Anti-Vivisection

Hindu holy men were alarmed. Holy India was going to be divided. Worse, the Indian Government had taken steps to break down untouchability and other extreme outgrowths of Hinduism. So, from all over India, the holy men trudged to Delhi, set up camp along the bank of the Jumna River. There the sadhus huddled around holy fires and chanted appeals to the Universal Force "to save earth's children from destruction." In groups they picketed the Parliamentary Rotunda (where the Constituent Assembly was meeting), Cabinet ministers' homes, the Government Secretariat. They shouted slogans: "Absolute Good unto All," "Cow Slaughter Must Be Banned," "Woe unto Evil."

They also cried the chief demand in their five-point program for a revival of Hindu orthodoxy: "Stop the vivisection of India."

Agreement to Disunite. Far away from the Jumna's banks, in the quiet atmosphere of London's No. 10 Downing St., a Briton who had striven desperately to save Mother India from vivisection reluctantly prepared the operating table. Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, laid before the full British Cabinet his plan for handing over British power to Indians. The knotty question was, what power to which Indians? Every Indian leader except Mohandas Gandhi had agreed that they could not unite, but could not agree how to disunite.

"Dickie" Mountbatten was for a quick showdown. India's leaders would meet in Delhi June 2. Mountbatten would give them one more chance to accept or reject, once & for all, Britain's 1946 plan for India--a loose federation of states. If they rejected it (and Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the Moslem leader, almost certainly would), then Mountbatten would suggest an alternative. Under it, each province could decide for itself whether 1) to join Hindustan, 2) to join Pakistan, 3) to set itself up as an independent nation.

In both the Punjab and Bengal, provincial assemblymen from each side of tentative dividing lines would meet separately to pick an electoral college which would register its choice. Punjab Sikhs would be split if the Punjab split. In the North-West Frontier Province, where the Congress Party controls the Government but 93% of the population is Moslem, a popular referendum would be held. The likely choice: Pakistan. Bengal, with its rich industrial nucleus of Calcutta, might choose to stand apart as a separate nation, part Moslem, part Hindu.

Who Gets the Army? Not one British Cabinet member liked this melancholy geometry. Even if it had to be accepted, the British hoped there would be one strong mold to bind the pieces--the Indian Army (present strength: 400,000, with 9,000 Indian officers, 4,000 British officers). The Hindus (56%), Moslems (34%), Sikhs and Christians in its ranks have worked together with minimum friction. In recent communal riots local police proved ineffective, while the Army's Hindu and Moslem troops obeyed orders, often succeeded in checking disturbances. But a purely Moslem army could not be expected to protect Hindu minorities in Pakistan, nor a Hindu army to protect Moslems in Hindustan. That did not bother Jinnah. Last week he pontificated: "All the armed forces must be divided. . . ."

Typically, Jinnah wanted to eat the cake of Moslem separatism, and have the cake of Hindu manpower. Pakistan, said his mouthpiece Dawn, should have all troops now stationed in the northern and eastern commands (most of the troops, including Hindus and Sikhs, are in those areas). Even a division along communal lines, which Jinnah might consistently have asked for, would wreck the Army at a crucial time when Britons are pulling out, leaving many half-trained reserves in lower echelons, a drastic shortage of officers at the top.

If the Indian Army could be broken into two efficient parts, the main mission of each would be to watch the other. This cancellation would leave India defenseless, invite the evolution of Pakistan and Hindustan into Stalinistan.

A Martyr's Grave. By week's end, the 600 sadhus who had gathered on the Jumna's banks had a martyr,* if not a program for India. Swami Krishnanandji, like many another holy picketer, had been taken to jail. The police took away his trishool (5-ft. wooden staff with three points, known as the "stick of righteousness"), without which no sadhu can take food. So Krishnanandji went on a hunger strike. The police released him, but too late. He trudged wearily back to the sadhu camp. The next day, while a score of fellow ascetics chanted prayers and slogans ("Victory unto the Lord who alone destroys all Evil"), Krishnanandji quietly died. His friends dug a grave, 6 ft. deep, in the sandy banks of the Jumna. There, in a sitting position, banked on all sides with cakes of salt, Krishnanandji was buried.

Thereafter the police were reluctant to jail the holy men. Instead they piled demonstrators into a van (although many holy men had vowed always to walk and never to ride on wheels), drove them 20 or 30 miles out into the country. Some wondered if even a Jinnah would show the single-minded stubbornness of the sadhus; many of them plodded back to Delhi through the blistering heat (113DEG), chanting "Good understanding among all living beings."

*They also had an unofficial pressagent. No sadhu, Nandlal Sharma, like pressagents the world over, stated his case in soaring sentences. "I am proud that I can trace my dynasty back a thousand years," he said, "even back to the Creator. That is because of the chastity of our women. The ground has always been pure and the seed has been good. We believe Hinduism has existed for so many thousands of years because of the purity of our blood. The world today is threatened with imminent destruction, mainly because of the unchastity of women all over the world. . . ."

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