INDIA AGAIN
By SIR JOHN THORNE
THE delights of a cold-weather visit to India can be exaggerated. To pass from the damp discomfort of England at the end of December to the cool sunshine of Delhi and the warm sunshine of South India : to breathe again, if only for a day or two, " the sweet, half-English Nilgiri air " ; to eat and drink without thought for the morrow's rations ; to be free for a while from menial and manual tasks—all these are pleasant enough, though even in February the winds of Delhi can bite when they come from the snow lying on the Simla hills. But India is no longer a place where the mind can take a holiday. Millions of refugees are still homeless in the two Dominions. Stories of the atrocities committed at the height of the troubles in North India sicken the heart ; one discovers hatred of the communal enemy still bitter even among one's most amiable friends. Within the Dominion of India there is not enough grain at the disposal of the Governments to ensure to everyone even a few ounces of food a day ; industrial production, and collaboration in every major task, go lamely ; the administration of the several Governments is enfeebled. In Pakistan enormous tasks have to be faced without adequate man-power or equipment ; the building of a new order out of chaos seems to be almost beyond human capacity. And over both Dominions hangs the heavy cloud on which is written "Kashmir."
Yet the life of Hind has survived many cataclysms. Thirty-five years ago, at my first contact with the civilisation of South India, I was tempted to regard it as petrified and effete ; with further know- ledge I learnt to admire the vitality of the peoples and their power of adaptation to new stresses, material and spiritual. This is no time to vaunt the virtues of the British Raj ; to many Britons, and many Indians too, it seems in fact that we have withdrawn it in such a manner as to risk the annulment of its achievements ; but it is impos- sible to meet old friends, or new acquaintances, in New Delhi and is.arachi without feeling that, while our withdrawal may have shaken the very structure of the country, we have left behind not only a fund of goodwill but also a new spirit of independent endeavour in each Dominion.
Over the controversies that have arisen between the two Dominions some of my Hindu friends have complained to me that the news reaching England has been biased in favour of Pakistan. I think the bias, if any, is apt to be the other way. Many of us get our detailed information of Indian affairs from India News, which is issued weekly by the High Commissioner for India in London, and which naturally stresses. India's case in every dispute with Pakistan ; and the corre- spondents in India of British newspapers mostly live in Delhi and pick up most of their news there.
The main internal problems of "India " at the moment are food and industry. As to the former, it has seemed to me that the working people—not refugees, of course— whom I have seen are better nourished than when I visited the same parts a year ago. There is no sign of starvation ; there are no more beggars than there used to be before the war. The folk of the South are well clad. They seem to have money for luxuries ; cigarette-smoking is general among the men, and in many country villages travelling " talkies " provide a new and popular amusement. Yet the parts I have visited in the South are " deficit" areas, which do not pro- duce enough rice even for the meagre ration of six or eight ounces' a day for each person. The decontrol of food has not yet been in effect widely enough or long enough for its results to be judged. Though Gandhi advocated it, and thus compelled its adoption, many even of his followers fear that it may be disastrous ; prices must rise and the supply is insufficient to provide plenty for all. Others, starting from the assumptions that the 'greater part of the people's food has reached them independently of official procurement and distribution, and that in the whole country there is enough food to satisfy everyone, believe that a free market will bring out hidden supplies and bring down black-market prices, and also encourage larger production. Sugar, for instance, can now be bought in plenty ; the price, though 5o per cent. above the old maximum, is well below the old black-market figure, and people will gladly pay the price for more generous supplies. In a few months it will be seen who is right ; meanwhile the Madras Government are showing caution in the decontrol of food in the towns and in the deficit rural areas. This is the more necessary as the north-east monsoon, due mostly in November-December, has failed in the south of the Province. If real want and hunger touch the people there will be' rioting and looting ; but I should prophesy that, given normal seasons and the expected imports of various food-grains, no such danger need be feared.
The other main problem, industry, may prove to be the harder nut to crack. Wages go up and up—the recent passing of a Mini- mum Wages Bill in the Central Assembly seems rather an anachronism—and production goes down and down, either because of strikes or because of deliberate idling. In Coimbatore, one of the chief centres of the textile industry, all the mills were shut when I was there at the beginning of February,. with 48,000 workers refusing to perform a reasonable task. The cost of living has in- creased since 1939 by 300 per cent., but wages there have been raised by nearly boo per cent. and will rise automatically with every rise in prices. It is the fashion to blame the Communist and Socialist organisers, who control most of the trade unions ; and certainly these in the South have shown little scruple in ex- ploiting for their own advantage (tor they are not themselves workers and the contributions they levy from the worker are not returned to him in strike-pay or in any other form) the discontents that have arisen from varying causes, among which must be reckoned the malpractices of many mill-owners during the war— exorbitant profiteering, black-marketing, flagrant evasion of taxa- tion. The Communists have not yet shown signs of carrying out the three-year truce in industly which was the most hopeful decision of the tripartite conference (the three parties are Govern- ment, employers and labour) held in New Delhi in the middle of December. In India as elsewhere Communism is concerned with the aggravation of trouble and not with the healing of it. Congress has little hold over labour except in certain areas, like Ahmedabad. This is the legacy of a national movement which gave insufficient attention to economics, and was willing to ally itself with Hindu big business.
What is India to do with these intractable elements? The mind of the Central Government is divided. Sardar Vallabhai Patel and his following in the Cabinet are credited with a willingness to hit the Communists hard ; and they have no love for Jai Prakash Narain, the Socialist leader, who as president of the railwaymen's union is a thorn in the side of the -Government. On the other hand, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, with his political record, can scarcely continue repression as a method of settling industrial dis- putes. He has given utterance more than once to his suspicion and dislike of Indian big business, which now has powerful champions in the Cabinet, and he may regard Jai Prakash Narain as a patriot who should be won for constructive tasks. In these circumstances, one can at present expect no clear policy from the several Governments in India ; and the best that can be hoped for is that trade unionism will improve and that the legislation for the settlement of industrial disputes by arbitration will be worked with increasing success.
Beyond these two problems—food and labour—there seems no serious threat to public order inside India (and Pakistan seems
blessedly free even from these problems). But failure to settle the quarrels between the two Dominions might lead to incalculable disaster. The chief of these—the settlement of which would remove all other serious dissensions—relates, of course, to Kashmir. I have heard sane and responsible persons in India make the wildest allegations against Pakistan authorities, and if I had had similar opportunities in Pakistan no doubt I should have heard equally extravagant calumnies against India. With the purging away of minorities each Dominion is too homogeneous to be capable of balanced judgement. In each Dominion the absolute view of the Kashmir quarrel prevails. The citizen of India has persuaded him- self that the rulers of Pakistan have deliberately unleashed on Kashmir savage hordes of tribesmen, and have commissioned their own forces to aid them ; this is fantastic exaggeration. The Pakistani's conscience should be more tender than it is about the original false step of inducing the Nawab of Junagadh to accede to Pakistan ; and it is nonsense for him to argue that India deter- mined from the start to commit the crime of forcing Kashmir's accession to the Dominion of India. India feels that she has failed to convince the Security Council of the justice of her case, and the disappointment is the sorer since the reference was made with full confidence of success. Rather than admit any flaw in her case, she now blames the failure on the incurable addiction of other countries to " power politics," and complains that she has not received from Britain the support which she had a right to expect. Pakistan, meanwhile, can find no satisfaction in the prospect of the matter being withdrawn from the Security Council, for she is in no position to fight India for Kashmir, even if the majority of Kashmiris may prove to be on her side.
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