Agenda And Ideologies: Thoughts On Congress, Communism, Fascism and Others

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I can still remember, as a boy of ten in Calcutta, Independence accompanied by Partition on 15 August 1947. Over the last seven decades or more, one has witnessed change and more change. In some of the years it appears as if changes took place faster than the clock.

In 1958 I was given a telephone by my employers which had no dial. Today we have the latest and the best mobiles which do practically everything to facilitate life especially for the elderly. The Internet is another wondrous world, what to talk of the computer. There was not even a calculator in 1947. In that year, owning a radio set was a matter of status, be it a Murphy, a Philips or a Westinghouse. Next to appear was the black and white television, then came the colour TV and now we have a TV that can become a cinema at home.

In 1955, India became a socialist state, which might have had its uses at the time but it succeeded in stunting India's economic growth. We had to wait till 1991 to be so fiscally poor that we had to pledge our gold to London banks. This enabled Prime Minster Narasimha Rao to push socialism to the Bay of Bengal and inaugurate liberalism.

For nearly a millennium, Indians had learnt to suffer literally everything. This tide of humiliation turned with Ayodhya in 1992. It is taking time for people to realise that it was at Ayodhya that the wheel of history turned so decisively. In an uncanny way, it has given India its first ruler who rules for the people and the country and not for himself.

To recount the history of independent India would be a fascinating challenge, although this volume only expresses the wish. It is an album that reflects some areas of life in India and elsewhere during the last three or four decades.