Indian Stresses

By GEOFFREY CARNALL

ASOUTH INDIAN friend of mine, a devout Christian, has three pen-and-ink portraits standing on a shelf in his room. He drew them himself. The one in the middle is con- siderably larger than the other two, which arc of Gandhi and Nehru. The central drawing is a portrait of the late Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in the military uniform befitting the leader of the Indian National Army.

Netaji, as he is usually called, is a far more popular figure in India than is realised in Britain. When I first came to Calcutta, I was surprised to see how many portraits of Netaji there were in advertisements, on shop-signs and on calendars. His face was as hard to avoid as Gandhiji's. At street corners one can buy gaudy pictures of the gods and the god-like. If the number of pictures of Netaji is anything to go by, he is as much an object of devotion. as Krishna and Kali. This is Bengal, of course, and there is a provincial pride in Netaji's being a Bengali. But that does not account for my pious South Indian friend, nor for the many admirers of the Indian National Army whom I have met, for example, in the Punjab.

This army was formed from Indian troops captured after the fall of Singapore, and to the English public it was just another tool of the Axis Powers, and Netaji just another Quisling. Most Indians, however, would insist that the I.N.A. was as much an army of liberation as de Gaulle's Free French forces. It must be admitted that a very. strong case can be made for saying that the Japanese would have favoured a greater degree of independence for India than Mr. Churchill would have done. It is the view of many Indians that Netaji, sickened by the compromises and faint-hearted- ness of the Congress, sought the aid of the enemies of Britain to destroy her power in India utterly and for ever. As one admirer has written, " The hero of many a non-violent battle in India, who had calmly suffered physical violence, donned the military uniform to speak to the Anglo-Americans in the only language they under- stand, the language of guns and cannon."

The claims made for the I.N.A. are often pitched too high. Its subordination to the needs of Japanese strategy is minimised or forgotten. And in the hang-over which has followed the first fine intoxication of Independence the exploits of Nctaji have acquired delusively exaggerated glory. It is avother Napoleonic legend. Netaji is crescent. Gandhi's influence wanes. While personal devotion to Gandhi's memory is as strong as ever, in India today the idea of non-violence has lost its earlier supremacy. This is not so great a change as might be supposed. Most people, perhaps, supported Gandhi's methods because non-violence was the only weapon the Indian people could effectively use. Netaji himself claimed that the vioknt methods of the I.N.A. supplemented and completed the non-violent struggle against the British inside India. One hardly expected, Other, that when India achieved independence her Govei'nment would disband the army, sink the navy and ground

the air force. There was Pakistan on the border, too, and the trouble in Kashmir.

None the less, a change there has been, and it is a change which has unhappy possibilities. Some degree of disillusionment always follows political achievements. Hitler's overthrow inaugurated ne brave new world, and to nationalise an industry does not in itself bring industrial democracy ; hence much disillusionment in Britain. India, too, has found that its problems were not solved by the departure of the British. And the brunt of disillbsionment has been

borne by the Congress Party, who stepped into the place of the British administration in 1947. The ideal of non-violence, being

intimately associated with Congress, shares to some extent in its discredit. At any rate, the Netaji legend, with its glorification of violent methods, is being invoked to oppose the Government.

The opposition is discordant. It agrees, however, on the need for ending " Congress misrule " and for leaving the British Common- wealth. The charge of misrule is justified in some measure. The new Ministries have been tied to the methods of the old regime, and have made the mistakes of inexperience as well. Less pardonable,

there has been a good deal of corruption. What is questionable is

whether any of the opposition groups would be able to do better. The criticisms made in papers like the Calcutta Nation often have an irresponsibility that Lord Beaverbrook would envy. (" Exports Increase While Country Goes Naked " is a headline reminiscent of the sillier moments of the critics of Sir Stafford Cripps's " austerity.") The Nation is run by Netaji's brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, who is trying to manoeuvre himself into the position of leader of the opposi- tion to Congress, and is making full use of the Nctaji legend to achieve his ambition.

Other opposition groups may not be so stirred by Netaji's memory, but reject non-violence. The R.S.S. (Rashtriya Sevak Sangh, or National Service Organisation) specifically renounces Gandhiji's teaching, and seeks to build a militantly Hindu-dominated State. The Cianmunists are in no way non-violent, while among the Socialists (perhaps the most promising opposition party) there is no great addiction to ahimsa. Congress, on the other hand, still clings in an official sort of way to the idea that non-violence is a good thing, and the Government has given the World Pacifist Meeting, which takes place in India next winter, a recognition unthinkable from any other Government in the woOd. At the same time, however, one must remember that nearly half the revenue in the last financial year went on military expenditure. Colleges and schools are being asked to start military training corps. A territorial army recruiting- drive will take place in the autumn. Non-violence, in fact, is generally felt to be as irrelevant as the Gandhian rejection of large- scale industry.

The contraction of Gandhi's influence is matched by a widespread disappointment at India's remaining in the Commonwe*h. That the British Prime Minister is Attlee and not Churchill does not out- weigh consciousness that the Commonwealth is British, and therefore undesirable. Indeed to one school of thought the British Labour

Party are merely imperialists with a shrewder sense of diplomacy than the Conservatives. All the opposition parties agree in attacking the Congress Government on the Commonwealth decision, and since to leave the Commonwealth would involve no effort, moral or other- wise, there is little reason to suppose that India's membership would survive the departure of the present Government. To the extent that the new Commonwealth is an effort to transform the unhappy relations of Europe and Asia in the past (and potentially, at least, it is), India's departure would be a backward step. Add an assertive nationalism coupled with a romantic militarism. and the prospect becomes decidedly disagreeable. It would be a sad decline from the hope of a new kind of social order, undominated and undominating, respectful in its treatment of man and beast, and in the use of the gifts of the earth, which it is still not beyond the power of India to show to an unbalanced and war-stricken world.

It is not easy to measure these trends, however. My work in India has mainly been among students and other young people, and my perspective doubtless needs correction by that of people who know the older generation better. It should be borne in mind that

Congress is said to have the countryside behind it, although the Communists are strong in Bengal and in parts of the south. One who, like myself, knows only the troubled provinces of Bengal and the East Punjab may well exaggerate opposition strength. The posi- tion is different in the more stable United Provinces, where, for example, there is a Gandhian experiment being made in village self- government. Still, the difficulties of Bengal are in a sense the difficulties of India at a greater intensity. An over-populated countryside, working people living in miserable conditions, an im- poverished and unsettled middle-class, and a resentful army of refugees from East Pakistan—all these are rich fuel for an explosion of aggressive nationalism. But if the present Government makes a success of constructive projects like the Damodar Valley Authority, if it can do something to increase food-production and to settle the problems of its hundreds of thousands of refugees and can root out abuses in the adminstration, then the present danger may be avoided. Time is the decisive factor, that and the will to learn from experience.