'1959: Key Events

• The government-sponsored steel plants at Rourkela and Bhilai are inaugurated; like the Bhakra Nangal dam, they exemplify Nehru’s ‘temples of the future’.

• In September, television arrives in India as a half-hour weekly service with a range of 40km around Delhi.

• C. Rajagopalachari starts the Right-wing pro- liberalisation Swatantra Party, combining the Forum of Free Enterprise and the All-India Agricultural Federation.

• China’s suppression of the Tibetan revolt, violating the treaty signed by Nehru and Mao Zedong (1954), forces 14,000 Tibetan refugees, led by the Dalai Lama, to turn to India. One consequence is that the Chinese model of economic collectivisation is discredited.

• Most of the food imported under the subsidised PL 480 scheme from the USA is released in fair-price shops, inaugurating India’s indebtedness to global lending organisations.

• The Communist ministry in Kerala is dismissed.

• Six years after The Robe, Guru Dutt makes the first Indian CinemaScope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool.

• Do Aankhen Bara Haath is shown in Berlin and wins the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Samuel Goldwyn Awards for best foreign film.

• Pather Panchali’s continuous 226-day run at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse, New York, apparently breaks a 30- year record for foreign releases in the USA.

• The Federation of Film Societies of India is founded, with Satyajit Ray as its president and Indira Gandhi as one of the vice-presidents.

• In Bombay, the Marathi weekly Rasarang (edited by A. D. Potnis), featuring sports and movies, is started; the Hindi monthly Sushama, an offshoot of the famous Urdu periodical Shama (edited by Yusuf Dehlvi in Delhi), features poetry, short stories, song lyrics and articles on Hindi films.