Untouchable's Warning

All done up in Gandhi cap and grey cotton waistcoat, his legs wrapped spider-like in white churidhars, India's Jawaharlal Nehru expounded his foreign policy last week before the Upper House of Parliament. "If coexistence is not possible," said he, "then the only alternative is co-destruction." The U.S. proposal for a Southeast Asia Treaty (SEATO) was "likely to change the whole trend towards peace that the Geneva Conference has created . . . Probably in America the crisis of our time is supposed to be Communism v. antiCommunism. The crisis in Asia is colonialism v. anti-colonialism . . . Was the tragic history of 7 1/2 years of war in Indo-China not due to an attempt to prolong the colonial era?" It was the old familiar Nehru line; his supporters had heard it before, and the public galleries were almost empty.

Then up rose a heavy-jawed, aging (61) and ailing man to answer the voice of India. Speaking badly but bluntly, "weaving no elegant web of words," Columbia-trained Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, nominal leader of India's 60 million Untouchables, challenged the man he once served as Minister of Law. "Nobody wants war," said Ambedkar, "but peace is being purchased at the price of partitioning countries. By this kind of peace, you are feeding the giant every time he opens his jaw. This giant may one day turn to us and say, T have now consumed everything . . . You are the only person who remains and now I want to consume you.'

"By allowing the Chinese to take possession of Lhasa [the capital of Tibet], the Prime Minister has practically helped them bring their border down to the Indian border . . . Aggression might well be committed by people who are always in the habit of committing aggression.

"The Prime Minister always says, 'Asia for the Asiatics,' [but] more than half of Asia is Communist . . . There can be no unity. Therefore it is better for us to align ourselves with what we call the free nations if we believe in freedom."

He accused Nehru of having a "certain hostility" to the U.S. and a "repugnance" to U.S. proposals.

Next day Nehru spoke a little more moderately: "I have no desire . . . to moralize to anybody. I am deeply conscious of our own failings." But the Nehru line, restated by his alter ego in foreign affairs, Krishna Menon, was unchanged. SEATO is "the modern version of a protectorate," said Menon, dreamed up by imperialistic "outsiders" who were trying to dictate to the peoples of Asia.

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