Bhai Bhai in India

Starvation, squalor, teeming restlessness and ill-concealed resentment haunt the alleys and byways of refugee-swollen Calcutta, India's biggest (pop. circa 7,000,000) and most turbulent city. There last week, in greater numbers than ever, hysterically cheering Indians turned out to greet the touring missionaries of Muscovite good will, bulletheaded Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev and his straight man, Soviet Premier Bulganin. Streets along the line of entry were scrubbed and decorated with triumphal arches; the city's swarming sacred cows had been driven into back alleys, and red flags fluttered on every side.

For hours before the Russians arrived, a crowd estimated at more than 2,000,000 jammed the center of the city. Only a comparative handful were within viewing distance when at last Khrushchev, Bulganin and their host, West Bengal Chief Minister Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, showed up in an open Mercedes-Benz. At the intersection of two of Calcutta's big streets, the Russians waved their straw hats, and Khrushchev cried out in their own language: "Hindi Russi bhai bhai!" (Indians, Russians, brothers, brothers!). Instantly the crowd burst forward, shattering police lines and bamboo barricades to swarm over the car. Some clutched Bulganin's coat. Others seized Khrushchev's hands and arms. As the Indians piled their weight upon the Mercedes, it broke down. With police aid, the visitors pulled themselves clear of the clustering crowd and fought their way to a nearby police van. Behind them, the happy mob pulled the Mercedes apart. Safe at last from their frantic fans, the Russians sped on in the paddywagon to reach an official reception at Government House one hour late.

Genial Generalities. The reception in Calcutta provided the final crashing chord to a barnstorming tour which had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of any campaigning vote-seeker. But while Moscow's good-will ambassadors swelled with complacency at the air of universal approval surrounding them, their Indian hosts had begun to entertain some sober second thoughts. Bursting with genial, jocular generalities all along the line of march, the fun-loving Red Rover Boys had progressively proved more and more forgetful of the fact that Nehru's India still hugs a determined neutralism close to its heart. In one breath they decried the West's preoccupation with H-bombs; in another, they boasted loudly of their own recent experiments with the same weapons--never pausing to reflect that to Indians, all hydrogen is deplorable in fissionable form. They cheerfully compared Gandhi to Lenin, which takes some doing. Khrushchev also, fantastically, proclaimed: "The English, French and Americans started the Second World War and sent new troops against our country--the troops of Hitlerite Germany."

This was going too far. Among those severely pained were the British, who as former rulers of India and Burma were Khrushchev's chief target. Many an indignant Briton demanded that his country cancel its invitation for Bulganin and Khrushchev to visit Britain in the spring, and cartoonists had a field day anticipating the event. In Calcutta itself, Premier Nehru felt constrained to remind his guests: "Twenty centuries ago Asoka told us that a person who extols his own faith and decries another's injures his own faith. We try to be friendly with all countries. We refrain from criticizing, even when we disagree." As if to prove that the Khrushchev-Bulganin politicking had not been all in vain, however, Pandit Nehru added musingly: "It is strange, though, that while one bloc is speaking of peace, another is thinking in terms of war and military alliances."

Misgivings. The Russian visit, said the Times of India, "carries its own warning to us. There is danger not only of the Indian message being distorted in global eyes but of our own people being carried away on a tidal wave of mistaken exuberance. By all means let us return courtesy for courtesy, but not to the point of letting the guest edge the host out of his own mansion. When our Parliament is converted into a pulpit from which guests attack countries with whom we have no basic quarrel, it is time to be more than slightly wary."

Did Jawaharlal Nehru share these misgivings? Those Americans who are his partisans, such as ex-Ambassador Chester Bowles, make much of the argument that, for all his annoying idiosyncrasies, Nehru is engaged in a great trial of systems with Communist China: both struggling to raise the living standards of a vast, poor and untutored people; both required to make bold use of large-scale planning, but Nehru alone handicapped because, as a democrat, he has elected to deny himself the power of coercion. If this is the case, Nehru's position requires him ever to point the contrast, constantly to show his 360 million people that his way is different and has no need for vast slave camps. Instead, Nehru had invited the Kremlin bosses to India, declared public holidays for them, and decreed the biggest welcome any visitor to India ever got. He gave them platforms to spread their deception, and sponsored their attacks on all that free nations stand for.

It may take years to undo the mischief.

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