The Censorious Bachelor

The Maharaja of Jaipur put on a good show. For the first post-independence session of the All-India Congress he sponsored a rousing parade down the main streets of Jaipur city. First came three silver-spangled elephants from the princely stables (see cut), followed by seven camel warriors armed with 18th Century blunderbusses. Then came a mile-long procession of boys & girls marching to seven brass bands and gaily decked out in the hues of the Dominion of India's tricolor: green, white and orange. At the end, in a silver chariot drawn by four snow-white pedigreed bullocks with green painted horns, came mountainous Congress President Bhogarazu Pattabhi Sitaramayya, smothered in marigold garlands and beaming like the grand marshal of a St. Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue.

For the 200,000 party faithful who showed up at Gandhinagar near Jaipur, the Congress session was an occasion for letting off steam, like a U.S. national political convention. Such relaxation is the exception rather than the rule in the Indian National Congress. The Congress is not only India's biggest political party (10 1/2 million members), it is also the largest association in the world of people pledged to puritanism (Indian brand). To join, one must give up liquor. If he entertains political ambitions, he must give up wearing anything but khadi (handspun cloth), and content himself with a modest salary. Recently the Congress press has been scandalized by rumors that Indian ambassadors abroad serve liquor at parties.

Bright & White. Of all the provincial delegation gathered at Jaipur, the Madrasis were the strictest adherents to Congress rules. Their leading crusader is a 45-year-old bacheloi named Avinashilingam Chettiar, Minister of Education for Madras province. A great admirer of the late Mahatma Gandhi, Chettiar invariably wears a jibba (a loose long-sleeved shirt) and a Gandhi-type loincloth. As a member of the provincial cabinet, he voted with the majority to forbid expansion of the textile industry, on the ground that it would conflict with the ministry's "wear more khadi" program. Recently in the Madras legislature he supported bills prohibiting horse racing and juvenile smoking.

Last week, Chettiar set out to clean up India's film industry. His new code of film censorship: "No picture shall be passed [by the board of film censors] which lowers the moral standards of those who see it." Films must not contain any drinking scenes or obscene words, nor should gods and goddesses in the ancient Hindu epics go strutting about the screen clad in a light or frivolous manner. Cried one harassed producer: "If all these rules are enforced, 90% of our films [in production] will never reach the screen."

Sweet & Soft. This was too much for the English-language daily, the Madras Mail, which quoted an exasperated woman's comment on Chettiar: "Why does not someone find him a wife?" The Mail observed: "The Minister's puritanism . . . derives from the absence of sweet softening feminine influences in his life. Now that the question has been broached, someone among the many matchmakers in South India will perhaps succeed in providing Bachelor Avinashilingam with a wife. We sincerely hope so . . .

"Who but one lacking the benevolent influence of femininity in his home life could be so forgetful of human nature as to suggest what the Education Minister did to the board of film censors, that they should labor to purify our films of much that amuses and entertains, and replace it by that which educates and uplifts. If they pursue the policy he indicated they will empty our cinemas more quickly than anything else could."

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