As India prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence next month, the country reached a new stage of political maturity this week with the landslide election victory of Kocheril Raman Narayanan, the first Hindu "untouchable" to become President since 1947.
Mr Narayanan (75), currently vice-president, defeated his only rival, Mr T.N. Sheshan, with almost 95 per cent of the ballot, the largest winning margin in an Indian presidential election.
Mr Narayanan, who had the backing of all mainstream parties, is a former journalist, university lecturer and diplomat. Since independence in August 1947, India has had five upper-caste Hindus, two Muslims and a Sikh as president. But Mr Narayanan becomes the first "untouchable" elected to the post, and his victory is being seen as a triumph for the "untouchables" - today referred to as Dalits ("Oppressed") - who still suffer discrimination at the hands of upper-caste Hindus.
India's centuries-old caste system was based on traditional professions. The most elevated in the Hindu hierarchy were the priestly Brahmin class, followed by the warriors (Kshatriyas), the merchants (Vaishyas) and finally the untouchables (Shudras), whose shadow was considered as unclean as their touch.
Instances of prevalent discrimination include limiting the use of temples and village wells only to upper castes. Often inter-caste love affairs have a bloody end with relatives killing the unfortunate couple.
Gandhi renamed the untouchables Harijans, or "Children of God," and worked to rid them of their lowly professions. But four days of riots in Bombay earlier this week, sparked by the desecration of the statue of a lower-caste Hindu leader, seemed to show that discrimination continues 50 years after untouchability was outlawed.
The Bombay violence during which police shot dead 12 slum-dwellers is not an incident in isolation, according to a prominent scientist, Dr Sudhir Hindwan of the Centre for Policy Research. "Violence against the lower-castes has gone up nearly 80 per cent since independence," he says. "More and more, it is between better-off lower castes and their social inferiors."
Lower-caste Hindus comprise about 42 per cent of India's population. Bihar, the second-most populous province, has a huge Dalit population, with many Dalits working as bonded labourers. It is India's most lawless state, with the organised armies of feudal landlords unleashing terror on socially backward Hindus and landless farmers.
THE other pressing problem facing India since independence has been its relations with its neighbours on the sub-continent who also gained independence in 1947.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947. The two still dispute the northern Himalayan state of Kashmir and accuse each other of carrying out covert nuclear programmes and fuelling insurgency in each other's territories. But, after a three-year freeze, there have been positive signs in recent months that relations between the archrivals are thawing, and senior diplomats say India and Pakistan are enjoying their best relations in 50 years.
The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan met in March for the first official talks in three years. Their prime ministers met two months later as part of the continuing talks.
Syed Shahabuddin, a prominent Indian diplomat-turned politician, at a seminar on Indo-Pakistan, pointed out that the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr Nawaz Sharif, were both born in the Pakistani province of Punjab. "They are the two sons of the same mother," he said.
SETTING aside any discussions about the role of the Connaught Rangers in the Indian Mutiny or about de Valera and Gandhi and their influence on each other in the struggles for national independence, the Indian sub-continent has always had a romantic appeal for Irish people. A surviving testimony to this romance and mystique is the "Hindu-Gothic" extravaganza built as the entrance gates and bridge at the Villiers Stuart estate at Dromana House, near Cappoquin, Co Waterford.
In the past two centuries, India has attracted Irish people as adventurers, missionaries, military and colonial administrators, and politicians.
A few months before his death in 1840, the British commander-in-chief in India, Sir John Keane from Cappoquin, was made a peer with the extravagant title of Baron Keane of Ghuznee in Afghanistan and of Cappoquin, Co Waterford. His contemporary, Sir Henry Lawrence, chief commissioner of the Punjab on its annexation in 1849, was killed at Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. His son, Sir Alexander Lawrence of Belgard Castle, Tallaght, was "killed by a falling bridge on the Thibet [sic] Road in India".
Mother Teresa of Calcutta trained as a missionary in Rathfarnham. But Irish-born missionaries in India include Canon Anthony Hanson, who later became Professor of Theology at Hull University, and the Rev Dr Robin Boyd, who later became a director of the Irish School of Ecumenics.
Two missionary organisations closely associated with India were founded in Dublin: the Leprosy Mission (1874) and the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur (1885). The DUMCN provided at least five bishops for the Indian churches, and established a hospital, boys' school and college, all dedicated to St Columba.
In his autobiography, Gandhi's friend, the Rev Charles Andrews, who was active in the non-violent struggles in South Africa and India, described Bishop George Le froy of Delhi as "the ideal for me of a Christian missionary hero. He was one of the bravest and humblest men I have ever known, an Irishman with an unfailing fund of good humour and high courage combined."
But perhaps the most interesting Irish connection with Gandhi and his Congress was the eccentric Irishwoman, Annie Besant. A cousin of Kitty O'Shea, friend of Michael Davitt, advocate of William Smith O'Brien, and Bernard Shaw's would-be lover, she was elected president of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta in 1917, 30 years before independence.
To mark the 50th anniversary of India's independence, RTE plans to screen Indian films, a special publication on Indian-Irish publications is being launched in September, and an India week is being planned in the RDS in October. By then, Mr Narayanan will have been sworn in, and India will face a new stage in its democracy with one of Gandhi's "Children of God" as president.