PRICE 30 PAISE NOVEMBER la. 1966

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Unity-W hat Next? ePol1 Prospects In West. Bengale Cabinet Reshu.ffle. Back In The Security Councilre About The Cow March And After. This Isto's Republic All Right. The Lessons Of Manila

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HELP TO KEEP HIM SMILING ALWAYS ...

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RELEASED 8Y:

PUBLICITY SOCIETY OF INDIA lTD.CALCUTIA. IOMBAY • MADRAS· DELHI· LUCKNOW

Our actions today will reflect on the future of ourcountry and the happiness of those near and dearto us...only we can ensure a happy smiling future.for the India of tomorrow by striving, as we havenever done before, in every field of activity inwhich we are engaged.

i-1---

NOW WHAT NEXT?

LETTER 22

VACANCY IN DELHI 14

BOOK REVIEW 20

LET there be unity and there will be light, so thought most people.Now that t.here is no left unity over seats, prospects are

better for the Congress .. In the tense, bloody days of the March-Aprilupheaval, in the war of nerves over the 48-hour September bandh, thepopular belief was that it would be easy for the parties, forged togetherin mass action, to come to an electoral understanding. But. after theSeptember bandh, in the mellow weather of the Pujas, the fighting spiritgave way to hard bargaining over seats, resulting in a grave setbackand a widespread sense of frustration last week. In this country whereeven parties calling themselves revolutionary are unable to keep up thestamina of extra-parliamentary action beyond a limited period, perhapsbecause of their obsession with seats in the Duma, such setbacks areinevitable. Is the food situation, the general economic situati.on in WestBengal, any better than it was on the eve of the last bandh? TheGovernment is going all out to placate the profiteers and blackmarket.eersin the food trade; modified rationing is a bleak failure; milo has cometo Calcutta; the prospects of the coming months as well as the actualconditions in Bankura, 'Vest Dinajpur and MaIda are shocking. Butamong the militant left all the recent preoccupation has been the cominge ection, and there is little attempt to mobilise the mass discontentagainst the Congress.

The fact has to be faced: whereas the Congress can reach the remotestvillage because it is in the seat of power, the left parties are yet to operateat t.he grass-roots level. Talk about the Kisan Sabha is phoney. In vVestBengal, as elsewhere, the mass explosions against the Congress adminis-tration ever since Mrs G-andhi· took over have been so sudden that theleft was caught unwares. Even the Left CPI, the most purposeful andorganised unit, has not had the time to mobilise these forces into adisciplined fighting frsmt in village and town.

For a few days at least, people will want to know' why left unitytalks led nowhere. The main factor, of course, is the split between theLeft and the Right CPI. A little more humility and understanding onthe .part of the latter could have made things easier. After all, it hadall the field to itself when the Left. CPI leaders were in jail, it had allthe time to practise peaceful co-existence and co-operation with the'progressives' in the country. But the very fact that it did not mindbeing assessed as the third opposition party-after the Left CPI andBangIa Congress, a new organisation whose strength is yet untested-shows that it knows where it suits it to be humble. But when the maintactic is to weaken the most organised left party, the result could havebeen foreseen: Those who are not interested in ideological cleavages aswell as those who are, those who have got sick of the snakes-and-laddersnegotiations about seats-the counting of chickens before they are hatched-will be glad to know in February where the Right and Left CPI stand.One Kerala (1965) is not e.nough. As for the new Kerala spirit ofaccommodation, conditions in West Bengal, it seems, are not. yet ripe forthe Namboodiripad way.

It would be silly to deny that the Congress' now has a better chance

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LA W AND POLITICS OF1 0 -PROLIFERATIQ'

RAHAMA TULLAH KHAN 11THE PRESS

LETTER FROM AMERICATur MESSAGE OF MANILA

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THE EMPIRE OF THEBABDS

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On Other Pages

CALCUTTA. DIARYCHARAN GUPTA 9

COMME TS 4

DELHI LETTERTHE. Cow STAMPEDE

FROM A POLITICALCORR ESI'ONDENT 7

Vol. 3: No.7:: November 18, 1966

/

at scraping through. Parties whichcannot agree on seats can never forman alternative government, so says theCongress gramophone. . B~t th~ cyni-cal should know that It IS eaSIer toagree on seats in the Cabinet thanon ways to win the elections. Itwould not be very difficult to forman alternative government-:-for atime at least--once the Congress ISreduced to a minority. After theCongress, what? Anarchy? Whatelse but camouflaged anarchy prevailsthese days? The oveniding sloganeven today should be-The Old GangMust Go. The leftist pat:ties, aftera brief and inevitable period of mud-slinging, of apportioning blame forthe breakdown of their talks, shouldtry to maintain the area of agree·ment already achieved a~d againtrain their guns on the mam target.And if there is a deadlock after theelections and there is President'sRule, the next elections should bedecisive. For, then the voters wouldknow how strong is the strongestopposition party and whether itsstrength will allow it to deliver thegoods.

Meanwhile, for reasons other t.hanelectoral, the need for an alert frontis urgent. As the elections drawnearer, other forces are rearing theirheads, spear-headed by ruthless g~oupsusing religion as the country lIquorof the people. The Del~i march .ofNovember 7 was a warDIng. Metla-bruz is another, and the Left mustbeware.

Not So EasyAs already stated, there will be

elation in Congress circles over thefailure of the left parties in WestBengal to come to an electoral under--standing. Seldom do Congress lea-ders miss an opportunit.y to boastthat theirs is the only party in thecountry capable of setting up candi-dates for all the seats in the Centraland State legislatures. By harpingon the massiveness of their party theytry to impress the electorate and in-stil, at the same time, courage in thefaint-hearted in the party of whomthere must be many. Though bulkalone does not qualify a party forpower, it cannot be denied that itgives the Congress some undisputedadvantage over the Opposition. De-feat of the Congress may not be anend in itself to every voter, and thecircumspect may like to know what

4

NOW

the alternative is. A united left frontwould have provided an answer tothis question; it could have securedthe support of not only those whoin their disgust at the Congress re-gime refuse to look beyond the im-mediate, but also the wary. It wouldhave. eliminated the splitting of non-Congress votes and the possibility ofthe Congress returning to power withminority support.

Now all this may not be, unlessthe unexpected happens and all leftparties come together. Efforts are onfor two sets of alliances, one led bythe Left Communists and the otherby the BangIa Congress. It will notbe enough for the current negotia-tions to succeed; contests between thetwo will have to be avoided. Thisis perhaps an impossible proposition,for otherwise· the 13-party negotia-tions would not have collapsed.Nevertheless, the trends that lay hid-den in the results of the last generalelection indicate that the Congresscannot hope for a walk-over nextyear. Nothing has been done by theparty or the Government run by itin the intervening years to reversethe trends. On the contrary, thereare many reasons why the process ofdisenchantment must have been ac-celerated.

It is true that in the last generalelection the Congress secured fivemore seats in the State Assembly thanit did in 1957, but in parliamentaryelection· its tally was one less. Itsshare of the total votes polled in1962 was almost the same as in 1957,and the increase was .only a fractionof the gains it made between the firstand the second general election.Only in six of the sixteen districtsin the State could it gain more seatsthan in 1957; it suffered reverses innine, in four of them severely, andin one district its position remainedunaltered. The overall Congress gainof five seats in the State Assembly wasat the cost of the PSP which. lost fif-teen seats to the Congress and gainedfive from it; this means that otherOpposition parties together with In-dependents wrested more seats fromthe Congress than "they conceded to it.

On the other hand, in spite of allpropaganda to the contrary, the Com-munist ·Party bettered its position in1962. It increased its representationfrom 'Six t.o nine in the Lok Sabhaand from fortysix to fifty in the StateAssembly. It secured a larger num-ber of seats in eight districts and

polied more votes in Ilfteell olsixteen districts or the Stale.solitary exception was Birbhumeven there the decline was from Iper cen t of total votes to ll.lcent, which is by no means a substial loss. Though the party seceight Calcutta seats against ten inprevious election, in terms o( vit improved its position consideraby polling 34.5 per cent of the tvotes cast against 26.6 per cent in)

The poll results make it obvithat the Congress gains in Calcuin the last election were not atcost of its principal opponent.registered substantial gains incity. J t is true the Communist Pwas not split at that time; butintra-party dispute was already aand the forces that some would Ito believe have un'dermined the Cmunist movement were alreadyplay. Figures do not bear outthe Communists secured more vin 1962 simply because they hadup more candidates. There wasdrop in the number of votes polper contested seat by the Canalso. The general decline shouldtraced to the fall in the numbertotal votes polled; only 55.3 per cof the electorate exercised their frchise in the last election, though1957 this figure was as high asper cent.

Organisationally also the Congis not what it was in 1962. Howmuch the Congress leaders mayto minimise the importance ofbreakaway party, the BangIa Congrwill claim a share of traditionCongress votes, at least in sometricts. There cannot be any doabout the popularity of the partyMidnapur where the Congresstured twenty-seven out of thirty.seats in the State Assembly in theelection. Another district whemerged as a Congress' stronghold1962 is 24-Parganas where the pbagged thirty-three out of forty'seats-thirteen seats more thanthe previous election. There alsoBangIa Congress has become a fto reckon with along with some atOpposition parties. The Canprospects for an absolute majowill dim considerably even if in ttwo districts alone the BangIagress can win some seats and helpCongress to lose some more. Inthe party need not be entirely onown; it may be assisted by thetionalism that lurks under the pI

NOVEMBER 18, I

I of Lhce. ThelUlU but'om 13.411.1 persubstan-secured

n in theof votesiderablyhe totalin)957.obvious:alcutta, at the1. Bothin thest Partybut they acutelId likeeCom-ady atut thate votes,ad putwas apolled

ongress'uld beIber of~r centr fran-!lgh inIS 68.8

mgress)weveray try)f theIngressonallyIe dis-doubtrty ins cap-ty-two1e lastwhich)ld inparty;y-t~o111 1n

iO theforceother19ressjoritytheseCon-p thel thism its! fac-lacid

1966

surface of the Congress organisationin the State.

Neither can the Congre~s be tooure of the votes of Muslims who

constitute 19 per cent of the totalpopulation of the State. This is notmerely becau e som,e of the promi-nent leaders of the community haveparted company with the Congress,but also because of the changed moodof the community. Among the fourdistricts in which the CommunistParty could not much improve itsposition in the last gen al electionare Murshidabad, MaIda and Bir-bhum where Muslims constitute a,izable portion of the electorate. Thefirst is the only district in the Statewhere Muslims are in a majority. Itseems Muslim voters in areas with alarge Muslim population have solong generally tended to vote eitherfor non-party candidates of theircommunity or tor candidates of theruling party. A shift in the votingbehaviour of Muslims may affect theperformance of the Congress in theeven districts which have a largeconcentration of Muslim population.

The Congress is not unaware oft.hese possibilities. If it were so,there would perhaps not have beenso much talk of gratuitous and testrelief on a grand scale in the remain-ing months of the current financialyear. The State Government has al-ready spent Rs 6 crores on this year'srelief work, though the average an-nual expenditure on this account isonly Rs. 5 crores. With New Delhi'sgenerosity it proposes to spend ano-ther Rs 15 crores in the pre-electionmonths, though the lean period ofthe year should be over in anotherfewweeks. Significantly, the distrirtswhich are said to be the worst vic-tims of drought are also the districtswhere the COl1gress wiII win or losethe general elect.ion. Nobody willgrudge if the really distressed getsome relief; nor is West Bengal's theonly Government which has plannedmassive relief on election-eve. Butrelief in the next few months islikely to ha e strings, and in a poorcountry this can very well subvertfree election. Such a subterfugewould not have been thoug-ht neces-sary had the Congress been reallysure of a resounding victory.

A Game Of ChessMrs Gandhi has been able to pull

off at least one surprise. Nowhere in

~OVEMBER 18, 1966

the spate of speculation over impend-ing changes in her team was MrChagla boldly tipped as ForeignMinister. But there he is. Thoughhe is not reported to be popular inthe Arab world, his appointment willgo down well with the \Nest, whichis what matters most to New Delhiat the moment. Mr Chagla, with hisuntiring tongue, will also come inhandy as a secular angel defendingKashmir if the issue is raised againat the Security Councl. At home,those who thought that Mrs Gandhihad become obscurantist over cow-slaughter wiII be asked to think overthe fact that a Muslim has beengiven a key post.

With Mr Fakhruddin Ahmed asEducation Minister, Urdu shouldgain on the eve of the elections,though it would remain to be seenwhether the States would enforce anynew policy when it is announced.The appointment should also pleasethose who have just formed a rivalMuslim League in Kerala-an endtowards which Mr Ahmed workedsome time ago. Whether educationas a whole would profit from the newincumbent whose record in his homeState was nothing to gloat over isanother matter.

About one thing most people wouldagree-defence wiII not improve.

More important than the changesannounced are those which Mrs Gan-dhi was not ab.le to !TIake, though shewas in a hurry. The Syndicate pro-vided a checkmate and Mrs Gandhihad to change her mind in the courseof a day. Mr Subramaniam and MrMehta, having failed to pull off theirbreakfast coup, may now face mount-ing criticism. Mr Patil is known forhis restless energy. Mr Morarji Desaiis still waiting for his chance. Itwould not be surprising if the gameof chess is taken up again. .

A Sense Of SecurityThere was, it must be admitted, a

certain agreeable degree of sophisti-cation in South Block's studied affec-tation of a total lack of surprise overIndia, after all, being elected to theSecurity Council for a two-year termas a non-permanent meIJ.lber. Syriawas the other contender, Pakistanhaving discreetly withdrawn earlier.The story is told of Winston Chur-chill that when remonstrated for hisunwarranted savagery about ClemAttlee who, it was said, was a modest

man, the greater man barked: "Yes,he is a modest man-with a greatdeal to be modest about". Such mustbe most people's reaction to the Ex-ternal Affairs Ministry's admirablerestraint in celebrating India's secondentry into the Security Council in 21years. In spite of the recent expan-sion of membership, for which Indiaworked hard, there is stilI a certainexclusiveness about the SecurityCouncil; and to get into the club isperhaps for a nation somewhat likewhat it may be for a newly rich rail-way or defence contractor into theBengal Club in Calcutta or the IDGin Delhi. The new entrant standsendless rounds of drinks to all andsundry with the money he has inone way and another earned; thedrinks the Indian delegation wiIIstand at Turtle Bay will have to bepaid for by the Indian tax-payerwho (a) has not got his weekly ra-tion and (b) when he has he cannotpay for. These circumstances warrantno orgy of jubilation.

It is for Parliament now to find outjust what it cost India to secure thecredit card of the Diners' Club calledthe Security Council. It is badenough that India got the least ofthe majorities among the five mem-bers trying to get in; only 82 againstthe many more secured, out of theI 19 cast, by the other candidates suchas Canada, Brazil, Ethiopia and Den-mark; but the "squeaking home by abare margin of two votes over thetwo-thirds majority", as one corres-pondent has put it, needs to be speltout in terms of rupees and paise. es-pecially because most of the expen-diture must have been in foreigncurrency. and perhaps since June'sdevaluatlOn. How many delegationswent abroad to canvass support forIndia's candidature? The purelymonetary answer extracted, Parlia-ment should go on to ask how muchArab goodwill may have been lost inthe process of opposing Syria, whichsecured no fewer than 42 votes. Itseems altogether too facile to con-clude that Paris manipulated thevotes of former French colonial terri-tories against India, although this isa possibility neither to be ruled outnor handed to South Block as a com-pliment. The present ambassador inParis could tell South Block justwhat went wrong with the Indianmission in the French capital foryears and others could say what iswrong now.

5

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NOVEMBER 18, I

seems t.he expectation as of now iof a total harvest adding up to only80 million tons, a full 15 million tonsshort of Mr Subramaniam's originalprognostication and precisely whatwas already the output of foodgrainsas early as 1960-61. No amount 01semantic exerci~ can hide the factthat agricultural productivity can·tinues to be petrified at an ominous-ly low level.

One cannot have it both waYI.The Minister, for whom the verymention 0 the USA evokes tears ofgratitude, cannot claim that the so-called new agricultural strategy,doubly blessed by the Ford Foundation and the'U .S. Agency for International Development, is workinmiracles in the countryside, and atthe same time lay the blame for poharvest on the failure of rainfall. 1is the purpose of strategy to ensurthe growth of agriculture irrespectivof rainfall. This has been the raisod'etre for selecting a highly stratifi10 per cent of the total cultivablarea for the Intepsive AgriculturDevelopment Programme. Fields anfarmers have been chosen carefullythere has been no letting up in tsupply of fertilizers and high-yieling seeds and water and pesticide ainsecticide and formidable Ameriadvice about how the conditionsIowa can be repeated for India.

But to no avail. Something is gting messed up in the process.could be the advice rendered is wroand misplaced. It could even be thclass relations being what they are'agriculture, vested interests areing to it that resources get lost m'way down the line. The deficienis as much in Mr Subramaniaunderstanding as in that of his AIrican mentors, who have. assured tgrowth in farm output can oceven on the base of the exi~ting cIrelations. But the top farmers ctrolling the bulk of the land are fin number. They are so feweven if ,agTiculture does not grthey would not have to starve;the contrary, a failure to raise 0

put allows them an additional mcting margin.

What will Mr Suhramaniamnow? How will he rush food todeficit areas, if the food is not tin the first place? The State CMinisters have set themselves upfeudal barons, and the Unionernment, in a fit of silliness wdefies comprehension, has fur

Food ShortageBrag in haste, and repent at lei-

sure. One would have thought thatby now Mr Subramaniam would havelearned that caution has its own re-wards; obviously he has not. In onemoment of American enthusiasm inAugust, the Food and AgricultureMinister confidently predicted food-grains production of the order of95 million tons for the current year.The scarcity of rain during the lasttwo months has taken care of thesoothsaying. On Mr Subramaniam'sown admission, there has been a ma-jor failure of the Kharif crop InBihar and in eastern and centralUttar Pradesh, and conditions arefairly severe in Madhya Pradesh, Ra-jasthan and Gujarat. The inade-quate rainfall in Sept.ember has affect-ed areas in Maharashtra, Orissa and"Vest Bengal as well. Because of lackof moisture in the soil at the time ofsowing, the rabi crop too is likelyto be poor, especially in Gujarat,Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. It

NOW

directly under Rail Bhavan. It re-quires nothing more than commonsense to realise that thousands ofmiles of railway track cannot possi-bly be policed, that not even mur-derers are deterred by the fear of thegallows. The only protection forthe vulnerable railways is the goodwill of the people around; and itwill not be denied that New Delhi'sslow-moving endeavours to win overthe alienated people of the hills arehamstrung by elements within theGovernment which are political aswell as administrative. A most mis-conceived militancy seizes the Gov-ernment of India, and some peopleoutside, whenever there are attemptsto understand the causes of dissati~-faction in the hill areas.

Mrs Indira Gandhi wisely handlesthe negotiations with the Nagas her-self; but progress to date has beennegligible. The underground holdson to its largely theoretical demandfor sovereignty; but it has also to beadmitted that no fresh idea has comefrom New Delhi, which seems singu-larly desti tu te of the two qualitiessuch human problems as those of theNagas need: sympathy and imagina-tion. Railway accidents are sad;sadder when caused by human handswith heartless deliberation; but theycan hardly be allowed to put a po-licy of humanity off the track.

6

Trains Of Thought'1\That happened near Siliguri on

the 11th morning may never be knownin detail, thanks to hamhanded secu-rity measures introduced at relativelyjunior but effect.ive levels. It hasstill been out that an army specialtrain was involved in the accidentwith the final number of fatal casual-ties still unknown. Those who re-member that Mr Lal Bahadur Shas-tri's highminded resignation after arailway accident five years ago wasreally inspired by Mr Nehru's hard-headed calculation that Mr Shastri'sservices were needed by the Congressfor its election campaign will not beunduly sorry that Mr S. K. Patil stillsticks to office, al though it is a 'vir-tual certainty that, during the monthsbefore the election, Mr Patil too willconduct something like a whistle-stop campaign. \Vhat makes theSiliguri accident worthy of specialnotice is not only the fact that it wasan army special but also the strongevidence that· the cause was an act ofsabotage. The spot of the accickntadjoins several disaffected areas wherehills people live and is not very fromthe frontier with East Pakistan.

For some parties, however, thetragedy of so many deaths waspromptly transcended by the afore-mentioned association of hill tribesand the neighbouring country. Thecry has already gone up that all effortsfor peace in the hill areas are futile,that Pakistan is the root of all evil.Thinking in the Ministry of Rail-ways has lately followed only onetrack-deterrent punishment includ-ing death and a bigger police force

The cost of successful election tothe Security Council ascertained, itshould be somebody's busil).ess to askjust what India expects to get out ofher inclusion in the Security Council.The Indian case on Kashmir or Goaor any other thing has never goneunheard in the Security Council be-cause she was not a member of thatclub; her delegates have spoken thereendlessly and fainted there intermit-tently. It has now to be shown tothe poor people of India how theextra cost of representation on theSecurity Council is going to benefitthem, politically or . economically.Quite frankly, the Indian people area trifle tired of South Block's prestigeor image; they feel securer when thereis something to eat.

NOW

FROM A POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

The Cow Stampede

>w isonly

L tonsiginalwhat~ramsnt of~ fact

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1966

L01l1pounded the felony by introduc-ing the single-State food zones. How-ever much Mr Subramaniam maycoax, no Chief Minister, even if hereigns in one of the so-called surplusStates, will agree to release food, un-less on his own terms. These termsmay be so exorbitant that both MrsGandhi and her Food Minister mightdecide that it would be cheaper tosell out to the Americans. This is,in fact, the process of history: asthe barons kept on nibbling at each.other, the King lost the Battle ofAgincourt. And it is freely allegedthat sometimes the King lost thebattle according to a prior arrange-ment with the enemy.

Pri vate BusesPri\'al.e buses have reappeared on

Calcutta roads and people are large-ly happy. The conductors donatrocious habit but they help pas-sengers get off in one piece, pick uplone passengers even if they are a few -feet away from bus-stops, they neverstand immobile at the gate to collectfare at their convenience, never passwry comments and never cheat ontickets.

Not many tears are being shed overthe CSTC. But to say that theCSTC is losing Rs. 30,000 a day sole-ly because passengers and conductorsare cheats is outrageously funny. Thecrux of the matter is, the CSTC ismade to incur losses so that the wholebusiness can be wound up and pass-ed on to private enterprise. Half ofthe total fleet is dumped on variousdepots on the plea that spare-partsare not available for repairs. If itwere really so, how could the num-ber of buses be doubled during thePuja days? The workshops have be-come hotbeds of shady dealings, butis it very difficult to mop up a fewpilferers? The CSTC cannot cons-truct or repair buses because of thelack of foreign exchange, which isnot available for a low priority itemlike public transport. How do theprivate entrepreneurs manage then?The Government can invoke DlRfor milk control but not for requisi-tioning private buses because nobodyhas yet been choked off in a bus.

Nationalisation is not Mr P. C.Sen's fetish. He wants to "offermaximum convenience to the public"in the shape of tin box buses and ifin the process some moneyed men

~OVEMBER 18, 19"66

are given a chance to mint some moremoney before the election, he should~e ~ertainly blessed by the Party. ThetimIng of the reappearance has beenvery clever. It will remove the groundfrom under the feet of the CSTCUnion workers who are getting mili-tant over their demands. By thetime they go on strike, if they are asgood as their threats, the transportsystem will not collapse, thanks to

Delhi Letter

WITH the "save cow" rampageclaiming its first political heifer

in Mr Nanda, the crypto-sadhu, thedilettantes in Mrs Indira Gandhi'smediocre menagerie took her for aride by talking her into attempting aCabinet shake-up. The situation israther comical now, with all the trap-pings of one of those African "coupswithin a coup". Or an anti-coupcoup (like the anti-missile missile theRussians talk of.) Mrs Gandhi's slickentourage now knows that a PrimeMinister who stays in office undersomeone's sufferance can be politi-cally manhandled by any of the ma-jor factions in the Congress. Theimage-builders who put all of thegloss on Mrs Gandhi'S wonderful ca-pacity for taking decisions. now goabout New Delhi as if thev neverclaimed such virtues for her.' .

The cow lobby in New Delhi is asmotley as the seven lakhs that march-ed down Parliament Street on Novem-ber 7, bringing an ugly reality in ournational life to the very doorstep ofParliament. It was an atavisticthrow-back under the focus of TVcameras for the world to see .. Me-dieval obscurantism walked the Capi-tal's main street, reminding a foreigncorrespondent standing next to meof the Munich Beer Hall putsch. Thecow lobby is mixed up with the bomblobby, with the Israel lobby and theHindi lobby. This is the time whenall the barriers merge. Seth GovindDas and Kamalanayan Bajaj, both ofthem Congress MPs, are part of thecow lobby and no responsible Con-gress leader had a word of denuncia-tion for their role on November 7.

the 750 private buses that will berunning. Already there is a split inthe union over the strike of October14, and efforts to form another unionare afoot. People who could not careless for what happens to the CSTCw~ll be understandably "annoyed"wIth one more strike by its workersa.nd probably this will give the greensignal for the winding up of theCSTC lock, stock and barrel.

It would be a long time before theodd bits of information are piecedtogether to tell the full-story of theNovember 7 orgy and the November9 high drama that virtually finishedMrs Gandhi's term as Prime Minis-ter. The astrologers tell us that herRaj Yoga ended on November 14 andMr Morarji Desai's begins.

But, to begin with the beginning,it is hard to say for certain if theCIA's hand was behind the Novem-ber 7 rampage. Where did all themoney come from and how come theDelhi Administration did not thinkof rounding up the bad charactersas they did on the eve of the Septem-ber 1 Right Communist march? Atthe end of the day's orgy, when news-men began grilling Mr A. N. Jha, theLieutenant Governor, it did becomeclear that the Government was notsure whether the ItSS whose storm-troopers led the attacks, was part ofthe cow agitation or not. It was admit-ted that only 4,500 policemen were onduty when seven lakh people turnedup for the rally. Earlier, Mr Nandasaid in Parliament that he had heardthe tape recording of Swami Ramesh-waranand's speech inciting the mob tostage a "gherao" on Parliament. Itbeats one how AIR,. which is underthe Information and BroadcastingMinistry, sent the tape so promptly(in an hour or less) to the HomeMinist.er. The tape had not beenbroadcast by AIR and Mr Nandacannot. claim to have heard it on theair. The propriety of AIR beingused as the intelligence arm of theHome Ministry is another matter.

The fact is t.he Delhi CIR as well

7

as the Delhi Administration is con-trolled by Jan Sanghis at the lowerand middle levels. This column wasthe first to lay bare the late Mr LalBahadur Shastri's sneaking admira-tion for the Jan Sangh and his soli-citude for the Hindu communalforces. Mr Nanda's Bharat SadhuSamaj was behind the agitation andthe Government fights shy of admit-ting it. Mr Nanda's involvement intbe cow is also well known. Cowprotection comes under the Food andAgriculture Ministry. But some timeago, without so much as informingMr Subramaniam about it, Mr Nandaaddressed letters to the Chief Min-isters on the cow-slaughter ban.

Against NandaThe anti-Nanda campaign has been

building up for quite some time now.Mr Patil has been openly leading thepolitical guerilla warfare. There havebeen signature calTIpaigns, whispercampaigns and veiled threats. At theheight of Parliament's furore overthe Sunil Das case, Mr N anda look-ed like going. But overnight, heseemed to have had a "life" and hedeclared in the Rajya Sabha that noone would be allowed 1:.0 escape thelaw in the case. Which the big namesin the Congress mixed up with thecase would not forgive.

When Mr N anda came under firein the Congress Parliamentary )lartyexecutive and later at the Cabinetmeeting, Mrs Gandhi did not havea word to say in his defence. Para-doxically, the cow savers were res-ponsible for the exit of their onlypatron saint in the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister's gutless hand-ling of the resignation raises impor-tant issues. In the atmosphere ofchicanery and intrigue that prevailsin the Congress, personalities areequat.ed with policies. But to date,no Prime Minister has had the cour-age to pwn up responsibility as lead·er of a collective cabinet. In 1962,when some Congressmen resigned inBombay against Mr Menon's Con-gress candidature from North Bom-bay, Mr Nehru thundered from theChowpatty sands agains't those whoattacked his colleagues when they didnot have the courage to attack him."If you do not like the colleagues Ihave chosen, I say go to hell .. ." hedeclared. But when the anti·Menonlobby began gunning for him, MrNehru instead of accepting respon-sibility, jettisoned 1\fr ;\Tenon. Mr

8

NOW

Nehru's handling of the Malaviyaaffair was no more redeeming. orMr Shastri's lack of grace in dealingwith TTK's resignation.

Perhaps the Prime Minister did notbargain for the kind of letter MrNanda wrote. She has been headinga caboodle and not a Cabinet. Wasit the all-powerful L. P. Singh (whoaccording to Mr Bhupesh Gupta haslinks with the CIA) who decided onthe round-up of Left Communists inthe past? What is the source ofMr L. P. Singh's strength and whydid Mrs Gandhi insist on his stayingas the Home Secretary? Mrs Gandhitold Parliament on Thursday that theprocedure was that a cabinet sub-com-mittee should decide the transfers.The Prime Minister, the Home Min-ister and the "concerned" Ministerconstituted such sub-committees. Herethe Home Minister was the concern-ed Minister and when he and thePrime Minister disagreed on MrSingh's stay as Home Secretary, sure-ly there must be some other proce-dure to sort things out. And whendid this procedure come into being?In Pandit G. B. Pant's days, the HomeMinistry handled all transfers of Sec-retaries.

November 9And now to the drama of Novem-

ber 9. Mr Chavan had returned fromBombay on November 8 and MrsGandhi sounded him through othercolleagues. The story is that MrChavan did not really indicate hisconsent in a direct manner. He justtold the Prime Minister to make u'pher mind first. Mr Patil barged intothe Prime Minister's house to tellher that he would not stand suchnonsense. In the meantime, thePrime Minister had asked both MrSachin Chaudhuri and Mr ManubhaiShah to resign. Mr At.ulya Ghosh,who heard this through a friend, toldthe Prime Minister that this just can-not happen. The Syndicate beganpushing the Prime Minister around.The next morning, Mr Atulya Ghoshgot in touch wiLh Mr Nijalingappa ofM ysore to persuade him to shoot atelegram to the Prime Minister ex-pressing his misgivings about hand-ing over Home to Mr Chavan.

As long as it was a lone Mr Patilstalling Mr Chavan becoming HomeMinister, it looked a simple affair tothe political nondescripts who engin-eered the reshuffle move-Mr AsokaMehta and Mr Subramaniam. But

the moment Mr Patil could get J

Atulya Ghosh crackillg down on tissue of dropping Mr Sachin ehadhuri, the Prime Minister looklicked. The Central Hall was bing with rumours of the shake·upcome i~ the afternoon. Butdrama was yet to be over.

The Syndicate bared its fist athe Prime Minister's advisers got cfeet. Even Mr Cllavan's switchHome, which was taken for grantlooked impossible at I p.m. Mr N'lingappa's telegram proved decishere. Mrs Gandhi tried to worka formula. A cabinet sub-commiwhich would include Mr Patil alwith Mr Chavan would ensureMr Cllavan did justice to Mysorethe border issue and the Goa isMr Patil told the Prime Ministerhe would not like to be involvedsuch things while Mr Cllavan saidwas not interested in the Homefolio with all the strings attaSo it was off. With it the elaboplan engineered by the "Indito put the Syndicate in its placefired. The Prime Minister didappear to have a will of herShe was acting independently ofKamara j' and the Congress Presiwas laughing in his minisleeves over the muddle. Theended in a resounding victory foSyndicate. It looked like if the Scate kept up its pressure for astalling anyone from takingHome, it could secure the Primeister's ouster. The Prime Mihad to come to terms with thedicate. Mr Kamaraj was nowhthe new political calculus. Thebel'S of the "Indicate" scurriedmice. The Prime Minister hadClI t to size.

Operation Salvage began theday. Here was a Prime Minino more enviable a position thpoor Mr Sadasiva Tripath) i 'asweeks ago or Mr B. P. Chalirecently. She could not elIectgle change. 'What happenedbrave t.alk of "going to theover devaluation? One cecannot go to the people wcomes to an unconcealed scrampower.

The "Indicate" had to talkwith the Syndicate and get ~Ito reconcile himself to Mr Ctake-over. The terms are notstill but when they fall out.1967 during the Prime \Iielection, the truth would be

CHARAN GUPTA

Calcutta Diaryet Mr)J1 theChau-ookedbuzz-

-up toIt the

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" 19<iG

Written OffBut what is l\Irs Gandhi's political

future? Many observers have writ-ten her off already. But not hercourtiers. There has been a surrep-titious attempt at rallying the Chief~linisters behind. her. There is al-ready an understanding with some ofthem-that they would have the de-cisive say in choice of Congress can-didates [or the Assembly seats andhe would have a say in the choice of

Lok Sabha candidates. The lists areto be so manipulated that she wouldhave a sizable hard-core following tostake the claim for re-election. TheSyndicate's room of manoeverabilitywould be less in 1967 with the pros-pect o[ Congress defeat in severalareas. Against Mr Morarji Desai, ifMr Kamaraj feels he has no chanceof winning, Mrs Gandhi has to bethe only alternative. This is MrsGandhi's own calculation.

But what of Mr Kamaraj's future?This is the "up or down" chance forhim to become the Prime Minister.~ruch depends on his winning the Ma-dras State. If Congress scrapes throughwith only a fifteen or twenty seat

. margin in the Madras Assembly, MrKamaraj would have lost his right asarbiter in New Delhi. For Mr Mo-rarji Desai, too, 1967 would be thelast chance. His astrologers have toldhim his Raj Yoga has begun (theyhave told him this so many times inthe past) .

So no one in the Governmentthinks of the country. Everyonethinks of himself. Mr Nanda hasprepared dossiers through the CBI onso many of them. The Governmenthas been paralysed for a week now,with every Minister jittery at thethought of a sack or a transfer. Theday after she took over as Home Min-ister, Mrs Gandhi tried to prove helfirmness by sending out letters to theChief Ministers on how to tackle thelaw and order situation. The samebureaucracy moulds the Home Min·istry's policies. In the context of MrNanda's paper missile, does not thecontroversy over the Le[t Communistsabotage strategy and the story thatappeared in The Statesman, sourcingit to the Home Ministry, acquire anew dimension? Mr Nanda deniedit of course. But then, Mr Nandadid not know of so man}' things hap-pening in his own Ministry. All hisdenials of the kind in the past wouldappear suspect in retrospect.

November 13, 1966

'OV 'MB <R lR, ]966

TI-IIS is Plato's Republic all right,where some places and people

are more equal than others. Lastweek's episodes in New Delhi areamenable to umpteen interpretations,but, writing as I do from Calcutta,there is one aspect that fascinates memost of all. It is the spatial ego-cen-trism of our rules entrenched in NewDelhi. Not much sympathy is neededfor Mr Nanda, but he is partly right:nasty incidents of the type which

. took place on Parliament Street arehappening with an almost monotonicregularity all over the country, butthe parly organisation has not both-ered to demand the scalp of anyChief~inister or State Home Min-ister. Mr Nanda fell because MessrsGhosH nd Patil had been gunning[or him for some time for their ownprivate reasons, and, in course of acouple of hours' swift manoeuvre,they successfully used the pretex\ ofthe disturbances to ease him out)

If it were not Mr Nanda, the de·nouement would have been different.But it is perhaps ~qually true thatif the locale were not New Delhi,much of the high drama would havenever taken place. Things took amuch worse turn in Calcutta lastMarch; compared to that, the after-noon rampage in New Delhi was aminor happening. Destruction ofproperty has been no less in Andhrain course of the recent letting upof emotions over the location of thefifth public sector steel plant. Butthose are events which occur fromtime to time in the distant outpostsof the empire, and can therefore betaken in their str.ide. The equani-mity of the rulers gets disturbed onlywhen something unpleasant takesplace in their immediate vicinity.The emirs and umrao cannot standthe stench of violence within the por-tals of their protected city. To thesmall coterie of politicians and civilservants who decide on our destiny,the country is shrunk: India, so faras they are concerned, is New Delhi.More polemic has been expended atthe meeting of the Congress Parlia-mentary Party on. t11e tragedy. of thethirty-odd cars, belonging to highcivil servants and parked on Parlia-ment Street. which were burnt down

. .

during the disturbances on Novem-ber 7, than on the reports of scoresof starvation deaths in Bihar and east-ern Uttar Pradesh. It is a commen-tary on the attitude that New Delhi'senvironment breeds. As the econo.mists would say, so far as ew Delhi'srelative values are concerned, the"shadow" price of a civil servant'scar is at least one thousand timesthat of the life of a poor peasant wo-man in the district of Gaya.

• •Dr Rammanohar Lohia's contor-

tions leave me cold most of the time,but he once made a most incisive re-mark about ew Delhi's upstartgrowth. If we add up all governmentexpenditure on construction in theentire country since 1947, we will dis-cover-Mr Lohia claimed--that 15 to20 per cent of the aggregate has beenspent on expanding and manicuringthe capital-adding new roads, re-doing old ones, building potentialstructures, patronising architecturaland civil engineering innovationsand so on, in a pattern of quasi-in-finite variety. The city's popula-tion; in contrast, would not evenmake up ! per cent of the country'stotal, and tax revenue paid by Delhi'scitizens is unlikely to exceed 3 percent of what is collected from thewhole nation. Those who reside inDelhi are the most effective of allpressure groups operating in the coun-try today. Wishes are horses withthem, again because this is Plato'sRepublic. Dum Dum handles almostfour times as much national and in-ternational traffic as Palam does. ThePalam airport has been expanded incourse of a brief two years, new faci-lities have been added, and it has abristlingly new look about it. DumDum, in contrast, continues to bearthe look of a mofussil railway sta-tion, musty and dilapidated. Bothairports are the charge of the UnionDepartment of Civil Aviation.. ""

Socialism spilleth over in this landof ours, the abiding principle stillbeing that some men are more equalthan others. I have before me theMedical Attendance Rules of a Cal-cutta institute which is sponsored bythe Union Government and which

nchtJ

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aijt1£'

The Message OfManila

NOVEMBER 18. I

ROB! CHAKRAVaRTI

WHAT kind af canferenceheld in Manila where, Lit

magazine wrate glawingly, Jahnsowas a li.stener, nat a talker?

An attempt to. answer the quetian is an interesting intellectuexercise far peaple who. are puzzlby the tremendaus hullabalaa raiby Jahnsan's trip to. Asia, astensiblpegged to. the Manila canferenGaldwater, far instance, tried this itellectual exercise in caurse af a telvisian appearance. With a disaning' display af Sacra tic ignarance, hasked whether the Manila canferencauld be called a peace conferensince the ather side was nat there.

1£ it was not a peace conferenthe questian may be asked whethit was a war canference. Here, tthe answer seems to be in the netive. The brunt af the Vietnam wis barne in the U.S., which, after alhad initiated it befare "allies" weraped in. Whatever direct assitance Sauth Karea, the PhilippinThailand and America's white Asiallies are lending to the Americwar effart in Sauth Vietnam is at bmarginal. If there is any significallto. it, it is at mast sym balical. Tbasic strategy ami the aperatianthe war is decided by the Americmilitary staff. The Manila· confence cannat, therefare, be calledwar conference either.

1. F. Stane in a farthright comentary an the Manila canferenripped the facade aff what he call"this magnificent Madisan Avencharade". He argued that the onpurpase af the conference was "to.Mr Jahnsan's picture with all thAsian patentates". The schedulethe trip is indicative. Of 17 daallatted to. the trip, he says, bartwa were devated to. the conferenitself. "There was hardly timeread, much less debate, the 3.words af the triple pranunciamenprefabricated far it: The GoalsFreedam, The Cammunique, theclaratian an Peace and ProgressAsia and the Pacific", '

Letter From America

•• ••An acquaintance af mine, who. in

his wisdam has recently taken a gav-ernment jab, was recaunting his firstlessan in the arithmetic af NewDelhi's hierarchy. As he was usher-ed in, the Sectian Officer immediate-ly shawed up, greeted him with adeep salute, and made the famauspranauncement, "Sir, yau are entitledto. 225 square feet ar twa windaws,whicheve1' is less",

I am tald a similar spirit af sacial-ism is reflected in the budgetary alla-catian far the building af quarters fargavernment servants. Maney will besanctianed to. build quarters af theappropriate specificatians, correspand-ing to 90 per cent af the sanctianedpasts in the Class I categary; farexample, if in a particular gavern-ment affice there are ten sanctianedpasts far Class I afficers, the numberaf quarters suitable to the status afsuch afficers that will be made avail-able to. this affice wauld be nine.The assumptian is that, at any givenmament, the tenth pasitian will re-main vacant. But, as ane descendsdown the salary ladder, nat anly daesthe quality af hausing deteriarate,'but the proportion af quarters madeavailable to. the members af sanctian-ed pasts cantinues to. shrink. 'If myinfarmatian is correct, far emplayeesin the Class IV categary-peans,jamadars, messenger bays, fm'ashes-,quarters are built to. satisfy the haus-ing needs af, anly 30 per cen t af thesanctianed staff. I was pravided withan explanatian why this has to. be so..The Class IV emplayees earn suchlaw salaries that they find it a strainto pay even the relatively law rentwhich the Gavernment charges far thequarters; to. lawer the burden afrent, these peaple therefare aften sub-let the quarters. The basses in NewDelhi were scandalised: such mal-practice with the utilisatian af gav-ernment quarters cauld nat be allaw-ed. The decisian was therefare ,tak-en to. cut dawn the prapartian afbuilt quarters far Class IV staff.The lagic, I have to admit, is im-peccable. A simple extensian af thisreasaning wauld be to. stap distribut-ing faad to. the law-income categqries-they are aften tao. paar to. affardthe faad, and sametimes they in-dulge in the malpractice af sharingthis faad with athers. These athersmay be starving tao., but, again, I amafraid that is nat. the main issue.

has to. canfarm to. that gavernment'srules and regulatians. These rulesfar medical attendance therefare mustbe identical with the pravisians un-der the Unian Gavernment's Cantri-butory Health cherne. Under,thesebenign rules, reimbursement af can-sultatian fees charged by dactars willbe Rs. 2 far an emplayee whasemanthly salary is anly up to Rs. 150,where the salary is mare than Rs, ] 50but less than Rs. 500 the reimbursi-ble fee is R;. 4. Then comes a ju'mp.If an emplayee earns mare than Rs.500, he can call in a dactar and Gov-ernment will reimburse him to. theextent af Rs. ] 6. There is evenmuch greater fun in the range afcampensation that can be claimed farinjectians. Far an intravenaus in-jectian, thase earning less than Rs.150 are entitled to. spend anly Rs. 2,far the middle incame range, an in-jectian casting up to Rs. 3 will beallawed; thase earning mare thanRs. 500 can hawever spend an an in-jectian as much as Rs. 5. In regardto. intramuscular. inject.ians, the pra-letarians under Rs. 500 must natspend mare than Rs. 2, but yau willbe permitted to. spend Rs. 3 in caseyau earn mare than Rs. 500. Thesame principles af stratified sacialismare repeated far the disbursement afexpenses far haspitalisatian. Thehierarchy af haw much an emplayeear a member af his family may incurin a haspital is laid dawn with pre-cisian: Rs. 4. per day far the lawestcategary, Rs. 8 far the middle cate-gary, and Rs. 12 far the abave Rs. 500baurgeaisie.

This is the structure Mr Nehrubuilt in caurse af seventeen years' afsacialist labaur-the same Mr I ehruwho. wauld simultaneausly concen-trate his maral passian far the redressof internatianal rights and wrangs. Inthe great Indian Republic, which,accarding to. the claim af the incum-bent Prime Minister, is determinednever to. sway from the path af so-cialism, it is taken fo.r granted thatthe lives af the paar do. nat matteras much as the lives af the rich. Itdaes 1I0t really matter if, at Rs. 200,the anly injectian yau are able toabtain cansists af water and no. life-giving substance. It daes nat reallymatter whether yau stay alive ar bedead: after all, let us nat fudge themain issue, you arc poor. It is anunfartunate circumstance to. be inin the Tndia af the Cangress party.

10

RAHMATULLAH KHAN

Law And Politics OfNon -Proliferation

ce was~, Lifeohnson

ques·ectual

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,

Stone, it seems to me, is underesti-mating the importance of the Manilaconference in the context of what ishappening in Asia today. He calledthe leaders assembled in Manila"peripheral pygmies poised on theedges of a giant continent in erup-tion" orchestrated by a Texan as thevoice of New Asia. His ideologicalanger prevents him from seeing thatit is precisely in this orchestrationthat the meaning of the Manila con-[erence lies.

The Manila conference, to beginwith, replaces SEATO for all practi-cal purposes. How long the ManilaPowers as a group will remain effec-tive is another matter; but, for thetime being, they will constitute thehub around which the spokes of Ame-rican economic, military and politi-cal power will revolve. One has tohave a national-geographic pivot forthe operation of a policy as it getsmore and more militant, and ManilaPowers fulfil this purpose.

TheAbsenteesTo understand the significance of

the Manila conference, it is instruc-tive also to take into account theAsian Powers who were absent there,and their present status in worldaffairs in terms of raw strength. In-dia, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon andJapan lack raw strength to influenceAmerican policies, for one reason oranother. And. Indonesia is not whatshe used to be before.

These facts constitute perhaps themost significant aspect of the Manilaconference. The bloc of Asian coun-tries which is committed neither toAmerica nor to China is suffering'from impotence as a result of whichAmerica and China are stru?;gJing tofind a balance of power in Asia with-out any mediating influence. Ame-rica has moved in stron?;ly into South-East Asia using "peripheral pygmies"asaides and there is virtually no pow-er to countervail this risin?; influenceof the United States in Asian affairs.If this influence takes the form of"politics by other means" (to quoteClausewitz's famous definition ofwar), there is no way of sobering theUnited States up. The weights arebeing distributed on two ends of thescale and impotent Asian countriesoutside China who were absent inthe Manila conference are provinguseless as "dead" weights.

The Manila conference, therefore,

NOVEM»ER. H3, 1966

NOW

should not be dismissed as a merepropaganda device of President John-son with his eyes set on winning themid-November elections. Th~s maywell have been a motivation behindthe trip to Manila and other Asiancountnes. What is of greater im-portance is that the trip signals thatAmerica is moving boldly into the

T HE sarcastic comment that ifinternational law is, in some

ways, at the vanishing point of law,the law of war is, perhaps even moreconspicuously, at the vanishing pointof international law, appears start-ingly true of nuclear weapons. Aftera few brave legalistic attempts totame the monstrous weapons (likethose of Dr Nagendra Singh and Pro-fessor Schwarzenberger) jurists andpublicists gave up the battle longago. The crux of the debate in theearly fifties in the American Societyof International Law and other learn-ed bodies was that any attempt torevise the rules of war would be anexercise in futility the moment itaffects the concept and instrumenta-lities of "total war". The laws ofwar were considered effective only onthe humanitarian fringe. Evidenceof this in State practice can be foundif one juxtaposes the accomplishedGeneva Red Cross Conventions withthe frustrating sessions in theEighteen-Nation Disarmament Com-mission.

International Law has no means tocontrol the arms race. The nature oftlie "obligations" imposed uponSta,!.t:s in this field are tenuous. TheUN has no power to dictate arma-ment agreements to nations. In fact,m this respect the League of Nationswas better equipped. Article 1 ofthe UN Charter authorizes tue Ge-nera ssembly to "consider. .. prin-ciples governing disarmament andthe regulation of armaments, andmake recommendations ... " Article26 empowers the Security Council toformulate plans for the establishmentof a system for the regulation of;l.rmaments "to be submitted to the

Asian continent, and those who knowthe turbulent history of the Far Eastwill find familiar echoes in Johnson'semphasis on "partnership amongequals" and keeping the Pacific areafree from dominance by power. Tothe uneasy Chinese, in particular,these statements must appear loadedwith sinister historical meanings.

Members". The Security Councilwas to do this with the assistance ofthe Military Staff Committee pro-posed to be established under Article47. The Committee was still-born.

It requires utmost ingenuity andconsiderable hair-splitting to readinto the above provisions any obliga-tion of a binding nature. Theseprovisions and the resolutions passedthereunder by the General Assembly(the Irish resolution of December 4,1961 through the latest on November19, 1965) are of a hortatory character.Not being a brooding omnipresencein the sky pointing its finger at errantStates, and not having at its disposala super-State machinery to dictateterms, international law can only pro-vide mild restraints on the negativeside, and on the positive side providea forum or venue-the UN confer-ences and treaty techniques, etc.States alone can help themselves inthe most perilous of all inter-Staterelations, i.e., disarmament and armscontrol.

The problem of non-proliferation,therefore, has to be met on the planeof power realities in internationalre!ations. True to the realist doc;;,/"tnne of Morganthau, States tend (0acquire and consolidate power. Thosewhich have the power want to retainit, to the exclusion of others: andthose which do not have it wish toacquire it. Viewed in this contextthe attitude of States to the questionof non-proliferation falls into properperspective.

Proliferation of nuclear weaponscan take place either by dissemina-tion from the haves to the have-notsor through the have-nots acquiringan independent nuclear capacity by

11

E.I.D.-PARRY LLiquors.PharmaceutlCeramics andSanitaryware.Fine ohemicalFood colours.ConsumerG(Packaged).Shipping andTransport.

Sugar.GarbonlC-Acid gas.Industrial Alcohol.Heavy chemicals.Fertilisers,Fungicides andInsecticides.Engineering.Confectionery.

(Incorporated in England.The liability of members is limited.•

livery". The haves, thus, are calupon to limit, reduce, and e1imintheir stock-piles. Their attitudebeen predictably negative on this.

A further complicating factor isinsistence of non-aligned Powersthe principle of universality. Byvery nature of it a non-universal nproliferation treaty would putsignatories at a great disadvanvis-a-vis the non-signatories.

The trouble with the propnon-proliferation treaty is thatand other steps, like nuclear.zones etc., are supposed to createright atmosphere for a broader ament on 'total and complete'armament. But each such step idepends in turn on favourableditions prevailing in the world.Test Ban Treaty, described bysiden t Kennedy as the first stepthousand-mile journey towardswas signed only in the fortuitouscumstances of a split in theSoviet axis, the fear in the USthe USSR of nuclear brinkmangenerated by the Cll han conftion, the possibility,of trade in wand other commodities betweenUS and the Soviet Union etc.right conditions for eacb step,fore, have to be carefully creat

Numerous steps in the directilessening world tension have totaken by the super nuclear Pbefore a non-proliferation agrcould be signed with the neccorollary of underwriting a joiother guarantee to non-nucleartions. It is not that the Pownot have a list of such steps toEast-W'est detente, but that pate pursuits of wrong goals inlike Vietnam are holding upefforts. In the absence of thefarious little steps that contribthe creation of conditions forall talk of gigantic leaps sounnew myths.

NOW

alone. Also, if the score and oddnear-nuclear countries are not pro-ducing the bomb, it is not becausethere is a legal constraint in the TestBan Treaty-the signatories can al-ways test underground with a littlebit of extra cost or get out of thetreaty on a three-month notice. Itis because of domestic compulsions-political, economic. moral etc.-andpriorities. Countries like Swit.zer-land, Indonesia, South Africa. or forthat matter, any small nation whichfaces no immediate threat but g-oesnuclear for prestige considerationsalone would be a cartoonist's delight.The bomb has meaning only in thehands of a threatened nation and,of course, an expansionist power.

A near-nuclear 'Power that has rea-sonable grounds to feel threatenedwould hardly commit itself to a non-proliferation treaty in the absence ofeffective guarantees for its nationalsecurity and territorial integrity. Thenon-aligned Powers have special diffi-culties in accepting guarantees fromone bloc. India, for instance, wouldlike to have a joint guarantee fromthe US, the UK, and the USSR. Des-pite the new-found optimism ofLord Chalfont, Dean Rusk and An-drei Gromyko, it would be interest-ing to watch how the US Senate isgoing to be convinced about theneed to underwrite the security offar-flung countries, especially when itinvolves committing its nuclearmight. The picture looks far fromrosy when one remembers that thesame US Senate had refused ratifica-tion of the Lea?;ue of Nations Coven-ant: defeated a motion in 1950 tocommit US power to check aO'gres-sian anywhere, any time, upo~ therecommendation of a UN organ; andlaunches the severest criticism gener-ally on any pretensions of the'Ame-rican administration assuming therole of a ?;Iobal, ideological police-man. The best bet is that the USadministration wiII try to pacify theSenate by vague and ineffective pro-mises, which the non-alligned andnear-nuclear Powers would not coun-tenance.

Another difficulty is the nuclearfreeze. It is meaningless, the non-nuclear nations feel, to promote mea-sures to prohibit the spread of nu-clear weapons unless these are follow-ed by "tangible steps to halt the nu-clear arms race and to limit, reduce,and eliminate the stocks of nuclearweapons and the means of their de-

themselves. So any measure to stopthe spread must tackle the issue onboth levels.

It is not difficult for the haves notto disseminate nuclear weapons orthe technical know-how. In fact,such an understanding already existsat the International Atomic EnergyAgency, and in a number of bilateralagreements between the US, the UK,Canada and the USSR on the onehand and recipient States of fission-able material on the other. It is inthe nature of power realities that anuclear Power would like to staynuclear to the exclusion of others.The calculated haste with which theUS shelved its project of a multila-teral force for NATO at the not unex-pected Soviet protests shows howhard the nuclear Powers feel aboutsharing their power even with theclosest allies.

1£ further evidence is needed thestrained relations of the US andFrance might be cited. President deGaulle's bitterness towards the UScould be traced, inter alia, to theAmerican postwar gesture of sharingnuclear secrets with the UK, reject-ing similar suggestions from France.So jealous do nations feel about ad-vancement in this field that the Ame-ricans were caught making photogra-phic reconnaissance flights overFrench atomic installations at Pierre-latte. As for the Soviet side, the Sino-Soviet schism could well be attributed,among- other things, to the Chinesedifficulties with the USSR over nu-clear dissemination. The record isthus clear on this count. The nuclear'Powers, especially the US, the UK,and the USSR, would be too willingto sign a treaty of non-dissemination.The trouble begins when they wantto get the non-nuclear nations sign adeclaration of self-abnegation.

Non-Nuclear NationsThe non-nuclear nations, especially

the near-nuclear ones, will not bindthemselves for all time to come notto acquire nuclear weapons. It mustbe said at the outset, however, thatit is not at all certain that the bombmeans power. France and Britainare not super Powers despite theirbombs. China is (or at least has thepotentialities of becoming one) ,though it may have only a handfulof bombs, and though it may havea long way to go to perfect a deliverysystem. Greatness in internationalrelations is measured not by the bomb

12

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1966

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By thersal non-put theivantage

NOVEMBER 18, 1966

monstration and its organisers maybe brought out. It has no doubtthat there are master minds not onlyin the cpr (Left) but in many par-ties who are hell-bent to discreditand destroy ultimately Indian demo-cracy.

The Statesman,' which carried pro.minently on the front page a newsagency dispatch that Mr AtulyaGhosh initiated the move for remov·al of Mr N anda says he is out fromHome ,not a day too soon. Mostwould consider the event belated butmeet. It was possible hitherto toover,look his weakness for the minorvices of Hindu obscurantism, butlately they were invading his politi.cal calculation. That made them toodangerous for a government whichmust of necessity be seculaL Norwere they compensated by adminis·trative brilliance. His long tenure inthe Cabinet, longer than of most ofhis colleagues" was largely undistin-guished; in Home it was very nearlydisastrous. The paper is in favour ofa substantial alterations in the Cabi·net of a most outmoded design, forspecial circumstances call for specialdispensations, and few since inde-pendence have been more special thanthe present. Mrs Gandhi needs afar better team than she has nowif New Delhi has to give a strong andclear lead to the country. If it in·deed be elections that are worryingthe Congress, deflating its will to facea little surgery, then the events in thecapital should prove to it very dear·ly that the elections are a reason for,not against, a few drastic changes atthe Centre.

The Times of India says what is inquestion is not simply a matter ofefficiency but of a policy for whichMr N anda alone was not responsi.ble. In spirit and character the dis-orders in Delhi were' not basicallydifferent from those that have occur·red elsewhere in the country. Thisis not a justification of Mr Nanda'sposition but a recognition of whathis departure from the Cabinet may

. unfortunately obscure-that violencein Delhi was the result of a policywhich none of Mr Nanda's coHea·ques, including the Prime Minister,saw any reason', to alter or improve.This was a policy of gener;dly re-garding those who protest or agitatefor one reason or another with theutmost sympathy even if they areguilty of violating the law. Mr Nandacannot be alone in deploring the

been bold enough to "state bluntly"that the outgoing Home Minister"has sown as he has r'~aped" and thathis performance in the Home Minis-try is "a dismal one, to say it mild-ly". The militant morcha led byholy men was only the last chapterin "a continuous tale of bungling andblunder". From the political witch-hunt to the moral crusade Mr Nan-da's record is uniformly one of dis-astrous failures. He succeeded neitherin ensuring purity in the adminis-tration nor in putting a check ongrowing lawlessness in various partsof the country. The paper has detect-ed a lack of "grace and tragic gran-deur" in Mr Nanda's departure, for"it would seem that he was made toquit", though technically and fomal-ly it is true to say that Mr Nandahas tendered his resignation. Thepaper, however, acknowledges thatthe ills of the Home Ministry willnot vanish just with the exit of MrNanda. His successor will have tocllan up a lot of mess. Forgettingthat only a while ago it had accusedMr Nanda of political witch-hunt, itgoes on to suggest what should bedone to equip the Home Ministryfor these critical times when "sub-versive elements are at work" invarious parts of the country.

Strangely, Amrita Bazar patrika alsohas formed an impression that MrNanda's resignation was not "whollyvoluntary" and the exit of the lateMr Lal Bahadur Shastri from theCabinet as Railway Minister was moregraceful. The paper has no doubtthat Mr Nanda and senior officials ofthe Home Ministry left many thingsundone. They were caught nappingby the sudden outburst of senselessviolence on a frightful scale, thoughweeks, if not months, of preparationseem to have gone into the massiveanti - cow - slaughter demonstration.Therefore, Mr Nanda's', statementthat he had done nothing thatwould warrant his resignation "isha.rdly. likely to influence public opi-nion in his favour". The paper hassupported ,the demand for a high-level probe into the New Delhi inci-dents so that all facts about the de-

Vacancy In DelhiThe Pre~1

COMMENTATOR

14

N0 tears have been shed over theexit of Mr Gulzarilal N anda

from the Home Ministry and theUnion Cabinet. On the contrary,there is a distinct note of jubilationin some papers that he is out. Theyhave sought to create an impressionthat his departure would end the dis-turbed state of the Union, glossing,over the fact that cliques in the Con-gress High Command rather than hisown deficiencies have secured MrNanda's downfall. The Calcuttapapers practically ignon;d the HomeMinister's point of view till his letterto the Prime Minister and statementhad been released to the Press. Delhipapers rvere more charitable; simul-taneously with the resignation storythey reported that Mr N anda hadtaken exception to the Uni()ll HomeMinistry being blamed for the singleincident in the Capital, though noaction had been taken against theChief Ministers of those States wheremuch more serious incidents had oc-curred. One of the Delhi papers re-ported that at the Cabinet meetingto review the situation created by thedisturbances near Parliament Housetwo Ministers, Mr Jagjvan Ram andMr Chagla, protested against themanner in which Mr Nanda was forc-ed to resign. The same paper saidthat supporters of a State Congressboss who attacked Mr Nanda at themeeting of the Congress parliamen.tary party executive boasted in Par·liament lobbies that the anti-N andacampaign could still be called off ifhe agreed to withdraw cases againstsome people who were arrested re-cently for anti-national activities. Itis not difficult to identify the Con-gress party boss as Mr Atulya Ghosh;why he was not named by the paperis difficult to understand.

The near-unanimity of views ofthe three Calcutta papers on MrNanda's exist mayor may not be re-lated to Mr Ghosh's deep involvementin the matter; but the coincidencesticks out. Not one word in atte]lua-tion has been thought necessary, 'andthe editorials give an impression thatan old score had been settled at last.For once HinduSthan Standard has

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The Empire Of· The Babus

Primc Minister's silencc when herHome Minister was assailed by CrI-tics both outside and within theparty. A Prime Minister who' is"conveniently rendered speechless"when one of her colleagues becomesthe victim of a policy which she sil-ently accepted in the past is hardlyinspiring. The belated discovery thata particular policy is not yielding re-suits cannot and should not be cov-ered up by arranging for the exit ofone Minister or another. There isstill nothing to indicate that the dis-astrous policy of treating grievance-mongers with misplaced solicitudewiII be appropriately changed.

Patriot's ViewPatriot is the only paper which has

criticised, though not directly, thePrime Minister's acceptance of theresignation of Mr N anda. It says thatbefore the resignation was accepted,an assurance should have been givento the people that the Governmentwill review the policies it has beenpursuing and its relationship withthe bureaucracy. With<?).lt such anassurance and changes in personnelat all levels of Government as wouldmake the implementation of the as-surances possible, Mr N anda's resig-nation wiII be an empty gesture atbest or one more scalp for the cun-ning factionist witch-hunters withinthe ruling party at the worst. Thepresent situation cannot be amendedthrough juggling with Cabinet Minis-ters none of whom in truth haseither the moral stature or the intel-lectual competence to inspire thepeople. Mr Nanda's resignation wiIInot change the attitude of the peopleto the Government. That will be-come possible only if the bureaucratswho are more responsible than theHome Minister for the developmentsin Delhi are removed, new conven-tions are established at the politicallevel of Government, and finally, anhonest review of economic and socialpolicies undertaken. Mr Nanda's re-signation will serve no long-term pur-pose unless along with him go Minis-ters who have failed more blatantlythan he and those officials who claimthat they knew what was going tohappen but did not or could not doanything to prevent the calculatedand planned attacks. Mr N anda mayhave been the Home Minister; butthe responsibility for what happenedin New Delhi and {or the long monthsof miserable failure of policies which

16

NOW

preccded it must be squarely accept-ed by the whole Government.

All papers have criticised the PrimeMinister for her failure to seize theopportunity to reorganise her Cabi-net with M1' Nanda's departure. Notthat they have approved of thechanges she had contemplated; in[act, almost all papers have opposedthem. Nevertheless, they have foundin the wavering and ultimate surren:der a weakness which does not makefor good governance. The causticcomments in The Hindustan Timesamount practically to an expressionof no-confidence in the Prime Minis-tel'; other papers are not so curt, butthere is no doubt that the PrimeMinister has got the worst Press inher political career over the develop-ments following Mr Nanda's resigna-tion. Anyone in the Prime Minis-ter's position, The Hindustan Timessays, will get a lot of advice and in-telligence, good and bad. It is forthe Prime Minister to decide ·what toact upon and what to discard. If the-Prime Minister continues to repose

IF Bankim Chandra Chatterjce orKipling were alive today, they

would have had hardly been able tomake out the old Bengali babuamong the squatting teachers or inthe daily processions of the Dalhousiewhite-collar in Calcutta streets.

The word 'babu', of course, had avariety of· meanings for Bankim andKipling. The former used it to des-cribe the idle rich of his age, thehalf-baked. semi-educated ban ians tothe English firms and the plumeddandy. To the latter, the babu wasone of the millions of clerl<s, produc-ed by Macaulay's policy to feed theinsatiable bureaucracy of Governmentoffices and British commercial firms,about whom yarns old enough to bechestnuts are still bandied about inex-civil servants' clubs by Kipling'ssuccessors.

Bits of all these various associa-tions, more than a hundred years old,are bound to peer out from ourchanged exteriors. if we scratch our-selves-the modern babus. For allour postures of rebellion, our capa-city to act is stilllimi,ted by the legacy

wlIfidence in men ullworthy or htrust, it is not a matter ill which 1console her misfortune but to quetion "whether she possesses the qualties of judgment and decision thaare the first requisites of high poltical office". These are harsh thin~to say but the country is passinthrough times of great difficulty. TPrime Minister has many qualitiShe is an extraordinarily decent hman being. She has a warm heaand an instinctive sympathy with 1problems and the hardships of 1common citizen. She has a holdthe people's imagination unsurpassby any other public figure. Earli

. in her term of office, she won lTIli

admiration for her capacity to deciand act. But she has steadily losl .confidence since the announcementdevalution. Though the paperlieves that she still has it 111 herinspire and command, to give nniand purpose, it feels the warnimust be uttered that the countrynot very many mistakes away froa convulsion.

handed down to us by the old babWe have inherited the desires ofGhoshes, Boses and Mullicks or 0

Calcutta to lavish money on III

riage or funeral ceremonies andvices of the pen-pusher of Kiplindays-the cringing hypocrisy, vcalumniousness, unctuous fawn'and susceptibility to both taking agiving bribes.

One does not usually associatebelliousness with such tendenciYet the Bengali babu has always bknown as the most, "revolutionacreature, at the forefront of all moments on a variety of demands raing from ·more dearness allowancethe withdrawal of U.S. troops fVietnam. A dispassionate prohowe\'er, would disentangle the pdox.

Perhaps nowhere more thanBengal, the chronic combat betwmiddle-class desires and capadhas been for ages the essence ofthe so-called revolutionary mments here. The babu's wagesbehind the prices of essentialmodities, but he is torn between

ofdhrI

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NOW

17

tional political issue. Pampered bypolitical parties, they have learnt torealise their unreasonable demandslike travelling without tickets intrains and buses, by resorting to formsof political movement like hunger-strike and satyagraha. While thestrength of the working babu's bure-aucracy lies exclusively in his officialposition, that of his son's browbeat-ing is sustained solely by his mem-bership of a gang. The gang spiritis the modern student's imperialmace. The gang can bully and black-mail the entire society; outside thegang, the student is a pathetic victimof his father or teacher's autocracv.

In his home, the babu is the 'pa-triarch. The enlightened babu withsome intellectual pretension mightwax eloquent about the equality ofthe sexes and the freedom of the in-dividual, but would resent imme-diately if his wife or children departan inch from what he lays down asrules [or his family. However liberalhe might be, he can never brook thesight o[ his son smoking a cigarettein front of him or accept withoutgrudging his daughter's choice of ahusband. In his moral judgments,the babu is still influenced by Vic-torian standards which shaped the"iews of his ancestors, who winked atthe male's moral lapses and COll-

demned the female's right to be in-dependent.

Thus the modern Calcutta babu'sworld is divided into hundreds ofsmall mutually hostile empires, whichcome into being for a few hours everyday and vanish leaving the erstwhileemperor an embittered slave. Whenthe latter resumes his position as apetty bureaucrat the next morning,the knowledge of the evanescence athis position makes him act with avengeance and he feeds fat his grudgeat the expense of the poor customers.

Perhaps we shall never be able tomake a complete breach with ourpast. Even if ousted from our birth-'place, we support our vanity by storiesof a once prosperous home. Almostevery refugee from East Pakistanclaims to have owned a zemindari.Those among us, who were born andbrought up in Calcutta and can layno similar claims to Sutanuty, Go-bindapur and Kali Kotta, cherishother memories, memories of 'whatwe could have been'. Every clerk inDalhousie Square bears within himthe debris of a poet.

Bu t as thoughts of a glorified past

Teachers And StudentsEven the teacher, who in our so-

ciety has been for ages in a dependentposition in relation to others, has anempire today where he can assert hisauthority by virtue of his power toruin his pupil's career. Only recently,t~rincipal of a Government <;'01-l~e III Calcutta expelled a few stu-(rents, most of them with brilliantaca ernie records, because their viewsdiffered from his own.-On the other hand, today's studentswho will become babus tomorrow, arealready showing signs of "pigmy im-perialism". As individuals, meek andsubmissive, in a body they are cons-cious of their power to turn a squab-ble over cinema tickets into a na-

ject; the editor will have the gentle-man at his mercy and the unemployedwill angle the fish in the pond."

With slight variations, the descril}-tion might fit well the modern babu;For every babu, whether he is behindthe counters in post offices or banks,or lectures from a dais in a school ora college, rules over a "petty empire"where he is omnipotent. The clerkbehind a cOunter feels a sense ofpower when the queue before itgrows longer and longer. Everyonein the queue, however important hemight be, for the time being at least,has to depend on this clerk, whoshows his power by moving at a lei-surely pace, often leaving his counterto chat with a colleague of his or byabruptly closing the counter withmore than half of the queue yet tobe attended to.

The same clerk, when he boards abus on his way home [rom office isreduced to a humble subject to theconductor, whose temporary empireis the State bus. The conductor feelsa perverse pleasure, especially duringthe rush hours, in harassing the officebabus. He rings the bell wheneverhe wants to, ordering the bus to rushaway at high speed, leaving a help-less crowd grumbling at the stop.Inside the bus, 'Ie commands the pas-sengers. He is 'at liberty to stop thebus and summon to his support hispowerful union and even threaten ahurricane strike if any passenger daresto irritate him.

Off duty, the State bus conductorloses his empire and like any otherbabu, becomes the humiliated sub-ject of some other "petty emperor"-'the post-master or the ration-shopowner or his landlord.

Ten AvatarsWhen alone, the revolutionary

Icneer wears off and the babu affordsto sink back into his usual role ofthe "petty' bureaucrat." How littlethe babu has changed in this respectduring the last hundred years will beel'ident [rom a comparison of his pre-sent status with tfiat described byBankim in his well-known satiricalpiece on 'Babu', where he is repre-sented as a sort of Vishnu in the in-carnation of ten 'avatars' ,-clerk, tea-cher, Brahmo, banian, physician,lawyer, magistrate, landowner, editorand the unemployed. "Like Vishnu",Bankim adds, "in different incarna-tions they will kill the powerfulAsuras. In the form of the clerk, t.hebabu will kill his menial; the tea-cher's victim will l?e his pupil; thestation master will kill the ticketlesspassenger; the Brahmo will starvethe Hindu priest depending on alms;the banian will cheat the Englishmerchant; the physician will slaughterthe patient; the lawyer will bleedwhite his client; the rpagistrate willpin to the wall the seeker of justice;the landowner wiiI cow down his st'~-

obligation 10 maintain the expensIvefamily tradition and the desire toclimb into a higher class. It makeshim a rebel, and at the same timeforces him to fearfully clutch at thela,t iota or his possessions.

The forms resorted to by him toexpress his disgrull tlemen t are alsotypical of the babu. He indeed joinsstreet processions, shouts slogans andcourts arrest. But all these gesturesretain only the glamour of the past,when they were effective to some ex-tellt and involved great personalrisk. Today they are just emptyshells and have even assumed somesort of respectability. Golok Bose, therentier in Dinabandhu Mitra's Neel-Da/pan) committed suicide to escapethe humiliations and tortures of aprison life. To his modern descen-dants, the .prison is a safe positionfrom where he can enjoy postures ofrebellion at a comfortable distance.[hanks to the growt.h of mass actionand trade unionism, the babu has theprotection of the collective when hejoins a procession or a strike. Thesame babu whose voice swells thechorus of revolutionary slogans, whosehands from an anonymous mass hurlstones at the police, refuses to raiseeren a mild protest against the gros-est injustice when he is alone.

,'OVEMBER 18, 1966

1 In

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or of overrated possibilities are poorconsolations, we .have to seek a moreconcrete substitute in the power,however ephemeral and limited,granted to us by our employers. Itflatters our vanity. When we imposeit on a fellow being, who is tempo-rarily depending on us, we unwitting-ly pay oblations to our ancestors-thepetty aristocracy and the merchantsof old Bengal.

When will the empire of the babusend? Noone knows. It survivedthe two world wars, the famine of1943, the partition and a successionof economic crises. Instead of show-ing signs of decline, the empire isextending its borders. The babusare overflowing into the world of tileproletariat and spreading their valuesthere. Calcutta's two main modernindustries-transport and engineer-ing-are manned by the babus. Defy-ing Marx's prediction about the pro-letariat's need to lose nothing buttheir chains, the proletariat babus otCalcutta are eager to extend theirarea of attachments. With the helpof Government loans, the State trans-port employees are fast buying landand building houses in the Jadavpurarea. In another decade, with therapid swelling of the ranks of the in-dustrial worker in steel plants andother public sectors with the Bengalibabus, the desire for power and pos-sessions might change the entire faceof the rising proletariat of WestBengal. _

Perhaps like love, poetry and Hin-duism, the Bengali babu is destinedto become eternal. Eluding defini-

, tions and predictions, his empiremight grow to engulf all the hetero-geneous trends in our country andstamp its own mark on them.

Asked by Mr Arjun Arora whetherthe appointment of General Cariappain tlte Family Planning Directoratemeant that force would be used toma!<e people observe the family jJlan-ing measures, Dr Sushila Nayar re-jJlied that the retired General hadno force at his command.

News-item

For NOW readers in Western Indiamay contact

S. D. CHANDA VARKAR10, Kanara House

Mogal Lane, Mahim-Bombay-l 6.

18

Sampratik's DesheDeshe

A DRAMA CRITIC

WHEN 'a play about a currentburning issue is produced,

we feel naturally inclined to appre-ciate it. Our tendency to appreClategrows larger when a troupe, with thecredit of producing Beckett's WaitingFor Codot, decides to stage a dramaabout the heroics of the Vietnampeople. In fact the audience at theMinerva Theatre on November 4was unusually sympathetic whenSampratik staged Deshe Deshe. Orwhy should people silently wat.chsuch a tame and tedious play?

The play opened with a whimper;as the curtain went up, some charac-ters on the pretext of initiating usinto the history <?fVietnam squeezedout most of the interest with theirtame lectures for ten minutes. Afterthis business, when the productionalarrangements were being made beforethe audience's eyes in Brechtianstyle, things were taking an interest-ing turn. But the moment the ac-tual play began, the audience wasonce more engulfed in a dense atmos-phere of tedium from which therewas no escape till the play was over.

Everything seemed disproportion-ate, out of place and ineffective. Thedrama was nothing more than a looseincoherent bundle of scenes aboutthe life of Nguyen Van Troi; be-cause of the lack of a proper focalpoint, everything became rather in-sipid and Troi looked extraordinarilyordinary. The language sounded acock-a-Ioopy _odd mixture of verynative shala, shuarer bacclla andtruly foreign byaparta ashambhaberparei (the thing is next to impossi-

•ble). - Most of the characlerstheir powdered laces and Bryleced hair-styles, looked morelovers than fighters_ The IlJusiit could be called anything likewas hideous.

But there is always anotherof the shield. The group as a wwas very much enthusiastic;there were moments whenwarm enthusiasm melted thelayer of boredom and succeedtouching our heart. Sankar Gin spite of his naivete, emerga fine actor. Sakti Banerjee,pen sated [or his directorial laphis able acting. .

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, 'THE fact is, you cannot both be aconquering nation and a bene-

volent nation at the same time,"quotes the author approvingly froma popular newspaper published onFebruary 12, 1893 in Bengal in thepenultimate chapter of his book,while summing up the attitude ofIndian leadership towards Britisheconomic policies in India. The ex-cuse for starting with this statementis that it perhaps brings out the au-thor's basic approach to the problemmuch better than many learned pas-sages could do.

What is the nature of the economicthinking which the author wants tocharacterize as economic nationalism?"The most important problem, whichaccording to them, faced the Indianpeople was the economic one, name-ly, the poverty." Many economistsmay shake their heads at this point,wondering whether 'poverty' is aneconomic problem. He adds, "Itwas moreover a national problem i.e.a problem that embraced the inter-ests of all sections of Indian society."(No comments).

This being the problem, what wasthe solution? The author continues,"The national leaders cast the blamefor this poverty not on nature or thepeople but on the alien rulers. Theysuggested certain remedies which werenot accepted. This led many ofthem to doubt the bona fides of therulers and to feel that if the countrywas not economically progressing, itwas only because of 'the presence andpolicy of the foreigners' and that per-haps there could be no national eco-nomic regeneration except by theirgetting rid in the first instance oftheir European. rulers." So it ap-pears, after all, the problem was so-ciological and the solution political.

The author draws attention towhat he considers to be two very

20

THE RISE AND GROWTH OFNATIONALISM IN INDIA[Economic policies of Indian leader-ship, 1880-1905]By Bipan ChandraPeoples' Publishing House,New Delhi

important points in the nationalisteconomic agitation.

First, Indian leaders were concern-ed primarily with the problem ofeconomic development as a whole andnot with economic advance in isolat-ed sectors.

Secondly, economic development,in turn, they believed, consisted pri-marily in rapid and all-out industrialdevelopment of the country.

"The core of economic growth laynot in development of foreign tradeor means of transport ... but in in-dustrialization."

It is not clear how any consistentthinker could maintain both thesepositions at the same time.

Workers And KisansAnother important aspect which

the author emphasises is that, whilethe economic thinkers were keen onIndia's achieving economic pros-perity through rapid industrializa-tion, they did not take up the classdemands of the peasantry and theworkers. They neither asked forreform of the existing system of landtenures nor espoused the cause of fac-tory labour. The author finds justi-fication of this appr:oach in the factthat it would not have been pru-dent to div,.ide the people at a timewhen the need of the hour was tounite them.

All this sometimes makes the taskof understanding the approach ofthe economic thinkers difficult pure-ly in economic terms, closely inter-mingled as it is with political objec-tives. The basic malaise being diag-nosed as the domination of a foreigncountry it is understandable thatcertain points were overstresse..d e.g.the famous "Drain Theory", with anagitational bias. The notable excep-tion in this matter was, of course,Ranade.

The author in his analysisoften misses this point and triesdraw attention to the astuteneeconomic thinking while he shhave at mOst applauded the shrness of strategy.

Of course obsession with growtindustrial capital does explain sof the anachronisms. In this cantion the author mentions the na,tlist thinkers' disapproval of attelto improve the condition of laers through factory acts.

The effect, they thought, wouldto raise the cost of production ofdian manufactures resulting inof the internal and external marand ruin of Indian industries.

To some, including Ranade,dustrialization was the most imtant if not the sale criterion ofgress of a people. Even here to juthe programme by its effects onnomic development alone would bemisread the approach of nationleaders. Factories and mills cowrote Ranade in 1890, "far ill

effectively than schools and callgive a new birth to the activitiesa .nation." Joshi, perhaps inspiredLIst, thought industrialisation wassuperior type and higher stage of cilization."

Foreign Capital?The major obstacle in the path

indust~ial development .was pauof capital. But the Indian nationist leaders were quite divided abthe use of foreign capital. BiChandra Pal is quoted as saying tBritis? .capital "instead of beinghelp IS 10 fact the greatest hindrato all improvements in the econocondition of the people."

The reasons advanced do notpear to be convincing from a pureconomic angle; but taking it aso.ther instrument of foreign domitlOn, the approach is quite undstandable

Normally we expect that if delopment of native industries wasprimary objective it should have b~ssociated with absolute protectioI~m. ~t was not always so. ThetlOnahst leaders were unanimous .their approval of imposition of iport duties on cotton fabrics ayarns in 1894, while the sugar jport duties of 1899 found themther divided. The countervailii~port duties. afforded some prottlOn to the native sugar industry £1'bounty-fed beet sugar of Austria a

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Germany. "The Indian nationalleadership was never-not even in thebeginning-unanimous in its suportto countervailing import duty; andwith the passage of time, the nation-alist opposition to it gained strengthand momentum." Controversy wascarried on by them not onlyabout the merits of the case butalso within the context of widerissues around the alleged violation ofthe principle of free trade by the sugarduty. Such attitudes towards pro-tective duties go ill with unqualifiedSUpPO!t for all-out industrialization.The mterest of the consumers ingetting cheap sugar was also stressedby some.

One other point. The opposition torap~d e~pans\?n of the railways bynatIOnalIst thmkers, because it faci-litated penetration of foreign goodsand the export of foodgrains andother agricultural raw materials canagain cast doubt on the central the-sis of the author regarding the na-tional economic thinkers, namely, that"Industrial growth was the vantagepoint, from which they looked at andjudged nearly all contemporary eco-nomic issues ..... "

They were not very much worriedthat lndian handicrafts would bedestroyed. In fact the author notesthat all they wanted was to see thatmodern industries under Indian ca-pitalists would grow.

Nor can much fuss be made overthe export of foodgrains or agricul-~ural 'produce, these being the onlyImportable surplus that an agricultu-ral country Gould guarantee. Exportof commercial crops was, and is, themost valuable foreign. exchange earn-er and if there was a surplus infoodgrains there was no reason whythey could not be exported. Theauthor, however, does not think thatthere was any surplus. The entireexport trade of India, according tohim, was forced and unnaturil.

"The necessity of paying to theState or landlord excessive land reve-nue or rent at fixed periods and inmoney compelled the peasants to selltheir grain and the problem of mar-keting it combined with need to

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22

maintain an export surplus forcedthe country to sell this grain in fo-reign markets.'" (P. 165).

The confusion between micro-eco-nomic and macro-econom\c aspects isglaring. The point is that In-dian merchants controlled the graintrade and they found it profitable toexport foodgrains. There may beconflict between individual interestand national interest. The conflictneed not necessarily be between then.ationalist approach and imperialis-tIC approach. This inability to dis-entangle the two aspects very oftenmars whatever little analysis the bookcontains.

A. G.

Letter

Truth Will Be OutI cannot really help praising our

Government which sticks to its mottoso scrupulously. The motto, youknow, is "Satyameba Tayate". Andhence its vigilance about all asatyassneaking into our holy land. A fewexamples: look at the map of Asiaon the second cover of H. M.Vinacke's A History of the Far Eastin Modern Times (Allen & Unwin,London 1962). Among all the coun-tries only the map of India is paintedblack. Surely there was some un-t.ruth in the depi'ction of our nor-thern border which our truth-lovingGovernment has blackened.

Look at the coloured maps inEncyclopaedia Britannica, the IndexVolume (l965 edition) -World, Po-litical (p. 3), World Physical (p. 5),Northern Land and Sea~ (p. 6),Eurasia (p. 76), India (p. 78, 79).Sout.h Western Asia, China and] apan p. 82).

On all these pages black patcheshide perhaps some monstrous unt,ruthswhich the pro-Chinese EncyclopaediaBritannioa .(printed in the USA)tried to sell in this land of Satya andDharma. Is it not an equally hide-ous attempt to propagate Chineseuntruths in the map of China pre-pared by the CIA (EncyclopaediaBritannica, Vol. 5, p. 602)? For-tunately, however, our authoritieshave taken pains to smear the untrueportions in the map.

PATRIOTCalcutta

A Grand PujaThis has reference to a filler

your annual number. You quatreport from a newspaEer to thethat the demand for image o(dess Durga had increased thisbecause the peaceful atmospherthe country was congenial (orfestival. You probably thoughtthe reporter was mad and thepaper perver 'e. But. the fact Iethat the Puja was a grand affairyear. The clues to this paradanot f.ar to see~. Student rowdyinothlllg new m this country blate, with every Tom, Dick and?abbling. over it and newspapersmg theIr stupid analyses, sigoondaism has assumed the glr~)Us nom~nclature of 'juvenileImquency to which 'Western puare devoting expensive projects.is all fanning the youthful penof the militant few. As a naconsequence, the goonda-fearingall over Calcutta had been maddO!1ate to ~e sanJajanin pujas atpomt of kmves. Moreover, Pujayear has been an election puja:election candidates are known todonated even Rs. 15,000 each.

FANlBHUSA ACH

Dum

"Strange Lot""We (Congressmen) are a slr

lot. O~ce. we are in power, weto remam m power and die in posays Mr S. K. Pati!o Hasn't heself proved the truth of itdoubt by clinging to his post inof a series of railway accidents.of them quite serious, involyingof life and property?

P. R.Fekari, ]algaon Di

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Regd. No. C 287