Independent India: Triumphs and Tragedies: 3 Quiz

Answer: Sunil Gavaskar

In 1971 India toured West Indies, expecting to be mauled by the fearsome battery of fast bowlers and torn apart by the swashbuckling batsman. They came back winning the series, after chasing the highest ever score for the fourth innings in a test match at Bridgetown, Guyana. Gavaskar, of course, chipped in with a century. The West Indians fans, as a tribute to this master batsman accorded their highest honour to him; by dedicating a calypso tune to his batting. It goes something like this.

"Gavaskar, the real master,
He was standing tall, like a wall,
No we couldn't out Gavaskar at all, at all"

Answer: Bangladesh

Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, saw a brutal crackdown by West Pakistani troops, after the Awami League, the East Pakistan party, which had won the majority in the first national elections, was not allowed to form the government. The East Pakistanis, had long been discriminated against as "dark-skinned rice eaters", by their western counterparts, but used their numerical superiority to form the largest party in the elections.

Answer: Aircraft carrier

In the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 the INS Vikrant, formerly HMS Hercules, was the first Indian aircraft carrier to see action, as jets took off from this carrier to pound positions in Cox's Bazaar and Chittagong. This aging carrier was decommissioned in 1997 and has been converted into a floating museum near Mumbai.

Answer: Banking

The nationalization of banks, especially the larger ones with a more national base, was one of the numerous populist (but not necessarily economically sound) moves undertaken by the Indira Gandhi government in 1969. It caused uproar among the right-wing capitalists, but was graciously welcomed by the Communist parties (which afterwards took a sound walloping in the elections for this). Like all other initiatives in a country of good intentions and bad implementation, the nationalized banks, which were supposed to serve the interests of the debt ridden farmer, served the interests of the corrupt politician and his cronies. Until recent reforms gave banks a little more breathing space and until the entry of the private sector, India's banking system was on the verge of collapse under the weight of unrecoverable loans and non-performing assets.

When certain banks went to the Supreme Court claiming that they had not been paid adequate compensation for their assets, the Court founf in their favour and struck down the Bank Nationalization Bill in its judgment in RC Cooper v. Union of India (1971) case.

The 25th Amendment was passed by Parliament to over-rule the Supreme Court decision

Answer: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad

On the advice of a small coterie of cabinet ministers and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi imposed emergency on the country. Freedom of the press was curtailed, people's rights to a fair trial and to judicial review of Parliament were abrogated.

The President officially passed the Emergency promulgation, but the real force behind it was Indira Gandhi, who "recommended" that it be done.

Answer: Basic structure

This case involved a Constitutional amendment which removed the right to property as a fundamental right guaranteed in the Constitution. Of the 13 judge bench, the matter was decided in favour of the amendment by a 7-6 decision, but not before a very important doctrine was enunciated, the doctrine of basic structure of the Constitution. According to 7 of the judges, certain parts of teh Constitution were inherently inviolable and among those were the fundamental rights.

The decision of J Khanna proved to be crucial here as, although he agreed that certain parts of the Constitution were inviolable and the fundamental rights among them, the right to property, according to him was not a fundamental right as such and hence the decision was in favour of the State.

In later cases, this doctrine has been upheld and several other features such as secularism and federalism have been upheld as basic structures of the Constitution. Interestingly, the eminent lawyer, Nani Palkhiwala who argued this case on behalf of the petitioners, has just turned down the role of Attorney General, which would have put him on the opposite side in this case.

Answer: Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA)

The Maintenance of Internal Security Act, or MISA as it was widely known, was applied ruthlessly and widely. It was used to jail troublesome Opposition politicians, especially of the the Janata Party and its allies, who had campaigned long and hard against Indira Gandhi's misguided policies. Politicians and sometimes even ordinary folk would be woken up in the middle of the night by policemen to face an unknown period in prison with no hope of an early release.

Answer: Buddha

India became the sixth country to possess nuclear weapons after that explosion, although the Buddha Purnima (Buddha's birth date) test was classified as a 'peaceful explosion'. The underground tests at Pokharn would be repeated in 24 years, and ironically, on the same day.

Answer: True

This campaign of 'nasbandi' as it was popularly called, was greatly disliked, especially given the enthusiasm and zest with which Indira Gandhi's son, Sanjay Gandhi, reproduced. This campaign was especially harsh in the more populous northern states and is widely believed to have contributed to the downfall of the Gandhis when the Emergency was finally lifted. Sex was and still is a taboo in Indian society, and people didn't take too kindly to government interference in such matters.

Answer: True

The Indian voter, after having to face 5 years of poor governance, high prices and low economic growth, and 18 months of tyranny, returend with a vengeance. Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party believed that though the Emergency was tyrannical, it had managed to control inflation and improve the economy a bit and that she would be returned to power.

They could not have been more wrong. The Congress Party suffered its most humiliating defeat in North India, though less so in SOuth India, and for the first time, a sitting Prime Minister lost in a Parliamentary election.

It is still a wonder to many political analysts as to why the rural voter, unaffected by the censorship of the press, or the silencing of political dissent, really voted against the Congress Party.

Some say that the campaign of forcible sterlization followed the by the government as part of its "population programme" and the general police brutality contributed to such a feeling. But my political science professor, who relives those few days in unabashed delight and wonder, says it was just that the Indian voter, rich or poor, urban or rural, actually cared about democracy and did not lightly tolerate anyone taking it away from him so lightly.