SIMMERING FIRES

REWIND

Elections are all about democracy and free play, but not in a state like Assam, which had to be taken to the polls kicking and screaming. For the residents of Nellie in Nagaon district, mainly Bangladeshi-immigrants, February 18 was a day which would haunt them forever when a raging mob left 3,000 dead in less than 24 hours. The All-Assam Students Union was allegedly behind the attack and it was retribution for poll-related violence in villages days before. Reports after the event pointed to the complicity of local administration and police.

FIRST CUT

India launched its first successful multi-purpose communication and meteorology satellite, insat-1b, on August 30 from Cape Canaveral, in Florida, US.

FOR NAM’S SAKE

India played host to the high and mighty of the world when the Seventh Non-Aligned Summit (NAM) was held in Delhi between March 7 and 12. Over 100 member-nations participated in the summit and later in the year, leaders from across the world converged on the city for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

“WE ARE NOT A BRANCH OFFICE OF THE CONGRESS.”
N.T. Rama Rao

So said Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao when he became the second South Indian film star to be made chief minister, sweeping the Andhra Pradesh polls, winning 202 out of 294 seats. Rao, who often played Hindu deities in Telugu films, founded the Telugu Desam Party in 1982 “to protect the honour and self-respect” of 60 million Telugu-speaking people—the spark was Rajiv Gandhi’s insult of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister T. Anjaiah, when he went to Hyderabad airport to welcome him. NTR effortlessly rode his screen popularity to power in 1983, making Andhra Pradesh one of the few states in India at the time not swamped by the Congress wave.

INDIA: 183; WEST INDIES: 140 ALL OUT

Kapil Dev led his men to one of World Cup cricket’s biggest upsets when India, perennial underdogs, beat Clive Lloyd’s mighty West Indies in the finals at Lord’s.

ELSEWHERE...

Island-wide anti-Tamil riots broke out in Sri Lanka in retaliation to the deaths of soldiers the day before and over 400 people died. This marked the beginning of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Cosmos 1402, a Russian nuclear powered satellite launched in 1982, fell into the Indian Ocean.

An explosives-laden truck crashed into the US Marine barracks (below) near Beirut airport in Lebanon. The bomb killed 241 Marines and injured 80.

31.5 lakh was the number of people in line for a telephone connection in India. Even the poor services—in Kolkata, every seventh phone was normally out of order—didn’t deter people from applying for a connection.

1984: INDIA AT 60

PUNJAB BURNING

PICTURE SPEAK

BEFORE: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was the prime target of Operation Blue Star AFTER: The Golden Temple after the military operation

REWIND

“Don’t shed blood but shed hatred,” Indira Gandhi said on air but the army was already preparing for assault. Operation Blue Star was Indira’s medicine to cure Punjab of its militant fever. She had hoped the operation would be smooth, swift and effective. But when on June 5 tanks rolled into the Golden Temple, half the battle—the hearts and minds of the Punjabis—had been lost. The body counts only made it clearer. When Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s body was extricated from the debris of the Akal Takht on June 6, many of his followers refused to believe he was dead. Prophet of hate to some, messiah to others, Bhindranwale led the first purge of Hindus from what he considered to be the state of Khalistan.

FIRST CUT

Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma was launched into orbit aboard the Soyuz T-11 on April 2, to become the first Indian in space. He famously said to Indira Gandhi’s question about how India looked from up there, “Saare jahaan se achcha”.

“Terrorism is encouraged most by weakness in political leadership and confusion in the security forces.”
K.P.S. GILL DGP Punjab on terrorism in the state in 1984.

“MARTYRDOM... IS ONLY A BEGINNING”

What does it matter if I die “lying down or standing up”, said Indira Gandhi once. When two of her Sikh bodyguards killed her, it did, for those trapped in the ensuing riots. She had been advised to change her Sikh bodyguards, to which she had replied, “Isn’t India secular?”

RAJIV RAJ

Rajiv Gandhi, the heir to the Congress throne, won the year-end elections with a landslide margin. He set a record of winning 401 Lok Sabha seats out of 508.

FIRE IN THE AIR

It took moments for the lethal methyl-isocyanate (MIC) gas to leak out of the storage tanks at the Union Carbide factory into the pre-dawn air of Bhopal on December 3, killing 3,000 overnight and 15,000 from related illnesses since then.

ELSEWHERE...

In one of the largest battles of the Iran-Iraq war, the two armies clashed and inflicted more than 25,000 fatalities on each other. The US accused Iraq of using nerve agent tabun against Iran.

The USSR announced its boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

American space shuttle astronauts, Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart, went on the first ever untethered space walk.

Desmond Tutu (below), black Anglican Archbishop in South Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent struggle for racial equality.

Rs 10 crore was the cost of reconstruction of the Golden Temple after it was destroyed in Operation Blue Star. This included the cost of the 40 kg of gold donated by the state and the Central governments.

1985: INDIA AT 60

DEADLY STRIKE

REWIND

The third worst mid-air disaster saw Air-India’s Boeing 747 Kanishka, flying from Toronto to Bombay, plunging into a watery grave with 329 passengers on board. As evidence piled up, it became clear that a terrorist’s bomb had made the flight disappear from the radar screens. Part of a larger plan, another bomb went off in Tokyo’s Narita airport killing two people. With it the fight for Khalistan, finally, reached foreign shores. The long drawn-out investigation led to the arrests of Khalistani militants Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. To this day, revelations pour out. The latest: A former Vancouver policeman has testified that Sikh militants had warned Indians not to fly Air-India weeks before the blast.

FIRST CUT

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established on December 8, with India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan as members.

LIBERAL SWEEP

On August 20, Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, who signed the Punjab Accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on July 24, with a promise of peace and free elections, was assassinated by Sikh extremists. His death created a sympathy wave for the Akali Dal, and S.S. Barnala (left) rode to power for the first time in the September Assembly elections.

“OURS IS A WIN FOR REGIONALISM WITH A NATIONALIST OUTLOOK.”
Prafulla Kumar Mahanta

Whoever said politics is a game for the experienced and the ‘old’ would have to reconsider. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, 32, the leader of the Assam Movement, became the youngest chief minister in the country’s history. He led the Asom Gana Parishad, which was formed only 67 days before the December polls, to victory. Sweeping 67 seats in a House of 126, Mahanta led a cabinet that had members with an average age of 40 and was seen as a new ray of hope in the violence-hit state. This, despite his affiliation to the All-Assam Students Union, which was behind much of the agitation against Bangladeshi Muslim refugees.

RAJIV GANDHI in Mumbai at the centenary celebrations of the Congress party
“Congressmen obey no principle of public morality. Corruption is tolerated, even regarded a sign of leadership.”

“Down Under, India is Thunder”

So read the placards at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and so it was, when India took down ODI giants Australia, skittling them out for 163 to win the World Series of Cricket.

ELSEWHERE...

A cyclone ravaged the Meghna river delta of Bangladesh, killing 10,000 people.

A debate in Britain's House of Lords was carried live on TV for the first time.

The first US mandatory seat belt law went into effect in New York.

Vietnam seized Khmer National Liberation Front headquarters near the Thai border.

Murray Haydon became the third person to receive an artificial heart.

The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior (above) was sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents.

$400,000 was what Osho Rajneesh had to pay in fines and court costs when he was boarded out of the US. Charged with immigration-related offences, Osho returned to India in November.

1986: INDIA AT 60

TENUOUS PEACE

PICTURE SPEAK

CATCH THEM YOUNG: Militants put guns in the hands of children too

REWIND

With the Punjab Accord of 1985 in a shambles after the assassination of H.S. Longowal, the crisis in the state only deepened with a split in the Akalis that left Chief Minister S.S. Barnala increasingly isolated. The terrorist toll rose to 600 while Julio Ribeiro’s bullet-for-bullet strategy was soon running out of ammunition. The violence, once restricted to the border areas of Amritsar and Gurdaspur, had spread to Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Faridkot. Hundreds of terror-stricken Hindu families fled to neighbouring Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. On August 10, General A.S. Vaidya was shot dead by assassins of the Khalistan Commando Force while driving his car home from the market in Pune, where he was living after retirement. He died instantly of head and neck wounds. Vaidya was Chief of Staff when Indira Gandhi sent the army into the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star. There was no going back for the insurgents because extremism in Punjab was a life-long trap.

FIRST CUT

The first full-blown aids cases in India were reported in six prostitutes in Chennai in May. While the appearance of the dreaded disease in India was scary enough, what was most disconcerting was the fact that it had happened despite Tamil Nadu being the only state in the country with a full-fledged aids detection programme.

DID YOU KNOW

Smita Patil, one of India’s foremost arthouse actors, died on December 13 due to complications after the birth of her son. She was only 31 and had appeared in films like Ardh Satya and Mirch Masala.

“I HAVE NO INDIAN PAPERS.”
Subhas Ghising

“My identification is Gorkhaland,” claimed Subhas Ghising, but he made headlines across India when he launched his 11-point separatist agenda in Darjeeling on April 13. What followed was a sate of crippling bandhs, escalating violence against tea-planters and skirmishes between CPI(M) workers and the local police which brought the situation to a peak in the second half of the year. Eventually, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was able to placate Ghising by allowing him an autonomous hill council rather than a state for Nepali speakers. The Centre, in effect, helped him stake the claim of being the spokesman of the 15 lakh Gorkhas in and around Darjeeling. And he found himself in the position of being able to play off the Centre against West Bengal in a situation where the two needed maximum cooperation.

“I lacked the right exposure.”

For the Olympics, she may have lacked the right exposure but at the Asian Games, P.T. Usha thundered through Seoul, winning four gold and one silver medal, creating new Games records in every event she participated in.

THE GOLDEN PEN

Vikram Seth rocked the literary world with his book-in-verse, The Golden Gate. Styled along the rhyming tetrameter sonnets of Charles Johnston’s 1977 translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, a book he found in a Stanford second-hand bookstore, it changed the direction of his career, from academic to literary work. And gave India a new wordstar.

ELSEWHERE...

Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, 59, was assassinated in Stockholm where he was leaving a cinema hall with his wife, Lisbet.

Space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after the launch, killing its crew of six astronauts and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

In the world’s worst nuclear disaster (below), one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine exploded, killing 31. Thousands more died from cancer due to exposure to radiation later.

1 lakh was the number of Maruti cars produced in 1986. The company, a brainchild of Sanjay Gandhi that had gone into liquidation in 1977, completed its turnaround to profitability when Suzuki came on board in 1980.

1987: INDIA AT 60

BATTLE OF DOOM

PICTURE SPEAK

LINE OF FIRE: Rajiv Gandhi

REWIND

In a year that had seen Rajiv Gandhi swamped with one crisis after another, from the resignation of foreign secretary A. P. Venkateswaran to the bitter relationship with President Giani Zail Singh, the Bofors controversy left a gaping hole in his credibility. A year after the Rs 1,705-crore Bofors deal had been inked, it became the proverbial loaded gun, as allegations of irregularities in the purchase broke out on Swedish Radio. Almost as damaging as the allegations themselves was the Government’s bungling of the affair. And then, as if these weren’t enough, Rajiv sent to Sri Lanka the Indian Peacekeeping Force to rein in its brainchild, the LTTE, as the civil war in the embattled island spiralled out of control. The army got bogged down in what was to be a swift, clinical action by an unfamiliarity with the terrain, civilian hostility and orders to avoid civilian casualties, and thus began India’s most disastrous overseas military expedition.

FIRST CUT

On September 4, Roop Kanwar seemingly set herself afire on her husband’s funeral pyre at Deorala in Rajasthan, bringing to light the practice of sati.

DID YOU KNOW

In what threatened to be a sequel to the controversial Shah Bano case of 1985, another Muslim woman, Saira Banu, was also awarded a maintenance from her divorced husband.

“THEY SAID I RIGGED THE 1983 POLLS, BUT COULDN’T PROVE IT.”
Farooq Abdullah

A landslide victory for the National Conference-Congress alliance in the Jammu and Kashmir elections of March should have been cause for celebration, but Farooq Abdullah’s return to power in the state was tainted by charges of rigging and electoral bungling. That was lent credence by the fact that it was the only state where results remained unannounced for a week. Even as the results were coming in, the new government was busy arresting top Muslim United Front leaders. Starting two weeks before the elections, about 600 Opposition party workers were in jail.

Meerut on the Boil

Nine days of communal violence in Meerut caused the death of over 150 and left over 1,000 injured. The frenzied rioting was set off by an insignificant incident when the police broke in on an Iftar session of a Muslim family to pick up a murder suspect.

THE BLASTER

On March 7, ‘Little Master’ Sunil Gavaskar became the first batsman in the world to score 10,000 runs in Test cricket.

THE OTHER STAR

Former Osho acolyte Vinod Khanna made a storming comeback, challenging Amitabh Bachchan’s dominance in Bollywood with the release of two blockbusters Insaaf and Satyamev Jayate, both of which touched 100 per cent first-week collections across most of India.

ELSEWHERE...

US President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that overtures to Iran had 'deteriorated' into an arms-for-hostages deal.

The Chadian army (below) destroyed a Libyan brigade in Battle of Fada, a decisive event in the 1978-87 Libyan-Chadian War.

The first successful heart-lung transplant took place in Baltimore, Maryland, in the US.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,000, ending the day at 2002.25.

British stores released the first Beatles compact discs.

40,000 was the number of people who were killed in road accidents throughout the country. Another 1.75 lakh were injured.

3,20,000 was the total number of registered medical practitioners in India.

Index