49Interview with Madhu Jain in Sunday, 4 September 1983; Rajinder Puri, ‘Remembering 1984’, National Review, November 2003.
50Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee, Histoire Politique du Pendjab de 1947 à nos Jours (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), pp. 158f.
51On the significance of the Akal Takht, see Madanjit Kaur, The Golden Temple: Past and Present (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983), pp. 268–70.
52Paul Wallace, ‘Religious and Secular Politics in Punjab: The Sikh Dilemma in Competing Political Systems,’ in Wallace and Chopra, Political Dynamics of Punjab, pp. 1–2.
53M. J. Akbar, Riot after Riot: Reports on Caste and Communal Violence in India (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1988).
54Achyut Yagnik, ‘Spectre of Caste War’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 March 1981; Pradip Kumar Bose, ‘Social Mobility and Caste Violence: A Study of the Gujarat Riots’, Economic and Political Weekly, 18 April 1981.
55Quoted in Moin Shakir, ‘An Analytical View of Communal Violence’, in Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Communal Riots in Post-Independence India, 2nd edn (Hyderabad: Sangam Books, 1991), p. 95.
56Individual studies of these riots are contained in Akbar, Riot after Riot; Engineer, Communal Riots; in the reports of civil liberties groups and in articles published in the Economic and Political Weekly during these years.
57The following paragraphs, identifying and enumerating these themes, are based on my own reading of the literature; but see also Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘An Analytical Study of the Meerut Riots’, PUCL Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1983.
58George Mathew, ‘Politicisation of Religion: Conversions to Islam in Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly, 19 June 1982.
59See M. J. Akbar, India: The Siege Within (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 197ff.
60Cf. Balraj Puri, ‘Who is Playing with National Interest?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 February 1984.
61Lt. Gen. K. S. Brar, Operation Blue Star: The True Story (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1987), pp. 35–7. Since he led the operation, and since all journalists had been evacuated beforehand, Brar’s book is essential in any reconstruction of Operation Bluestar. However, it should be read alongside Tully and Jacob, Amritsar, this based on interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors.
62Brar, Operation Bluestar, p. 91.
63Ibid., pp. 126–7.
64Lt. Gen. J. S. Aurora, ‘If Khalistan Comes, the Sikhs will be the Losers’, in Patwant Singh and Harji Malik, eds, Punjab: The Fatal Miscalculation (New Delhi: Patwant Singh, 1985), p. 133.
65J. S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 227.
66Shahnaz Anklesaria, ‘Fall-out of Army Action: A Field Report’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 July 1984.
67Sten Widmalm, ‘The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir, 1975–1989’, in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, eds, Community Conflicts and the State in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988); B. K. Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second (New Delhi: Viking, 1997), pp. 627–41.
68The Week, 26 August 1984.
69Indira Gandhi to Erna Sailer, 20 October 1984, copy in Jayakar Papers, Mumbai.
70Pupul Jayakar, ‘31 October’, typescript in ibid.
71This account of the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi is based on two works deservedly regarded as classics: Anon., Who are the Guilty? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Cause and Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November (Delhi: PUDR and PUCL, 1984); Uma Chakravarti and Nandita Haksar, The Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1987). I have also drawn upon conversations with friends and colleagues who were active in providing relief after the riots.
72‘The Violent Aftermath’, India Today, 30 November 1984.
73‘Indira Gandhi’s Bequest’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3 November 1984.
74Daniel Sutherland, ‘India Seen Facing Era of Uncertainty’, New York Times, 1 November 1984; Henry Trewhitt, ‘U.S. Fears Assassination may bring Chaos in India, Rivalry in South Asia’, The Sun, 1 November 1984.
25. THIS SON ALSO RISES
1Times of India, 4 December 1984.
2Times of India, 14 December 1984.
3Praful Bidwai, ‘What Caused the Pressure Build-Up’, Times of India, 26 December 1984.
4Radhika Ramaseshan, ‘Profit against Safety’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22–29 December 1984; Indian Express, 5 December 1984. The Bhopal tragedy has had a tortured and still continuing afterlife, with the survivors and their families ranged against the government (accused of providing insufficient medical relief) and Union Carbide (accused of paying paltry amounts of compensation).
5Hari Jaisingh, India after Indira: The Turbulent Years (1984–1989) (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1989), pp. 19–20; Business India, 17–30 December 1984.
6Harish Khare, ‘The State Goes Macho’, Seminar, January 1985.
7Mani Shankar Aiyar, Remembering Rajiv (Calcutta: Rupa and Co., 1992), p. 53.
8Harish Puri, ‘Punjab: Elections and After’, Economic and Political Weekly, 5 October 1985; India Today, 15 September and 15 October 1985.
9India Today, 15 September 1985 and 15 January 1986; Sunday, 29 December–4 January 1986.
10See Lalchungnunga, Mizoram: Politics of Regionalism and National Integration (New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 2002), Appendix D; report in Sunday, 20–26 July 1986.
11‘Mizoram: Quest for Peace’, India Today, 31 July 1986.
12S. S. Gill, The Dynasty: A Political Biography of the Premier Ruling Family of Modern India (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1996), pp. 394–5.
13Business India, December 31 1984–January 13 1985.
14Shubhabrata Bhattacharya, ‘Rajiv Gandhi’s Discovery of India’, Sunday, 22–28 September 1985.
15See judgment in Criminal Appeal No. 103 of 1981, decided on 23 April 1985 (Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano and Others), Supreme Court Cases (1985), 2 SCC, pp. 556–74.
16Hutokshi Doctor, ‘Shah Bano: Brief Glory’, Imprint, May 1986.
17See Danial Latifi, ‘Muslim Law’, in Alice Jacob, ed., Annual Survey of Indian Law, vol. 21 (New Delhi: The Indian Law Institute, 1985).
18Lok Sabha Debates, 23 August 1985.
19Ritu Sarin, ‘Shah Bano: The Struggle and the Surrender’, Sunday, 1–7 December 1985.
20E.g. editorial in The Statesman, 19 December 1985.
21Indian Express, 21 December 1985.
22Vasudha Dhagamwar, ‘After the Shah Bano Judgement – II’, Times of India, 11 February 1986.
23See Eve’s Weekly, issue of 29 March–4 April 1986.
24R. D. Pradhan, Working with Rajiv Gandhi (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1995), pp. 130–1.
25Peter Van der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), especially chapter 1, and ‘“God Must Be Liberated”: A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1987. Ayodhya’s sister town, Faizabad, gives its name to the district. The official who passed the verdict was technically the district judge of Faizabad.
26Saifuddin Chowdhury, quoted in Sunday, 9–15 March 1986.
27See articles by Neerja Chowdhury in The Statesman, 20 April and 1 May 1986, reproduced in A. G. Noorani, ed., The Babri Masjid Question, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2003), pp. 260–6.
28Inderjit Badhwar, ‘Hindus: Militant Revivalism’, India Today, 31 May 1986.
29Sant Ramsharaan Das of Banaras, writing in May 1989, quoted in Manjari Katju, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003), p. 73.
30India Today, 15 March 1986; Sunday, 25–31 January 1987.
31Cf. Rajni Bakshi, ‘The Rajput Revival’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 1 November 1987.
32This figure comes from David Page and William Crawley, Satellites over South Asia: Broadcasting, Culture and the Public Interest (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2
001), p. 56.
33Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Indian Public (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 84.
34Sevanti Ninan, Through the Magic Window: Television and Change in India (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1995), pp. 6–8.
35Philip Lutgendorf, ‘Ramayan: The Video’, Drama Review, vol. 34, no. 2, 1990, p. 128.
36Robin Jeffrey, ‘Media Revolution and “Hindu Politics” in North India, 1982–99’, Himal, July 2001, emphasis added.
37Interview in Financial Express, quoted in Supriya Roychowdhury, ‘State and Business in India: The Political Economy of Liberalization, 1984–89’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Politics, Princeton University, pp. 100–1. Cf. also Stanley A. Kochanek, ‘Regulation and Liberalization in India’, Asian Survey, vol. 26, no. 12, 1986.
38H. K. Paranjape, ‘New Lamps for Old! A Critique of the “New Economic Policy”’, Economic and Political Weekly, 7 September 1985.
39Cf. reports in India Today, 15 March and 15 April 1985.
40T. N. Ninan, ‘Rise of the Middle Class’, India Today, 31 December 1985. See also ‘The Rising Affluence of the Middle Class’, Sunday, 29 October–1 November 1986.
41Roychowdhury, ‘State and Business in India’, pp. 73, 122.
42T. N. Ninan and Jagannath Dubashi, ‘Dhirubhai Ambani: The Super Tycoon’, India Today, 30 June 1985; T. N. Ninan, ‘Reliance: Under Pressure’, India Today, 15 August 1986; Perez Chandra, ‘Reliance: The Man Behind the Legend’, Business India, 17–30 June 1985; Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, ‘The Two Faces of Dhirubhai Ambani’, Seminar, January 2003.
43‘Crony Capitalism’, Sunday, 2–8 October 1988; Teesta Setalvad, ‘Pawar, Politics and Money’, Business India, 10–23 July 1989; Sankarshan Thakur, ‘How Corrupt Is Bhajan Lal?’, Sunday, 21–27 July 1985.
44Indranil Banerjie, ‘The New Maharajahs’, Sunday, 17–23 April 1988.
45Niraja Gopal Jayal, Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 46ff.; ‘The Wretched of Kalahandi’, Sunday, 19–25 January 1986.
46R. Jagannathan, ‘Welcome to Hard Times’, Sunday, 6–12 September 1987.
47M. V. Nadkarni, Farmers’ Movements in India (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1987); special issue on ‘New Farmers’ Movements in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1993–4.
48Vijay Naik and Shailaja Prasad, ‘On Levels of Living of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 July 1984.
49Tanka B. Subba, Ethnicity, State and Development: A Case Study of the Gorkhaland Movement in Darjeeling (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1992); ‘Peace in the Angry Hills?’, Sunday, 24–30 July 1988.
50Sunday, 27 August–2 September 1989; India Today, 15 September 1989; Business India, 26 June–9 July 1989.
51Sunday, 25–31 January 1987 and 28 August–3 September 1988.
52Shekhar Gupta, ‘Punjab Extremists: Calling the Shots’, India Today, 28 February 1986.
53See India Today, issues of 30 April 1986 and 15 September 1988; Sunday, 3–9 January 1986. The violation of human rights by the police in Punjab throughout the 1980s and 1990s is extensively documented in Ram Narayan Kumar et al., Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab (Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights, 2003).
54Reports in Sunday, 19–25 May 1985, 19–25 July 1987 and 20–26 March and 1–7 June 1988 and in India Today, 15 June and 31 December 1986.
55Shekhar Gupta and Vipin Mudgal, ‘Operation Black Thunder: A Dramatic Success’, India Today, 15 June 1988.
56Interview in India Today, 30 November 1986.
57Sten Widmalm, ‘The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir, 1975–1989’, in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, eds, Community Conflicts and the State in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 167ff.
58Sunday, 9–15 July 1989.
59For which see, among other works, A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2000); Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).
60Shekhar Gupta, ‘Operation Pawan: In a Rush to Vanquish’, India Today, 31 January 1988.
61Lt. Gen. S. C. Sardeshpande, Assignment Jaffna (New Delhi: Lancer, 1992), preface.
62Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities, p. 154 and passim.
63See Gill, Dynasty, pp. 474–7.
64See report in India Today, 15 June 1989.
65Cover story on ‘The Ugly Indian’, Sunday, 12–18 July 1987.
66See report in Sunday, 28 September–4 October 1988.
67Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, The Demolition: India at the Crossroads (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1994), pp. 260–2; Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1999), pp. 383ff.
68See People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Bhagalpur Riots (New Delhi: PUDR, 1990).
69Chitra Subramaniam, Bofors: The Story Behind the News (New Delhi: Viking, 1993).
70India Today, 31 March and 15 October 1988; Sunday, 30 October–5 November 1988.
71This ‘Defamation Bill’ is discussed in M. V. Desai, ‘The Indian Media’, in Marshall M. Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds, India Briefing, 1989 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989).
72India Today, 15 January 1989.
73Sunday, 12–18 March 1989.
74Indranil Banerjie, ‘Mera Dynasty Mahan’, Sunday, 1–7 October 1989.
75See India Today, 31 October 1989; Sunday, 12–18 November 1989.
76Vir Sanghvi, ‘A Vote for Change’, Sunday, 3–9 December 1989.
77Sunday, 16–22 June 1985.
78Kewal Varma, ‘The Politics of V. P. Singh’, Sunday, 19–25 April 1987.
26. RIGHT AND RIOTS
1M. N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962).
2The political assertion of the backward castes through the 1960s and 70s is usefully described in Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003). See also D. L. Sheth, ‘Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21–28 August 1999.
3Report of the Backward Classes Commission (Delhi: Controller of Publications, 1980), Volume I, p. 57.
4Sanjay Ruparelia, Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 117f.
5André Béteille, ‘Distributive Justice and Institutional Wellbeing’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, March 1991; Dharma Kumar, ‘The Affirmative Action Debate in India’, Asian Survey, volume 32, number 3, March 1992; Norio Kondo, ‘The Backward Classes Movement and Reservation in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh: A Comparative Perspective’, in Mushirul Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato, eds, The Unfinished Agenda: Nation-Building in South Asia (Delhi: Manohar, 2001).
6Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution, pp. 345–7.
7See Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman, A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004).
8Richard H. Davis, ‘The Iconography of Rama’s Chariot’ in David Ludden, ed., Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India (second edition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
9Ibid, p. 46.
10Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 420–2.
11See Paul Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 110–23.
12See Katju, Vishva Hindu Parishad, p. 65.
13See, for more details, S. Guhan, The Cauvery River Dispute: Towards Conciliation (Chennai: Frontline, 1993).
14As this book goes to press, the dispute over the Cauvery waters has intensified
once more. The Supreme Court ordered that Karnataka release 15,000 cusecs of water each day to meet the demands of the summer crop in Tamil Nadu. Protests erupted in the southern districts of Karnataka, with strikes and bandhs in several towns, including the state capital, Bengaluru. Reports in Times of India (Bengaluru edition), 7 September 2016.
15India Today, 31 December 1999.
16Manoj Joshi, The Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1999), Chapters 1 and 2. Cf. also Tavleen Singh, Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors (New Delhi: Viking, 1995).
17Smita Gupta, ‘The Rise and Rise of Terrorism in Kashmir’, The Telegraph, 21 April 1990.
18Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, p. 147.
19These headlines are taken from various news reports filed in the Centre for Education and Documentation, Bangalore.
20The Telegraph, 27 May 1990; Joshi, The Lost Rebellion, pp. 72–3.
21See ‘Urgent Action’ reports of Amnesty International, numbers UA 102 and 108 of 1991, copies in the files of the Centre for Education and Documentation, Bangalore.
22V. M. Tarkunde et al. ‘Report on Kashmir Situation’, in Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Secular Crown on Fire: The Kashmir Problem (Delhi: Ajanta Publications), pp. 210–23.
23This paragraph draws upon, among other works, M. K. A. Siddiqui, Muslims in Free India: Their Social Profile and Problems (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1998); Abusaleh Shariff, ‘On the Margins: Muslims in a State of Socio-Economic Decline’, The Times of India, 22 October 2004; Yogendra Sikand, ‘Lessons of the Past: Madrasa Education in South Asia’, Himal, volume 14, number 11, November 2001; idem, ‘Countering Fundamentalism: The Ban on SIMI’, Economic and Political Weekly, 6 October 2001; Arjumand Ara, ‘Madrasas and Making of Muslim Identity in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3 January 2004.
24Navnita Chadha Behera, State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), p. 179.
25Sonia Jabbar, ‘Spirit of Place’, in Civil Lines 5: New Writing from India (New Delhi: IndiaInk, 2001), pp. 28–9. See also the vivid eye-witness account of a young Pandit who had to flee the valley with his family – Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (New Delhi: Random House India, 2013).
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