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Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
In India, the ‘Lost Generation' was actually a generation that found its voice
The defining event of the Lost Generation in Europe and the Americas was the Great War. It is harder to pinpoint a single event that served the same function for that cohort in India. Most of the giants who led the freedom movement — Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Sarojini Naidu — belonged to previous generations. But their influence on those who followed saw the struggle for independence become truly national, with the Indian equivalent of the Lost Generation eventually becoming the architects of a new, independent nation. The battles of this younger cohort were different from those that shaped Ernest Hemingway, JRR Tolkien and Ezra Pound in the West. Was the new political awareness in India the result of George Curzon's Partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi movement that began in 1905, partly as a result of it? Was it furthered when India's dead soldiers and wounded veterans were met with the thanks of the Rowlatt Act of 1919, which gave the police the continued right to arrest without warrants, hold detainees indefinitely and imprison without trial or judicial review? Was it shaped by the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh (also 1919)? Or the rise of Gandhi as a national leader, after his return to India in 1915? As these events, one after another, reinforced the idea of a new 'India', a generation of young leaders emerged: BR Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Mahadev Desai, Acharya Kripalani, Subhas Chandra Bose and, vitally, Jawaharlal Nehru. In India, this wasn't a Lost Generation at all. It was a generation finding its voice. In the words of the freedom fighter Rambriksh Benipuri, no stranger to the pen: 'When I recall Non-Cooperation era of 1921, the image of a storm confronts my eyes… no other movement upturned the foundations of Indian society to the extent… From the most humble huts to the high places, from villages to cities, everywhere there was a ferment, a loud echo.' When Independence was won, it was this storm of young people that began the business of building the nation. In the fields and hospitals, the offices and transport systems. In the courts beginning to uphold a new Constitution. It was at the hands of this generation that an India as old as the Indus Valley and the Vedas was reborn as a new country, and emerged blinking from the shadow of the Raj and the bloody birthing of Partition. Look at free India's first cabinet and you see them. With the exceptions of Patel and C Rajagopalachari, every minister, starting with Nehru, came from the generation born between 1883 and 1900. A generation, in India, of pathfinders. Dreamers. Doers of the impossible. Looking back, it can be hard to believe what they pulled off. In their gentle way, they shook the world. (K Narayanan writes on films, videogames, books and occasionally technology)
India Gazette
5 days ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
Pawan Khera slams PM Modi for
New Delhi [India], May 29 (ANI): Congress leader Pawan Khera on Thursday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his recent remarks related to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), stating that he should stop 'misquoting and misappropriating' statesmen from Congress for 'petty politics of hate and divisiveness'. He said it was 'embarrassing' for the Prime Minister to be fact-checked on X. 'For those of us who care about facts, Sardar Patel's words elucidate his weighted caution regarding PoK considering the military realities of the time. As for Modi, who has never quite shown care for truth - he should stop misquoting, misappropriating or co-opting statesmen from Congress like Sardar Patel for his own petty politics of hate and divisiveness. Besides, it is rather embarrassing for the PM of India to be fact-checked on X,' Khera said in a post on X. Khera cited a letter dated June 4, 1948, written by the first Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, chief drafter of Article 370, which stated, 'The military position is none too good, and I am afraid our military resources are strained to the uttermost. How long we are to carry on this unfortunate affair, it is difficult to foresee.' The Congress leader asserted that Patel's words clarify his 'weighted caution' regarding PoK. His remarks come after PM Modi on Tuesday said that the April 22 attack on tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam as well as other terror incidents could have been avoided if India had heeded Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's advice in 1947. Addressing an event in Gujarat's Gandhinagar, the Prime Minister said that Patel had advised not to stop the armed forces before they reached Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). 'In 1947, Mother India was torn into pieces. Katni chahiye thi zanjeerein par kaat di gayi bhujayein (The chains should have been cut, but the arms were chopped off.) The country was divided into three parts, and on the same night, the first terrorist attack took place on the soil of Kashmir,' PM Modi said. (ANI)
India Today
27-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Terrorists should've been dealt with in 1947, Sardar Patel's advice was ignored: PM
The terrorists in Kashmir should have been dealt with effectively in 1947, when the first terrorist attack occurred after partition and what India is experiencing today is a distorted form of the same terror that has plagued the country for decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while addressing a gathering in Prime Minister pointed out that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India's first Home Minister, had argued that the army offensive against Pakistan in 1947 should not have proceeded without reclaiming Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but the then Congress government ignored his 1947, when Mother India was partitioned into three parts... that very night, the first terror attack occurred on the soil of Kashmir. One part of Mother India was forcibly taken over by Pakistan in the name of 'mujahideen'. On that day, those so-called mujahideen should have been thrown into the pit of death," the PM said.
Indian Express
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Question of caste in free India: 1951 Census to now
On April 30 this year, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) approved caste enumeration in the forthcoming census. While India last collected caste data during the 1931 and 1941 Census, the latest available data is that of 1931 since the 1941 survey was not released. Similar data was collected during the 2011 Census too — but as a part of a special Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) to identify households living below poverty line (BPL) as well as caste so that they could get various entitlements. Despite costing nearly Rs 5,000 crore, this countrywide report was never released. In a meeting of Census officials in February 1950, Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who also held the Home Affairs portfolio in the interim government headed by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, had announced categorically, 'Formerly, there used to be elaborate caste tables which were required in India, partly, to satisfy the theory that it was a caste-ridden country and, partly, to meet the needs of administrative measures dependent upon caste division. In the forthcoming Census, this will no longer be a prominent feature.' Hence, the 14 questions in the 1951 Census sought information on 'nationality, religion and special groups', among other information. However, the omission of caste in enumeration and tabulation would prove to be a huge loss for sociologists and anthropologists. As soon as the 1951 Census was completed, the government in January 1953 decided to constitute a commission headed by then Rajya Sabha MP, social reformer and journalist Dattatreya Balkrishna Kalelkar, popularly called Kaka Kalelkar, to look after the demand for reservation and other affirmative actions for the other backward classes (OBCs). On March 18, 1953, then President Rajendra Prasad formally inaugurated the Kalelkar Commission. Speaking on the occasion, both President Prasad and Prime Minister Nehru expressed the hope that the 'labours' of the commission would pave the way for a 'classless' society in India. Nehru, who disliked the term 'backward classes', even remarked that it was wrong to label any section as backward, even if they were so, particularly, when 90% of the people in the country were poor and backward. As the head of the First OBC Commission, Kalelkar's biggest hurdle was the 'lacunae' of caste data, especially of those who claimed to be OBCs. The Registrar General, meanwhile, provided the Commission with separate reports on the 'estimated' population of certain OBC castes for different states. According to the Registrar General's estimates, nearly 11.5 crore Indians belonged to 930 backward castes. A report by the Kalelkar Commission noted that it had prepared a list of 2,399 castes as backward (Total population of the country in 1951 was 36.10 crore). Stating that the Registrar General's estimates had made its task 'extremely difficult', the Kalelkar Commission noted, 'The Census Department has furnished us with approximate population figures for most of the communities, but we assume no responsibility for the reliability or finality of these figures.' The Commission also got estimates from individual communities. However, the Commission added, 'Figures furnished by the various communities were chiefly a matter of guesswork and their numbers were often exaggerated…. The caste-wise statistics in the previous Census reports (of 1941) were not compiled on a uniform basis throughout India and were, therefore, not of much use…We cannot consider this method of compilation either satisfactory or reliable, but we had to utilize whatever materials were made available to us.' Advising that the next Census should 'give all the necessary information about castes and sub castes', the Kalelkar Commission said, 'We would like to record here that the Census of 1961 should collect and tabulate all the essential figures caste-wise. We are also of the opinion that if it is possible, this should be carried out in 1957 instead of in 1961, in view of the importance of the problems affecting backward classes.' Propagating for the caste census, the panel suggested, 'It would certainly be valuable material for sociologists and anthropologists… But a lurking suspicion is asserting itself in my mind: Can we do it?' Though the report of the First OBC Commission, submitted in 1955, was never implemented, its suspicions would prove to be true. There was no caste census till 2011, which was just an SECC exercise and not a part of the 2011 Census. Kalelkar remained in the Rajya Sabha till 1964. Nehru, who constituted the Commission, passed away in May 1964. Till the end, his government was unclear on the final criteria for backwardness — caste or economics. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1963, on the criteria, Maragatham Chandrasekar, then Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, had said, 'All that we are doing now is to suggest to the State Governments that they should adopt the economic criterion instead of the caste criteria.' By 1977, the demand to implement the Kalelkar Commission report had gathered steam. The Morarji Desai government then constituted the Second OBC Commission, headed by Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal, the scion of the erstwhile Murho Estate in Bihar who also served as the seventh chief minister of the state. The Mandal Commission's report was submitted after Indira Gandhi stormed back to power in 1980. Its report, which too suggested a caste census, was implemented in parts in 1994 and then in 2009. Its suggestion on the caste census is finally expected to take place now. The writer is Senior Associate Editor, The Indian Express
Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Delhi University panel suggests more syllabi tweaks
Delhi University's (DU) standing committee for academic affairs on Thursday recommended replacing Islamic poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and medieval traveller Ibn Battuta with Mughal prince Dara Shukoh in the History department's eighth semester syllabus. According to a committee member, the changes were proposed in a general elective paper, 'Life Narrative and History', which includes key political figures. Originally, the course featured Harsha, Battuta, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Iqbal. This was the third and final meeting of the committee reviewing seventh and eighth semester syllabi ahead of the first graduating batch under the four-year undergraduate programme. Committee members said the revisions align with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 framework. Other changes reportedly include dropping the elective paper 'Cultural Transactions between India and the World', and adding Dr BR Ambedkar alongside Karl Marx in the paper 'History of Labour in Colonial and Postcolonial India'. In political science, 'Hind Swaraj' was suggested as a new reading, while the topic of sexual division of labour and unpaid work may be removed from the paper 'Feminism: Theory and Practice', according to the committee member. The commerce department may see the removal of topics like social media marketing, rural development, and personal financial planning. Some faculty expressed concern over the scope of these revisions. 'The standing committee is meant to review—not restructure—department syllabi,' said Rajesh Jha, former executive council member. The final decision will rest with the academic council, which meets Saturday.
