Declaration of Independence

In famed "Lahore the Golden," capital of the Punjab, ancient seat of the Mogul Sultan "Akbar the Magnificent," there stood on a muddy sidewalk last week, with a grin of amazement and recognition on his round red face, His Majesty's Mr. Constable Sean O'Rourke.

A wild familiar Irish tune was in the air. It shrilled and banged from the oriental instruments of an outlandish procession. First on a white charger rode Pandit Motilal Nehru, President of the Indian National Congress, followed by 20 elephants magnificently caparisoned. Next came famed Mahatma Gandhi, a wizened, self-starved little saint, wearing as his only garment a skimpy loin cloth--indisputably the most adored and potent man in India.

Following Mr. Gandhi came a rabble of marchers, many of them as reedy looking as the Mahatma, all stepping briskly to the stirring air which Mr. Constable Sean O'Rourke was now bellowing in a rich Dublin tenor, to the delight of correspondents:

. . ."'Tis the most distrustful country

That ever yet was seen!

They're hanging men and women

For the wearing of the green."

What could be more appropriate? The Nationalists are in effect the Irish of India --except that they lack Irish brawn and Irish humor. They quarrel among themselves like Irishmen.

Even this mild defiance was too strong for timorous Subas Chandra Bose, leader of the delegation from Bengal. Shocked at the fiery speeches of Pandit Nehru advocating "extreme civil disobedience," he stalked from the hall; 24 other Bengali scrambled to their feet and followed.

Now they were marching 80,000 strong to "The Wearing of the Green" out of Lahore and along the green left bank of the River Ravi to an enormous, amazing Congress camp surrounded by a barricade consisting of 13,000 worn-out railway cars.

Even with 500 British special constables skulking outside, the 80,000 Nationalists (physically weak and mentally timid though they are) felt safe behind their barricade. They had met with the announced purpose of committing High Treason en masse, assembled as did 65 American colonists in 1776 to defy a British sovereign with a Declaration of Independence. Only 3,000 of them were official delegates but all 80,000 shrilled applause as Pandit Nehru cried: "We are now in open conspiracy to free India."

Year ago the Nationalists met in Calcutta--their "Congress" being in fact a party caucus--and resolved this ultimatum: If the British Parliament does not grant India dominion status with a legal Indian Parliament before Dec. 31, 1929, then the Indian National Congress will proclaim civil resistance to the British raj (rule).

Since that defy, despite the would-be liberal policy of James Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister's hands have been tied by opposition in the House of Commons, and the British Government has in fact done nothing to meet Indian aspirations. There have been commissions of investigation, soothing statements by the Viceroy, and several bombings, but nothing definite. For example: Nobody was killed last week when "persons unknown" dynamited the empty dining car of the viceregal train. (In 1872 a knife was stuck into Lord Mayo, only Viceroy of India ever successfully assassinated. Moral: A bomb--even the one which successfully exploded in the very howdah of Viceroy Lord Hardinge of Penshurst in 1912--is a poor weapon.)

With their ultimatum in effect rejected, the Indian National Congress was at zero hour last week when Mr. Gandhi, attended by ascetic gentlemen in white loin cloths and lean ladies in pink girdles, squatted down cross-legged on the rostrum and announced that the executive committee of the Congress had adopted unanimously his draft Declaration of Independence and would put it to vote after suitable debate. As the debate began, the weather turned bitter cold. Mr. Gandhi drew a piece of cloth over his shoulders and sat quiet, knitting something woolen.

All that was contemplated by Saint Gandhi last week was that the Congress should follow up his Declaration of Independence by exhorting 250 million Indians to stop paying taxes, stop buying British goods, indulge in a passive orgy of "nonviolent non-cooeperation."

The serious aspects of this threat are that, if Indians stopped buying, Great Britain would lose more than one-eighth of her export sales, and that, if Indians stopped paying taxes, the people of Great Britain could not by any possibility make up the deficiency necessary to maintain themselves as a great power and still pay what they owe the U. S. in War debts. Because previous Indian boycotts have always broken down, British statesmen were anxious rather than frightened last week, calmly faced the probability that before "nonviolent non-cooeperation" has gotten very far there will be enough casual rioting and bloodshed to justify the reimprisonment of Mr. Gandhi (let out of jail in 1924), and the mowing down of a goodly number of gentlemen in white, ladies in pink.

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