Gandhi, Jinnah share century honours
By Nikhat Kazmi
NEW DELHI: Where would you find Bal Thackeray rubbing shoulders with Chandrababu Naidu or Veer Savarkar sharing the limelight with B R Ambedkar? Also, where could Sabeer Bhatia share equal ground with J R D Tata and Balamurali Krishna win accolades with Kishore Kumar? On the Times Online list of 100 Indians who made a difference.
Compiling a list of the 100 Indians who made the greatest impact – positive or negative – on our country this century is an arduous task. Nevertheless, The Times of India has drawn up its list with the help of nearly 50,000 votes from visitors to our website.
The poll is divided into four categories: Leaders and Politicians, Creators of Wealth, Great Minds and Spiritual Lights, and Artists and Entertainers. The idea is to recognise the contributions of diverse people and not just politicians.
The category of `Leaders and Politicians’ boasts of such nationalist leaders as Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Bhagat Singh and Savarkar. The category also includes politicians who influenced the course of events in independent India like Jaya Prakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, “Periyar” E V Ramaswamy, V P Singh, P V Narasimha Rao, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jyoti Basu, Indira Gandhi, C N Annadurai, Rajiv Gandhi, A B Vajpayee, Thackeray, Pratap Singh Kairon, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Sheikh Abdullah and Naidu. Interestingly, M A Jinnah also finds a place in the list - for, without him, India would have been different.
In the `Creators of Wealth’ category, the idea was to include the architects of modern India. In short, entrepreneurs and innovators who set the wheels of progress in motion. The list includes G D Birla, Gujar Mal Modi, A B Godrej, J R D Tata, Keshub Mahindra, M S Oberoi, Dhirubhai Ambani, Shiv Nadar, Azim Hasham Premji, Parvinder Singh, Laxmanrao Kirloskar, Jamnalal Bajaj, T P G Nambiar, N R Narayana Murthy, M A Chidambram, K M Mammen Mappillai, T V Sundaram Iyengar, Walchand Hirachand, Karsanbhai Patel, Subhash Chandra, Har Prasad Nanda, Brijmohan Lall, Sabeer Bhatia, V Kurien and S P Hinduja.
India is almost synonymous with the world of ideas, being universally recognised as the fount of spirituality and philosophy. Naturally then, under the category of `Great Minds and Spiritual Lights’, we find philosophers, thinkers, writers, scientists, innovators and spiritual gurus almost spilling over. It is an exhaustive and varied canvas which includes Rabindranath Tagore, S Radhakrishnan, C V Raman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Homi Jehangir Bhabha, K Sivarama Karanth, M S Swaminathan, J Krishnamurti, Mother Teresa, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Chinmayananda, Bhagwan Rajneesh, Amartya Sen, A P J Kalam, Sri Aurobindo, Sathya Sai Baba, P C Mahalanobis, Munshi Premchand, Manmohan Singh, Salman Rushdie, Hargobind Khorana, J C Bose, M Visvesvaraya, Mohammed Iqbal and Swami Vivekananda.
And when it comes to art and entertainment, such a list threatens to be never-ending. Strict control cuts it down to 25, including leading lights in sports too. Hence, we have a comprehensive list which carries the Flying Sikh (Milkha Singh), the `Payyoli Express’ (P T Usha), the Little Master (Sunil Gavaskar), the Grandslam Master (Viswanathan Anand), Batboy Sachin Tendulkar, hockey wizard Dhyan Chand, Kapil Dev and the invincible duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi along with the luminaries of the film, art and music world: Bhimsen Joshi, M F Husain, Amitabh Bachchan, Satyajit Ray, Ravi Shankar, Lata Mangeshkar, A R Rahman, Madhuri Dixit, M S Subbulakshmi, Balamurali Krishna, Zakir Husain, Mohammed Rafi, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Madhubala and Kishore Kumar.