The Legatees

On U.S. Independence Day, Britain's Prime Minister Clement Attlee presented to the House of Commons an Indian independence bill. It was, said the bespectacled, scholarly Earl of Listowel, last Secretary of State for India, a "nice, neat, tidy little bill." The bill was certainly neater than the mess Indians will try to clear up before the British leave on August 15.

Last week the Indians were tussling with the complexities brought by the partition of India. They agreed on one major problem: partition of the Indian Army. In the first stage it will be split on the basis of religious communities, with Moslem-majority units going into the Pakistan forces, non-Moslem majority units into the Indian Army. Next April, each soldier will be allowed to transfer to the army of the state where his religion is predominant.

In effect, two new armies will be built up from scratch. Last week the British-owned Calcutta Statesman lamented: "Within nine months, therefore, unless plans have meanwhile to be altered under pressure of events, the best army in Asia (with the possible exception of that which Russia keeps in Siberia) will, we reckon, be reduced to about a sixth of its present military value--perhaps less."

Typewriters & Inkpots. Meanwhile, Moslems and Hindus were wrangling over their shares of the inheritance from the British Raj. Fifty committees set up to divide the Government's assets proceeded along 50 different lines. The Moslem League wanted one-fourth of India's assets, but was not willing to pay one-fourth of the $6 billion national debt. Railway rolling stock will probably remain on that side of the border where it stands on independence day. (The Moslem League accused the Hindu-controlled Government of switching brand-new American locomotives from Pakistan areas to Delhi, substituting old, burnt-out engines.) The 40,000 staff members of New Delhi's vast imperial Secretariat were busy last week counting typewriters and almirahs (cabinets), carpets and inkpots. Typists worked four hours a day overtime copying files, so that each of the two new Governments would have a set. Moslems and Hindus accused each other of stealing files that both wanted.

Hindus accused the Minister of Communications, Moslem Leaguer Abdur Rab Nishtar, of carting off to Karachi (temporary capital of Pakistan) every piece of telephone and telegraph equipment he could lay hands on. Calcutta's Hindu press said that Bengal's Prime Minister Huseyn Shabad Suhrawardy, a Moslem, was stripping western Bengal (which will be part of Hindu India) of food, clothing, machinery and hospital equipment.

Moslems claimed for Pakistan the famed Moslem-built Taj Mahal at Agra, deep in Hindu India, only 100 miles from New Delhi. Extremist Hindus retaliated by claiming the river Indus (deep in Pakistan), on the ground that the sacred Hindu Vedas had been written on its banks some 25 centuries ago.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.