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Rajiv Gandhi:The Flight of the Scion
On the flip side, Rajiv proved a poor judge of the company he kept. His minister VP Singh deserted his on the Bofors kickback issue. A whole lot of other colleagues in his cabinet abandoned him before the 1989 elections. He was also impatient for peace, signing accords in rapid succession with the respective secessionist groups of Mizoram, Assam and Punjab, and going on to persuade Sri Lanka to allow the deployment of Indian Peace Keeping Force in its territory. India and Rajiv too had to pay a heavy price for this last accord. In Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, the country lost a great leader. No doubt he made some mistakes, but he also had the uncanny ability to learn from them. What would have been the fate of the nation if Rajiv Gandhi were living? It is for the reader to draw this conclusion.
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Indira Gandhi - A Political Biography
Twenty years after her death, study on Indira Gandhi still exercises an interest. A chronicle of the years between 1966 and 1984 during which, except for two or three years, Indira Gandhi was India's Prime Minister. The book is a historical study of the tumultuous events in which Indira Gandhi played a dominant role. The author has tried to piece together these momentous events into an integral narrative so that it reads like a story Father Benny Aguiar delves into his memory to write about the period when Indira Gandhi dominated the Indian politics. Indira became the Prime Minister of India in 1966 and remained so, barring the period 1977-79, till her assassination in 1984. She had a colossal presence and the history of India of this period got closely interwoven with her story. It is in this sense that the book is important. It is not a historical record of events, which many other books have already done. Father Aguiar recounts from his experiences of the period to produce an emotional history that helps understand the situation as it existed then. It is a close brush with reality and tries to make an assessment about the various feelings that shaped Indira s decision-making. He does not justify the Emergency but tries to understand why Indira Gandhi, who was a democrat, imposed a system that she was going to denounce when she came to power again in 1980. She spoke about the country needing a healing touch. Not in a thousand years, she said, would the need arise for another Emergency. Indira Gandhi was an enigma for most of her colleagues. She was politically smarter and could see through the events. This is why she upstaged most of them during her struggle for political survival. In doing so, she kept losing friends one after the other. Gradually her son Sanjay Gandhi was the only one she could rely on. The mother and son duo used to coordinate their activities for running the affairs of the country. But fate snatched away Sanjay from her and left her crest-fallen. She gathered the loose strings and began the task of governance. Indira Gandhi took tough and controversial decisions during her premiership. It is natural for people to dissect them post facto. A real understanding, however, will emerge only if the situation of that time is simulated. Father Aguiar tries to do that. This is probably for the fist time that a book tries to highlight the role played by various Christian organisations during the numerous crises facing the nation during this period whether it was the Emergency, riots, relief or rehabilitation. The book also talks of the meeting betweenVatican chief Pope John Paul II and Indira Gandhi.
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The Making of Mumbai
Fr Benny Aguiar tells the story of Mumbai as no one has told it before. Indeed, here you have a fascinating story told in all its details across the centuries. Books about Mumbai are many, but few people know that the flint stones found in Backbay attest to the presence of early man in the seven islands which the ancient historian, Ptolemy called "Heptanesia" (Seven Islands) or that the caves of Kanheri and Elephanta are witnesses to the ancient Aryan and Buddhist civilizations that flourished here or in nearby Sopara, Kalyan and Thane? True, many people are aware that it was the British colonizers that transformed Bombay into the Cosmopolitan, industrial and commercial capital of the country. But how many people know that Shivaji and his Maratha Successors mightily ruled over Bassein and Salsette for nearly sixty years? Today's 12 million Mumbaikars enjoy the legacy left behind by the early traders and rulers and should therefore strive to preserve what was best in that legacy. For Catholics especially the history of Mumbai is of special importance as it was from the Portuguese missionaries that they acquired their religion and partly their culture, but also because the transition from one period of history to another led to a decline and then to a revival and formation of the vibrant Catholic Community that has made such a vital contribution in the educational and other fields in the city of Mumbai