Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR INDIAN ELECTIONS Robert Stern's impressions of pre-election India ("'India Prepares to Vote," NL, January 2) are an interesting reflection of the view commcn to the official American...
...It would appear that Stern is either unaware of or has chosen to ignore a major source which casts substantial doubt on the validity of this conclusion...
...But as loyal Americans they hasten to reassure us that such a denou-ment need not be fatal to our geo-political strategy...
...The IIPO polls indicate that the Congress faces a minium loss of 50 seats and a maximum loss of 90 in the Lok Sabha...
...One can argue this without misusing the word genocide, and I think it will strengthen the argument...
...I most vigorously support Hans Morgenthau in his stand that criticism must flow freely...
...Imposed by Prime Minister Nehru at the time of the Chinese conflict, and maintained through the border war with Pakistan, the Emergency continues to be used by the Congress government to suspend the constitutional rights of Indian citizens even a year after the signing of the Tashkent accords...
...On the basis of the Congress' performance in the three general elections since independence...
...Genocide, according to history and the dictionary, is the choice of a people for extermination and the planned extermination of that people...
...This was Hitler's choice and plan, and the victims were deliberately put to death in gas chambers...
...The clear Swatantra commitment to an expanded role for private initiative in India's economy, to more substantive guarantees of individual rights and freedoms and to a Western oriented foreign policy...
...January 2) is cf the kind that has some truth on both sides...
...This multiplier varies directly with the number of contestants in a constituency...
...This overlooks the fact that although the rural constituency consists of many hundreds of villages, it tends to assume the character of an urban constituency: Political direction is generated in the towns and small cities, where the political workers of the opposition are as numerous as those of the Congress and generally more militant and voluble...
...It cannot be denied that the Congress losses in the February election will result in a measure of instability and that the electoral alliances among the opposition are as yet purely temporary...
...Freedom House and Vietnam...
...It would appear that the anti-Morgenthau elements in China are loath to follow the pro-Morgenthau Mao-Lin policy of expanding the external sphere of influence at the risk of a general war with the U.S...
...Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao are struggling to extend their internal sphere of influence and are finding the going rough...
...Since that end eludes him...
...Walter Lippmann...
...editors of the New York Times and others are unrelenting in their purpose to render their earlier prophecies of doom self-fulfilling...
...Professor Morgenthau seems to have an emotional and intellectual investment in our defeat in Vietnam...
...On the basis of data released so far by the director of the IIPO, the Congress will probably lose its majority in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa, almost certainly in Kerala, and possibly in West Bengal and Gujarat...
...Hans Morgenthau furnishes an excellent example of what I mean in his response to the Freedom House ad on the subject of genocide...
...Electoral alliances have been formed so far in the five crucially important states of the Hindi speaking belt, and the Congress faces the prospect of losing these state legislatures altogether or finding itself in the uncomfortable position of governing with a minority...
...and its allies (Russia...
...They propose within ear-shot of Hanoi and the Vietcong that if and when negotiations come, the Vietcong must be included in the government of South Vietnam even if that will insure the subordination of that nation (and its people and resources) to the control of the Laodang (Communist) party of Vietnam...
...Additionally, voter absenteeism tends to be in inverse proportion to the size of the constituency, which reduces the functional rural strength of the Congress...
...tf not synonymous with, the operation of an open, truly democratic polity...
...they can be dominated while perpendicular...
...The house is being enlarged to 520 seats and the Congress will control between 270-313, a majority which might have looked attractive to Harold...
...First, they do insist upon internationally supervised mercy for the South Vietnamese anti-Communists...
...hence electoral alliances can adversely affect the strongest party...
...Brooklyn, N.Y...
...His tacitly accepting the myth of Congress' indestructible rural base is a case in point...
...The survey is still underway, but from its findings to date a clear trend emerges, indicating the possibility of major opposition gains in a number of India's most populous states and at the Center...
...A simple example is the Congress' control of 73 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on the basis of only 45 per cent of the popular vote in the last election????a multiplier of 1.6...
...The likelihood of Congress upsets has also been increased by the internecine strife over the allocation of seats that has resulted in the departure of such party stalwarts as Krishna Menon, Humayun Kabir and Hare-krushna Mahtab, and the formation of parallel organizations by Congress dissidents in the key states of West Bengal, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Kerala...
...It is one of the things that make the war unbearable and that should make us work to end it...
...or the Socialist's advocacy of an augmented public sector and such Great Society ideals as a guaranteed minimum wage, free education through the university level and medicare????all these are neither as nebulous nor as hazily idealistic as Stern would have us believe...
...Consider that he was not long ago warning that our Vietnam policy would draw China and the USSR closer in alliance against the U.S...
...Since October 26, 1962, The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Ithaca, X.Y...
...Morgenthau's endowment of the Indonesian Communist party with a "wave of the Chinese future" quality????as well as Ben Bella...
...On the other hand, often as I have listened to critics of the war...
...Stern has been equally uncritical in his acceptance of the notion that the Congress alcne among India's parties possesses a viable political platform...
...While the Congress has led India through the delicate stages of infancy by providing stability and strong leadership, it has not been without a price in terms of basic democratic institutions...
...I have had great difficulty swallowing some of the unwarranted accusations made...
...If the balloting results in the emergence of a truly functional Parliamentary opposition, it could lead to the development ol the fundamental requisite of a genuinely democratic state—freedom of choice among real political alternatives...
...Stein seems to have fallen prey to a number of popular misconceptions about the operation of political dynamics of India...
...Nkrumah and Guevara...
...Has it...
...It is difficult for us to accept Stern's overly generous view of the fruits of Congress rule...
...For the first time, a nationwide Gallup-style pre-election analysis has been undertaken by the Indian Institute of Public Opinion (an autonomous, government-supported organization), providing in-depth polling in representative constituencies throughout India...
...The Indian scene, however, characterized by a number of contestants for each seat, presents a much more complex problem to the political pollster...
...But the dialogue in our democracy is not ended or nearing an end in this envenomed and fundamental cleavage between a relatively small yet celebrated sector of public opinion and the majority...
...DEAR EDITOR INDIAN ELECTIONS Robert Stern's impressions of pre-election India ("'India Prepares to Vote," NL, January 2) are an interesting reflection of the view commcn to the official American in India and the peripatetic American academic...
...Stern foresees that its losses will be "small in spite of the high hopes of its opponents...
...Secondly, they foresee a unified "Titoist" Vietnam joining with other threatened nations to pursue a goal which unites almost all Americans????the "containment of China...
...John Stl ajo Black ion ShrH-K\N1 S-\mbr\Nl MORGENTHAU The controversy over the Freedom House advertisement ('Freedom...
...The killing of civilians in Vietnam is horrendous, but still it is not genocide...
...The import of the election, however, transcends these immediate shortcomings...
...To use the same word to describe the unwanted but inevitable killing of civilians in a guerilla war, is to obliterate the meanins of words and to make communication difficult...
...Stern, however, is correct in suggesting that in all probability such opposition coalitions would be hard put to form stable, unified state governments...
...Susan Bodan Professor Morgenthau's intellectually lazy prescription for our Southeast Asia involvement is essentially that hoary concept in foreign relations????spheres of influence...
...his frustration is compounded...
...The American voter, used to two-party system, assumes a roughly one-to-one correspondence between the percentages of a party's popular vote and its position in the legislature...
...Consider, too, that Premier Ky and his government were scorched as tyrannical and short-lived????only to preside over the disintegration of the Buddhist-extremist revolt and the significant September 1965 elections for a constitutional assembly...
...India has been in a State of Emergency...
...My feeling is that more support would accrue to our antiwar cause if exponents weighted their arguments with reasoning based on whatever facts are known as facts, and threw off the ballast of over-heated, over-stated, propagandist ic matter...
...And so we begin with the "spheres of influence" to de-contain China, and end by surrendering South Vietnam to "Titoist" Communism to re-contain China...
...Morgenthau...
...In effect, the strongest party is the beneficiary of what statisticians refer to as the "multiplier...
...New York City Murray Baron...
...Recognizing the inevitability of the Congress party's "dominant position in Indian politics," he sterns to accept the notion that stability engendered, by one-party rule Is equivalent to...
...Wilson last year but which will mean considerable loss of face to the once invincible Congress...
...In cne breath he derided the "domino theory" cf contiguous nations succumbing to Chinese domination (if we are defeated), and in the next fulminated for acceptance of a Red Chinese sphere of influence over the dominoes????which needn't fall at all...
...But in one exquisitely ironic sense Morgenthau's sphere of influence does appertain to the plight of the Chinese Reds...
...The fourth general election may well be a landmark in the history of democratic India...
...At the Center, the Congress is in no danger of losing its majority, although it is threatened with a serious loss of strength and thereby the prospect of having to pay more than minimal attention to the opposition characteristic of Indian Parliamentary democracy in the past...
...He argues that "the village headman can be depended upon to turn over the vote for the Congress party...
...To the extent that the policies of opposition groups appear indistinguishable from those of the Congress, this can be attributed to Congress often borrowing the clothing cf its opponents to go to the polls...
...And again, in those far off pre-October 1965 days...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 2
