When INDIA TODAY was putting together an issue to celebrate 50 years of Independence, I remember writing that we are rather unpatriotic as a people except perhaps when there is a war at our doorstep. I think in the past 10 years there has been a tangible change as India and Indianness is celebrated now and patriotism has gone pop.

Although India Shining failed as the NDA’s catchline in the 2004 elections, our corporate world’s slogan of India Everywhere has caught the world’s fancy. India has moved from being the flavour of the month to an entree on the main menu.

In spite of all the hype, India continues to straddle several centuries. Although the economy and jobs are surging and there is global optimism about where we are headed, millions remain caught in a struggle over the basics of life and livelihood. The jury is still out on whether we have made a success or a failure of our freedom.

On the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of India’s Independence, we decided to put our modern history under the microscope in order to understand it better. Between now and Republic Day 2008, we will dedicate four special issues to the theme of India at 60. We begin the series of specials by revisiting India’s last six tumultuous decades as an independent nation.

As we look back, the themes of triumph and trauma, of survival under strain, repeat themselves over and over again. If freedom was tempered by the horrors of Partition, the progress India made in every decade was accompanied by conflicts and tensions—over language, in the 1950s, economic strictures in the 1960s and 1970s, and communal and caste divides in the 1980s.

In the 1990s, India reaped the benefits of liberalisation but the threat of imbalanced growth remains to be addressed. Starting with 1996, the last decade has also witnessed the beginning of the era of coalition governments, which has brought with it its own dynamics and tensions. It is a miracle that India has come through every trial it has faced, bloodied but unbowed. Nothing has been able to shake our democratic roots. This is one tough country.

Our exhaustive special issue was put together by a youthful (average age 28) team led by Executive Editor Kaveree Bamzai along with Associate Copy Editor Chitra Subramanyam, Deputy Copy Editor V Shoba and Assistant Copy Editor Gaurav Rajkhowa. India may be 60 years old as an independent nation but more than half our population is under 24. For Subramanyam, Shoba and Rajkhowa, who trawled through thousands of documents, newspapers and photographs, this issue has been a voyage of discovery, a crash course in contemporary history.

The Nehru Memorial Library opened up its archives to us and gave us permission to reprint images that were rare and in some cases, never seen before. We have seven distinguished columnists including Kaushik Basu, Ramachandra Guha, Sunil Khilnani and Gyan Prakash, writing on each of the decades India has lived through.

Since the launch of INDIA TODAY 32 years ago, I have been privileged to observe, at close quarters, tremendous changes in our country. In this period alone, India has come through an Emergency and been governed by 10 different prime ministers. The population has gone up from 607 million in 1975 to 1.1 billion and economic growth from a stately Hindu rate of growth of 4 per cent to more than double of that today.

The story of free India has so much drama, intrigue, joy and sorrow that it can put our best movies in the shade. In the life of a nation, 60 years is merely an adolescence. India is today like an unruly ambitious teenager whose frenetic energy needs to be channelised. If the past is any indicator, our special issue has some invaluable insights for the future.

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