'1967: Key Events

• Indira Gandhi leads her Party to victory in the National Elections. The Congress, hit by major defections and multi-party alliances cobbled together exclusively to oppose it, finds its popular support eroded and loses in eight of India’s 17 states. Left United Fronts assume power in West Bengal and Kerala; the DMK wins in Madras on an anti-Hindi platform, and coalitions elsewhere include Hindu communalist factions, dissident ex- Congressmen and reincarnated pre- Independence royalty.

• The peasant uprising in the Naxalbari District of West Bengal, led by CPI(M) members, starts peacefully but turns into an armed insurrection against individual landowners. Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee, who leads the only major non-Marxist faction in Bengal’s United Front, rigorously quells the rebellion, causing a split in the United Front and provoking the dismissal of the state government.

• ‘Naxalite’ activity surfaces in Andhra Pradesh, at Srikakulam, where Girijan tribals take on local landlords and the police to create virtual soviets, redistributing land and establishing their own administrative machinery. The Srikakulam uprising is defeated only in 1969 by the Central Reserve Police Force.

• The Rohini RH75 rocket is launched from the Thumba base.

• Bommai diversifies into the Telugu monthly, Vijaychitra. Start of the Bengali film monthly Chitrabikshan by Cine Central, Calcutta.

• Hindustan Photo Films makes India self- sufficient in b&w film and sound negative film. All colour stock is imported and locally perforated.

• The first 70mm wide-screen film screened in India. M. G. Ramachandran is shot and injured by co-star M. R. Radha. He also becomes a DMK Member of the Legislative Assembly and, in 1970, treasurer of the DMK.

• The Vividh Bharati channel on All-India Radio goes commercial in Bombay, Pune and Nagpur. Over the next decade, it becomes the dominant publicity medium for cinema, with, e. g. , sponsored serials and song compilation programmes.