Editors Pick

PAGE 16

The unique goals and challenges of Indian secularism

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:14 PM IST

Virtually all commentators agree that India is secular — which seems unarguable given the word’s inclusion in the Preamble

Dr Jaime Torres Bodet Director General of UNESCO Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad arriving at Parliament House for the session of the Indian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO.(HT Photo)

ByDeepa Das Acevedo

How Ambedkar, Constituent Assembly dealt with the caste conundrum

Crucial to addressing the problem of caste, the Constituent Assembly noted, was recognising that it posed a problem distinct to that presented by religion

C Rajagopalachari (R), then governor general of India, with law minister BR Ambedkar on June 14, 1948 .(HT archives)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:12 PM IST

ByMadhav Khosla

The importance of an independent judiciary, writes Madan Lokur

The freedom of the judiciary, and the top court, has been sought to be compromised on several occasions in the past. But it has always bounced back

Chief Justice HJ Kania Administering the Oath of office Rajendra Prasad first President of the republic of India in the Durbar Hall Rashtrapati Bhavan.(HT Photo)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:24 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByMadan Lokur

HT Archives| Policy of controls takes away creative genius of people: GD Birla

The achievement of Indian industry thus is not small. It built itself up against heavy odds when there was no encouragement.

Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi with GD Birla at Boulogne station on the way to England to attend the Round Table Conference as the representative of the Indian Nationals.(HT Archives/ Getty Images)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:35 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByGD Birla

In Partition’s shadow, Constituent Assembly adopted secular charter

Jawaharlal Nehru’s announcement in May 1942 that an elected Constituent Assembly would draft a Constitution for free India took Inder Kumar Gujral by surprise

Jawaharlal Nehru addressing a meeting of a committee of the Constituent Assembly in New Delhi, 1949.(Alamy Stock Photo)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:40 PM IST

ByVikram Raghavan

Preamble embodies Constitution’s vision

The content of the Preamble not only embodies events that predate the adoption of the Constitution but also incorporates citizens’ experiences

A photo of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly with its chairman BR Ambedkar in the centre.(Alamy Photo)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:42 PM IST

ByAnurag Bhaskar

Machines that printed first copies of the Constitution sold as scrap

As for the lithographic plates, they were also “auctioned to scrap dealers long ago”, Survey of India (SoI) officials said.

The Monarch model of the printing machine that printed the first thousand copies of the Constitution of India(Photo Credit: Survey of India)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:43 PM IST

Hindustan Times, Dehradun | BySuparna Roy

Framers put forth a plural, secular basis for citizenship

The secular model of acquisition of citizenship served many objectives

A view of the Constituent Assembly on December 10, 1946.(HT Archive)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:12 PM IST

ByShadan Farasat

Constitution was the first canvas of modern masters

Each of 22 chapters of the document is headed by an illustration painstakingly crafted by Nandalal Bose and his team at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:10 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByDhamini Ratnam

Greatest strength of India’s Constitution

The framers of our Constitution displayed remarkable foresight while drafting its amendment provisions.

Jawaharlal Nehru addresses the Constituent Assembly in 1947.(Getty Images)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:15 PM IST

ByRaju Ramachandran and Shankar Narayanan

People who steered India’s founding document

BR Ambedkar was the head of the drafting committee and India’s first law minister.

Preamble Constitution of Republic of India

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:49 PM IST

New Delhi | ByHT Correspondent

BN Rau: An idealist and a staunch constitutionalist

In such accounts, the roles played by political leaders assumed importance, and the scope for recognising a bureaucrat like Rau remained severely limited.

An image from March 1951 showing BN Rau working at the UN.(HT Archives)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 04:51 PM IST

ByArvind Elangovan

15 remarkable women who helped shape India’s future

The demand for a body to form the Constitution was an old one but it was only in 1934 that the Congress adopted a resolution to create a Constituent Assembly

Eleven of 15 women members of Constituent Assembly(special arrangement/meera velayudhan)

Editors Pick

Updated on Nov 26, 2024 05:08 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByDhamini Ratnam and Dhrubo Jyoti

The man who chronicled Mahatma Gandhi

Mahadev Desai joined Gandhi at 25 as his secretary and maintained diaries that offer a rare insight into the mind of the most secular leader India has seen

Mahatma Gandhi with Mahadev Desai (right) at the All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay, August 8, 1942, the day that the Quit India resolution was moved.(National)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:43 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByNachiketa Desai

Birla House: A visit to the Mahatma

Formerly the house of noted industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla, the home where MK Gandhi spent his last 144 days is now a museum

Gandhi, a day before his assassination at Birla House, New Delhi.(National Gandhi Museum)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2020 08:00 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByDhrubo Jyoti

‘I kept feeling that Bapu would wake up any minute’: Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee

Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee spoke about her father’s stint in Hindustan Times, her grandparents, and the changing face of Delhi

Tara Bhattacharjee at her residence in New Delhi.(Amal KS/HT)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:00 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByKumKum Dasgupta

A tribute to Mahatma Gandhi by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

On January 30, 1958, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, wrote an article for Hindustan Times on why India’s Father of the Nation belonged ‘to the ages’

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr stands next to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in his office in 1966.(Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:32 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByDr Martin Luther King, Jr

Hindustan Times and the Mahatma

When Gandhi inaugurated the Hindustan Times press in 1924, he knew it was time for a paper that reflected sentiments and the shared national agenda of Indians

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi inaugurated the Hindustan Times press in 1924.(KK Chawla/HT Archives)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:03 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByDhamini Ratnam

Essential reading on MK Gandhi

Swami Anand, who persistently urged Gandhi to write his autobiography, introduced the readers to sociological insights about castes and communities

Gandhi after his release from prison, 1924.(gandhi museum)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:33 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByTridip Suhrud

A biographer’s journey: In search of the Mahatma

The Collected Works had all the known letters that Gandhi himself wrote; but virtually none of the letters that he received or responded to.

Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru spinning, Delhi.(National)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:47 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByRamachandra Guha

Gandhi and Gujarat: At home and in self-imposed exile

The state was his birthplace and the site of his experiments with truth. But it must analyse its points of divergence from the Father of the Nation

At 6.30 am, on March 12, 1930 MK Gandhi, accompanied by co-marchers, left the Sabarmati ashram for Dandi, a coastal village in Gujarat.(HT Photo)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:37 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByTridip Suhrud

Gandhi, Ambedkar and the 1932 Poona Pact

The 1931 Poona Pact shaped India’s Dalit political representation, and its implications are felt even in today’s parliamentary elections

The impact of MK Gandhi’s principled resistance to BR Ambedkar’s political demand for separate electorates for the so-called depressed classes lives on.(HT image)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:52 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByDhrubo Jyoti

A hyperlocal economic plan

The political consensus was that a newly independent India needed to rapidly industrialise. Instead, Mahatma Gandhi offered a radically different economic path

Gandhi argued for an India of household production for local consumption.

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:36 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByNiranjan Rajadhyaksha

An experiment in Khadi, and Gandhi’s eastern base

History hangs thick in the air of the Gandhi ashram, as the place is known. A print of a letter written by Gandhi in 1928 adorns the wall next to the bed

A charkha used by Mahatma Gandhi on display at the Gandhi Bhavan (Hyderi Manzil) in Kolkata, where he spent 25 days, including Independence Day, in 1947.(Samir Jana/ht)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:40 PM IST

Hindustan Times | BySnigdhendu Bhattacharya

1915-16: A tour of the homeland

Gandhi was advised by his mentor Gopalkrishna Gokhale — a freedom fighter who belonged to the ilk of Moderates within the Congress — to tour India for a year

Gandhi started his travels from Bombay and journeyed across the length and breadth of the country, from Kolkata to Ahmedabad, Delhi to Chennai.

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:11 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByDhamini Ratnam

Growing up in Mahatma Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram

In 1936, Gandhi decided to personally live and work in villages. He wanted to redirect the educated class in India towards villages.

The school started by MK Gandhi and operated by Anand Niketan at Sevagram Ashram Pratisthan in Wardha, Maharashtra.(Satish Bate/HT)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:19 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByAbhay Bang

Learning to become a political activist

The debate on social media often ignores the changes Mahatma Gandhi went through in subsequent years when he sought to travel third class in trains

Gandhi recovering after being beaten up by a fellow Indian who felt that Gandhi had made a wrong compromise with South African officials, 1908(National Gandhi Museum)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:42 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByUma Dhupelia Mesthrie

The Mahatma’s Bengal connection

Bengalis have a complicated response to MK Gandhi. Some hold him responsible for the Partition; others question his treatment of Subhas Chandra Bose.

Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan in February 1940.(National Gandhi Museum)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 09:43 PM IST

ByRudrangshu Mukherjee

Champaran: India’s first Satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi’s swaraj meant self-sufficiency at the village level, dependent largely on agriculture

An outside view of Bapudham Motihari Railway station, a historical place for the start of Satyagraha movement by Mahatma Gandhi, at Motihari, Bihar.(Photo by Sanchit Khanna / Hindustan Times)

Editors Pick

Updated on Oct 01, 2023 08:57 PM IST

ByNeyaz Farooquee

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Editors Pick

Virtually all commentators agree that India is secular — which seems unarguable given the word’s inclusion in the Preamble

Crucial to addressing the problem of caste, the Constituent Assembly noted, was recognising that it posed a problem distinct to that presented by religion

The freedom of the judiciary, and the top court, has been sought to be compromised on several occasions in the past. But it has always bounced back

The achievement of Indian industry thus is not small. It built itself up against heavy odds when there was no encouragement.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s announcement in May 1942 that an elected Constituent Assembly would draft a Constitution for free India took Inder Kumar Gujral by surprise

The content of the Preamble not only embodies events that predate the adoption of the Constitution but also incorporates citizens’ experiences

As for the lithographic plates, they were also “auctioned to scrap dealers long ago”, Survey of India (SoI) officials said.

The secular model of acquisition of citizenship served many objectives

Each of 22 chapters of the document is headed by an illustration painstakingly crafted by Nandalal Bose and his team at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan

The framers of our Constitution displayed remarkable foresight while drafting its amendment provisions.

BR Ambedkar was the head of the drafting committee and India’s first law minister.

In such accounts, the roles played by political leaders assumed importance, and the scope for recognising a bureaucrat like Rau remained severely limited.

The demand for a body to form the Constitution was an old one but it was only in 1934 that the Congress adopted a resolution to create a Constituent Assembly

Mahadev Desai joined Gandhi at 25 as his secretary and maintained diaries that offer a rare insight into the mind of the most secular leader India has seen

Formerly the house of noted industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla, the home where MK Gandhi spent his last 144 days is now a museum

Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee spoke about her father’s stint in Hindustan Times, her grandparents, and the changing face of Delhi

On January 30, 1958, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, wrote an article for Hindustan Times on why India’s Father of the Nation belonged ‘to the ages’

When Gandhi inaugurated the Hindustan Times press in 1924, he knew it was time for a paper that reflected sentiments and the shared national agenda of Indians

Swami Anand, who persistently urged Gandhi to write his autobiography, introduced the readers to sociological insights about castes and communities

The Collected Works had all the known letters that Gandhi himself wrote; but virtually none of the letters that he received or responded to.

The state was his birthplace and the site of his experiments with truth. But it must analyse its points of divergence from the Father of the Nation

The 1931 Poona Pact shaped India’s Dalit political representation, and its implications are felt even in today’s parliamentary elections

The political consensus was that a newly independent India needed to rapidly industrialise. Instead, Mahatma Gandhi offered a radically different economic path

History hangs thick in the air of the Gandhi ashram, as the place is known. A print of a letter written by Gandhi in 1928 adorns the wall next to the bed

Gandhi was advised by his mentor Gopalkrishna Gokhale — a freedom fighter who belonged to the ilk of Moderates within the Congress — to tour India for a year

In 1936, Gandhi decided to personally live and work in villages. He wanted to redirect the educated class in India towards villages.

The debate on social media often ignores the changes Mahatma Gandhi went through in subsequent years when he sought to travel third class in trains

Bengalis have a complicated response to MK Gandhi. Some hold him responsible for the Partition; others question his treatment of Subhas Chandra Bose.

Mahatma Gandhi’s swaraj meant self-sufficiency at the village level, dependent largely on agriculture

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