The Tea-Fed Tiger
(See Cover)
From the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, from tropical Madras to the freezing Himalayas, election fever was rising last week in India. Government printing presses rolled around the clock turning out ballots for 210 million eligible voters (all citizens over 21). About 125 million of them--more than the populations of England, France, Canada and Australia--are expected to go to the polls this month in the biggest free election in the world. Voting in most states will last a week beginning Feb. 18; returns from six snowbound constituencies in the north will not be in until April. Voters will use rubber stamps to make a cross after the candidate of their choice; for the benefit of illiterates, each candidate's party symbol has been marked on the ballot along with his name.
All over the subcontinent, candidates for the 494 seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) and 2,930 seats in 13 state assemblies were on the stump. Groups of Communist Party workers gathered in Calcutta streets to act out skits on such issues as high prices, high rents and poor public transportation. A candidate in the Punjab campaigned from his jail cell; he was accused of trying to assassinate his opponent. In the Himalayan constituency of Ranikhet, a Congress Party aspirant promised to deal with his district's most urgent problem--a tiger that has so far devoured 20 people.
No matter how remote Himalayan tigers or even Calcutta Communists, Americans have an important stake in this outsize election. During the past 15 years, the U.S. has funneled $2.4 billion in aid into India. Though its interpretation of neutralism is often irritating to the West, India is the world's most populous (438 million) democracy, and could be a major force for freedom in Asia. Or it could merely be a confused and drifting giant, at the mercy of its fiercely aggressive Communist neighbor.
Nowhere are the issues more fervently debated than in the constituency of North Bombay, where a splenetic and tireless politician is campaigning hard to retain his parliamentary seat. His name is plastered on thousands of opposition posters slapped on tree trunks, buildings and boulders all over North Bombay. The posters show two red bayonets stabbing down from Red China into India; the words are less a slogan than an accusation: "Menon represents China, not India."
The Toy Car. Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon, Defense Minister in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's Cabinet, has always inspired bitter antagonism from opponents both in and out of India. Abusive, rude and overbearing, Menon, 64, is a Western-educated intellectual who despises the West, a passionate foe of old-time colonialism who consistently dismisses or ignores the new-style Communist imperialism. Nehru values Menon highly as a friend, confidant and traveling apostle. He admires his provocative intelligence, uses him as a shock absorber to take attacks that might otherwise be directed at him or his government. "Menon is like a toy car," says a rival. "Nehru sets its pace by winding it and watching it go around. Whenever the car comes to an obstacle, Nehru removes the obstacle from its path and rewinds it."
This time Nehru cannot just rewind his toy to get him past his election battle. As Defense Minister, Menon bears a large part of the responsibility for Red China's successful incursions along India's northern frontier--the hottest issue in the campaign. He also stands for the doctrinaire left-wing socialism that has come increasingly under attack by conservatives.
Beyond India's foreign and economic policy, a more subtle question is raised by the election: Can a strong opposition take root and flourish in India?
Dhoti Democracy. For 77 years, the Congress Party has been the most influential Indian political organization, today controls 373 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the years of the British raj, Congress kindled the fires of independence, gathered under its banners peasants, landowners, untouchables, maharajahs, Communists, capitalists, liberals and reactionaries. Only the massive national appeal of Mahatma Gandhi and the united determination to oust Britain from India kept the catchall party together. But the Congress became so ingrained in the Indian consciousness that the party did not fall apart after independence came in 1947. The various elements that made it up stuck together to reap the rewards of political power. "Not a few of them cashed in heavily on freedom," says Indian Editor Frank Moraes. "For them independence has meant patriotism, plus 20%."
Most of the older Congressmen* ritualistically wear the diaperlike dhoti and white Gandhi cap to identify themselves with the dead hero. The party has a few first-rate men, but Congress politicians generally are unsophisticated, unlearned and uninspiring nonentities. After 15 years of Congress rule, the party is shot through with corruption, inefficiency and favoritism. The major problems that existed at the time of Gandhi's death are still to be solved. India's economy is a schizophrenic mixture of state and private enterprise. Religious fanaticism and factionalism remain strong, despite earnest efforts to overcome them. Poverty and illiteracy afflict the vast majority of the people, and the birth rate spirals upward at the rate of approximately 10 million new mouths to feed each year.
Despite massive discontent, the Congress Party has never really had a goad in the Lok Sabha. Disgruntled elements within Congress are loath to leave the sheltering paternalism of the party, which benevolently permits them the fruits of patronage and influence peddling. The only coherent opposition has been the Communist Party, whose influence is greater than its 30 seats in Parliament suggest. Nowadays the Communists generally support the Congress Party's left-wing candidates, including Menon, oppose only the right-wingers. Nehru has occasionally swatted the Communists for "having their thoughts outside India," but is less hard on them than on any other opposition party.
This year, a new non-Communist opposition is playing a significant part in the elections. Its chances of upsetting the government are nil, but a strong showing would stir up Congress policies and present alternatives for the future.
sb THE PRAJA SOCIALIST PARTY, with 18 seats in the Lok Sabha, represents the non-Communist left and is the political home for most of India's intellectuals. It has provided most of the debating muscle against the government in Parliament, but Congress has lifted most of the P.S.P.'s ideas, sharply reducing its influence.
sb THE JANA SANGH PARTY commands only four seats in the Lok Sabha. but has a growing strength based on its virulent anti-Moslem, antiminority appeal. Jana Sangh's Hindu reactionaries would restrict the rights of Moslems, Christians and untouchables ; they would forbid cow slaughter all over India. Jana Sangh is confident that it can win many Congress voters away from their party. "Scratch a Congressman and you find a Jan Sanghi," says a party leader. But the party is strongly opposed by many Hindus who disapprove of its fanaticism.
sb THE SWATANTRA (Freedom) PARTY is the most important opposition movement in the campaign, even though it was founded only three years ago, has never been tested at the polls, and has only ten members in the Lok Sabha--all rebels and outcasts from other parties. Swatantra is vigorously conservative, opposes Nehru's idea of a planned society. Nehru has slashingly attacked it as the main ideological challenge to the kind of India he wants to build. Nehru called the Swatantra leaders "fascist." says: "Nobody knows which century they live in--the 15th or the 16th."
The Permit Raj. Nehru's fury partly stems from the fact that the Swatantra leader, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, India's most prestigious elder statesman, attacks Nehru personally. "C.R.," also nicknamed "Rajaji," has stung Nehru by calling the Congress reign "corrupt and dishonest . . . worse than the rule of the Mogul emperor," has accused him of leading India to statism and Communism. A bowed and frail Madras Brahman whom Gandhi once called "keeper of my conscience," C.R. was a leader in the Congress freedom fight against the British, was the only Indian ever to serve as India's Governor General. A leader of the Congress right wing, he quit the party in 1959 when it passed a resolution in favor of cooperative farming. At 84, though mentally alert, Rajaji is not running for election, guides his party from the sidelines.
India's leftists accuse Swatantra of be ing "feudal'' and "socially backward" because it is supported by a clutch of princes and princesses, most notable of whom is the beauteous Maharani of Jaipur, who is Swatantra Party boss in Rajasthan (TIME, Nov. 10). Ignored is the fact that there are more princes and zamindars (feudal landlords) in Congress than in the Swatantra. Despite the cry that Swatantra is the "millionaires' party," C.R. has been generally unsuccessful in attracting financial support from India's richest corporations. Right-wing businessmen instead contribute generously to Congress, for obvious reasons: they depend on the government for the permits and licenses without which their businesses cannot function or expand. One industrialist, J.R.D. Tata, head of the huge Tata iron and steel combine, has had the courage to give one-third of his campaign contribution to the Swatantra, the rest to Congress. Says Party Leader Rajagopalachari of the license system he detests: "We got rid of the British raj. Now we have a permit raj."
"Go to Hell." All five major parties are involved in Krishna Menon's re-election fight in North Bombay. In an unlikely coalition, the Swatantra, Jana Sangh, and Praja Socialist parties are backing Jiwatram Bhagwandas Kripalani, 74, a lean, acerbic former Congress Party president who fell out with Nehru, formed the Praja Socialists in 1951, is now an independent. To combat this alliance, Bombay's Communist Party has put its organization at the disposal of Congress Candidate Menon: Menon's defeat--or even a narrow victory--would be the most dramatic repudiation of Nehru's aggressive socialism and left-leaning neutralism since India's independence. A smashing Menon victory would seriously dishearten Indian conservatives and measurably strengthen the pro-Communist left.
The campaign has been hot. In an attack on Menon, Kripalani said: "I charge him with wasting the money of a poor starving nation. I charge him with the neglect of the defense of the country against the aggression of Communist China. I charge him with having lent his support to totalitarian regimes against the will of the people." Kripalani supporters have circulated a pamphlet titled "Krishna Menon--Danger to India" that calls Menon a "crypto-Communist."
Kripalani scoffs at Menon's and Nehru's pretensions about India's vital role in advancing world peace. An old Gandhian, Kripalani declares that the Mahatma was wary of Menon and suspicious of his influence on Nehru. Says Kripalani: "Menon's defeat will change the course of Nehru's Cabinet and en courage the best men in it to make a stand against Jawaharlal."
With his personal prestige at stake, Nehru has campaigned vigorously for Menon. When local Congress leaders in North Bombay tried to dump Menon as a candidate, Nehru personally had the revolt squashed. Shortly thereafter, 26 Bombay Youth Congress workers resigned from the party, protesting that because of Menon's "pro-Communism, the future of the country is not safe." Nehru was infuriated, shouted in a speech before 200,000 people in North Bombay that the youth workers could "go to hell."
What enrages the West and many Indians about Menon is the way he toadies to the Communist bloc in his capacity as India's chief U.N. delegate. Menon roasted Britain and France about Suez, dismissed Russian oppression in Hungary as "probably an exaggeration." He is a consistent advocate of Red China's admission to the U.N. Nikita Khrushchev's demand for an uninspected nuclear test ban gets Menon's wholehearted approval. Asked what would happen if Russia then went ahead and resumed testing as it did last fall, Menon shrugs: "There is no alternative except to live and let live."
Menon tirelessly preaches "self-determination," but the question of a plebiscite for the Moslem Indian province of Kashmir, which is also claimed by Pakistan, brings forth a torrent of words about India's historic rights.* He has a remarkable explanation of why the Russian satellites are not colonies: "A colony by definition is a territory which is not a member of the U.N.," he says. "You can't call the satellites colonies, because they were all admitted to the U.N. by a unanimous vote. There may be oppression there, there may be any vice you can think of, but that is not colonialism."
The Boy Scout. Menon's mind is a weird, eclectic mixture, containing more of Marx than of Gandhi, more of the Bloomsbury agnostic than the Hindu,/- more 19th century radicalism than 20th century reality, all held together by arrogance. His feelings toward colonialism can be traced partly to his birthplace, the town of Calicut on the Malabar coast (now the state of Kerala). "I was born where Vasco da Gama made the first landing by a European in India," Menon says. But he is reluctant to talk about his youth. "I have no past, have no journals or diaries. When I die, I want to leave nothing behind." Son of a lawyer, he was sent at the age of 15 to the theosophical institute in Madras run by Mrs. Annie Besant, the eccentric Englishwoman who was an early agitator for Indian home rule, a prominent member of the theosophy movement** and in 1917 president of the Congress Party. Theosophy did not appeal to young Menon. Says he: "This world has too many problems to think of the other world's."
He became a leader of the Indian boy scout movement, in 1924 went to England for six months as secretary to one of Mrs. Besant's assistants. He stayed for 28 years. Says Menon: "I survived England somehow or other." He studied under Socialist Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, was later admitted to the bar. But Menon found his real calling when he joined the India League, an unofficial propaganda organization aimed at converting the British to Indian home rule.
As secretary of the league, Menon gave soapbox speeches, got sympathetic left-wing intellectuals like Laski, Bertrand Russell and Stafford Cripps to preach the gospel of Indian independence. Menon lived in a dreary bed-sitter in Camden Town in London's working-class borough of St. Pancras, eked out a living by writing occasional legal briefs, often lacked enough money for a meal. He became involved in Labor Party politics, served as a member of the St. Pancras borough council, where he is still remembered as "the best library chairman we ever had." For his work, he became one of the two men ever given freedom of the borough. The other: George Bernard Shaw.
Menon was close to Communist front groups but never joined the party. Says a friend today: "The Communists thought that they were using Menon. Krishna thought he was using them." He had a falling out with the Labor Party over his Red flirtations, resigned in 1941 when the Laborites voted not to press for Indian independence until after the war. "They weren't bad people." he says, with an inflection that makes them sound worse than idiots and not quite so bad as lepers. "Just moderates."
The 40-Year War. Menon's success with the India League had brought him into contact with Nehru, when he visited England during the '30s. Nehru had little in common with the stodgy, parochial Congressmen in India, found in Menon an intellectual equal who shared his passion for world affairs. Together they toured the trenches of the Spanish Civil War, "watched the bombs fall nightly from the air." After India gained independence in 1947, the new Prime Minister named his friend High Commissioner to Great Britain.
From then on, Menon took orders from no one else, even feuded with Nehru's powerful sister, Mme. Pandit, onetime Indian Ambassador to Russia, the U.S., and the U.N. On a visit to London, she was told by High Commissioner Menon: "You will not give interviews to the press unless I or one of my staff is present. I am ambassador here, not you." Mme. Pandit protested to her brother about Menon's arrogance, but to no avail. "Krishna can be both charming and irritating," she says. "But it's about three-fourths of one and one-fourth the other."
A malevolent-looking, tea-colored bachelor, Menon has carried on what a Western diplomat has called "a 40-year war with the rest of the world." He tends to see intrigue and conspiracy whenever he is opposed, questions the honesty of almost everyone with whom he comes in contact, calls India's press "those rags." Once at the U.N., he threw his papers down on the floor in a rage; when an aide stooped to pick them up, he kicked him in the backside because he did not do it fast enough. One journalist at the U.N. gets so exercised at the mere sight of Menon that he must leave the room whenever Menon comes in. While he feels persecuted, he also manages to believe that he is greatly liked, has told interviewers: "I suppose you wonder why Krishna Menon is so popular."
He covets publicity; he once fainted dead away during a U.N. debate, inquired immediately after reviving: "Where's the A.P. correspondent?" Menon speaks no Hindi, campaigns in English. "It is a political disadvantage," he admits, but feels that Gandhi traditions carried on by other politicians are just "good merchandise. I don't need it myself."
Goa's Liberator. He is widely hated by fellow members of the Congress Party, who feel that he has no political base apart from Nehru's friendship. Says one observer: "That wretched fellow won't last a year in government after Nehru's death." But Menon may in fact be winning some popularity. His role in "liberating" Goa won him near adulation among the masses, and he assiduously cultivates the movie stars of North Bombay's film colony for their publicity value in enhancing his own prestige. In the Defense Ministry he has made enemies by arbitrary promotions and by his manner--once he was overheard screaming into a phone, "Don't be stupid. Admiral !" --but he has also won favor with the military by boosting pay, improving living quarters, modernizing weapons. When a Gurkha regiment left to join the U.N. force in the Congo, Menon was at the airport to shake the hand of every man. "Don't squeeze too hard," whispered an officer to the tough little Gurkhas.
Menon is a vegetarian, touches neither tobacco nor liquor, survives on biscuits and up to 20 cups of tea a day--"flavored," says one longtime foe, "with malice." He is frail, has a racking cough, last fall was operated on for a brain clot. He affects a cane. "You can walk with Menon and wonder if he will be able to keep moving," says a colleague. "But if you and Menon are racing to catch a bus, it won't be Krishna who misses it."
In the political race, however, Menon and the Congress Party may be missing the bus on the major issues confronting India: Red China's aggression and economic progress.
The China Issue. Although the Communist Chinese have seized 14,000 sq. mi. of Indian territory, Menon and Nehru have consistently downgraded the incursions as "misbehavior" or a "momentary aberration," called the area occupied by the Chinese "barren mountaintops where not a blade of grass grows.'' Nehru and Menon hoped to appease the Chinese by not protesting the frontier violations. Menon failed to object to Red China's brutal conquest of Tibet, refused to vote in favor of a Tibetan resolution in the U.N. condemning the Chinese action. "What is the purpose of a U.N. debate?" asks Menon. "It does not help the Tibetans at all."
India's appeasement only encouraged the Chinese to go further. China is plainly working to put India into the jaws of a giant Himalayan nutcracker. Recently China concluded a road-building treaty with Nepal, is offering economic aid to the Himalayan kingdoms of Sikkim and Bhutan. The significance of the Chinese pincers movement finally occurred even to Menon. "A stab in the back," he com plained last month. "When did you realize this?" gibed Election Rival J. B. Kripalani in Parliament. "The day before yesterday?" But Menon still urged caution against "adventurism," said that the Chinese Communists should withdraw from Indian territory "in the interests of peace and socialism."
Menon claims with some justice that India could not win a war with Red China, though it is a curious stance for a vain Defense Minister. But Menon's critics counter that defending Indian territory against further Red conquests need not lead to war. Trouble is that Menon has neglected to build up India's border defenses. While he and Nehru refuse to give details to Parliament, on the ground that such information would be useful to the Chinese, one fact is clear: north India's population centers are far closer to the frontier than Red China's big cities, but the Chinese have built more roads to the Himalayan passes than the Indians. Most frontier areas can be reached from the Indian side only by muleback or helicopter. India's defensive position would be far better if it were to make common cause with Pakistan, but Menon sneers at the suggestion. Because Pakistan is allied with the West, he argues, Indian-Pakistani cooperation "would plunge us right in the middle of the cold war." Partly because of Menon's attitude, the Pakistanis have lately begun talking about a deal with Red China.
The Economic Issue. Menon has no direct responsibility for India's economy, but his political opponents in the campaign point out accurately that his ideas strongly influence Nehru. They are both old-school, doctrinaire socialists of the 1930s variety, and both insist, against considerable evidence, that all the world is inevitably turning to socialism. They refuse to recognize that all the older socialist parties of the free world have abandoned the rigid formulas since World War II, and that the greatest progress has been achieved (in Germany, Western Europe, Japan) by relatively free enterprise. Of that progress Menon says scornfully, "The last word has not been said," suggesting that collapse is just around the corner. Both Nehru and Menon regard Indian private enterprise as some thing of a monster that must be kept in check. Certainly the older Indian capitalists are often rapacious, but Nehru and Menon are overlooking a younger breed with progressive ideas that is drawn to the Swatantra.
Under tight planning, the Indian economy has indeed made progress. Since 1951 two successive five-year plans have pumped $24 billion into the economy. Industrial production nearly doubled, farm production rose by one-third, national income fattened by more than 42%. The life span of the average Indian was stretched by five years (to 42), and 100,000 new homes were built. As the number of universities leaped from 27 to 46, enrollment rose from 360,000 to 900,000. Production of electric power jumped from 2,300,000 to 5,700,000 kilowatts. India has entered the bicycle age, says Nehru, and he predicts that it will be quicker and easier to progress from the bicycle to the automobile than it was to get from the bullock cart to the bicycle.
The 89 Desks. Swatantra critics are not so sure. The government-run industries are running poorly. Most of the plants in the public sector operate far below capacity and show a pitiful return on capital. Reason: bumbling management. Top personnel is drawn from the ranks of civil service bureaucrats. Although elaborate measures have been taken to promote autonomy, most plant managers still consider themselves responsible to Cabinet ministries and Parliament, will let an entire plant grind to a halt rather than make a sensible emergency expenditure. One factory requested two stop watches to improve efficiency. The request went through 89 different desks, by which time the watch had gone out of stock and watch prices had doubled; the plant still does not have the watches.
Hampered though it is by the "permit raj," the private sector accounts for 90% of India's G.N.P. and has been tabbed for 40% of the costs of the third five-year plan. Nevertheless, Nehru hopes to put heavy and basic industry in the public sector, and redistribute India's wealth among the people. Able Finance Minister Moraji Desai, warns that such socialism only tends to "redistribute poverty." Nehru has also advocated government-controlled cooperative farms to improve agricultural productivity, but the program has run into trouble from the conservative Indian peasant, who is relatively serene about his poverty and thinks that land reform is immoral if it involves taking away another man's property.
Priests & Prostitutes. Despite its vacillating foreign policy, despite its anachronistic socialism, despite the dizzying variety of India's languages, races and religions, the Congress Party cannot lose the election. In this land of holy men and agitators, of corner prophets and half-educated clerks, of beauty, mysticism, filth and poverty, of a thousand gods and languages, the Congress Party does represent, if not a national consensus, at least an operating system. Like the Hindu religion, the party has no heresies; almost anyone can find a home in it. Beyond this, the party has a genuine national hero in Nehru and a Tammany-style political organization that extends into every village. On election day. party workers can turn out every kind of voter from temple priests to prostitutes in Bombay's red-light district.
Best chances for the opposition is in the state assemblies (see map). In Rajasthan, the Swatantra and Jana Sangh could topple the Congress leadership, and in West Bengal a leftist front could overthrow Congress. In the Punjab a Sikh separate language party threatens Congress for control of the Assembly. In Mysore, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, Congress may lose some seats. In Parliament its victory is beyond question, though the opposition parties may win as many as 200 of the 494 seats.
Even though Congress will win, the election will still have considerable effect on national attitudes. The Congress Party's very amorphousness makes its members highly susceptible to the pressure of any opposition. If the Hindu-first Jana Sangh does well, it will influence conservative Hindu Congressmen. If the Swatantra scores or Menon does poorly, it will infuriate Nehru and immeasurably strengthen the conservative element within his own Cabinet. But if the rest of the opposition falters, the Communists by default could widen their power. Says the Swatantra's Rajagopalachari: "Whether we win or not, making the attempt to really oppose is worthwhile."
Like a great submissive bullock, India has plodded patiently in whichever direction Jawaharlal Nehru has driven it. It has not yet shown in which direction it would like to go itself. Whether it is ready to do so is the real issue of the election.
* Meaning members of the Congress Party, not to be confused with Members of Parliament.
* At the time of independence, the Hindu Maharajah of Kashmir opted to go to India rather than Pakistan, even though the province was 76% Moslem. His action precipitated a bloody war between Hindus and Moslems. Nehru first promised the state a plebiscite, then reneged. The two countries now maintain a troubled peace along a U.N.-drawn cease-fire line in the divided province. Nehru has three times ignored U.N. resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir.
/- Menon belongs to the Nair subcaste of the Sudra caste, lowest of the four main Hindu castes (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra). According to Hindu tradition, the Brahmans sprang from the head of the deity, the Sudras from the feet.
** A mystical melange of occultism, universal brotherhood, pantheism, including a Hindu-style belief in reincarnation. Mrs. Besant held that in an earlier existence she was King of north and south India.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.