National Bravery Award - History

History

On October 2, 1957, India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was watching a performance at Delhi's Ramlila ground, at the Red Fort. During the performance, a short circuit caused a fire to break out in a shamiana (decorated tent). Harish Chandra, a 14-year old scout, promptly took out his knife and ripped open the burning tent, saving the lives of hundreds of trapped people. This incident inspired Nehru to ask the authorities to establish an award to honor brave children from all over the country. The first official National Bravery Awards were presented to Harish Chandra and one other child on February 4, 1958, by Prime Minister Nehru, and the ICCW has continued the tradition ever since.

The Sanjay Chopra Award and the Geeta Chopra Award were established in 1978, in memory of two Chopra children who lost their lives while confronting their kidnappers. The Sanjay and Geeta awards are given to a boy and a girl for acts of bravery. The Bharat Award was established in 1987, and the Bapu Gaidhani Award was established in 1988.

In 2001, Scholastic published a commemorative book featuring the winners of the 1999 National Bravery Awards. The book was entitled Brave Hearts.

Read more about this topic:  National Bravery Award

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    These anyway might think it was important
    That human history should not be shortened.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

    No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)