East Meets West

AMERICAN UNITY AND ASIA--Pearl S. Buck--John Day ($1). GLIMPSES OF WORLD HISTORY -- Jawaharlal Nehru--John Day ($4).

The big problem for the world of tomorrow is the necessity for the changing mind of the West to understand the changing mind of the East. Both these books, in different ways, contribute to such an understanding. Pearl Buck stresses some of the difficulties in understanding the Asiatic mind. India's National Congress Leader Jawaharlal Nehru exhibits a little of that mind itself.

The desperate need for Asiatic cooperation with the West in this war is Author Buck's No. 1 thesis. Her thesis No. 2: until the American Negro and other racial minorities in the U.S. are granted economic equality and some measure of social equality, there will be no fullhearted cooperation with the United Nations from India (certainly), from China (probably).

The Japanese, says Author Buck, are broadcasting to Asia the doctrine that "there is no basis for hope that colored peoples [Chinese and Indians as well as Negroes] can expect any justice from the people who rule in the United States. 'Look at America,' Japan is saying to millions of listening ears, 'Will white Americans give you equality?' For once, Japanese propaganda is more than propaganda. Lies can be laughed off, but truth is a sober thing. Who can blame our colored allies if they doubt our intentions for true democracy for them?"

Nor does Author Buck believe that settlement of this issue can be postponed until after the war. "It is idle," she writes, "to say tint the crisis between white and colored is two steps off and let us attend first to defense and the present war. Crisis is close, inextricably mingled with this war, because the war against Naziism carries race equality or inequality as one of its main issues."

Mrs. Buck says that Great Britain cannot take the lead in bringing Asiatics closer to the West, because Britons are thoroughly disliked in India. The U.S. might take the lead, she thinks, if the U.S. could solve the Negro problem.

Some other points underscored by Author Buck:

> "The truth is that India cannot go on with the old order, and we had better accept what is a fact, whether we know it or not."

> "Today China is democratic to the bone and to the heart. The freedom of their own country is the first Chinese war aim. But after the Axis is defeated, they will still have freedom in their country--no political and economic or military outposts, if you please, belonging to other countries."

>-"The deep patience of the colored peoples is at an end. Everywhere among them there is the same resolve for freedom and equality that white Americans and British have, but it is a grimmer resolve, for it includes the determination to be rid of white rule and exploitation and white race prejudice, and nothing will weaken this will."

Pandit ("Learned Brahman") Jawaharlal Nehru is a revolutionist, orator, humanitarian, philosopher, amateur swimmer. His book is 1) an extraordinary feat of intellectual gymnastics--most of it was written in torrid (112DEG) Indian prisons, where Author Nehru has spent about eight years for anti-British political activity; 2) a highly readable history of the world, with special emphasis on that part of it about which most Westerners know least--Asia.

The book, written in the form of letters to Nehru's young daughter, Indira, is sometimes sententious, sometimes ostentatiously simplified, occasionally inaccurate--because it was written in jails with no libraries and, says Nehru, because "during my brief period out of prison I have not had the time" to have a "competent historian" revise the manuscript. It is also strongly leftist.

Author Nehru has five heroes, and they tell more about Nehru's mind than he tells about them. What they tell is peculiarly relevant because Nehru is a great Asiatic contemporary, must be reckoned with in the future history of India. The heroes:

Ashoka (beloved of the gods) made India into a united nation in the 3rd Century B.C. He was "the only military monarch on record who abandoned warfare after victory." He also popularized Buddhist vegetarianism. After consolidating all India except the southernmost tip, Ashoka remorsefully swore off war, and ruled "for thirty-eight years, trying his utmost to promote peacefully the public good. He was always ready for public business 'at all times and at all places, whether I am dining or in the ladies' apartments, in my bedroom or in my closet, in my carriage or in my palace gardens.' "

Shankaracharya, religious reformer and young genius of the 9th Century A.D., "traveled all over India ... as a conqueror of the mind and in argument."

Akbar, a contemporary of Shakespeare, ruled as a Moslem-invader emperor, was India's first Great Mogul. "He was very autocratic, and had uncontrolled power," which he used to consolidate the nation. "In a sense he might be considered to be the father of Indian nationalism." In addition, he had other remarkable traits --among them "his boundless curiosity and his search for truth. He seems to have been convinced that truth was no monopoly of any religion or sect, and he proclaimed that his avowed principle was one of universal toleration in religion."

Lenin. "A master mind and a genius in revolution," a "lump of ice covering a blazing fire within."

Gandhi is still one of Nehru's heroes, even though he has split with him on tactics and methods.

Like his heroes, Nehru is an intellectual far ahead of the mass of his people, and not quite like them. For though the emphasis in Glimpses of World History is Asiatic, Old Harrovian Nehru is himself an imperfect amalgam of East and West.

When in jail, Nehru finds that "spinning on the charka (spinning wheel) and weaving niwar" (cotton webbing) "are delightfully soothing." Yet on the death of his father he does not quote the Vedas, but Edgar Allan Poe: "Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor even unto death utterly, save by the weakness of his feeble will."

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