'1956: Key Events

• The Second Five-Year Plan, with a plan outlay of Rs 4800 crores. The government signs the controversial PL 480 agreement with the USA on foodgrain imports: India pays for the food in the form of loans to US multinationals in India and to private enterprises marketing American goods.

• The States Reorganisation Bill is passed; the State of Madhya Pradesh and the Union Territories of Delhi and Andaman and Nicobar Islands come into being.

• Language riots in Ahmedabad over the proposed division of Bombay into Maharashtra and Gujarat.

• Kerala State is formed, combining Malabar, Kasergod and most of Travancore-Cochin. Mysore State (later Karnataka) is formed, extending the old Mysore kingdom with parts of Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Hyderabad.

• On 14 October, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and 200,000 ‘scheduled caste’ Hindus convert to Buddhism in Nagpur to overcome the iniquities of caste oppression.

• The first Indian newsprint factory at Nepanagar is started.

• APSARA, the first nuclear reactor in Asia outside the USSR, is commissioned at Turbhe, just outside Bombay city.

• The artist M. F. Husain paints his seminal works Zameen (1955) and Between the Spider and the Lamp, presenting an emblematic cultural amalgam for independent India.

• UNESCO gives a $20,000 grant to study the use of television as a medium for education and ‘rural uplift’. The USA donates equipment and Philips sells a 500w transmitter at a nominal price.

• Indian films are shown at Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary and Berlin.

• The government refuses to make its ‘approved’, compulsory propaganda films available free of charge to exhibitors.

• The freeze on construction of new cinemas in Bombay is lifted.

• The Kerala Film Chamber is started in Cochin. The

• Andhra Film Chamber Journal is launched in Vijaywada.

• Rossellini starts work on India ‘57. Despite major government support and funds, his visa is allowed to expire after a variety of controversies including allegations that he infringed local moral codes (by having an affair with a married Indian woman).

• The Hindi journal Film Sangeet, published by the Sangeet Karyalaya, Hathras (which had earlier published Bhatkhande’s pathbreaking textbook on North Indian classical music).

• Bhatkhande’s influence is extended to written musical scores for film songs, in addition to essays on film music aesthetics and interviews with musicians.