A LINE IS DRAWN

PICTURE SPEAK

UNEASY TRUCE: Jawaharlal Nehru with Liaqat Ali Khan on his right

India and Pakistan signed the Karachi Agreement establishing a ceasefire line to be supervised by UN observers. It was suggested that the Kashmir issue be solved through arbitration.

EXIT, SOUZA

Artist and founder of the Progressive Artists movement F.N. Souza (third from left) left India in July after the police raided his studio in search of obscene paintings. He lived in London where his art was exhibited all over Europe and bought by galleries like the Tate. He moved to New York in the ’60s, but never returned to India.

FIRST CUT

Muthamma Chohivia Beliappa became the first woman to clear the Indian Administrative Service examination and join the Indian Foreign Service.

The Cinematographic Act, 1949, created two categories of censorship certificates: ‘A’ for adults and ‘U’ for universal exhibition.

China came to share border with India after its occupation of Tibet.

EXIT, FRANCE

The people of Chandernagore, a French Indian settlement, decided by plebiscite in favour of merging with India. The territory was transferred a year later.

DID YOU KNOW

Nehru and Patel had a major disagreement over who should become the first President of India. Nehru wanted Governor-General C. Rajagopalachari but Patel preferred Rajendra Prasad.

“I FELT INDIAN POLITICS IN THE ABSENCE OF GANDHIJI WOULD BE PRACTICAL AND ABLE TO RETALIATE.”

NATHURAM GODSE during his trial at Red Fort
On November 15, Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan Dattatreya Apte were hanged. The accused in the case are seen talking during the trial in a special court at the Red Fort in 1948.

1,00,000 people who prayed at the site of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on the first anniversary of his death.

4 new universities set up. This included the MS University in Baroda.

A POLITICAL WILL

K.M. Cariappa

Lieutenant-General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa (left) became the first Indian to become Chief of Army Staff and commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, succeeding General Sir Roy Bucher. He was also the first Field Marshal in the Army. Cariappa soon became a thorn on Nehru’s side. Moving away from military matters, in the early ’50s, he started commenting on India’s economic issues, provoking Nehru into asking him in 1952 to reduce the number of press conferences he was addressing.

ELSEWHERE...

Samuel Beckett (above) finished writing En Attendant Godot, which was translated into Waiting for Godot in 1953.

Scientists at Mayo Clinic, US, announced the synthesising of a hormone, later called cortisone, useful in treating rheumatoid arthritis.

The North Atlantic Treaty came into effect.

South Africa established an apartheid programme.

Soviet Union exploded its first A-bomb.

1950: INDIA AT 60

REPUBLIC OF HOPE

REWIND

On January 26, India cut her last ties with Britain and became a republic. Rajendra Prasad became the first President. For the first time, he said, the country had been “brought together under the jurisdiction of one constitution and one union which takes over the responsibility for the welfare of more than 320 million men and women who inhabit it.”

ON SHAKY GROUND

On August 15, a massive earthquake shook Assam, its tremors felt even in Calcutta. Its magnitude was measured 8.6 on the Richter Scale with 1,526 deaths reported. Large landslides blocked the Subansiri River and when the natural dam broke eight days later, it created a wave 23 feet high submerging many villages and killing 536 people.

FIRST CUT

Anna Rajan George of Tamil Nadu cadre became the first woman officer of the Indian Administrative Service.

India’s first destroyer squadron was formed after the country obtained three modern destroyers.

Justice Hiralal J. Kania became the first Chief Justice of India.

All 22 passengers killed in the first-ever air crash near Pathankot.

DIVINE LIGHT

Mother Teresa got permission from the Holy See to establish the order of the Missionaries of Charity. It began with only 12 nuns.

MAN OF LAW
B.R. Ambedkar

In his 1949 speech before the Assembly, the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, Bhimrao Ambedkar, had said, “If things go wrong under the new Constitution the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that man was vile.” He revived the Scheduled Caste Federation prior to the 1952 polls, describing the Congress as a dharamshala “open to fools and knaves, friends and foes”.

“HELLO, HERO, HOW ARE YOU?”

Gyan Mukherjee’s Sangram did the unthinkable—showed the hero playing a bad police officer who murders a girl he loves, shoots a policeman and gambles. Banned by chief minister Morarji Desai in its 16th week for being too violent, it solidified Ashok Kumar’s status as a leading man. Ashok Kumar believed actors “belong to the lower strata of life”, and yet went on to become such a star that even Jawaharlal Nehru would ask him: “Hello, hero, kaise ho? (Hello, hero, how are you?)” He started at Rs 250 and was earning Rs 2.5 lakh by the time the studio system ended.

K.M. PANNIKAR Historian, after meeting Mao Zedong
“He is pleasant and the look in his eyes kindly. There’s no cruelty or hardness in his eyes or in his expression.”

7 denominations in which coins were introduced. These included one rupee, half rupee, quarter rupee, two anna, one anna, half anna and pice.

49 lakh refugees assisted at the end of the year representing 98 per cent of the total displaced.

Iron Age Ends

Sardar Patel died in December 1950. In his tribute to the man who united India, Nehru called him, “an unmatched warrior in the cause of freedom, a lover of India, a great servant of the people and a statesman of genius and mighty achievement”.

ELSEWHERE...

Author George Orwell, 46, died in London of tuberculosis.

The fbi began its “10 Most Wanted" list after a reporter asked agents for names and descriptions of the "toughest guys" the FBI would like to capture.

Jordan annexed the West Bank and offered citizenship to all Palestinians wishing to claim it.

The Korean War (below) began as forces from the communist North invaded the South. It lasted till 1953.

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