Nineteen Forty-(Seven)

I have always regarded calendar dates highly. As it so happens, today is 7/7/7, which is supposedly the most auspicious day in a century. Why is seven so lucky – it is a lucky number in most cultures: the seven virtues (Christianity), seven blessings (Jewish marriage: Sheva Berachot), Seven Gods of fortune (Japanese), seven chakras or wheels of energy (Hindu).
Maybe because according to the Bible, seven represents the union of man and woman (since the number for woman is 4 and for man is 3) or because according to many ancient faiths, there are believed to be seven heavens and seven planets in the solar system – those celestial objects they could see with their own eyes (the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn), from where the names of the days of the week are derived in most languages, in the same order (Sunday through Saturday). Or is it because seven is the optimum number of hours of sleep for humans, according to some study?
Whatever the reason be, seven has always received great attention from the antiquitarian, the historian, the chemist, the playwright and the author alike: Seven wonders of the world, the line of seven emperors in classical Rome, seven is the pH of pure water as also the atomic number of the harmless nitrogen, according to Shakespeare, there are seven ages of man [As You Like It, Act II Scene 7, Jacques, “All the world’s a stage…”], and the legendary fictional character created by Ian Fleming is Agent 007.
July 7, 2007 is dubbed to be the biggest wedding day ever across the globe.
Be that as it may, my obsession with calendar dates will continue over the next few weeks when I compile a list of some of the most eventful dates in post-Independence history, as a preparation to recalling that 'moment (which) comes but rarely in history…when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance'.
Here are the first seven years:
August 15, 1947- August 15, 1948:
January 30, 1948: For it wasn’t that easy to assassinate the Mahatma (read about the lesser known Gopal Godse) and as George Bernard Shaw put it – ‘It shows you how dangerous it is to be good’.
August 15, 1948- August 15, 1949:
September 23, 1948: Colonel J.N. Chaudhari eclipses the portraits of the Nizam in Hyderabad, for as Coupland once wondered, ‘India could live if its Moslem limbs in the north-west and north-east were amputated, but could it live without its midriff?’
August 15, 1949- August 15, 1950:
January 26, 1950: The greatest political venture since that originated in Philadelphia in 1787. India announces herself as a ‘SOVEREIGN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC’. The Supreme Court with the widest known powers in the world comes into existence.
August 15, 1950- August 15, 1951:
December 15, 1950: Death of the Iron Man of India, and the end of two power centres in India’s ruling party—virtual monopoly of Jawaharlal Nehru.
August 15, 1951- August 15, 1952:
October 25, 1951 and January-February, 1952: As the world’s largest democracy exercises its franchise, was it ‘the biggest experiment in democracy in human history’ or ‘the biggest gamble in history’?
August 15, 1952- August 15, 1953: December 15, 1952:
Death of Potti Srimamulu, after fasting for fifty-eight days paves the way for the cartographic revision of India on the basis of language. As Ramachandra Guha puts it, he was the Mercator of India.

August 15, 1953-August 15, 1954:
April 29, 1954: India and China decide to ‘mutually coexist’ on five principles: Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai?