From 1984 to 2008 to 2020, independent India’s history is punctuated by ‘worst years ever’ – By Anand Vardhan
As 2020 nears its end, the urge to look back at the year as an annus horribilis is palpable…. while the newsweekly Open, for instance, stated the obvious in running its 2020 year-ender issue with a cover story grimacing the annus horribilis, the chroniclers of India’s recent past would argue that the year would have to contend with other claimants for this egregious mark in national memory….
To an extent, the same can be said about the present scourge of Covid…. the pandemic inflicted significant alarm and loss of life in places like Maharashtra and Delhi….
Perhaps India’s sense of annus horribilis could be reserved for years when the chaos becomes unmanageable enough to incur heavy human costs or endangers the territorial integrity and the foundational values of the nation-state….
