'1971: Key Events

• The Pakistan government’s crackdown on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League leads to war with India and results in East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh. Indira Gandhi exploits India’s success by announcing elections. Her Congress (R) wins a massive majority, which she uses to change the Constitution, giving greater powers to the parliamentary executive at the expense of the judiciary.

• President’s Rule is declared in West Bengal and Union Minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray uses troops to quell what remains of the Naxalite Movement. A conservative estimate (quoted by Francine Frankel, 1978) is that 15,000 people were arrested, of whom 2000 were killed. By 1973, there are more than 30,000 political prisoners in Bengal, arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

• India signs a 20- year Treaty of Peace and Friendship with the USSR, triggered by ‘secret’ talks between Kissinger and Zhou Enlai and the fear that both China and the USA would back Pakistan in the event of further conflict. This effectively ends the Nehruite non-alignment policy.

• The State of Himachal Pradesh is formed.

• B. V. Karanth’s theatre group, Benaka, stages Karnad’s Hayavadana, Kambhar’s Jokumaraswamy and Lankesh’s Oedipus, inaugurating a Navya- inspired avant-garde in Kannada theatre.

• The agreement between the Indian government and the MPEAA is allowed to expire.

• From 114 foreign films censored in 1972, the number falls to 38 in 1973 and 26 in 1974.

• The directive to the FFC to sponsor independent film-making is written into its official objectives, enjoining it to turn film into ‘an effective instrument for the promotion of national culture, education and healthy entertainment . . . by granting loans for modest but off-beat films of talented and promising persons in the field’. This directive was to last for only five years.

• India produces 433 feature films, making it the largest film producer in the world. The boom, started in the mid-60s, continues throughout the decade: in 1979, 714 Indian features were submitted to the censor.

• Pakeezah is released.

• Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe starts the New Indian Cinema movement in Marathi. Its original author, Tendulkar, writes the play Sakharam Binder.