EDGE OF BORDER

PICTURE SPEAK

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM: Satyagrahis march towards the Indian border in Goa in 1954

Nehru’s foreign policy was opposed to the continuance of colonial rule anywhere. This meant reclaiming parts of the country still languishing under foreign yoke. Things came to a head when unarmed satyagrahis were fired upon by Portuguese authorities in Goa, which dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar had described as “a light of the West in lands of the Orient”. An enraged India asked the Portugal government to close their legation in Delhi and its consulates in other cities. The Indian consulate-general in Goa was withdrawn on September 1.

FIRST CUT

HEC-2M, the first computer in the country, was installed in Calcutta.

Bharat Petroleum became the first company to market liquid petroleum gas for home use.

General Maharaj Rajendra Sinhji became the first person to hold the rank of Chief of Army Staff.

State Bank of India, formed in July, became the first Indian bank to be nationalised.

CODE-BREAKER

Despite differences between the prime minister and president, the Hindu law was modernised with a series of acts reforming laws on marriage, succession, guardianship and adoption, passed over two years.

DID YOU KNOW

The crowd that turned up to hear Jawaharlal Nehru speak at Moscow’s Gorky Park was so large that the venue had to be shifted to the Dynamo Moscow Football Stadium.

“ONLY SCIENCE CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF HUNGER.”

“A new India can be built, not merely by the brilliance of a score or hundreds of people, but by the cooperative hard work of the millions,” said Jawaharlal Nehru, while pouring the first bucket of concrete into the foundation of the Bhakra Dam. It was one of the most ambitious projects in India. At 680 feet, the dam was the second largest in the world with water that would irrigate 7.4 million acres of land.

15 was the minimum age of marriage fixed for women after the Hindu Marriage Act was passed.

ELSEWHERE...

Clarton-Schwerdt and Schaffer discovered the polio virus.

President Juan Peron of Argentina was ousted and military leaders confiscated his wife Eva Peron’s body.

Actor James Dean died in a collision.

Rosa Parks (below) was arrested in Alabama as she refused to move to the back of a bus, sparking off the civil rights movement.

Down the Road With Ray

Filmmaker Satyajit Ray produced the first film in the Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali, (Song of the Road), which went on to win the National Award. Pandit Ravi Shankar recorded the music for the film in a non-stop session of 11 hours.

1956: INDIA AT 60

STATE MATTERS

PICTURE SPEAK

WINDS OF CHANGE: Travancore-Cochin during elections in 1954. Two years later it became Kerala.

Rewind

The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 remains the single most extensive change in state boundaries since the Independence of India in 1947. It took 9,000 interviews, visits to 104 places and 1,52,250 memorandums before the Act, creating 14 states and six Union territories, was passed. The Act led to the formation of Kerala and Bombay. A new article was also added to the Constitution that ensured linguistic minorities the right of education in their mother tongue.

“WITH GRACE AND GOODWILL.”

The formal end of French rule was marked by a treaty signed in Delhi. Pondicherry, Karikal, Mahe and Yanam were declared Indian territories. Jawaharlal Nehru praised the French for their “tolerance, good sense and wisdom”.

FIRST CUT

Sulochana Modi became the first female mayor of Bombay.

The mile-and-a-half-long Banihal tunnel, an all-weather link in Kashmir, was inaugurated.

The first steel tube plant at Jamshedpur went into operation.

Lambretta, the first scooter, was introduced.

India reached the semi-finals of the Olympic football tournament.

DID YOU KNOW

India celebrated the 2,500th Buddha Jayanti with celebrations organised all over the country. This included an international exhibition of Buddhist art.

FRENCH HONOUR

S.H. Raza painted The Village and Eglise (above) and became the first non-French artist to be awarded the Prix de la Critique. With this award he joined the ranks of artists like Bernard Buffet. He also started showing his work in Venice, Tokyo, Brussels, Sao Paulo, New York and Britain. His work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Indian philosophy, specifically tantric beliefs and their evocative values, influenced Raza greatly. The reality of being an Indian artist in the West at a period when all art from this country was regarded imitative, weighed on him. But what saved his work from being just exotic was the effort to be Indian in spirit, says critic Yashodhara Dalmia.

“FIRST LET’S PROVE OURSELVES AND THEN TALK OF GANDHI.”
Homi J. Bhabha

The Cambridge-educated physicist was the first chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission and the brain behind the first atomic reactor in Asia that went into operation at Trombay, Bombay, in 1956. He also founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the city. Though he said 50 bombs would cost Rs 10 crore, an expenditure quite small when compared to the military budgets of many countries, he was a votary of disarmament.

ELSEWHERE...

Sudan became independent from Britain. Northern Muslim parties took over. Southerners demanded autonomy and civil war began.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously to censure Israel for its attack on Syria as a flagrant violation of the Palestine armistice.

Actor Grace Kelly (below) married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in a civil ceremony. A church wedding took place the next day.

The last of the French troops left Vietnam.

70,000 tourists visited the state of Jammu and Kashmir during this year.

500 million roubles was the loan offered by the USSR for the purchase of farm machinery.

1957: INDIA AT 60

PLANS OF ACTION

REWIND

India went to the polls for the second time even as the second Five Year Plan was also put into motion. Inspired by Nehru’s vision of an industrialised nation, P.C. Mahalanobis prioritised the development of the public sector and paid attention to domestic production of industrial products. He travelled to different parts of the world in 1954, researching economic models, before presenting what came to be called the Mahalanobis model where qualitative problems found quantitative solution. The honeymoon lasted till 1966, when a “Plan holiday” was declared till 1969 and decision-making moved to the Finance Ministry.

Mother India	Jaagte Raho

CINEMATIC CROSSING

Indian films were on a global roll. Jaagte Raho won the main prize at Karlovy Vary and Pather Panchali was declared Best Picture at San Francisco. Mother India had a rare preview at a mainstream New York theatre and was India’s entry to the Oscars. Do Aankhen Bara Haath was a hit at the Berlin film fest.

FIRST CUT

The Indian Air Force got its first jet bomber, the Canberra. It was the only bomber till the 1970s.

MV Andaman became the first passenger-cum-cargo vessel built by Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam.

An Elephant Named Indira

As his daughter, his official hostess at Teen Murti, Indira Gandhi looks on, Jawaharlal Nehru feeds an elephant which he gifted to Japanese children in 1949, during a visit to Tokyo. It was named Indira. This became a reference point in future ties between the two countries.

“A GOVERNMENT IS BEST THAT RULES THE LEAST.”
E.M.S. Namboodiripad

India and the world got its first-ever elected Communist leader when CPI’s Namboodiripad took over as chief minister of Kerala. The party first commuted the sentences of all death-row prisoners. Fair price shops were opened and labour dispute cases withdrawn. Whether this was Red Terror or a New Dawn,the world was divided. But in the first few months in office, the first Communist government of the country invited the Birlas to set up a factory in the state. The business house was offered bamboo at Re 1 a tonne, though the market price was a thousand times more. During the two years EMS was in charge of Kerala, he initiated educational reforms.

DID YOU KNOW

The Indian polo team won the title at the World Polo Cup in France.

Archaeologist V.S. Wankaner discovered one of the world’s largest collections of rock paintings at Bhimbetka caves, that chronicled history right from the Stone Age.

GO, GOA, GO

On August 26, Portuguese troops fired in the direction of the Tarak Pardi post inside India. No casualties were reported and the fire was returned. Portugal filed a complaint before the International Court of Justice protesting that it was being denied the right to pass through Indian territory to get to the Portuguese enclaves, Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

ELSEWHERE...

There was a revolution in Iran as the king was overthrown and a republican government established.

France sent its troops to Algeria to crush a rebel movement. This later came to be called The Battle for Algiers.

French fashion magnate Christian Dior died and was succeeded by his assistant Yves Saint Laurent.

USSR launched Sputnik 2 with Laika, a dog, on board.

Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins starred in Bridge on the River Kwai (above).

80,544 number of foreign tourists, excluding Pakistanis, who visited India in 1957.

1,216 postal offices across the country handled telegrams in the Devnagri script.

Index