Mr. Singh Goes to Washington

Even the one-man lobby was startled by his success. J. J. (for Jag jit) Singh, president of the India League of America, got through Congress an amendment which will permit famine-stricken India (pop. 389,000,000) to share in the largesse of the United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Administration. He had finally put through something that India's timid official delegate had not even dared to bring up at UNRRA's Atlantic City assemblage.

J. J. Singh, 46, is a 6-ft, handsome Sikh from Kashmir, a confirmed bachelor, and a British subject. He came to the U.S. in 1926 to operate India's concession at Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Exposition. He ended up too broke for passage home, stayed on, is now a successful, fluent New York importer.

He had never lobbied before. He knew few Congressmen. When he got to Washington, he discovered that the House Foreign Affairs Committee had already closed its hearings. But swarthy Jagjit Singh went to work. He organized no letter campaign, deluged no Congressmen with telegrams, threw no Scotch-&-soda parties in a plush hotel room. Instead he padded up & down corridors of the Congressional office building, calling on members. He found them sympathetic, but unwilling to buck the U.S. State Department, the British Empire and UNRRA. He argued: India was chipping in $35 million to UNRRA, while millions of its own were starving. How could UNRRA move into India to feed the 750,000 Burmese refugees there, but not feed the hungry Indians alongside? Finally Republican Karl Mundt of South Dakota offered a last-minute amendment to the UNRRA bill: "Any area important to the military operations of the United Nations which is stricken by famine or disease may be included in the benefits." It breezed through. Then Singh moved over to the Senate.

Minor Statesman Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, gave him shrewd advice. No one had objected to the amendment, so why stir up a fuss? Singh sat back, watched the UNRRA bill -with the Mundt amendment wrapped in--sail through the Senate.

Singh well knew that his amendment was only a "declaration of intent," from but one of the 44 nations in UNRRA. But he also knew that the U.S. was the biggest spender in UNRRA. And U.S. officials might choose not to ignore the will of the U.S. taxpayer.

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