"Special occasions call for special gestures and November 19 was a special day indeed. Yet in an extraordinary display of mean-mindedness, the government of the day chose to ignore the 100th birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi. Barring a perfunctory tweet by the prime minister, there was no advertisement issued in her memory, no commemoration of her life, no discussion on her contributions - for better and for worse - in her long innings at the helm of the country."

Read Manini Chatterjee's column here.