| | 1 | ''''1956: Key Events''' |
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| | 3 | * 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. |
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| | 5 | * 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. |
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| | 7 | * Language riots in Ahmedabad over the proposed division of Bombay into Maharashtra and Gujarat. |
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| | 9 | * 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. |
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| | 11 | * On 14 October, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and 200,000 ‘scheduled caste’ Hindus convert to Buddhism in Nagpur to overcome the iniquities of caste oppression. |
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| | 13 | * The first Indian newsprint factory at Nepanagar is started. |
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| | 15 | * APSARA, the first nuclear reactor in Asia outside the USSR, is commissioned at Turbhe, just outside Bombay city. |
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| | 17 | * 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. |
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| | 19 | * 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. |
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| | 21 | * Indian films are shown at Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary and Berlin. |
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| | 23 | * The government refuses to make its ‘approved’, compulsory propaganda films available free of charge to exhibitors. |
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| | 25 | * The freeze on construction of new cinemas in Bombay is lifted. |
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| | 27 | * The Kerala Film Chamber is started in Cochin. The |
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| | 29 | * Andhra Film Chamber Journal is launched in Vijaywada. |
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| | 31 | * 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). |
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| | 33 | * The Hindi journal Film Sangeet, published by the Sangeet Karyalaya, Hathras (which had earlier published Bhatkhande’s pathbreaking textbook on North Indian classical music). |
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| | 35 | * Bhatkhande’s influence is extended to written musical scores for film songs, in addition to essays on film music aesthetics and interviews with musicians. |