Get into it and be swayed by the whirl of passions, paradoxes and ironies. So it is not surprising that, in the panegyrics of geopolitics and globalism, India is the exclamation mark of the East. Its democracy is the only reassuring drama in a region where the show is still about less evolved civil societies.
Its marketplace has already shed all those socialist inhibitions and become the playground of the so-called wealth multipliers.
And in the digital planet, Indian is an adjective to be reckoned with. When India performs at its best, in words or on the screen, the world is transfixed—and such moments are not rare.
We are not some remote oriental exotica any longer. We are an interesting bunch of people, capable of a few miracles.
We are here because our national back story is populated by people who are more interesting. Canonised by history, exaggerated by memory, they are not just the protagonists of a great yesterday.
They are the ones who set the stage for those who came after them to play out their romance. Pioneers, warriors, revolutionaries, innovators, dreamers, adventurers and creators, they stretched the limits of the freedom they were born into. They challenged the dead certainties of their times with the power of ideas, conviction—and faith in themselves.
They shattered the idyll of consensus and pitted their own will against the scepticism of the majority. Some of them played god as they gave themselves to the temptations of the alternative. Some of them pointed their accusatory fingers toward the self-styled gods of the era.
And all of them, in varying degrees of originality and audacity, acknowledged the indispensability of questions—and the uses of dissent.
They are the men and women who have made India a place of perpetual astonishment, a country whose stability is built on a million imperfections. Most of them are the people we read about in textbooks. They are the permanent residents of the mythology we make out of hero-worship. (See graphic: Poll survey — Top 10 greatest Indian leaders )
They are known by a simple word: great. It is an adjective overused in history books and by popular media. It is not necessarily synonymous with fame; it is given to a chosen few in gratitude, by a people indebted. It evokes awe and admiration, and owes its origin to achievement.
The India Today list of the 60 Greatest Indians does more than showcase the familiar. Nevertheless, they are all there, certainly, from those who were in the vanguard of the freedom struggle to those who managed the freedom.
From those who stood up to the Empire to those who built empires of their own—of the mind and the money. From those who have made politics and morality seamlessly compatible to those who have redeemed India in their imagination.
This list captures the evolution of the Indian story in portraits of individual exceptionalism. It is the history of a nation personified, and a celebration of the spirit that breaches borders.
The poll
The poll began on March 14 and ran for three weeks through the India Today website and SMS.
A total of 18,928 votes came in, with Bhagat Singh leading with 6,982 votes, Subhas Chandra Bose coming second with 5,193 votes and Mahatma Gandhi trailing at 2,457 votes.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who forever stepped aside for Jawaharlal Nehru, has been redeemed in posterity, at fourth position with 8 per cent of the votes, compared to just 2 per cent for Nehru.
Another steely nationalist, Indira Gandhi, is sixth, with 3 per cent of the votes.
It is, most tellingly, a reflection of the changing perception of those who are remembering. Greatness, it seems, is not static, or absolute. It continues to be reappraised in the mind of the indebted.
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