Introduction
Khusro Faramurz Rustamji is accepted as a colossus in the police fraternity. He is the only police officer, so far, to have been awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour. During his long and illustrious career, he was witness to many historical developments in pre and post-Independent India. This book, which is based on his diaries and articles, presents a first person account, not so much about this police icon himself, as about some of those tumultuous developments of our history as seen and experienced and recorded by him.
Rather than presenting a ringside view of history, the book is more in the nature of an account of a man who was inside the ring itself, as it were, and wrote about the 'bout' immediately thereafter. Several decades later, Rustamji analysed the events he witnessed, in great detail in his numerous articles. I have harmoniously coalesced both the accounts to present an eyewitness narration of the factual details and an assessment of their historical significance made by him from the safe distance of time and experience, supplemented by extensive reading.
This book is based on more than 3,500 pages of his diaries, written on a regular basis from November 1938 to December 1970, on foolscap size paper, as well as his notes and articles, which run into about 7,000 pages of printed and typed material. I depended more on the diaries as they were recorded a day or two after the event, and reflect more accurately the factual content as well the mood of the times.