1959 FORSAKING HOME

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1947-2008-India-Roundup

A homeland was lost, perhaps forever. His Potala Palace in Lhasa increasingly under attack, the Dalai Lama crossed into India with 10,000 followers after an abortive Tibetan revolt against the Chinese. India gave him political asylum and here he has stayed since then, heading Tibet’s government in exile. Though Jawaharlal Nehru told the Dalai Lama not to look for support in the West where he would look like “piece of merchandise”, independence or nothing was what the Dalai Lama and his people wanted. The Chinese way, he said, would make them a “people without their souls”.

HINDU YA MUSALMAN?

“Tu Hindu banega na musalman banega/insaan ki aulaad hai insaan banega” (you will not grow up to be a Hindu or a Muslim/you are the son of the man/and a human being you shall be), sang Mohammad Rafi in Dhool Ka Phool, directed by yash Chopra, with lyrics from the great Urdu poet, Sahir Ludhianvi. The movie examined the searing stigma of illegitimacy and carried an impassioned plea for communal harmony.

FIRST CUT

• Bajaj Auto received a Government licence to produce two – and three-wheelers in India.
• The Press Club of India was inaugurated in Delhi.
• National Aerospace Laboratories, India’s pre-eminent civil research and development establishment in aeronautics and allied disciplines, was set up in Delhi.

Visiting Peking in 1959, lawyer Daniel Latifi was told by his Chinese colleagues that the “McMohan line (line of control between India and China) had no juridical basis”.

“WE CAN’T WORK UNDER THE DEFENCE MINISTER”.

General K.S. Thimayya

So said the war hero and Chief of Army Staff in a stand-off with Jawaharlal Nehru’s dearest friend, V.K. Krishna Menon. The son of a coffee planter in Coorg, Thimayya was the closest to pacifist India’s idea of a modern military hero, writes Ramachandra Guha. A veteran of World War II, he supervised the movement of refugees in Punjab, battled raiders in Kashmir and led of UN team to Korea. But when Defence Minister Menon appointed B.M. Kaul as lieutenant general in 1959, Thimayya quit. Nehru recalled him after two long sessions in his office and the lack of preparation for battling China, which so worried “Timmy”, was never addressed.

ELSEWHERE…

· Soviet forces arrved in Afghanistan.

· The United Nations issued its Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

· US President Dwight Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49^th state.

· Fidel Castro (below) took over Cuba, leading revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista, who fled to Dominican Republic.

· An agreement was signed by Britain, Turkey and Greece, granting Cyprus its independence.

· The Barbie Doll was unveiled at the American Toy Fair in New York priced at $3.

4.49

Lakh Partition refugees were paid a total of Rs 128.3 crore as compensation. Millions of people had left their fixed assets and crossed the borders after the division of the country into two nations.

Courtesy By India Today