40 years ago October 2, 1986: Gandhi statue controversy

This is the front page of The Indian Express published on October 02, 1986.

2 min readOct 2, 2026 06:40 AM IST First published on: Oct 2, 2026 at 06:40 AM IST

The Mayor of New York has declined to unveil the eight-foot-high statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Union Park in Washington. No Indian official from any mission in the US will attend. Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, personal secretary of Martin Luther King and first Black American to protest outside the British High Commission in Washington during Quit India Movement, will lead the ceremonies.

PM assurance on Hindi

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M G Ramachandran, elicited a categorical assurance from the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, that the Centre had no intention of imposing Hindi on the people of Tamil Nadu. During the 50-minute meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in New Delhi, Ramachandran apprised Rajiv Gandhi of the strong feelings of the people of Tamil Nadu arising out of a circular issued by the Press information Bureau in Madras about the use of Hindi as the official language

Reagan lauds Indian economy

Declaring that India had captured the spirit of economic freedom, US President Ronald Reagan said such progressive nations were challenging old dogmas and rediscovering a timeless truth. The swamp of state control and regulation was finally giving way to a vision of the future, which, he said, rested on two words — economic freedom.

3 more held in Vaidya case

Three more persons, including a woman, have been arrested in Durg and two unlicensed revolvers recovered from them as raids and searches of suspected extremist hideouts continued, official sources in Raipur said.