’s Chettiar temple until the priests agreed to accommodate all castes and communities. He insisted on Hindustani (written in the Roman script) as India’s unifying national language. British India’s commanderin- chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, probably hoped to expose what he saw as Bose’s comprehensive treason by selecting a Hindu (Prem Kumar Sahgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz Khan) and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon) from…

W hatever the colour and ideological bent of governments that come to power, they will all go back to Indira Gandhi. She laid down the pillars of wisdom that must constitute the face of a ruling party, cooked as it was in the very crucible of her own survival instinct. India has progressed economically and its middle class has grown. But inequality of incomes has also grown and millions of people still live in abject poverty or very straitened circumstances. Which is why Indira’s recipe still holds sway and is embraced by such unlikely Congress-haters (the BJP’s official objective is ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’, a Congress-free India) as Narendra Modi and his government. Perhaps it is time to tabulate what Indira’s prescription for the country amounts to. Under the rubric of abolishing…

With every election triumph, it is apparent the BJPRSS combine has built an intimidating election machine: Congress is now in power in less than half-a-dozen states, suggesting the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dream of a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ is not so far-fetched. And with their ‘take no prisoners’ approach, the hunger for even greater success in 2019 is no more unrealistic. An unshaken belief in electoral invincibility has spurred greater risk-taking. In November 2016, Modi dra matically announced a decision to ‘demonetise’ Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. It may have been economically contentious, but it was also typical of the disruptive politics he has made his calling card. The decision was positioned as a ‘war’ on black money, giving the prime minister a moral edge and the applause of the poor.…

Some called V.P. Singh the messiah of social justice, and he saw himself in this light. Others felt he was nothing but a cunning politician who, for his own survival, brought a genie out of the bottle which could not be put back. The decision was to dog VP’s successors through the decade of the nineties and beyond it, till all parties came to accept the inevitability of reservations for backward classes, who add up to a whopping 52 per cent of the country’s population. But the Mandal decision unleashed forces that were difficult to contain and it cut short the life of his government to a mere 11 months. Later, he remarked, in his typical eastern UP style, with a touch of wry humour, “Goal kar diya par taang…

Democracy and respect for diversity are even more closely interlinked in India than elsewhere, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee understood this better than most leaders of his time. India is a land of unmatched diversity, which is reflected in its geography, social structure, cultural landscape and political life. No community, organisation or ideology has ever succeeded, or can ever succeed, in establishing complete dominance over others. Vajpayee knew this. Therefore, he would have never allowed the arrogant, unseemly and plainly myopic talk of “Congress-mukt Bharat” (Congressless India) put out by the BJP’s current leaders. Vajpayee’s belief in secularism was a natural corollary of his belief in democracy and diversity. It was not the Congress brand of secularism which, willingly or otherwise, used Muslims as a vote bank. His was certainly not…

When she died in 1964, a few months before her friend Jawaharlal Nehru, The New York Times called her “a princess in her nation’s service”. Indeed, daughter of Harnam Singh, son of the erstwhile Maharaja of Kapurthala who lost his claim to the throne because he married a Presbyterian, she was educated at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, England, but gave it all up to become Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary for 16 years. Her list of accomplishments is a tribute to her skills at building institutions and collaborations. Founder of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which she argued should remain autonomous; leading campaigner for women’s right to vote; sports enthusiast; she was one of the great women thrown up by the freedom movement. She was a firm believer…

Kanshi Ram successfully captured the Dalit imagination by proposing a third path avoiding both revolution and collaboration. Displaying extraordinary organisational energy and strategic acumen, he first assembled a unionised network, BAMCEF (All India Backward And Minority Communities Employees Federation), linking scheduled caste employees across the county. This was used as a platform to create an activist group, DS4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti) that, through aggressive propaganda, reached out to Dalits, lower castes and poor Muslims in both urban and rural areas forging a wider coalition of the economically exploited and socially oppressed. The final step came in 1984 when he formed a full-fledged political party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, for combat in the electoral battlefield. The Dalit leader was an ardent votary of B.R. Ambedkar’s slogan, “Political power is…

Though known for his humour and wit, S.H.F.J. Manekshaw was a fierce strategist and pragmatic on the battlefield. In April 1971, when Indira Gandhi asked him if the country was ready for war, he ref used. The onset of the monsoon and the army’s unpreparedness would make it difficult to win the war, if the army was to go to war, he emphasised, it would go prepared. More importantly, the Mukti Bahini or the Bangladeshi guerrilla resistance movement had to be trained. Manekshaw even offered his resignation if the prime minister went ahead with the war plan. When she gave him the six months he asked for, he set a date for the war, personally coordinated the infrastructure build-up, monitored the battle-readiness of unit formations and stocked up on logistics…

H e would write the definition of luxury with 3,000 square foot suites, but his own first hotel room was a 10 square foot tenement. He was assigned Band Quarter 4 at his first job at Shimla’s imposing hotel, The Cecil. His home squatted at the bottom of the hill, a situation as lowly as his own position there: keeping track of the coal. He would trudge up twice a day, since he came home for the simple lunch cooked by his pretty bride, Ishran Devi. Everything would change in the eight decades during which the colossus straddled a luxe empire of 35 hotels stretching across cultures, time zones, even hemispheres. Yet nothing really changed. Rai Bahadur M.S. Oberoi kept climbing, and never forgot that in reaching for the seven…

Ghanshyam Das Birla, founder of the Birla empire, was a man of many parts. GD, as he was fondly referred to, had financed political parties but only once run for a political office; set up colleges though his own formal education stopped at age 11; built temples but preferred his own house for meditation; and starting as a jute broker 70 years ago, created a business domain worth over Rs 1,000 crore in his lifetime. At the age of 18, GD’s grandfather Shiv Narayan Birla set out from his village in Rajasthan to make his fortune in Bombay as a moneylender. By the time GD was born, on April 5, 1894, the family was well established. Later, as a young man, GD wanted to diversify the family business into manufacturing.…

If Elattuvalapil Sreedharan had been a superhero, he would have a readymade name, ‘Metroman’. The disbelief at what he was able to pull off—founding one of India’s most successful infrastructure creators, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC)—is chiefly because this sector has been marred by poor implementation and time and cost overruns. The corporation grew out of Sreedharan’s project management style, marked by swift decision-making, scrupulous honesty and unswerving self-belief. The DMRC has continued without him since he hung up his boots in 2011, but his association with metros across the country continues. The insistence by state CMs that he sign off on every project makes him one of the oldest government servants still in active service—he joined the Indian Railways Engineering Service in 1954. His prowess at urban renewal…

There is something to be said about how Vikram Sarabhai is today seen equally as an institutioncreator and enabler, far beyond just being the father of the Indian space programme. Even more amazing is the fact that most of the institutions that he created and helped build are iconic knowledge temples of modern India. The institutions he created were designed not just for brilliance, but also with great imagination and creative thought. The first was the Ahmedabad Textile Industries Research Association (ATIRA) which, interestingly, had nothing to do with space science or exploration, but was designed to fill a gap in the management of the textile industry, for it to become more organised in terms of industrial research, and cutting-edge internationally. He was also the person behind the founding of…

In his pomp, he was easily the most ‘complete’ batsman in the world if not the most entertaining. His approach was highly nuanced, making minor technical adjustments depending on the pitch and opposing bowlers, the fundamental tactic being to wear down the opposition in the sure belief that runs would inevitably follow. Since he lacked nothing in the range of strokes and could swiftly move into attack mode as he showed in his last few seasons, Sunil Gavaskar’s tempered approach could be attributed to three things: the way batsmen (save those from the Caribbean) were mentored in those days, and the onus of carrying the team’s batting on his shoulders. Of course, in the best tradition of the Bombay school, he also hated to get out. The genius in his…

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was probably the most influential yoga guru from India over the past 50 years, with millions of followers in every part of the world. His meditation-based teachings had an enormous impact, including on some of the best-educated, most affluent and articulate minds from the East and West. His influence in India was extensive, where he redefined the image of the guru and the corpus of knowledge that the guru was expected to represent. He became a cult figure in the West—the media face of the yogi and meditation master. Despite the adulation he received, he did not encourage a personality cult, emphasising ‘higher knowledge’, which is impersonal in nature. He was able to articulate the ancient traditions of Vedic and yogic knowledge for the modern mind. He…

Post-Independence, the revival of the crafts sector began with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay who strongly championed the handicrafts movement for the role it could play in social and economic upliftment. Her interventions set the template, the result of which can be seen today in the awareness and availability of craft products everywhere. Kamaladevi’s belief in handicrafts as well as in dance, drama, theatre, music and puppetry led her to establish various institutions that played key roles in shaping much of India’s cultural journey post-Independence. She helped establish institutions like the All India Handicrafts Board and the Central Cottage Industries Emporia. By any yardstick, Kamaladevi was a truly remarkable person. Independent, intellectual and fiercely committed to her beliefs, she actively participated in the freedom movement, was thrown into jail, and strongly championed women’s…

Duur hai manzil, raahein mushkil/ aalam hai tanhai ka (The destination seems far, the path turbulent/ an atmosphere of loneliness) While Begum Akhtar’s music was the most defining aspect of her personality, her music in turn was defined by her life’s journey—in a sense making her life and music inseparable. A journey that began in a salon in Lucknow as a young teenager—set up by her mother Mushtari bai, also a tawaif—Akhtari in a short span became an artiste of calibre. Only the very distinguished were allowed access to her mehfils. She became popular across north India through a number of 78-rpm recordings released under the Megaphone label. At a very young age ,she went through many creative phases in her career including acting in theatre in the 1920s in…

Yes, you could call Husain saab a control freak—he controlled his family, he controlled his art gallery owners, he even tried to control his patrons. He alone, from amongst his contemporaries, understood the power of marketing. When he decided to up his price astronomically, it appeared to be an arbitrary, irrational, even egocentric decision. It was anything but. It was a well thought through strategy that paid him rich dividends. But more than that, it shook up the disorganised art market and took everybody else’s prices up as well. This was the one thing he felt bitter about. While his contemporaries were swift to label him ‘commercial’, they refused to admit that their own prices had also gone up, thanks to him. But what eventually broke his heart and crushed…

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayanswami once told his biographer N. Ram, publisher of The Hindu, the newspaper for which Narayan wrote a longstanding weekly column, that he was “amused mostly by the seriousness with which each man takes himself”. It’s an attitude also reflected by his brother, R.K. Laxman, in his ‘Common Man’ cartoon. Unlike Krishna, many of Narayan’s characters cannot find those inner resources that enable them to survive; their tragedy is that they cannot reconcile the circumstances of their lives with their frustrated individual dreams. Narayan’s greatness as a writer is that his characters’ frustrations are treated not with mockery, but with affection. He was a pioneer because he was the first writer to turn English into a medium to tell Indian stories, but his greatness as a writer came…

The British Film Institute in London recently screened the finely restored version of Pyaasa and I was asked to introduce the film. There were about 50 people in the audience, some were strangers to Indian cinema and others were diehard fans. The lights dimmed and, as it invariably does, Pyaasa wove its magic from the very first scene where we see the poet Vijay (Guru Dutt) lying on the grass in a park, composing a poem on nature. Sahir’s verse is heard in voice-over and is really a prelude to this sad and moving film. As Vijay walks away, the poems ends with the lines: Main doon bhi toh kya doon tumhein, ae shokh nazaaron Le de ke mere paas kuchh aansu hain kuchh aahen [What can I give you,…

Salim Khan was the wannabe actor son of an Indore DIG of police. Javed Akhtar was the son of a Communist poet, one of Bhopal’s most famous citizens. They came to Bombay seeking individual fame but together they became possibly the most famous writers of their time, Salim-Javed. Between them, they wrote the story, screenplay and dialogues of 24 films, created the iconic Angry Young Man who embodied the turbulent ’70s, and generated plots, characters and lines that continue to influence cinema. The characters they created were memorable—the larger-than-life villain; the long-suffering, usually single mother; the “najayaz baap” (to borrow the Trishul phrase about illegitimacy); and the independent-minded working woman. But their most seminal contribution to cinema was the articulation of a new modern hero. Here was a man who…

Ebrahim Alkazi crafted modern Indian theatre by merging the different strands of our heritage—Natya Shastra for one—with international cues and standards of production. He skilfully threaded music, spectacular sets and innovative lighting to leave a lasting impact on the audience much after the curtain came down. Perhaps his education at London’s famed Royal Academy for Dramatic Art gave him the international perspective that enabled him to seamlessly meld various disciplines into contemporary Indian theatre. Alkazi was equally at ease putting up a production along the lines of Japanese classical theatre as a Molière production. He continues to be a Protean; he is a painter, he is a master of the nuances of music as well as design and is an accomplished photographer too. Alkazi had come from Bombay with an…

DREAM BIG AND FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS, give back to society, never stop learning and never stop questioning—this was some of the advice offered at the 13th edition of the India Today Mind Rocks Youth Summit, held on September 8 at Bhopal. Speakers included the who’s who of the political, art, business and sports worlds, including Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, actors Abhishek Bachchan and Bhumi Pednekar, director of Lipstick Under My Burkha Alankrita Shrivastava and cricketer-turned-MP Mohammad Azharuddin. The event was inaugurated by India Today Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa, who encouraged the audience not to impose limits on what they wished to achieve. “The Internet is a great equaliser,” he said, “and the same information is available to everyone. A glorious future awaits you.” The sessions at the…

The Monk Who Sold His Bacardi, Blender’s Pride & Prejudice, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Beer, The Three Whisketeers, Gone With the Pint.” Unleash the alcohol puns and redefine happy hours at Bar Bar, the city’s introduction to wholesale pricing on a drinks menu. With a semi-open spot in Phoenix Market City that is privy to Bengaluru’s dramatic skies and the mall’s ongoing events, this 150-seater gastropub sticks to a simple maxim— drink more, pay less. Bar Bar serves up pegs of Bacardi, Smirnoff and the good ol’ Monk for as low as Rs 99. Here’s how it works. Grab the e-savings calculator tab placed on your table, browse through the menu that divides whiskey, rum, vodka, liquer and more into three segments (popular, premium and luxury), place up…

NOVEL CONCEPT Krishna Mehta’s new pop-up store in Mumbai has fashion, furniture and decor on display. PRICE ₹22,000 onwards AT House of Tales, VB Gandhi Marg, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai SLEEP ON IT Trident’s latest offering, the Induldence Collection has bedsheets with 300 thread count and temperature control quality. PRICE ₹3,599 AT www.tridentindia.com FANCY FABRICS Spanish textile brand Manuel Revert has launched a new furnishings collection. One of the technologies used called Stainstop prevents staining as it does not absorb liquids. PRICE on request AT Maishaa, Pritampura, New Delhi SOFA SO GOOD Italian luxury brand, Visionnaire has introduced The Convention Living Room. It is part the Greenery Collection 2017, which reflects a greater use of natural materials with a low environmental impact. PRICE on request AT visionnaire-home.com PLATE UP Kitchen Dining…

Interior Designer, Blogger and Founder, Rajee Sood Home, Gurgaon www.rajeesood.com The one time one can indulge guilt-free in excesses is during festivities. Diwali being on the top the list. From food to decor, it’s natural to overdo it. As for me, I can’t stop buying candles. But I have understood that when it comes to decor, less is more. The biggest mistake homeowners make is placing too many loud decor elements. Keep it muted and not only will your rooms look great but it will bring in a sense of peace. It’s also a good idea to tell a story through the decor. Let the theme carry throughout the house. THE BASIC INGREDIENTS In these two settings (console and coffee table), to keep things muted, shades of white have been…

When a moderator asked during Rahul Gandhi’s interaction at UC Berkeley how he’d counter the “1,000 BJP workers sitting on computers to show him up as a reluctant and stupid politician”, the Congress vice-president said he’d engage in more conversations to make people understand who he really was. On the party president issue, Rahul said he was ready to assume the mantle. The two statements are indicators that the Gandhi scion, unlike in the past, is finally ready to be the pragmatic politician who is willing to bend and adapt. He conceded that PM Narendra Modi was a better communicator than he, but also attacked the BJP government where it must hurt—on jobs, economic growth and communal violence. There were other pointers to the turf where he wants to take…

There is a long and distinguished tradition of literary forays by Indian foreign secretaries. The first holder of that office, K.P.S. Menon, wrote over a dozen works either side of his tenure. The longest serving occupant, Subimal Dutt, wrote an important memoir covering the run-up to the 1962 war. Y.D. Gundevia, Rajeshwar Dayal, T.N. Kaul, M.K. Rasgotra and J.N. Dixit all followed suit. The most recent example, Shivshankar Menon’s slim but sharp volume, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy, published last year, marked a shift from the chronological to the analytical. Menon largely eschewed the traditional format of the memoir, instead exploring a handful of key junctures in Indian foreign policy during his time as a diplomat. Shyam Saran, who immediately preceded Menon, and later served as Prime…

Why do our laws fumble so much on rape? Is it because lawmakers pigeonhole us into boxes— married, unmarried, 15-18, below 15? The biggest bull I heard last month was the notion that forced sex contributes to a stable marriage. At least that’s what a government affidavit seemed to imply, by stating that criminalising marital rape may “destabilise the institution of marriage”. That’s right, folks. That’s what the government filed in a Delhi High Court hearing on a petition demanding that marital rape be made a crime. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is hearing another petition against marital rape: this one seeks to remove the legal exception that allows girls aged 15-18 to be raped by their husbands. That’s right, folks. There is an actual legal exception for this. It’s in…

The Renaissance in 15th17th century Europe coincided with the rise of industrialisation, the destruction of feudalism, and the subsequent rise of capitalism and urbanism. In other words, a move away from villagebased societies to urban ones meant the arrival of modernity that also coincided with the rise of democratic forms of governance. This signified progress. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s India, therefore, would be an urban, industrial society. “What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance and narrowmindedness?” Ambedkar famously worded his thoughts. Did any Indian leader have that view of Indian villages? Ambedkar’s goal of turning India into an urban, industrial society matches that of the builders of modern Europe and America. To him, rural India is a man barebodied, urban India is a man clothed. Most…

Lal Bahadur Shastri was the person who personified the independence movement and also the transfer of power and was a key that could fit in any lock as far as India was concerned. When Jawaharlal Nehru had a stroke, I told Shastri that he was next in line and should get ready to take over but he was sure Indira would be next in line. When the time came, all politicians rallied around Shastri because he was soft-spoken, didn’t annoy anyone, he would see the mood of the public and act accordingly and he was simple, austere and served the purpose he was put there for. Just to give you an example of his simple nature, I was attending a meeting with him once in Delhi in the Qutub Minar…

History is written by the urban elite, who cannot resist painting Charan Singh as power hungry. If that were the case, after becoming prime minister, he would not have refused to visit Indira Gandhi to thank her for the support, insisting that the support was directed to break the Janata government. Confronted between principles and convictions, he chose to give up the post of prime minister. He refused to concede to conditions put forward by the Congress for their support. Had he lived, it seems improbable that Charan Singh would have survived the shifting of the centre of political gravity from community to caste leaders. On being falsely targeted all his life, he once remarked that the “propaganda will cease as soon as Charan Singh dies”. He was wrong. It…

During Manmohan Singh’s 10-year stewardship, the economy withstood two global crises, one in 2008 and another in 2011, without assistance from IMF, and despite the slowdown of the last two years, its 10-year growth performance was impressive. However, the perception that corruption and cronyism had increased was a clear weak spot. Dr Singh admitted as much when, sometime in the course of UPA-II, he was asked by a senior editor what he regarded as his greatest failure. He replied that his “greatest regret” was how the controversy on the 2G spectrum allocation had played out. Shortly before bowing out as prime minister, he was widely quoted as saying “history will judge me more kindly”. I have no doubt he is right. In a recent conversation, I took the liberty of…

To appreciate E.M.S Namboodiripad, one must recognise the twin challenges he grappled with, for which there is probably no historical parallel. First, to shepherd and anchor a party with a revolutionary agenda and proclivity for violent methods in a democratic institutional space. Second, to extend and expand democracy under inhospitable conditions in a poor, backward, feudal, agrarian society with abysmally low levels of industrialisation. Moreover, all this took place under highly uncertain circumstances, with his party making quick changes, quite unsure of how to move forward. (The author is with the department of political science, University of Hyderabad)…

There was nothing outstanding about Jyoti Basu, he had neither Jawaharlal Nehru’s eloquence nor the moral authority of Jayaprakash Narayan. By the standards of communist stalwarts of the day, S.A. Dange or E.M.S. Nam boodiripad, the longest serving chief minister (1977-2000) in India was no intellectual giant. He spoke with the drabness of an apparatchik, and wrote a memoir in Bengali, Jotodur Mone Pore (As Far As I Remember), with the legal twist in the title that absolves him of accountability for being economical with the truth. Nor was he a model of financial saintliness. But Basu’s role in shaping modern India is better seen in counterfactual terms, as what could have happened if he had played a determined reformer back in the 1980s by becoming a champion of development…

Poet, novelist, playwright, lyricist, composer, artist, institution-builder, much of what is known about Tagore is legend: he wrote some 200 books, 40 volumes of poetry, 2,500 songs; he gave India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka their national anthems; won the first Nobel Prize outside Europe; was the first Indian to receive (and reject) a British knighthood; and he had set up institutions— to recharge education and reform village life—such as Visva Bharati University. What is not so well-known is what resonates with the rhythms of modern India and makes Tagore the thinker more relevant than ever: in a century marked by fragmentation and fear, when there is a worldwide assault on freedoms with many governments breaking international laws, when the Supreme Court of India is repeatedly turning away challenges to freedom…

With the exception of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, no other leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party has contributed as much to its birth, as well as to its meteoric rise in Indian politics, as Lal Krishna Advani did. The Atal-Advani era began even before the birth of the party in 1980. It can be traced to the traumatic aftermath that followed the mysterious assassination of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, the main ideologue and organiser of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the BJP’s predecessor party) in February 1968. Left rudderless, the Jana Sangh, which had a highly committed and disciplined band of workers in many parts of the country, needed a new leader. Vajpayee, the rising star in Indian politics, rose to the occasion. But he needed a capable colleague to help him in…

JRD was a nationalist as well as an internationalist,” recalls F.C. Kohli, founder and first CEO of Tata Consultancy Services. “That is why he agreed to be on the board of Air India even after it was nationalised. He was a great human being, and encouraged the staff to aim higher each time.” When Kohli asked JRD’s permission to shift the TCS office to the Air India building in 1971, his first response was whether the software company, then a fledgling firm, could afford it. “I promised him we would find our own resources, and we did,’’ says Kohli, 92, who still has an office in the iconic building in Mumbai’s Nariman Point. Kohli says that had the government not nationalised Air India, it would have been ranked amongst the…

There are perhaps only two people in India today who truly understand the transformative power of technology and the potential it holds to solve some of India’s long-standing problems. The first is PM Narendra Modi, who demonstrated the skilful use of technology in his election campaign, and the second is Nandan Nilekani, the man behind at least a dozen technology projects of national scale with great social impact. The best illustration of Nilekani’s vision is his leadership in initiating and running the Aadhaar programme. This was a government programme run with the energy of a private sector start-up, with a small team working towards an extremely ambitious goal. While its primary purpose is to provide a unique identity to every Indian resident, Aadhaar’s true value has been demonstrated by its…

Every entrepreneur who has braved the odds in his career is an heir to Seth Walchand Hirachand. Known for flexibility and innovative spirit, he was never afraid to take up challenges. His entrepreneurship in shipping, aviation and automobiles earned him the title ‘Father of transportation in India’. He set up the first car factory and first shipyard, he was the original ‘Made in India’ proponent, so much so that even when on trips to London, he would carry along his complete array of toiletries made back home, enough to last him for his entire stay. Hirachand was born in Sholapur, Maharashtra, on November 23, 1882. He matriculated in 1899 but was not interested in the family business. He entered the construction business, building tunnels through the Bhor Ghats for a…

Jamnalalji always focused on ‘honesty over profits, action over words and common good over personal gain’. He embodied Mahatma Gandhi’s principles to such an extent that Gandhiji ‘adopted’ him as his fifth son. “Jamnalalji surrendered himself and all his wealth without reservation. There is hardly any activity of mine in which I did not receive his full-hearted cooperation and in which it did not prove to be of the greatest value... whenever I wrote of wealthy men becoming trustees of their wealth for the common good, I always had this ‘Merchant Prince’ principally in mind,” Mahatma Gandhi said while referring to Jamnalal Bajaj. In 1931, Jamnalalji was successful in persuading Gandhiji to make Wardha his home. He offered his land for Gandhiji’s home (now known as Sevagram). Wardha became the…

In 1964, then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri visited Anand in Gujarat, keen to witness Amul’s success first hand. He requested Verghese Kurien to let him stay incognito in one of the villages for the night. Kurien got a fright. How could he let the prime minister stay overnight in a village without security or any support mechanism? Shastri insisted and, without his security detail’s knowledge, was taken close to a village and left there for the night. He walked into the village and introduced himself as a traveller who had lost his way. A family in the village invited Shastri to stay with them. He took the opportunity to talk to them about their lives and how they had been affected by the cooperative. By the time Kurien came…

In 1945, two years before India gained Independence, Homi Bhabha launched the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) with generous help from J.R.D. Tata and in 1948 became chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru tasked him with developing nuclear weapons soon after. From the very outset, just four months after Hiroshima, he was in command and remained so guiding India’s nuclear future. Representing India from 1950 at the conferences of the International Atomic Energy Agency—ostensibly to discuss the peaceful uses of nuclear energy—it enabled him to learn what other nations were doing and appreciate how India had a lot to do to catch up with them. He intensified the lobbying to develop nuclear weapons and after the India-China war, campaigned for it vigorously and openly. At…

The fact that his academic accomplishments spanned physics, chemistry, engineering and English literature helped Satish Dhawan perceive the world from different perspectives and become a leader of unparalleled integrity. Dhawan, the longest serving chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)—12 years—shaped India’s audacious space programme during its critical years, producing a period of extraordinary growth and spectacular achievement. He transformed ISRO into an innovation system yearning always for more. A highly organised and efficient leader, he built the systems around which ISRO is organised even today. The meticulously planned space programme came to be appreciated in the 1980s as a model of technology development and application carried out within the country. It came up with cost-effective space missions with frugal engineering and adaptive technology. He pledged similar commitment as…

I remember Rajneesh clearly. Anyone who met him, talked to him, will never forget him. I remember his piercing eyes, like those of the ancient mariner in Coleridge’s poem, that grabbed you in its stare and refused to let go. The shining bald pate and the long white beard, carefully groomed to look impossibly careless, reached out wherever you looked. And the shimmering overcoat with giant sequins and rhinestones that hung loose on his frame as he sat surrounded by his disciples at his feet and those gorgeous looking girls dressed in red short skirts and purple halters with Uzis held firmly in their hands, pointing upwards as they womanned the gates of his commune hall. He was, as you would call it, a sight for the Gods. A godman…

What made Bhimsen Joshi distinctive from his contemporaries was the balance he could maintain between traditional music and mass cultural taste. His contribution to classical music is humongous as he created an audience in every nook and corner of India without compromising on the purity of classical music. The power of his music was unique. Although his knowledge spanned the breadth of the ragas, when it came to performances, he restricted himself to a select few—those that would mesmerise the audience. After admirers watched him live, his music lingered on in them for days and months together. Even when he performed at the same venue continuously, the show was always a full house every time. Bhimsenji’s mass popularity not only meant that he had admirers from all age groups, but…

Few people are destined to not only excel in their fields, but to become icons. My guru, Pandit Ravi Shankar, was one of them. He one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century—a true icon of our music and a man whose contribution lies beyond popularising Indian music in the West. Much before technology was making the world smaller, Guruji’s sitar took India to the world and influenced millions of people. Whichever part of the world I travel to, I meet people who say that they first heard about India and its music when they “heard Ravi Shankar”. Be it popular musicians like the Beatles or classical virtuosos like Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich and Jean-Pierre Rampal or jazz legend John Coltrane, they all came under the magic spell…

Humour is the art of insult dressed up as irony. The cartoon is the nod and the wink. It can either savage its target with acidic force or expose the frailties of the subject in a manner acceptable to the ethos and the audience. Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman, aka RK Laxman, was a cartoonist of the latter genus. Since he started drawing in 1951, during the half century-plus change he spent recording India’s transformation, he had one cardinal tenet: ‘My sketch pen is not a sword, it’s my friend’. His iconic common man with the unkempt moustache, in a shabby checked jacket and threadbare dhoti, holding an unfurled umbrella became every Indian’s friend. Laxman may not have been the intellectual’s idol or the illiterate’s ventriloquist, but he was the comrade of…

From the time Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, or Rajinikanth (literally, ‘colour of night’ as christened by his mentor K. Balachander), debuted in 1975 with Apoorva Raagangal, he has been shaking it up. For a state fed on a diet of fair-skinned heroes, he was one of the first leading men with a darker hue, in both skin and performance. “In those days, no director would select a boy who was very dark for any role,” the late Balachander said in an interview. “I am quite dark, you know. My father was darker. So, I thought, why not introduce a dark-complexioned fellow as a new character? Especially as the main villain? It worked out wonderfully.” Rajinikanth was a memorable antagonist in several films, including Katha Sangama (1975), Moondru Mudichu (1976), Anthuleni Katha…

There is a story Raj Kapoor loved sharing with reporters. In the early 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru made an official visit to the Soviet Union where he met with Joseph Stalin. On returning to Delhi, Nehru hosted a party at his residence where Prithviraj Kapoor, then a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, was among the guests. When Nehru saw him, he walked up and said, “I believe your son (Raj Kapoor) has made a film. I met Sta lin in Moscow and he told me about it. What is this film?” The film Stalin mentioned was Awara (1951), which caught the fancy of viewers not just in the Soviet Union but also across eastern Europe, the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, Mexico and other Latin American countries. The film was nominated…

Q. You’ve trained two world class badminton champions. What does that mean to you? A. A. Beyond the medal hunt, it is about creating a process in the quest for excellence. I have enjoyed the success [of my students] even if it was only about becoming a state level champion. [My students] have strung together a success story that has no parallel in Indian sporting history. Q. Is there any difference in the training or progress of your male and female students? A. No such distinction has been drawn here because it is all about following a training regimen scrupulously. For example, for over a decade now, [P.V.] Sindhu has begun her daily training regimen before daybreak and gone through the mill rigorously. Q. Does physiology play a role in…

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