Red, Green & White

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

To recall the populations of India* and of Great Britain/- is to wonder how much longer the meek colossus will bear the proud pygmy's yoke. As yet the sole, authentic voice articulating India's slumbrous discontent is that of the Indian National Congress. Last week its delegates met, 5000 strong, in the huge, sprawling, unlovely city of Madras, on India's southeast coast.

Came folk representing each Indian caste, rank, race and sect, nearly all clad in symbolical, white homespun robes. Standard bearers unfurled everywhere the national banner: red, green & white, with a spinning wheel in the center. If only all Indians would follow these banners, if only each would spin at home what cloth he needs, if only Indians would buy nothing from Great Britain, then "the nation of shopkeepers" (England) would be choked by its own surplus-- at least so believes the Indian National Congress.

To Anglo-Saxons a spinning wheel seems a queer sort of sword. Queerer still seem the great Indian combatants. They talk not of howitzers nor of horse power but rather of how to evoke from teeming millions a cumulative "soul thrust" which shall rock the world. One and all they defer to the Mahatma: "the Great Soul": Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Last week Mahatma Gandhi received general homage as he squatted upon his usual dais, naked except for his habitual skimpy loin cloth, emaciated from much fasting and prayer, and wearing as his sole adornment a cheap nickel-plated watch suspended by a cord from his scrawny neck.

Around the Mahatma a "soul thrust" proceeded to generate itself. As he spoke--in precise English or soaring Hindustani--the Congress beheld a vision, grasped at a vast surmise. His were the grand, the eternal themes: 1) Union transcending caste, race, creed; 2) PASSIVE RESISTANCE, the sword which shall slay the mightiest in the end; 3) SPINNING WHEELS, more and yet more of them, more and yet more of all for which they stand.

Since the Mahatma now leaves active political leadership to others, remaining their spiritual leader, he was not, as he has been, the President of the Congress. That role fell to a Mohammedan, potent Hakim Ajmal Khan. Under his chairmanship the delegates discussed in wrathful mood the appointment of the British Statutory Commission (TIME, Dec. 26) which will shortly go out to India to study and recommend practicable means of extending to Indians greater political freedom. Because not one single Indian will sit on this Commission, the 5000 delegates at Madras declared by unanimous resolution, last week, that all Indians must boycott it. General discussion then began and promised to continue for some weeks.

What the Secretary of State for India thinks of the Indian National Congress was shrewdly guessed at by the Indian journal Bengalee, last week, when it reproached Secretary Lord Birkenhead with having "a contempt for all Indians, which, though silent, is intense and real."

* 318,940,000

/- 42,920,000