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1947-2008-India-Roundup
As a land dispute broke out between peasants, led by Kanu Sanyal, a middle class radical, and landlords in Naxalbari, West Bengal, the area gave its name to a whole movement and indeed became a shorthand for revolution. It had an offshoot in Andhra Pradesh, where Maoist revolutionaries fought in Telengana and Srikakulam. In Srikakulam, the movement was headed by Vempatapu Satyanarayana and in Telengana by Tarimala Nagi Reddy. In West Bengal, the cpm, which had stoked the Naxalbari fire, eventually came to be at loggerheads with the Naxalites who formed a new party, cpi (Marxist-Leninist). The protests, said historian Ramachandra Guha, had their roots in the inequitable agrarian structure of northern Bengal. “But they may not have taken the form they did, had the cpm not joined the government.” The party reacted in an authoritarian way by putting Sanyal in jail while other rebels took refuge in the jungle.
FIRST CUT
- The first non-Congress ministry came to power in West Bengal as Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee was sworn in as chief minister of a United Front-Left Front alliance.
- The first Boeing 707-337C aircraft arrived in Bombay. This non-stop flight covered 4,931 miles between London and Bombay in seven hours and 54 minutes setting a new speed record for any Boeing.
Tamil Nadu, India’s sixth most populous state, was formed in 1967. the dmk routed the Congress Party in the 1967 elections and took control of the state, with C.N. Annadurai as its first chief minister.
Nose Dive
Indira Gandhi broke her nose when irate people threw stones at her during an election rally near Bhubaneswar, Orissa, in 1967. Hurt by the injury, she jokingly wrote to her friend Dorothy Norman: “Even since plastic surgery was heard of, I have been wanting to get something done to my nose… I thought the only way it could be done with-out the usual hoo-ha was first to have some slight accident which would enable me to have it put right.”
PANDIT AND POLYMATH P.N. Haksar
He was the man responsible for giving an ideological tint to Indira Gandhi’s political struggle for autonomy. An Indian Foreign Service officer, he was deputy high commissioner in London when the prime minister asked him to join her secretariat. He became the first of the all-powerful PM’s men, along with diplomat T.N. Kaul, economist P.N. Dhar, politician D.P. Dhar and security analyst R.N. Kao—they were collectively known as the Panch Pandava. As Katherine Frank wrote in her biography, “from 1967 to 1973, he was probably the most influential person in the government”. Backed by his socialist agenda, she was able to distance herself from the Syndicate by taking the moral high ground.
Neville Maxwell in his series of articles India’s Disintegrating Democracy
“The great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed.”
MERA BHARAT MAJOJ
The Bharat image was successfully carved on celluloid when Manoj Kumar starred in the desh ki dharti film Upkaar. Kumar began a career of playing Mr Bharat roes while Pran, the great villain, finally let go of his evil way, playing the crippled soldier Malang Baba. The movie celebrated Shastri’s jai jawan, jai kisan rhetoric. The film was a huge hit and made Kumar the authority on Bollywood patriotism.
ELSEWHERE…
- Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against the three Arab states in 1967. Israeli forces captured the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank of the Jordan River, Old City of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
- In the United States, the first space deaths occurred on Apollo 1 when command pilot “Gus” Grissom, senior pilot Ed White, and pilot Roger Chaffee died in a fire during a ground test.
- The US signed a space treaty with Russia. More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.
25 years passed since the Quit India Movement.
30 Indians in Venezuela died from a measles epidemic that hit Yanomani villages at least one year before researchers administered the Edmonston B vaccine.
Courtesy By India Today
