Ex-Peking
A remarkable document has just appeared on My desk, I am not sure where from. Rather lavishly produced and carefully laid out, it is called 'The Myth of Afro-Asia (The Indian View)' and is made up of a series of quotations from Indian editorials which explore the con- cept of Afro-Asianism. It must clearly have been timed for the Algiers conference. It bears no more sign of origin than 'Pakistan Publications' and gives a box number in Karachi. Indian sources in London tell me that this is an official publishing house of the Pakistani government, Pakistani sources admit that the house does some govern- ment work. As to its purpose there can be no doubt: this is the thorough discrediting of all Indian policy. The technique is no less than 100 per cent distortion. In fact, the booklet seems to me to include some of the most sensible com- ments on Afro-Asianism I have read. Thus for instance Mr. Frank Moraes, Chief Editor of the Indian Express: What are the links which bind Asia and Africa? 1 can discover only two—the common feeling of a political bondage shared by both, and second, colour. By over-stressing Afro-Asianism, India is creating more cleavages than cohesion and intensifying racial divisiveness.
(Mr. Moraes has recently been arguing that India's security rests on strengthening her links with the Soviet Union.)
At the end is a series of anti-Indian accusations including the following: that India has built up a war machine of over one million men, that she is covertly producing nuclear weapons, that she has brought the cold war into the sub-continent and is a threat to world peace. The'publishing house may be in Karachi, official or not, but the voice is that of Peking. If it is also the voice of the Paki- stani government, we might expect her to say so openly—otherwise immediately to deny it.
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