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
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of Gods property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)