2017

by Samit Kar
Swami Vivekananda came in contact with Margaret Elizabeth Nobel for the first time in November 1895 in the latter’s friend’s residence in London. He was then in the midst of a world- wide tour to garner morality and financial support to establish the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission as wished by Sarada Devi, the wife of the Ramakrishna Deva. Vivekananda became a well-known figure in many parts of the world since his famous oration in the World Parliament of Religions (…)

This is a familiar exercise. China resents India’s rule over Arunachal Pradesh. New Delhi, and, on the other hand, ignores the protests and treats the North-East territory as its own. Beijing has been irked by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. The noise was, however, louder when the Dalai Lama went there earlier.
China and India have seldom agreed on where the actual border line lies. Beijing attacked India in 1962 when New Delhi tried to get back its (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Indira Gandhi’s 33rd death anniversary fell on October 31 this year. And her birth centenary is on November 19, 2017. Remembering her on this occasion we are reproducing the following ‘Editor’s Notebook’ that N.C. wrote on November 6, 1984, that is, soon after her death as well as one of his pieces ten years following her tragic assassination.
After Indira Gandhi
Twenty years after her great father’s passing away, Indira Gandhi fell, her frail body riddled with the (…)

November 19 this year marks Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary. On this occasion we remember her by reproducing what Cuba’s President had written about her 32 years ago—this was one of the best tributes to her from anyone after her death. We are also reproducing and publishing some other tributes to Indira Gandhi written after her demise.
On September 11, 1973, on our way to Vietnam—then involved in the people’s heroic war against the Americans and their Southern puppets, a war that was (…)

Indira Gandhi died as she lived—courageous and fighting.
However she is judged at home on her domestic record, in the Third World she is remembered as a courageous woman, who had braved many odds to successfully lead her country, safeguarding Indian independence and national interests, but at the same time viewing them in the wider universal context and as part of the struggle of the peoples of the Third World for peace and development with equity and justice.
In the international (…)

by Madhu Limaye
Indira Gandhi held the supreme political office for a long period. She was the country’s Prime Minister for sixteen years. Unlike Jawaharlal her Prime Ministership was not uninterrupted. Jawaharlal never tasted defeat. Indira Gandhi’s party was thrown out of power in 1977 and she herself lost the election to the Lok Sabha.
The Nehru household cannot be called a happy household. The relations among its women members were not on the best of terms. Indira silently watched (…)

Ten years have not dimmed but, on the contrary, brightened the image of Indira Gandhi as one of the most luminous leaders that India and the entire world have known in modern times. These years have also made it clear why she was murdered and who did the murdering.
In assassinations of this kind it is rarely, if ever, that any enquiry commission finds out the conspirators even if the actual assassins are caught red-handed. This has happened in the case of President Kennedy. So also has it (…)

by P.C. Joshi *
Indira Gandhi is no more. The people of India are slowly emerging out of the trauma of her brutal assassination. Their psychological state is that of a people stricken by a massive earthquake, struggling with themselves to face the devastation and to start the processes of repair and reconstruction. What has stricken India, however, is not a natural calamity but a social, man-made, disaster. It has been caused by the evil forces generated from within but buttressed from (…)

The following are two poems composed by the author in October 1985, one year after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The first was translated by the author from the original Bengali. The second was published in Mainstream (November 16, 1985).
We shall Overcome
A year has passed.
In memory’s portico your painting on canvas Is still as bright as on that day.
The void of your absence In the hearts of the toiling people—
The guffaw of (he foul-mouthed and The exhilaration of the (…)

by Sardar Amjad Ali
We are celebrating the birth centenary of Smt Indira Gandhi. This is also the 33rd anniversary of her martyrdom. Notwithstanding the bitterest criticisms from various quarters for her so-called misdeeds, specially during the Emergency, no one, unless he or she is rabidly anti-Indira for no reason whatsoever, would deny that the task which her late father left to be accomplished was successfully carried out by Indiraji; and that resulted in India being recognised as a (…)