The Year 2024: Highlights

It felt that the year of 2024 flew by. In India and beyond, it produced several moments of significance.

• 22 January, A Civilization Shimmers: The Prana Pratishtha ceremony of the Rāma Mandir in Ayodhya. It was the happiest I had felt in a long time and my happiest day of the year. It was the crowning moment for Hindu resurgence. Nearly five hundred years of struggle bore fruit in November 2019 when the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of the Hindus, but on this date one could behold the fruit in all its glory.
• 04 June, The World’s Largest Democracy Decrees: An unexpected shock as the results of the Lok Sabha elections in India rolled in. By the end of the day, the supporters of a party (the BJP), that had now a few seats more than the totality of the opposing alliance, were crestfallen. For it had lost a majority that it had twice won (282 seats in 2014, and 303 seats in 2019; brought down to 240 in 2024). The stature of a towering Narendra Modi seemed ever-so-slightly shortened.
• 13 July, Courage: An assassination attempt on Donald Trump, presidential candidate, in Butler, Pennsylvania. History wrote a spectacular record of courage as he defiantly fist-pumped and said, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
• 31 July, Strike While the Iron is Hot: Ismail Haniyeh, the overall leader of Hamas, is assassinated with a remotely detonated explosive device. This was especially venturesome, since it occurred in the Iranian capital.
• 05 August, Ouster: Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh resigns. Indian eyes saw therein the footprints of a Langley-engineered coup.
• 17 and 18 September, Cloak and Dagger: Thousands of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies intended for Hezbollah use exploded across Lebanon and Syria.
• 05 October, Snapback: The BJP wins a majority in the state of Haryana, defying expectations after the Lok Sabha bruise.
• 16 October, Sequel to 31 July: Yahya Sinwar, who succeeded Ismail Haniyeh as Hamas chief, is killed in a firefight with the Israeli Defence Forces.
• 05 November, Rebound: Donald Trump wins the U.S. Presidential Elections in what would be ranked as among the greatest political comebacks. A political untouchable after the results of the 2020 elections — his own party would distance itself from him — he would emerge as leading a reinvigorated party, as also an unlikely group of people in whom many Americans see promise. Both the popular vote and the electoral college vote would tilt in his favour.
• 23 November, Crest: The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance wins in a landslide in the state of Maharashtra, again defying expectations, reinforcing the fallibility of exit polls. The BJP itself won its highest ever seat tally in the state.
• 08 December, Downfall: Damascus falls to the Syrian opposition. Bashar-al-Assad fled, ending fifty-four years of his family’s rule. The reverberations of this event will, doubtless, be felt in the Middle-East.