'1972: Key Events

• Government nationalises the coal-mining industry.

• Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi reach agreement over Kashmir (the Simla Accord).

• Amol Palekar’s staging of Sadanand Rege’s Marathi play Gochee starts the Chhabildas experimental theatre movement, deriving its name from a school in a lower- middle-class neighbourhood in Bombay, which the theatre group Aavishkar had earlier acquired to stage low-budget theatre experiments to a small audience.

• Television starts in Bombay (October). Stations are started the following year in Srinagar, Amritsar and Calcutta. Madras and Lucknow follow in 1975.

• First art-house cinema opened by the FFC. First features in Manipuri (Matamgi Manipur) and Coorgi (Nada Manne Nada Koolu).

• The first film co-operative run by technicians, the Chitralekha Co-op, starts production with Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s début, Swayamvaram.

• In Tamil Nadu, M. G. Ramachandran is expelled from the DMK and forms the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

• The Malayalam film weekly Nana starts, occasionally publishing filmographies and listings in between features on the Malayalam film industry.

• Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche establishes the Ramsay Brothers and the horror genre in Hindi.