Shashi Tharoor is the author of “Nehru: The Invention of India”.

This short biography examines a great figure of twentieth-century nationalism from the vantage point of the beginning of the twenty-first.

Deftly weaving personal facets with historical happenings, it tells the fascinating story of Jawaharlal Nehru’s life. Finely portrayed is the unremarkable youth who found his calling in politics and followed Gandhi into British jails; the aristocrat born to privilege who was moved by the plight of peasants because of his socialist convictions; the cosmopolitan who became the hero of the nationalist youth; the die-hard secularist who confronted Hindu mobs, trying to stop the Partition violence; and the Prime Minister who desired to educate the poor, illiterate and idolizing Indian masses in democracy by his own personal example.

The book also analyses the principal pillars of Nehru’s legacy to India: democratic institution building, staunch pan-Indian secularism, socialist economics at home and a foreign policy of non-alignment.

Tharoor sees the first two as having been indispensable to the survival of our pluralism, and non-non-alignment to preserving our self-respect, though socialist economics, he believes, was disastrousboosting poverty, stagnation and widespread corruption. All of these, however, were integral to a vision of Indianness that is fundamentally contested today. Beautifully written and sparkling with fresh insights, full of anecdotes retold with a novelist’s pen, this book offers a reinterpretation of an extraordinary man and his times.

The year 2001 was celebrated as “Women’s Empowerment Year” in India.

As part of the Women’s Empowerment Year, the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) and its associated bodies were involved in a number of initiatives to improve the status of women in the country.

The National policy for the empowerment of women, with the objective of bringing about advancement, development, and empowerment of women, was formulated.

Five Stree Shakti Puruskars, to honor and recognize the achievements of individual women, were presented, for the first time, by the Prime Minister at the launch of the Women’s Empowerment Year.

The Government also decided to give annual awards to selected ‘Anganwadi’ workers on the basis of exemplary performance.

In 1978, the 44th amendment to the Constitution removed the right to property from the list of Fundamental Rights and converted it into a simple legal right under article 300 A.

Initially, the right to property was recognized as a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 of the Constitution.

In the original constitution, there were 7 categories of fundamental rights. After deletion of right to property by 44th amendment, it was reduced to 6.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.

It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community.

The declaration had many long-lasting consequences. It greatly increased popular support for Zionism within Jewish communities worldwide, and became a core component of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founding document of Mandatory Palestine. It indirectly led to the emergence of the State of Israel and is considered a principal cause of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, often described as the world’s most intractable.

Controversy remains over a number of areas, such as whether the declaration contradicted earlier promises the British made to the Sharif of Mecca in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence.

Malaysia

The top office in Malaysia is known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, which literally means ‘He Who is Made Lord’– referring to its elective nature, and has a tenure of five years.

Nine hereditary rulers from the Malay States form a Council of Rulers who determine the next Agong via a secret ballot.

Malaysia’s system of elected monarchy is the only one of its kind in the world.