The Indian cow has never had it so good. The oft-seen occupant of our roads was branded by many as the 'personality of the year'.

It started with the Maharashtra government announcing a ban on the sale of beef in the state -- a move which led to massive debates online and offline, spiraling into the 'beef controversy'. While there was already a ban on the slaughter of cows, the Maharashtra government has gone a step further by putting a blanket ban on the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and calves too! The bigger issue was that anyone found guilty would be liable for a 5-year imprisonment.

But what brought the issue into national spotlight was the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq, a resident of Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. Akhlaq was dragged out of his home and beaten to death by a mob and his son critically injured over rumours that his family had consumed a dead calf's meat. However, tests later proved that all he ate was goat meat and not beef.

Fuelled by the Dadri lynching, the 'cow' became the icon of discussions on 'intolerance', sparking the 'award wapsi' campaign and even stalling the Parliament proceedings at one point.

If there had to be a word that sums up how controversial the year has been for India, it would be INTOLERANCE.

Incidents like the ban on beef, the subsequent lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri over suspicion of beef consumption and returning of Sahitya Kala Akademi Awards by eminent personalities kept the intolerance debate raging through the year.

Bollywood actors added fuel to fire. If superstar Shah Rukh Khan on his 50th birthday created a flutter when he said that there was extreme intolerance in the country, fellow industry colleague Aamir Khan went a step further when he announced at a public forum that he was "alarmed" by the number of such incidences and that his wife Kiran Rao even suggested that they should probably leave the country.

Many known names from the industry including Anupam Kher, Rishi Kapoor and Raveena Tandon slammed Aamir by asking, "When did incredible India became intolerant India', still others touted Shah Rukh as an 'anti-national', a 'terrorist' or a 'Pakistani agent. Aamir later released a statement in his defence stating that his words were misunderstood but he stands by everything that he had said.

Surprisingly, the intolerance debate lost steam soon after the Bihar poll verdict was announced, prompting the government to declare that it was a 'manufactured' controversy, something that it had been claiming all along.

Even since the scam pertaining to the manipulation in the selection process for government colleges and jobs conducted by the Madhya Pradesh professional examination board or Madhya Pradesh Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal (Vyapam) broke out, nearly 40 people associated with it have mysteriously died.

Madhya Pradesh police (intelligence wing) conducted a parallel investigation into these Vyapam-related deaths before the case was handed over to the CBI. And as expected, the probe team has ruled out any conspiracy behind the deaths and given a clean chit to state government.

Ironically, the spate of spooky unnatural deaths of those linked to Vyapam recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh has stopped completely since the Supreme Court ordered CBI probe into it and decided to monitor the investigations.

But the CBI has not been able to unravel the mystery behind the deaths.

The 2-minute instant noodles went off the shelves in June after being banned by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India which stated that it was "unsafe and hazardous" for consumption due to presence of lead beyond permissible limits.

However, Maggi made a huge comeback five months later. Nestle India, which took a hit of Rs 450 crore including destroying over 30,000 tonnes of the instant noodles, went on to challenge FSSAI in the Bombay HC when their samples were found safe in independent laboratories accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories.

Maggi's launch welcome-pack sold on Snapdeal sold a record 60,000 kits in 5 minutes.

But troubles are far from over. The Supreme Court has sought a response from Nestle India on an appeal by the FSSAI against lifting the ban on Maggi noodles as the food product was in the market without a fresh permission from the authorities. This legal battle will continue next year.

When British filmmaker Leslee Udwin interviewed Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus in which a 23-year-old paramedical student was brutally gangraped by six men on December 16, 2012, at Tihar jail, she would not ave imagined the storm she would kick up in the days to come.

India's Daughter -- the documentary where Mukesh expressed no remorse for his crimes and suggested that his victim would not have been killed had she not fought back her attackers and behaved like 'decent girl.' -- caused a huge outrage in Parliament withseveral lawmakers demanding a ban on the documentary. The government promptly did so.

A Delhi court restrained media from publishing, broadcasting, telecasting or uploading the interview on the internet.

Nevetheless the BBC -- which had commissioned the documentary -- went ahead and aired it in the United Kingdom following which it appeared on video website Youtube.

When it comes to addressing issues like rape and sexual abuse, our netas have been shooting their mouth off year after year. This year was no different.

Be it Goa tourism minister Dilip Parulekar who dismissed rapes as stray incidents that are bound to take place in a busy tourist destination like his state... or Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan who suggest that a rape victim's quest for justice was a publicity stunt... or Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh who said it is impossible for 4 men to rape a woman... or Karnataka Home Minister K J George who observed that two men raping a woman cannot be termed as gangrape...

The political class's views have often been incongruent with their 'oft-repeated' stance on women's safety.

CBFC, commonly referred to as the Censor Board, has been mired in controversy since the beginning of the year when Pahlaj Nihalani took charge as its chairperson.

Nihalani embraced controversy soon after taking over, as he circulated a list of cuss words and the kind of scenes to be 'censored' before clearing the films, which was opposed among others by CBFC members themselves. Over the year, several members of the Board expressed unhappiness over Nihalani's functioning.

He faced more criticism for ordering that a kissing scene from the latest James Bond film The Spectre be cut by 50 per cent to maintain viewers' sanctity.

The icing on the cake was the over-the-top music video he produced hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, the #sanskari CBFC chairperson was pulled up by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry for allowing trailers of Mastizaade and Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 -- with their over the top sexual connotations and vulgar dialogues -- be aired if such stuff had been dealt with differently earlier.

Last heard, I&B minister Arun Jaitley is discussing with experts as to what the future role of the Censor Board should be.

Another government appointee in the firing line this year was Film and Television Institute of India Chairman Gajendra Chouhan.

The appointment of Chauhan, best known as Yudhisthir of BR Chopra's TV serial Mahabharat, did not go down well with students of the premier film institute who went on strike, and three members of the FTII society -- Santosh Sivan, Jahnu Barua and Pallavi Joshi -- also quit.

Several rounds of talks between the students and the ministry followed. The logjam even took a nasty turn when five students were arrested after FTII director Prashant Pathrabe was gheraoed by them. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also paid a visit to the FTII campus in support of the students' demands.

The students ended their strike after over four months, but their protest continues and Chauhan is yet to visit the institute after being nominated its head.

The All India Bakchod Knockout, which saw Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor being 'roasted' (a comic concept where scripted insults and abuses are thrown at celebs who had given their consent for this kind of treatment) by 'roast-master' Karan Johar, amidst abuses and vulgar gestures, left its critics red-faced and several youths up in arms against the attack on freedom to watch what they want to.

A live ticketed show, the event was aired online and received brickbats and an FIR against 14 people, including the celebs who were 'roasted'. The video was later pulled down from Youtube by the AIB team.

While Ranveer, Arjun and Karan received a lot of support from their Bollywood colleagues, there were some who condemned the show. Aamir Khan mentioned that the show was a violent and shameful act.

Even though Johar and other AIB members issued an unconditional apology, the issue triggered a debate on freedom of speech and expression.

Who doesn't love a complicated murder mystery, especially when it involves celebrity suspects. Media tycoon Peter Mukherjea and his wife Indrani Mukherjea were arrested over the murder of Sheena Bora, daughter of Indrani from an earlier marriage.

Sheena Bora, 24, was allegedly murdered by her mother Indrani Mukerjea, her step-father Sanjeev Khanna, and Indrani's driver Shyam Rai in April 2012, in Mumbai. Her body was allegedly kept overnight at the residence of Indrani Mukerjea's husband, Peter Mukerjea, before being taken to the forests of Raigad, 80 km from Mumbai, and burnt, based on what Mumbai police revealed over an intensive period of investigation and frenzied media coverage.

Then, in a surpise move, the Maharashtra government handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation and shunted the investigating officer Rakesh Maria from the Mumbai police commissioner's post.

Away from the media glare, the CBI went about its investigation before springing a surprise in November when it arrested Peter for his alleged role in the murder conspiracy.

CBI has maintained that the murder could be the fallout of some financial transactions. The agency had said that Peter, during his interrogation, disclosed investment of crores of rupees made by him and Indrani abroad.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump stirred the hornet's nest when he called for barring all Muslims from entering the United States following a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by suspected ISIS sympathizers.

Over the last few months, Trump has made a series of remarks that have baffled, offended, captivated, angered, tickled -- all in equal measure. When asked if he would approve surveillance on mosques during an interview with Yahoo News, Trump answered in the affirmative.

The 69-year-old billionaire real estate mogul was unrepentant even as criticism rained down from the White House and as far afield as Ottawa, London and Cairo, where Egypt's official religious body Dar al-Iftaa denounced his "extremist and racist" comments.

Besides his 'xenophobic tendencies', Trump has also been in the news for his insensitive and rather derogatory remarks about women. Sample this comment about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton: "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America."

God save America.

The year started off on a bloody note when on January 7, 2015, two Islamist gunmen shouting Allahu akbar ("God is great" in Arabic) and "the Prophet is avenged", forced their way into the Paris headquarters of French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve. The attack was presumed to be in response to a number of controversial cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad that it published.

The attacks triggered a wave of support for Charlie Hebdo. Je suis Charlie or 'I am Charlie', was adopted by supporters of freedom of expression and was a rage in social media circles. The first edition after the attack, sold almost five million copies.

However, months down the line, the magazine found itself in the line of fire for publishing editorial cartoons inspired by photographs of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy whose drowning in the waters off Greece prompted an outpouring of sympathy for refugees.

In its September editorial, magazine's editor Laurent Sourisseau parodied anti-immigrant attitudes by featuring a cartoon with a caricature of Jesus walking on water next to a drowning Muslim boy, with the caption "this is how we now Europe is Christian". Many commentators, both in the press and on social media, expressed outrage at the magazine, with some even threatening legal action.

The relations between Russia and Turkey have been locked in a spat over the downing of a Russian Su-24M bomber on November 24 by a Turkish Air Force's fighter jet. Ankara claims the bomber violated the Turkish air space in the area of the border with Syria. However, Russia's defense ministry said the Su-24M plane stayed exclusively over the Syrian territory and "there was no violation of the Turkish air space."

Putin described Turkey's shooting down of the Russian bomber as a "stab in the back" and imposed sanctions in retaliation.

Since then, Russian and Turkish vessels -- both military and commercial -- have been involved in at least two near-collisions, and Turkey has accused Moscow of a provocation in the shoulder-mounted missile-launcher incident. Then on December 13, Russian defense officials announced that one of their ships had fired warning shots near a Turkish fishing vessel in the Aegean Sea after what Moscow called "Turkish provocations."

It was an incredibly dangerous standoff, one that seemed certain to increasingly inflame Syria's civil war and to push any hope of peace further into the distance. While Russian President Vladimir Putin ruled out any military retaliation against Turkey, a NATO member, the clash has highlighted dangers the Syria conflict could spiral into a broader one since Russia began air attacks there Sept 30.