Indian American Center for Political Awareness Home Page : Review 2004 : Year of Sonia’s ‘sacrifice’ and the rise of Manmohan Singh

DIASPORA DAY: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, left, looks on as the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, right, inaugurated the three-day Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in New Delhi, on Jan. 9. Vajpayee announced measures to help Indian corporate sector go global. (File photo)

INDO-U.S. MILITARY DRILL: An Indian soldier, right, with his U.S. counterpart at an Indo-U.S. army exercise in Mizoram on April 6 organized by the Indian Army’s Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School. (File photo)

MANMOHAN SINGH APPOINTED PRIME MINISTER: Manmohan Singh, the architect of India’s economic reforms in the 1990’s, became the nation’s 13th prime minister on May 22 at the head of a coalition government that brought the Congress Party back to power after eight years. Seen in the photo is Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, right, with Singh, outside Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on May 19. Gandhi, who declined to become prime minister despite her party emerging as the single-largest entity in Parliament, named Singh to fill the position. (File photo: AFP)

India: Newsmakers

DEATH OF A BRIGAND: Koosai Munisamy Veerappan, India’s most elusive brigand, wanted for some 120 murders since 1969 and who carried a Rs. 30 million ($652,173) reward on his head, was finally shot dead by elite commandos late on Oct. 18 on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. Seen in the photo, police and locals at the spot where Veerappan was shot dead on Oct. 18. PHOTO INSET, Veerappan with his trademark moustache. (File photos: AFP)

PROMINENT PERSONALITIES WHO FIGURED IN ‘THE TIME 100: The A-List of the World’s Most Influential People’ compiled by Time magazine and published in its April 26 issue of the magazine. From left, upper row, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, chairman of information technology major Wipro Technologies Azim Premji, yoga instructor B.K.S. Iyengar as well as Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel laureate Dalai Lama, and from left in the bottom row, Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai; Grammy award-winner and daughter of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, Norah Jones; and Nobel Prize winner and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

AGNIHOTRI RESIGNS: Bhishma Kumar Agnihotri, the Ambassador-at-Large for nonresident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs), stepped down from his post soon after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP-led government was voted out of power in the April-May general elections. Agnihotri was appointed to the post by the Vajpayee government.

NRI LAWMAKER: Successful New York attorney Madhu Goud Yaskhi, who entered the Lok Sabha by dint of his victory from the Nizamabad constituency in his native Andhra Pradesh state, became the lone NRI lawmaker in the Indian Parliament. “I intend to use (this status) to become an interface with the 20 million Indian diaspora across the globe,” he told News India-Times.

SUSPENDED FROM BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Nov. 10 suspended senior leader Uma Bharati from the party’s primary membership for six years after she launched a public attack against her colleagues. In full gaze of TV cameras, Bharati defied Advani’s stern directive for discipline, lashed out against her colleagues and stormed out of the BJP headquarters in New Delhi.

BOFORS CASE: A Delhi court on Jan. 4 absolved late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi of any involvement in a $40 million payoff scandal involving Sweden’s former arms company Bofors, saying there was not a “scintilla of evidence” that he had accepted any bribe. “My family has been vindicated,” said an emotional Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, responding to the verdict that came 13 years after her husband’s assassination.

IN TROUBLE: Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi arrives at a court in Kanchipuram, some 50 miles southwest of Chennai, on Nov. 18. He was arrested in Andhra Pradesh eight days earlier over his alleged links to the murder of Shankara Raman, a former official at the Shankaracharya’s hermitage in the temple town of Kanchipuram.

FORD KIN IN KOLKATA: Alfred B. Ford, center, the great grandson of Henry Ford, watched by his wife Sharmila, rings a bell as he offers prayers at the newly-built Sri Mahalaxmi Temple in Kolkata, on Feb. 20. (File Photo: AFP)

Obituaries

R.K. Hegde

RAMAKRISHNA HEGDE, 76, former Union Commerce minister and twice chief minister of Karnataka, died in Bangalore on Jan. 12 following brain hemorrhage.

M.D. NANJUNDASWAMY, 67, international farmers’ leader who led protests against genetically-modified seeds and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in India, died on Feb. 3 of lung cancer.

S.B. Chavan

S.B. CHAVAN, 83, senior Congress Party leader and former Union home minister, died in Mumbai on Feb. 26.

G.S. Tohra

G.S. TOHRA, 79, senior Sikh leader and Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee president, died in New Delhi on March 31 after a heart attack.

E.K. Nayanar

E.K. NAYANAR, 85, former Kerala chief minister and stalwart of the Communist Party of India-Marxist died in New Delhi following illness.

Dom Moraes

DOM MORAES, 65, noted poet, writer and columnist, died in Mumbai on June 2 following a heart attack.

Nafisa Joseph

NAFISA JOSEPH, 25, former Miss India and TV anchor suspected to have committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan at her home in Mumbai.

Cartier Bresson

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, 95, legendary French photographer who captured in his photographs some of the most cataclysmic events in Indian history, including the assassination of Gandhiji, died on Aug. 5 at his home in the Luberon region in southwestern France.

Raja Ramanna

RAJA RAMANNA, 79, architect of India’s nuclear weapons program, died at the Bombay Hospital in Mumbai on Sept. 24, after he was admitted to a hospital to receive treatment for a cardiac arrest. Ramanna led the team of scientists that conducted India’s first nuclear test at Pokharan in Rajasthan in May 1974.

Mulk Raj Anand

MULK RAJ ANAND, 99, who was among those who pioneered English writing in India, died in Pune on Sept. 28.

Shobha Gurtu

SHOBHA GURTU, 79, noted classical singer died in Mumbai on Sept. 27. She was one of India’s foremost exponents of the thumri.