Year in review - Part 2

The year would end before one realises. Here are a few things that made news and creted ripples n the past year.

Mcmahon line

HT Image

India’s cold, remote and usually forgotten Himalayan frontiers occupied mindspace around the country through much of the year that was. It started with reports from Ladakh that Chinese troops had threatened shepherds and villagers on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control. Then photos began to circulate of rocks with Chinese lettering on them.

The issue went from shepherds and graffiti to India and China. Territorial claims began to be pressed on both sides of the McMahon Line, the border that was drawn in 1914 and has been disputed since. Beijing expressed strong dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s election campaign visit to Arunachal Pradesh; Delhi reiterated that Arunachal is part of India, and moved two army divisions, numbering more than 50,000 soldiers, to the state. Forward air bases along the Chinese frontier were reopened after decades.

The focus shifted eventually to the epicentre of the dispute: Tawang. The man at the centre of it was, quite appropriately, the 14th Dalai Lama. The Tibetan leader symbolises resistance to Chinese rule. Tawang, a little hill town dominated by a Tibetan monastery, is perhaps the place that best symbolises the complicated border dispute between India and China. It was part of Tibet until 1951. India accepted China’s suzerainty over Tibet. So Beijing claims that Tawang, and the areas around it, are part of China.

Down under in Australia

It was not the first year Indians were under attack in Australia. Of the 1,47,106 Australian residents who declared in 2006 that they were born in India, a large cohort trawls the streets of Sydney and Melbourne as cabbies. Many of them have faced violence from assorted ‘drunkaroos’ for years.

This year the number of assaults rose to 105 and included several cases tainted by racial taunts. Most of them were directed at students — children of people like us — who are grazing for greener grass Down Under.

The moon

The moon looked like a busy place in 2009, at least from India. Our Chandrayaan I first got there and then outdid expectations by discovering traces of water there. Days after the discovery, on August 29, the spacecraft lost contact with Earth. The mission, which was to last two years, ended in 10 months. The presence of water was later confirmed by a Nasa satellite that crashed into the surface of the moon and found 26 gallons of the liquid there. People of a futuristic bent of mind spoke of possibilities of human habitation.

Lunar property is already being sold at a brisk pace. You can buy a plot online for about Rs 1,000 ($23) from the Lunar Embassy Corporation, owned by a man named Dennis Hope, who set up what he calls the Galactic Government.

The moon, naturally, is part of his galactic domains. His claim, however, is not recognised by any country on Earth— but then, our planet is only the third rock from an unremarkable sun. Surely the Galactic Government owns it too?

Berlin after the wall

This November, Europe marked 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. There were fireworks, concerts, a march in pouring rain led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and a symbolic knocking over of dominoes where once the Wall stood. Back in 1989, the fall did have a domino effect on communist governments around the world. The Soviet Union itself broke up into 10 independent states two years later. Soviet pride went before the fall. This year, Russian news agency Ria Novosti declared that the Wall’s fall was not the end of history.

Kargeh street, Tehran

This is where Neda Aga Soltan, a 27-year-old woman on her way to a protest against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, died. Images of her bleeding to death with a bullet in her chest became the symbol of the Iranian resistance. The protests were crushed then, but haven’t died out. They acquired a fresh lease of life in December following another death — that of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was critical of Ahmadinejad.

Deoband

It’s been a centre of learning since 1866. As a guiding light to millions of Muslims in South Asia, its importance remains high. So the Darul Uloom Deoband’s pronouncement that it’s okay for Muslims to practice yoga if they replace ‘Om’ with something from the Quran was welcomed by liberals with a sigh of relief. This came after the Ulema in Malaysia and Indonesia declared yoga ‘un-Islamic’. The maulanas at the madrasa later received as their guest yoga guru Ramdev. It was a meeting of beards and communities, and an exercise in fraternity.

Azeroth

In November, World of Warcraft turned five, and the population of Azeroth — the virtual world where this online game takes place — was counted at around 1.15 crore. A BBC report commented that “more people now play World of Warcraft, or WoW, than live in Greece.”

Sharm el Sheikh

It’s this Egyptian coastal city between the Red Sea and Mount Sinai where Manmohan Singh, prime minister of a nuclear-armed India, and Yousuf Raza Gilani, PM of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, came close to burying the past. But it hasn’t worked yet. Singh was severely criticised at home for a “sell-out”, while Pakistan continues to accuse India of not adhering to the treaty.

Buckingham Palace

The sprawling home of the British monarch is where a 1,70,000-km journey started on October 29. The occasion was the Queen’s Baton Relay, the curtain raiser to the 2010 Commonwealth Games. The baton, which the organisers say has a “precious jewellery box” at the top containing Queen Elizabeth II’s message to the athletes, was first passed to President Pratibha Patil, who passed it to the 14 Indian sportspersons present there to begin the globetrot.

The jewellery box, which is fitted with a global positioning system, will need some close guarding. It will travel through 71 Commonwealth countries before arriving in India next June. Then it will travel to all the state capitals before reaching Delhi in time for the opening ceremony on October 3, 2010.

Spa Francorchamps

They came, they drove a perfect race, they almost conquered. A Force India driver may not have won the race but having finished second, Giancarlo Fisichella (left) ensured a first-ever podium finish and championship points for the team that’s partly owned by Vijay Mallya. (Fisichella had won pole position of the race.) With the tricolour zooming past all the cars save one on this hilly and twisted Belgian racing circuit, India celebrated the arrival of Force India.

DARK SIDE

Flood-hit Kurnool

Floods in the Krishna basin killed 65 people and affected more than 1.7 million in five districts of AP. Kurnool was the worst hit.

Texas fort hood

Site of the worst massacre at a US military installation where Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a rampage, killing 13 and injuring 38.

Banstala, west Midnapore

Maoists kidnapped the driver and co-driver of the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani and held them hostage.

Shopian, Kashmir

In a largely quiet year in Kashmir, the mysterious murders of two young women brought the Valley to the brink once more.