India: Return to India-part II
Plastrik, Stanley
A city turbulent, jittery, easily upset. It is twenty years since my last visit, yet the memory of this city is a vivid one. Calcutta is the home of Indian terrorist nationalism, its people...
...the smile is more quickly there, more quickly gone, superficial...
...In the company of S. V. who knows them well I go to talk to them...
...become agglutinative (the average word contains six or seven syllables...
...It is difficult to carry through the scheduled round of official visits, more difficult to summon up the energy and curiosity to make all visits worthwhile...
...strange to see such organization, efficiency, cleanliness and concern in India...
...In addition to heading a local group of labor unions...
...Old friends who retained much of their earlier interests, yet each of whom had changed in his politics...
...In the city of Madras the emphasis is on the historical: the Portuguese were here and built the curious Cathedral of San Thorne near which I stay...
...Thomas, the Apostle who passed through Malabar in the first century A.D., setting up seven churches which still survive...
...There will be little place for the transitory politically...
...Kerala is amazingly similar to many parts of tropical Ceylon...
...If we accept the figure of two million union members for all of India, about 48 per cent belong to the Congress-dominated unions (Indian National Trade Union Congress), about 20 per cent to the Communistcontrolled unions (All-India Trade Union Congress), about 16 per cent to the Socialist-controlled unions (Hind Mazdoor Sabha), about 6 per cent to unions organized by dissident socialists (Marxist United Trade Union Congress), and about 10 per cent independent...
...In the long conversation we held together he stated flatly that the party, having reached its lowest point some time ago, has since been moving steadily upward...
...he's mistaking the demonstrations, and protest riots for politics...
...Their talk is of hydroelectric and dam-building projects in the hills, of canals and waterways, of crop diversification and village cottage industries...
...I have never been in a country where such bad relations exist between the college teacher and the students...
...This boy has never worn a pair of shoes...
...all countries and worlds sound alike in their jargon...
...My guide is concerned that I shall find the students unsophisticated and intellectually backward...
...a lightning storm flashes in the distance...
...National income is expected to increase at the rate of 5 per cent annually...
...I believe Mehta is right...
...It is in the Lok Sabha that Nehru has attained the peak of his career...
...And while they are in the university, they are being supported by the entire community at a cost which is about four times the per capita national income of our people...
...Houas LATER we were in Calcutta proper...
...Mehta accepted this task...
...The heat, steadily in the hundreds day after day, is the enemy, a general torpor takes over...
...more cautiously so on mine...
...Across the Deccan: It is possible, of course, to fly from Madras to Bombay in a few hours...
...As for birth control, it is a farce except for middle-class city folk whose issue would go down in any case...
...ONE OF THE BASIC AND unresolved problems of the Indian trade unions is their relationship to the political parties that frequently dominate them, a relationship that keeps the unions from achieving the autonomy they have in some of the Western countries...
...In the upside-down triangle of the Deccan itself lives an immense concentration of South India's population, many still at a primitive tribal state of life, raising cotton, citrus fruits and rice...
...In my opinion, this must also include the so-called new caste associations which are, in effect, political parties based upon the awakening of their people, an awakening expressed in demands for more representation, popular education, the breaking down of caste walls which discriminate against its interests...
...Nehru Still elegant and handsome, Jawaharlal Nehru dominates the parliamentary proceedings as, in fact, he dominates the political life of India...
...Further, the ownership of industry is non-Bengali (partly British, partly non-Bengali Indians, partly central government...
...mainly interested in American "beatniks" about whom they know little but assume each visiting American's expertise...
...What does he look forward to, what does he want...
...that the contents of the publications and student reviews I glance at are ritualistic and often border on gibberish, but is not this unavoidable in the atmosphere of a feverish city where ideas—mostly half-baked— circulate in a vacuum of frustration...
...My refuge is the home on Vatcha Gandhi Road where I am staying and where my greatest delight is to ply with questions Mrs...
...This man who, a few years before, was one of the most responsible figures in Indian socialism seemed strangely facetious in his notions...
...At a railway stop not far from the town of Raichur, a group of ragged boys leap onto the slow-moving train...
...The Plan cannot be taken literally...
...We are 1,000 feet up, below the dark monsoon clouds...
...But I cannot help thinking of the multitude of western and European intellectuals who, their eyes riveted in fascinated horror and/or admiration upon China, have consistently neglected and ignored India...
...Dave does not oppose the active participation of outside political leaders at this stage of India's trade union development, but he does insist upon minimizing their political exploitation of economic situations...
...Every possible patch is cultivated...
...There is a fascination and occupation with interior decorating in Bombay that surely must point to the city's general affluence...
...The Deccan is a region, ancient and burdened with the history of remote Dravidian milleniums...
...Front Poona onwards one returns to "modern" life, to political India...
...Further, the immediate economic situation is spotty...
...One of them tells us about himself—he is nine, has never been in a school, shares a mud hut with his parents in a nearby village...
...Although legally elevated to power in the state elections, the Communists deliberately set about creating a situation in which their rule would be perpetuated through extralegal means: the infiltration and transformation of all political and social institutions...
...But to me, most important, was a visit to Antony Pillai, an important figure in the Madras labor movement...
...it hopes to persuade the fishermen to move in and abandon their beach village for a more settled way of life...
...In front is his paying audience, behind him, his mass audience...
...During my Calcutta visit the strike of the railway employees comes to its predictable ending...
...It is many days before the chaos of disrupted schedules and communications will clear up...
...The striking unions beat a retreat before Nehru's inflexibility...
...it is an economically underdeveloped country moving steadily toward a viable economy with a better life for its people...
...But Bose perished mysteriously while allied to the Japanese...
...The 5 million Bengalis driven out of what is now East Pakistan nurse exaggerated grievances and nostalgic memories of their former life...
...Marco Polo on the way back from China in the 13th Century stopped in the harbor...
...The plane from tiny Trivandrum airport circles southward over the tip of the Indian peninsula before turning north toward Madura, Trichinopoly, Madras...
...These factors are so delicate that gains of the past ten years are easily imperiled by inflation...
...An American is particularly sensitive in India to the varied forms of life and the diversity of its cultural and social institutions...
...Nehru himself is treated with utmost respect by all...
...It compares favorably with the proportion in the United Kingdom and most countries of Western Europe and Japan...
...But this play ought to be shown in the towns and villages upon which these people have turned their backs...
...Or is this an isolated arrangement...
...Leaning heavily upon N. D. Das, I might summarize my observations of Calcutta's resentments and grievances as follows: • West Bengal is not a replica of other Indian states...
...The known history of Kerala dates from the time of St...
...During the past ten years the habit of planned economic development has taken hold in India...
...This is frowned upon, and the student must seek his pleasures surreptitiously...
...On the contrary...
...comfortable middle-class atmosphere with much talk of interior decorating and how best to educate one's children...
...Out of the basket, awakened, pops the head of an enormous hooded cobra, ugly, repellent, frightening...
...Of particular significance is the fact that, for the first time to my knowledge, Indians from one part of the country are apparently unsafe in another part of their own country...
...In the midst of a discussion about life and politics in America a message comes to these people that a serious conflict between two or more of the many groups that live in the city has broken out in a remote quarter...
...omy sustain in terms of the general economic situation...
...he will give it to his blind father...
...mainly domestic issues are on the agenda: the government employees' strike, the draft outline of the Third Five-Year Plan, etc...
...For the first time I had seen men like Nehru and Sardar Patel in action and had felt the tremendous influence of Gandhi himself...
...October 30, 1960 and subsequent issues...
...Student actions, rather, result from more dramatic and direct situations—rumors of corruption, bickerings with bus conductors, movie managers, exams and, above all, bad relations between professors and students...
...This will be infinitely less dramatic than in the past, but then the task of contributing to a nation's growth by pursuing intelligent but limited aims is usually not one of high drama...
...For one thing, its cultural life—largely traditional and classic—separates it from the more diversified north...
...He belongs to the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazagham) , a movement favoring South Indian separatism, and speaks a political language which, I confess, was new and surprising to me...
...Only Miss S. V.'s • In Search of India, page 208...
...I hope to write a separate essay in which I evaluate the problems and prospects of Indian democracy...
...My meeting with Lohia whom I had last seen in New York is rather strange and disappointing...
...The hartal which has utterly paralysed the city is due to end late that afternoon...
...Early on the morning of my last day the child of the family with whom I am staying tugs at my arm until I follow her out onto the porch...
...Pillai, who received his political training in the Ceylon Trotskyist movement, was elected by a local constituency to the Indian Parliament at New Delhi...
...cannot be separated from problems of socialism (agrarian cooperatives, workers' democracy in the new industries, social justice etc...
...I make no effort to brush aside its difficulties, perils and shortcomings...
...the languages (Tamil, Kanarese, Telugu, Malayalam, etc...
...Ramanohar Lohia, one finds a passionate concern with politics that is largely absent in the west...
...in Calcutta—ends 20 hours later in the overpowering embrace of a Tamil movie which, having begun '/2 hours earlier, was still moving strongly along when I staggered out into the heavy Madras night...
...Since relations between boy and girl students in India is circumscribed by a tradition of puritanism upon which is imposed caste distinctions, it is quite natural that student energies are directed along pleasureseeking lines...
...Take the case of the steel industry...
...But the fragmentation goes beyond this...
...One feels in the air of Trivandrum and other towns and cities that these people have passed through a harsh experience whose effects are far from shaken off...
...Industrialization is backward, proceeds at a slow pace and has limited possibilities.* My few days in Kerala are largely on my own...
...China, 12 million tons...
...Such figures, of course, tend to conceal the low starting point, but the forward movement is indicated...
...Thus, preoccupation with the strike's after-effects will dog the rest of my visit...
...For better or worse, Bombay is a modern city facing Europe and the West...
...The political parties naturally have their clubs, but this affects only a small percentage of the student body...
...I attend several sessions...
...A 120 per cent increase in industrial output...
...Neither grasps the other's description...
...The Mascot Hotel at which I stay, described by Arthur KoestIer as a rather sinister Communist headquarters in his recent book, The Lotus and the Robot, has reverted to the placidity of an ordinary provincial hotel...
...The official census taken in February, 1961 came to 438 million, or 7 million morethan estimated...
...Jobs were on the line and loss of work in India is disastrous, there being no unemployment benefits and 100 applicants for each job...
...until then no busses or cars dare move...
...I would like to discuss the coming 1962 general election already actively underway and which will be crucial for the country...
...It is India's most ancient region, an island when the northern plains of Hindustan were still under sea...
...More important, he acknowledges the weakness of the present government (a coalition of the Congress party, Praja-Socialists and the Muslim League) by stating bluntly to me that the Communists still have the support of the workers in Kerala, the industrial unions and "the poor...
...In the new context of political democracy and the secular state, even caste organiza• tions have largely accepted democratic politics and function within the circle of its rules and regulations...
...the music quickens and undulates, the charmer moves his flute from side to side, the cobra sways and dances, rising and falling...
...In India, for every one in the university, 98 have been denied admission...
...A trade union rally in behalf of government employees sacked because of strike action...
...the voice becomes louder, more urgent...
...Trivandrum, Kerala: Again, that astonishing experience one has throughout India * "The Political Role of India's Caste Associations"—Pcblic Affairs, March, 1960...
...Does the Congress-Socialist coalition set a pattern for future politics in the country...
...It means a proliferation of small-scale industries, from the village-transposed potter and his wheel to the chemical soap factory, an ultra-modern atomic research plant, air-conditioned office buildings and hotels, technical training institutes of high order and a university bursting with students...
...The city felt sure of itself in those days...
...V. V. Giri, the New Delhi appointed Governor of Kerala State, seemed to have the keenest understanding of Keralian problems: this shrewd and able politician, an old-time leader of India's railway workers' unions, made clear his dissatisfaction with the uneasy alliance in Kerala and its lack of accomplishments...
...A few days before I had driven through here by bus, but from the air its beauty is more complete—a network of backwater lagoons, canals, paddy fields, and stretches of white beach bordering the oceans...
...Their very limitations—provincialism, concentration on Bengali affairs, lack of political sophistication—push them in the proper direction of hard, I55 basic work, the achieving of practical immediate goals, and a strong feeling for the needs of their city and state...
...A volcanic upheaval gave the Deccan its peninsular shape and its rich, volcanic soil...
...Madras—early August: Madras, capital of the newly reorganized new language state of Madras, is South India's largest city, gateway to what historians conceive of as classic India...
...Rarely do such deeds awaken the response looked for...
...It is true, of course, that the contents of the libraries are pitiful and outdated...
...If West Bengal has become the "problem state" of the Indian Republic, it is in Calcutta that these problems are most exacerbated...
...West Bengal claims not to get her rightful share of earnings from the central government's monopoly over jute and tea, two important Bengal products...
...there is little initiative or encouragement...
...WE TAKE AN ELABORATE tour of the University of Calcutta, including lecture halls, small libraries, student groups and a fabulous coffee house where masses of students congregate for hours on end...
...Many have found Mehta reserved and remote (Guy Wint calls him a political expert rather than a national leader), too logical and cool...
...C. Ross Smith has summed up the differences between North and South...
...K. R. Jadhav, writing in Humanity, is guilty only of exaggeration when he states, "Contempt for students and flattery of superiors seem to [the college teacher] the only two clear paths in the jungle of the present day educational system...
...It is active, clashing, noisy and resentful...
...Anxious apparently to stimulate the Bombay beatnik...
...Further, the new steel centers (Perambur, Bhilai, Rourkela located close by) give a weight and importance to the area in terms of Indian economic planification...
...massive government buildings, numerous schools, colleges, the University of Kerala and a splendid museum with an outstanding collection of Hindu sculpture...
...Originally from Ceylon, Pillai is now thoroughly integrated into the life of South India...
...My first day at Madras—it had begun at 5 A.M...
...More important, the government follows up the end of the strike by wholesale firings in the thousands, pursuit of those arrested and a generally vindictive attitude...
...the head bounces from side to side in the Madrasi waggle...
...Here are tropical plains crossed by numerous rivers, streams and canals and dotted everywhere with homes, plantations, cultivated areas, towns and small cities...
...Given to a supercilious and self-mocking manner, Lohia is surrounded by a group of admirers who form the usual backdrop of the political cult...
...In the early morning hours we reach the city of Poona...
...in Kerala I saw it again...
...George (Thomas Pitt, Warren Hastings...
...The monsoon session of the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) is about to begin...
...saris and turbans, no longer pale and washed, become deep green and purple and yellow and red...
...and the difficulties inherent in establishing new industrial centers with reasonably modern living conditions...
...Foundations exist for the development of modern technology in steel, power and agriculture...
...The Plan concentrates on the problem of agrarian production, but avoids that of land relations...
...The Assam atrocities against Bengal's people came as the latest and most humiliating in a series of affronts to Bengali pride...
...Lohia rejects Congress-run India root-and-branch...
...Economic difficulties and failure in examinations account for this...
...Again, as is so frequent among the younger Congress leaders and the new cadres of managerial administrators, there is a sense of competence, acknowledgment of the problems and a desire to work constructively and carefully...
...S. smiles politely and explains, there are so many of us...
...Kerala is covered by a network of natural and man-built waters down to the long and narrow stretch of sandy seaboard where some of the world's finest beaches are found (Malabar Coast, etc...
...It seemed to me that the Keralan coalition is unique, defensive in nature, and that the question of is best grasped, it seems, as a political experiment in search for stability rather than an ideological commitment to Communism...
...as sharp, quick-witted and alert as twenty years ago, but taking a bit too seriously American office habits of efficiency, polished desks with buttons and telephones...
...And they are right to do so, of course...
...Humayun Kabir, the Central Government Minister of Scien tific Research and Cultural Affairs and a noted educator whom I was to meet later in New Delhi, balances the picture in these words con tained in his 1959 convocation address to the University of Kerala: "In India, there are today about 800,000 students in universities and institutions of higher learning, which gives an intake of roughly 200,000 per year...
...The attractiveness of India today consists of the fact that its political community is made up of such a variety of associations, both natural and voluntary, all of which play their role in the exercise of political freedom, in formulating some approximate notion of the public good, in influencing the state directly or indirectly, and in protecting the liberties of both the individual and the organizations...
...These thoughts occur to me as I prepare to leave Madras on the long train trip that will take me into the state of Kerala, which the Communist Party boasted only two years before would become known as the Hunan Province of India...
...We summarize: • Since 1951, a 42 per cent rise in national income...
...Like students everywhere, they are eager to talk...
...Sleep was impossible the rest of the night...
...An intense discussion with Miss S. V., my Madrasi guide and one of the ablest women I have come across in Asia...
...The Minister further acknowledges much of the intense criticism of the old-line Congress leadership throughout the south and himself illustrates an important fact: there exists in the country a significant left-wing Congress group of administrators and functionaries who share common attitudes...
...But I must add to this, it is often playful in tone and wispy in content...
...They are permanent transients...
...In the brief spell I was to stay in and around Calcutta, many of these observations were borne out...
...she feels neglected by the central government, the political parties and the country as a whole...
...Waiting for the Calcutta plane at the Patna airport, I overhear a dialogue of the deaf...
...If Calcutta has a clear and sharp image of itself, made up of its strong resentments, Bombay is struggling to find a self-image and not too successfully...
...for their present entertainment after the day's work, the soaring birth figures will continue...
...it is, in fact, in the midst of a general strike (hartal...
...Some hours later we reach Dum Dum, airport north of Calcutta...
...Here, the group of socialists of the PSP whom I meet one evening in their party headquarters, seems to show more understanding...
...more important, she embodies that serenity and spiritual force found in India among so many women of the middle I66 and educated class who had followed Gandhi in the thirties and forties...
...They will surely be the heirs of the Congress organization, as well as the administrators of future plans, nation-wide and local...
...But, and here I follow the analysis of Rohit Dave, an excellent political and economic observer, these figures by themselves signify rather little...
...The socialists have grown but at the expense of the Congress...
...A young married couple—he in advertising, she a nursery school teacher— whose home was strikingly similar to that of newly married American couples...
...Therefore, says the Plan, we must be prepared to keep consumption from rising too fast—a classic problem in countries striving for industrialization...
...The Deccan is the triangular plateau fixed into the southern, peninsula section of India, which separates the Arabian Sea from the Bay of Bengal...
...The conservative elder who complains that the Indian student takes too much interest in "politics" is wrong...
...An American woman, in her sixties, on a flight to "visit friends" in Singapore, is describing her husband's wheat farm in Nebraska to my friend S., the bhoodan guide who is seeing me off...
...The man has become a self-centered farceur unable to discuss, at best able to amuse and mock...
...By the same token, the chairman of the Praja-Socialist Party, Asoka Mehta, a brilliant and forceful personality, embodies the best in Asiatic socialism...
...Summary and Farewell:* The Race: The Third Five-Year Plan, about to be implemented, is based on an assumed population of 431 million people by March, 1961.'x* There are many other assumptions in the Plan, not the least of which is a continuing high percentage of unconditional foreign aid, but this population outburst is fundamental...
...The sudden and shifting influences of the West are felt too strongly here...
...Before the second Five Year Plan (1955), India produced 1 million tons of finished steel, mainly at the Tata Iron and Steel Works, a single privately-owned plant in Jamshedpur, state of Bihar...
...Much of the learning is by rote, by mimeographed sheets of notes handed down from "generation to generation...
...landholders o priests), Nairs (wealthy and upper middle class), Ezhavas (one-fourth of the population, laborers, tenants, etc...
...The infrastructure has been strengthened, but must be completed not only materially (roads, transportation) , but culturally (basic education...
...But there is no question that he has held India together since independence, struggled to lay the foundations of a progressive, secular state, resisted bigotry and communalism, and served as the symbol of an all-India effort within a unified country...
...Hindus, for example, are separated into Brahmans...
...P. T. Chacko, the powerful minister for Home Affairs, Catholic, Congress leader and anti-Communist ideologue, expresses the need for basic "law and order" throughout the state, with the application of economic planning and massive capital import from without...
...Christian (24 per cent) and Moslem (20 per cent...
...I am reluctant to go, so enjoyable has the stay in Bombay been...
...the conflict between rival Indian trade unions anxious to organize large numbers of new and comparatively well-paid workers...
...This is hardly the leadership India needs...
...his arrogant and often petulant style is not to my liking and his frequent ambiguity and even hypocritical way of thought repel me...
...Classical Hindu music, theater, dance are pursued with intense passion throughout South India...
...Before flying out of Trivandrum to return to Madras, I visited the University of Kerala to meet the students...
...One of my first visits is with the Minister of State Industry who proudly displays on his desk an advance copy of the proposed third in the series of Five Year Plans, the plan which is to go into effect in 196I...
...Most of all, it must establish its own prosperity and stability...
...It had lost a third of its membership in the Lohia split, its spokesman and greatest figure, Jayaprakash Narayan, had withdrawn, and one of its best thinkers, Narendra Deva, had died...
...When one compares this to Communist China, with its superiority in basic natural resources, and the disputed rate of its development as well as the undisputed nature of its total state structure, why should the democrat, the socialist despair...
...the frame be comes smaller, more wiry...
...India, as Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph have pointed out,* has never had an organized reactionary movement...
...USA, 120 million...
...We have a long and candid discussion on the progress of India's economy as well as that of his state...
...Still, I must confess to some disappointment, for his approach to trade unionism in India seemed to me to indicate the general weakness of labor in a country whose industrial and economic growth ought to be turned to the profit of the unions...
...India today is a free and open society with a mixed economy leaning toward increased governmental leadership and control...
...As so frequently happens in a coalition government, the various political forces within it draw strength and supporters from one another rather than from the enemy they have united against...
...Subject: the future of Indian democracy...
...Ranging from the Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom to the coterie grouped around the dissident socialist Dr...
...A round of discussions, meetings, conferences, with glimpses of the city limited to quick taxi rides from one spot to another...
...the university is comparable to a small-town, mediocre college somewhere in America...
...Like most of the interminable Indian pictures, the story was based on incidents from some ancient legend, this from the life of one of the ancient Pallava kings...
...The Christian community is divided into Protestants, Catholics, Joacobites, Thomites, etc...
...Lohia laughingly dismissed the activities of all his former political comrades...
...Ralaii What crowded days and hours in Madras...
...G.G.P., I scurry about from meeting to meeting, person to person, school to school in a whirlwind of impressions...
...Never had the Bengali dreamed he would see his land divided in two, nor had he expected the day to come when 5 million of his fellows would be forced to flee and be shunted like nomads through different parts of India...
...There are numerous discussions with many individuals, socialists, people of long experience and background in the nationalist movement—in general, their political cultivation is broader and more objective than that of the Bengalis...
...It is twenty years since my last visit, yet the memory of this city is a vivid one...
...Kerala Under Communism, a report of the Democratic Research Service of Bombay, 1959, is an excellent source about Kerala as well as the best account of Communist rule from April 5, 1957 to July 31, 1959...
...He feels that "...much more could have been achieved than what has been by this (labor) movement so far...
...To inherit leadership of such a movement is no enviable task...
...The activities of his group are primarily protests against the many bureaucratic actions of the government, protests which take the form of courting arrest, jail and sentencing...
...Since his break with the Praja-Socialists (PSP), Lohia heads a comparatively small group of left-socialists who, in turn, carry on a permanent form of protest and passive resistance against the government...
...This represents an increase in population of 21 1/2 per cent in tenyears...
...Outlook: bright and optimistic, on her part...
...Today is a Hindu holiday, the attaining of the full moon, and many hundreds of thousands have come to the beaches for the sacred ocean dip...
...He unhooks the basket cover, takes up his flute, the reedy music starts...
...The continued industrial development of Calcutta, West Bengal and the sector leading southward toward Madras, may ultimately change the picture I have drawn...
...this is not the moment in Indian life for perpetual satyagraha...
...The 1957 electoral landslide in favor of the Communists Trivandrum itself, a university town combined with a state capital, is not particularly striking...
...Breakfast, Gujerati-style, in the pleasant company of Indian friends...
...This "pluralism" is more alive in India than anywhere I know...
...These people know how to carry on political actions...
...thoroughly immersed in the life of the city, its most complex financial and housing problems...
...meeting to decide its strategy in the independence struggle during the days of the London air blitz...
...Each year there are tens of millions more Indians...
...As I prepare to leave for Madras and the south of India it is still the center of news in the daily press...
...Today, outwardly, Calcutta is simply more crowded with refugees, its slum areas more unbelievable, its English people largely gone or in hiding, its wealthy class of Punjabis and Marwaris, now the heirs of the city's incredibly vulgar night spots, more puffed up and preposterous than before...
...This, of course, is an open issue within the socialist movement...
...It is the smallest of the Indian States (15,000 square miles, width varying from 5 to 75 miles, 360 miles in length from Mysore to Cape Comorin, with the fantastic population of 15 million—that is, 1015 people per square mile, the highest pressure of population on land in the world...
...A 40 per cent increase in agricultural production...
...own enthusiasm and nervous energy could keep me moving about each day from early morning late into the night amid the tremendous heat...
...He has combined socialist idealism and political nationalism into a finely woven texture...
...The natural vegetation and man-grown crops of Kerela are incredibly varied: in the higher elevations, tea, coffee and cardamom plantations: on the lower elevations, pepper, rubber, ginger, turmeric, banana and plantain groves, fields of rice and tapioca...
...This man became heir to his party at the lowest moment in its history...
...The main issue is what rate of development (pressure) can the econ * These are mere notes...
...My first accidental contact while I am looking for the PSP headquarters is, curiously enough, with an ardent young Tamil nationalist who explains to me he had once been a socialist but feels the "socialists" betrayed South India to the North...
...What have been these gains...
...The hartal is a popular protest strike of Bengalis in support of people from West Bengal who now live and work in the state of Assam, over toward the Burmese border...
...The curriculum is rigid, old-fashioned and formalistic...
...The plane heads out over the Bay of Bengal in the early morning, passing over threaded Chowringhee Road and pointing toward the endless beaches that line the bay...
...A 20 per cent increase in per capita income...
...The many days I am to spend in and about Madras are arranged by an exceptionally able young socialist woman leader...
...The monsoon has halted for the time being in New Delhi and my last days in India are to be spent in the burning heat of the sun-drenched plain on which the Indian capital has been built...
...Many of these people are idle, non-earning dependents who belong to a dozendifferent political parties...
...A little beyond and off the beach, the city is building a housing project out of stone and cement...
...They are displeased with their university, with its teachers and classes, with their own prospects...
...there are too many question marks built into it...
...Again and again, I am struck by the essentially democratic nature of life in India today, the widespread tolerance, the give-and-take of the multitude of conflicting groups and parties...
...a wise socialist doctor in Lucknow put it to me quite bluntly when he remarked, "Until we offer the villagers and city masses some other kind of life than that of endless work, until we can substitute entertainment and recreation in the form of community life, radio, education, theater etc...
...that is, tastelessly, without the normal joy of youth, and with much guilt...
...Such towns and areas face all the questions familiar in the modern industrial world: the conflict between the Indian Civil Service administering these vast modern projects and the technicians and specialists who build and run them...
...A good portion of them camp out on the sidewalks, live in and about the railway stations or in government godowns...
...the East India Company (1639) set up its famous Fort St...
...The average college teacher in India today is a shocking example of mediocrity, middle-browism and second-rateness...
...For one thing, it will become impossible to ignore the deterioration in relations between New Delhi and Calcutta...
...familiar echoes of New York life...
...Just as issues of democracy in India (secularism, national unity, language-based states Parliament State Assemblies Congress Party-366 seats out of 500 2,029 seats out of 3,190 Socialists (all)-20 seats 204 seats Communists-27 seats 170 seats Conservative Regional parties-37 seats 297 seats Independents-44 seats 409 seats Jan Sangh Hindu Party-4 seats 49 seats 169 etc...
...I spend many hours wandering around the city: Christian churches, Hindu temples of imposing beauty, rather terrifying...
...I am grateful to Narendranath Das for his acute summary of these problems, most of which date far back but to which have been added new problems arising out of the violent partition of Bengal...
...If Bengal, as is often said, is the Catalonia of India then Calcutta is its Barcelona...
...S. counters with a description of the average family farm in the Ganges basin, 2 to 4 acres, operated by arm, leg and back power, valued at under $1,000...
...But I doubt that the hundreds of thousands of newly-trained workers drawn into the new and complex industries India is building up so rapidly can be satisfactorily served by a trade union leadership that is dependent on the wishes of one or another party...
...does lead to the phenomenon of exaggerated promises to the workers, one group outbidding the other and creating tensions which are out of proportion to the economic realities...
...The general view is that Lohia, though a wellknown and popular figure, has isolated himself from the life of India...
...late afternoon and the city slowly came back to life...
...I have never counted myself among his admirers...
...Pillai, however, seemed to find no problem here, perhaps because his public role depends upon a continuation of a commonly accepted situation...
...Particularly impressive is the Party's spokesman in the city council...
...Ousting the Communists in an electoral alliance is one thing—desirable and fundamental—but the disease, rooted in a generalized poverty and unemployment, still remains...
...The thing to find out would be the effect that partition, that deep wound separating Bengal into West and East, India and Pakistan, has had upon its people...
...The coastal belt is covered with cocoanut plantations, while a variety of trees—areca, jack, mango, cashewnut, etc.—cover the plains...
...A long drive through the wet Maharashtra countryside to a lovely spot in the hills set aside for a Gandhi memorial laid out in Hindu and Buddhist designs...
...Within a few hours of arriving it was possible for me to track down old friends from New York, Paris and wartime days in London...
...We discuss my impression of Iocal party provincialness and lack of contact with the center, as well as the frequently low theoretical level shown by party members who have no clear notion of the public image (or images) their party casts...
...A man carrying a flute and a large woven basket has stopped in front of the house and is waiting for a signal to enter the gate...
...The number of villages on this dusty plateau is beyond measure, its dryness relieved occasionally by hilly areas and sparse forest lands...
...The old order, based upon a complex system of caste interrelationships, Hindu theology, philosophy and law and a set of fixed community values, has proved particularly effective at absorbing and synthesizing the new...
...See excellent discussion article, "New Outlook for Indian Trade Unionism," by Rohit Dave, Janata...
...he is more concerned that I accept his explanation that this is basically the fault of their professors and teachers...
...I can select no better illustration than my short visit to Dr...
...so the growth of the socialist party must go together with the growth of all democratically-oriented parties and institutions, including the Congress itself...
...the Nebraska lady despairingly demands...
...A fantastic mixture of the incredibly bad (posturing and declaiming at its worst) and the incredibly beautiful (Bharat natyam classic dancing, natural scenes shot against the stone pagodas, carvings and elephants of Mahabalipuram, the sacred temple area south of Madras...
...Yet I felt that behind all this stood a small-time labor boss with his "private" preserves, quite apart from the large stream of labor that now begins to gather...
...A sophisticated Bombay audience, robed in gorgeous saris, indifferently listening to intellectualized actors giving a sterile performance on a stage whose decor is superb...
...I learn later to evaluate this movement as a social protest of the poor of South India (above all, untouchable and lower caste people) against the wealthy and ruling Brahmanic elite...
...The number of possible entrants by relevant age group per year would be almost 10 million...
...To cross it in a slow-moving train, gazing out over the plateau during endless hours, is to be carried back into time's utmost recess...
...a short trip brings one into a different world...
...The people of Madras and all of South India are clearly different...
...He goes on to describe how the teacher classifies his students: "Out of 100, ten are good, twenty not bad and the remaining—pigs...
...its economy is lopsided...
...If he sells his basket he will earn a rupee that day...
...it existed, largely as a ginger group, but was uncertain about its right to exist...
...We fly above Cape Comorin, another "end of the world" spot, where three waters—the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal—merge...
...They fluctuate rapidly and workers tend to shift allegiance in accordance with their estimate of who is closest to the sources of power...
...Here, twenty years before, I had attended a session of the Congress top leadership...
...He has the reputation of being one of India's most skillful labor leaders...
...He rides along the line with us for many miles...
...On the way, a visit to a state cooperative dairy supplying most of Bombay's milk...
...Jh., an articulate woman who had passed her younger days in the nationalist movement...
...Within seconds a large crowd collects on the other side of the fence...
...I chose to take the train trip—one and a half day's timepassing through the heart of the Deccan...
...My one interview in the Indian press confined to subject of beatniks...
...the Communists, led by the present compromise national secretary of the Communist Party of India, Namboodiripad, who had been Prime Minister of Kerala, have retained their popular strength...
...The Planning Commission decided to set up three steel projects, now in varying degrees of construction and operation in the publicly-owned sector and with a production target of 6 million tons altogether.* At Bhilai, for instance, the steel township already has 100,000 people...
...The Party must soon prepare for municipal elections, prelude to and perhaps a test of the nationwide elections in early 1962...
...Out of every 100 students who graduate from primary and secondary schools, approximately one-third go to college, but hardly 4 reach the post-graduate level...
...Yet, there is another, more official, side to this and it ought to be indicated...
...Then came the endless round of invasions from central Asia, from the Near and Far East, and finally, from the West...
...After crossing over the Western Ghats which separate Kerala from Mysore, the terrain westward slopes gently down into widening valleys...
...While it is easy to overestimate its strength because of the extreme violence of its language, the DMK is symptomatic of the admitted failure to integrate the parts of India into a coherent nation...
...See page 169) This is the nation's supreme body, and the view of Asoka Mehta, chairman of the Praja-Socialists, that the Lok Sabha must continually assert itself as both the top repository of democratic power and the source of leadership in the country is borne out by what I hear...
...separatism, Dravidians are the victims of Delhi and northern economic imperialism, the Congress is run by northern Brahmans etc...
...Although it is a year since Communist rule was removed from the state, I come away with a sense of uneasiness...
...it is an authentic parliamentary democracy with a maximum of individual freedom...
...In the future it seems probable, however, that with the number of workers employed in industry rising rapidly, a different type of labor Ieader will come forward—one trained in the techniques of industrial relations, economic research, the skills of management and collective bargaining...
...The distribution of seats in the present Parliament and the State legislative assemblies illustrates this...
...Firmly and with no hesitation, they—and this includes the splendid woman who is chairman of the West Bengal party—excuse themselves and go off in a body to see if they can halt this pointless violence...
...It is no secret that democratic socialism in India was close to its end some five years ago...
...One would think this would touch deep cords in village India...
...The north's comparatively light skin becomes black...
...he is the eternal oppositionist...
...The reports from Assam are unclear, but sufficiently detailed to indicate that uncontrollable violence and mob hysteria are on the loose, a violence di rected by Assamese groups against the powerful linguistic minority of Bengalis in their state...
...For the time being, the triangular industrial area whose points are Calcutta to the east, Jamshedpur to the west and Visagapatnam to the south must remain in a state of chronic restlessness brought on by largescale industrialization...
...The activities of outside political leaders in the unions...
...Electricity generated by 200 per cent, railway freight-traffic by 80 per cent etc...
...The level, tone and rhythm of the debates are serious and impressive, except for the comparative inferiority of many of the Congress representatives, "party" men who rely entirely upon Nehru and his ministers.* • The Congress Party dominates the country's politics...
...A group of Indian Trotskyists, including a professor of sociology, who expounded familiar doctrine to an unsympathetic ear...
...They offer for sale baskets of small lemons, oranges and other fruits...
...the rents are too high and besides they feel their way of life is unsuitable for such fine dwellings...
...later, that day, he will catch a train going back the other way...
...Particularly in the south, where the traditional order is both oldest and most deeply rooted, is this diversity striking...
...Crowds of Indian journalists—clever, quick, alert but often superficial...
...If Nehru has become more difficult of access in recent years, more touchy to criticism, the response of the crowd to his presence still indicates that this man is India to them...
...Perhaps...
...It was striking to me that in our conversation, Pillai presented an elaborately rationalized explanation of developments in India with heady overtones of simplistic Marxist and Trotskyist doctrine...
...I left Kerala with the impression that no definitive settlements had been reached, that the future of the alliance was shaky and discordant (there was, for example, much criticism of the socialist Chief Minister voiced by his own party people) and that only economic measures involving large sums of money from the central government could bring results which would push Kerala into some kind of economic integration with the rest of India...
...Thus Antony Pillai and others whose political activities are founded upon the older working class populations, largely textile mill workers, may well be pushed aside by the forward thrust of industrialization with its new type of worker...
...THE UPSHOT OF MANY discussions with officials and political people is that Kerala still must go far before overcoming the effects of Communist rule...
...Mehta explains that first priority is party organization, so as to become the leading opposition in the country...
...These remarks are true, but they have little bearing on the quality of the university education received and they tend to ignore the many complaints one hears from Indian students everywhere...
...And I knew the controlling forces and passions of the war period were, of course, gone...
...In other words, barely 2 per cent of the total population of the relevant age group have the opportunity of university education and yet this proportion is itself high compared to many countries of the world...
...The trouble with this, of course, is that I would like to get to know these people more intimately than is possible and to talk...
...The whole set against the Bay of Bengal in front of which stretches the Marina, or oceanfront drive...
...The pursuit of "culture" will not yield it...
...The child's fascination is mirrored in a hundred faces who have quickly gathered around...
...There is a flow of humor and wit, always a good sign of a healthy parliamentary body, as socialists, Swatantrists and independents go about their task of questioning, needling ministers, probing...
...actually, I found the Indian student even more indifferent to political life than his American counterpart...
...there was an intensity and anger present in this meeting I noticed nowhere else...
...The PSP seemed haunted by its inability to find the proper relation to the Congress movement and to the nation as a whole...
...Twenty years ago Calcutta was militantly organized behind the ultranationalist leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose and his "Forward Bloc," its dissatisfactions centering largely around the failure of the Congress movement to move with sufficient rapidity toward independence...
...Russia, 60 million...
...Thus, 8 million out of 30 million in the state are both dissatisfied and unintegrated in its life...
...but then, neither have millions of others...
...Calcutta is an international, cosmopolitan city, jammed and packed with a multitude of people...
...As a result, separatist talk is quite common in Bengal and Calcutta...
...Lohia...
...Madras has a rhythm and pace all its own...
...the doubting Saint Thomas is supposed to have been martyred here...
...Monsoon weather has struck Kerala and many are idling about, classes over, with time on their hands...
...Why are all you Indians so spindly in the legs...
...Economically, partition meant that Pakistan took the agricultural "Green Belt" while West Bengal was left with industry and aridness...
...These demands will be fed further by increased population, the movement into the big, consumer-oriented cities and the general demand of people to live better...
...Strong inflationary pressures, rising consumers' goods price index, no lessening in unemployment and a tendency for seasonal and part-time employment to drop, poor control over the nation's price structure...
...But the fishermen—how familiar this story has become!—say they will not go...
...A $21 billion investment in the Indian economy to which the United States contribution is merely $I billion...
...it is not as easy to make the transition from Calcutta to Madras as, say, from New York to Chicago...
...But this city has its other, more cosmopolitan and sophisticated side...
...Bombay culture and art: a performance of Lorca's "Yerma," his play on the tragedy of a village woman's sterility...
...an experiment that almost proved fatall future coalitions between the Congress left and the socialists, starting on a local basis and perhaps leading eventually to a national coalition government, is rather a different question, tied to the country's future needs rather than a rearguard action against a partly discredited Communist movement...
...This will be the source of new investments, but also new consumption demands...
...He will pass many years doing this, as will others Primary education has yet to reach as much as a third of India's children...
...No less than 3 million Indians from other states have migrated to and earn their livelihood in West Bengal...
...I select at random from my notes on Bombay: • Detailed discussions with the Praja-Socialists of Bombay, one of the better organized branches of the PSP with strong roots in the city...
...Under the guidance of one of the most devoted and competent socialists I have ever met, Dr...
...And, writes Das, "at the top of all, Calcutta occupies the position of a giant sucking every ounce of the green juice from the rural hinterland...
...each invasion compressing these people and their culture deeper into the southern tip of the subcontinent...
...She reflects the disappointment of people of her generation with the "new youth," their apparent indifference to politics and ideals...
...Only if Calcutta and West Bengal were to succeed in straightening themselves out in relation to the rest of the India Union, to find their place and then set about making it secure, could this confusion come to an end...
...But, and here is evidence that Mehta is a man of political stature, the party's progress does not take place at the expense of the country's inner adhesion or even at the cost of other movements...
...Above all in the south there is a need for diversification of small and medium-scale industries, for the region is predominantly agricultural and below average in resources...
...Only uplifting the people and enlarging their cultural horizons will flatten out the curve...
...It is caused by the "language issue," a problem tormenting India's unity since independence...
...The city itself is dry, dusty, overpoweringly hot...
...His standing is clear...
...The Third Five-Year Plan—whose objective is to drive the Indian economy forward so that it henceforth generates its own fresh capital formation— is India's most ambitious program to date...
...I find him a man of fine intelligence, broadminded and, above all, hopeful for his country's future...
...Bombay—Early August: Bombay means "Americanization," people with problems of leisure time, vacation time, boredom time, money in ample amounts, juvenile delinquency coexisting with cocktail parties that flout the city's prohibition laws, India's only practicing psychoanalysts, art, theater, culture, rounds of movies (the latest) from abroad...
...At one time, these people, Dravidians, controlled the entire subcontinent and the South Indian nationalists have never forgotten this...
...Calcutta is very much alive...
...Bombay means wretched housing conditions, gigantic slums to which flock relatives and their relatives from every possible corner of India, and numberless thousands who call their small stretch of sidewalk home...
...Alert and active, articulate in both Hindi and English, Nehru is present for most of the sessions, answering questions, participating in the debates, well-briefed and energetic...
...Also Overstreet and Windmiller's Communism in India (University of California Press, 1959) contains much information of value.•• Kerala's 15 million people are grouped into three main communities: Hindu (56 per cent...
...Indian "themes" and motifs in decoration and design seem to have been introduced from without in these homes...
...I travel with Indians eager to talk about their country but who prefer to describe its present and future, concealing their interest in the past...
...to enter it is to enter a world quite apart from the northern regions of India...
...In India itself I found the magnetic pull of China to have completely lost its power except for a diehard group of Communist intellectuals...
...there must be some example of calm in this explosive city...
...to them far beyond the time allowed...
...granted the continuation of democratic forms in India and the absence of international war, the future of the PSP looks bright...
...Even in the south only a few minor groups propose to return to the rule of the Brahmans...
...a variety of sweets and stuffed candies...
...I spoke to students in many cities who confirmed this rather bleak picture...
...Half a mile wide, about ten miles long, totally mechanized, valued at about $300,000...
...Gandhi whom I was to meet later...
...In a state where politics is a pastime (over 30 daily newspapers), suffering from density of population and widespread unemployment, and with a highly literate population, it is not surprising to learn there has always been an intense fragmentation of social and political life...
...search for sensational copy...
...M. R. Masani, general secretary and organizing spirit of the new conservative Swatantra Party...
...At one end of the vast and almost deserted beach are the huts of a village of Tamil fishermen, men who go far out into the bay in their catarmans...
...Calcutta is a city where political ideas are always discussed with a good deal of heat...
...oriented labor leader, skilled in organizing the spontaneous strike, in militancy, in the fly-by-night kind of union...
...I am about to see that most simple and fascinating of theaters— the snake charmer...
...and other lower or scheduled caste groups, including tribes...
...The last sight of Calcutta is of a city somewhat ragged around the edges but fixed in its setting, there, permanent...
...Among my hasty notes taken during the days in Madras I find references to visits to other state ministers, each occupied with a particular task, to a private school for young children run by the Punjabi com munity and directed by an extraordinarily calm and tranquil lady (songs, garlands and the delight of talking to alert young children), a meeting of rather well-placed and well-off Madrasi citizens...
...Calcutta is the home of Indian terrorist nationalism, its people quick and volatile, forever dissatisfied and demanding...
...New Delhi—August: I am to leave by plane that night for New Delhi and the final week of my visit...
...How shall the race between food production and mouths that consume be run without faltering...
Vol. 8 • April 1961 • No. 2
