Rains And Riots

The British clung to the contention that Mohandas K. Gandhi was a pacifist traitor, an irrational screwball and a menace to India's safety. The Raj would not admit that the plan to crush Gandhi's threatened civil-disobedience campaign by suppressing the National Congress party was a monumental failure.

General Sir Archibald P. Wavell, India's Commander in Chief, broadcast from Delhi that danger was closer to India than it has been for 150 years. But what would save India, said General Wavell, was her "fighting men," not "undisciplined schoolboys" and "ignorant hooligans." Indians groaned at the slipshod arrogance of the military mind. They demanded, as before, that the Indian masses be armed and allowed to defend themselves under their own leaders.

As the breach widened, a growing rumble could be heard through the artificial silence of strict censorship. When it would come, no man knew for certain. But when it did come, three centuries of frustration, dreams, mysticism, misery, disease, corruption, and heat-rotten inefficiency would spew forth. Neither the sanctimonious belief of the Raj in its own exalted trusteeship, nor Gandhi's equally sanctimonious conviction of his own purity was powerful enough to prevent it. The immediate danger was that the internal explosion would coincide with the advance of Japanese armies at the northeastern frontier and sea raids across the Bay of Bengal.

Martyr. Kept incommunicado in the Aga Khan's palace at Poona, Gandhi could scarcely know that his third great mass movement in 20 years was turning into a revolution despite five weeks of ruthless police prosecution. As before, being in jail increased Gandhi's prestige as a legend and a martyr. His followers secretly printed a fiery Congress Newsletter which heated the campaign to halt factory work, disrupt transportation, close down schools, stores and civil administration.

Just how serious the problem was becoming was first revealed in guarded hints. But last week British Correspondent Stuart Emeny cabled to the London News Chronicle: "Bills for the damage done in recent riots in India will total millions of pounds." In the U.S. a report was published that 50,000 workmen at Tata Iron & Steel works had gone on strike.

Maneuvers. In the face of a national disaster, Indian leaders called repeatedly for United Nations intervention and for a formula to rally the resistant attention of the Indian masses against the potential invaders. One possibility was that Moslems would break down the intransigeant demand of the Moslem league, for Pakistan (a separate Moslem state) and agree to a Hindu-Moslem wartime compromise. The small but tightly organized Indian Communist party (suppressed for eight years until two months ago) urged mediation. The Hindu Mahasabe, third largest political party, issued a resolution which stressed the urgency of a national government. J. R. D. Tata, India's Henry Ford, flew from Bombay to Delhi to urge a settlement. The Untouchables favored compromise. India was uniting against the British. Even one of the Princely States was heard from.

His Highness Maharaja Holkar of Indore is familiarly called "Junior" by his American friends, wears canary yellow suits and gives lavish tiger-hunting parties. He is married to an American girl, the former Margaret Lawler. Unlike most of the other 561 princely potentates (see cuts), he is known for his liberalism. He speaks for himself, perhaps not for others whose kingdoms, as Lord Halifax said, are "enshrined in solemn treaties" between them and their King-Emperor. Junior announced: "Isolation of the Indian states is now a thing of the past and I hope they will associate themselves more directly with national aspirations."

Manpower. A subcontinent as big as the area from Hudson's Bay to Key West and from New York to Salt Lake City, India crawls with 389,000,000 people, nearly three times the population of the U.S. Its population is increasing at the rate of 5,000,000 a year.*

The mountains of Baluchistan and Afghanistan guard India at the west and northwest. North, reaching to Burma on the east, are the towering Himalayas. South are the warm valleys of the great rivers: Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra. In the Ganges valley and in the great plateau to the south (see map) the Hindus predominate. They work their own or rented fields with wooden plows, make an average of 4-c- a day and have a life expectancy of 27 years (U.S. life expectancy: 61 years). Seventy percent of all India lives on the soil. Ten percent is crowded in the world's worst slums in the great industrial cities (steel, jute, cotton) of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. In this vast land of riches, riots, peacocks and poverty the British have invested at least $4,300,000,000 on which they draw an estimated 4.9% annually and pay the world's smallest taxes.

Maybe. None but the Jap knows whether he will attack India when the monsoon ends and the steaming, water-clogged delta lands of the Brahmaputra valley begin to dry. But a quick successful thrust at Calcutta could cripple 70% of India's war effort. From the Andaman Islands the Jap could crack by sea and air at the Trincomalee naval base in Ceylon, at Madras and at Calcutta.

Sea attacks might be hit & run. Last spring's Battle of Ceylon may have made the Jap cautious. A land invasion presents greater difficulties for greater gain and would cut off the last practical land supply route to China.

Last week, as India's transport system, foods distribution, civil administration and war production began to snarl and slump, the Japanese were missing no political busses. They were indoctrinating Indian soldiers captured in Singapore and Burma, training them as an "army of liberation" for the day when the attack came.

* 1941 population figures by religions: Hindus, believing in reincarnation, caste, polytheistic pantheism, soulforce: 239,195,140; Moslems, believing there is no god but Allah: 77,093,000; Sikhs, believing in a hodgepodge of Hindu and Moslem creeds: 4,335, 771; Christians: 6,296,763; Jains, believing all animals are sacrosanct: 1,251,000; Buddhists, believing in the escape from suffering through the "Eightfold path": 12,786,806; Parsis, believing in Ormazd, lord of light and goodness: 109,000: tribal (mainly primitive) religions: 8,280,347.

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