Uncertain Freedom

Two years ago, realizing its hot and violent dream of freedom, India formally broke away from the British Raj. More than once since then it had seemed as if the great subcontinent would consume itself in war; by this summer, India gave the greatest promise of stability in Red-flooded Asia. But that stability was far from secure. From New Delhi, TIME correspondent Robert Lubar cabled:

India celebrated the anniversary of independence by announcing new and stricter austerity measures. India is still basically a hungry land; the government has launched a drive to raise more food. To highlight the food drive, plows ripped through New Delhi's viceregal golf course. Governor General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, no golfer himself, posed behind a team of bullocks.

Commander in chief of the food drive, as he is of the government's many other battles, was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Together with his deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel, Nehru pulled India through the first two years of independence. During Independence Week, Nehru was his usual supercharged self. He sat in every morning on the deliberations of the Indian constituent assembly, daily attended a dozen, cocktail parties, nightly put in long hours briefing himself on the affairs of his ministries. Beneath his exuberant activity, however, Nehru was a worried man coming face to face with ominous realities.

Demand for Work. India's cities teemed with unemployed, her factories were producing less steel, less cotton cloth and less jute than before independence. Prices were three times as high as in 1939. Last year India imported 2,200,000,000 rupees ($665 million) more than she exported ; she was deep in debt for the balance. Said Nehru in his Independence Day message: "Criticism and self-criticism are always welcome provided they do not take the place of work. Today, India demands work from her children."

But India's children were also demanding leadership from their paternalistic ruler. Nehru's Congress Party. That great instrument of India's will to independence, its mission accomplished, was declining into flabby politics and provincial corruption.

India, while probably more democratic than any other country in Asia, still has no effective parliamentary machinery through which a healthy opposition can work. The Congress Party has power without purpose; led by a laborite (Nehru) and a conservative (Patel), it has avoided charting a clear economic course for India toward either socialism or free enterprise. Nehru last week declared that there would be no nationalization of ker industries for at least ten years; businessmen were far from reassured.

Hail of Complaints. As a result of the Congress Party's vacillation, India's Socialist Party, though still small, is gradually gaining members, many from disillusioned Congress ranks. A typical recent convert was Sarangdhar Das, an engineer, who summed up much of India's present resentments when he described a visit to his native province: "The villagers were no longer exulting in freedom. Instead, they came at me with a hail of complaints --where is our cloth, where is our food, where is our fuel? I urged them to plant trees for fuel. They pointed to a distant glow on the horizon. The glow was caused by fires where the zamindars [landlords] were destroying forests in order to lease out more land and make a few more rupees."

Other forces were hammering away to exploit discontent. On the extreme right, the fanatical anti-Moslem Hindu Maha-sabha advocates war on Pakistan. Three times in recent weeks extremist revolutionaries have tried to assassinate Nehru. Bengal was warming to extreme left-wing Demagogue Sarat Bose, brother of notorious Subhas Bose, the pro-Japanese strongman whose devoted followers still refuse to believe that he was killed in 1945 in an airplane crash (in his Calcutta house, they still keep his clothes pressed, ready for his return). India's Communist Party is one of Asia's smallest (about 60,000), but it manages to keep busy and highly audible under its present leader, a studiously obscure party worker named B. T. Ranadive.

India's jails are jammed with Communists and other dissidents. Recently, Socialist Leader Ram Manohar Lohia, an old friend of Nehru's, was clapped in jail for leading a street demonstration. Nehru sent mangoes to his cell.

Prayer for the Future. Despite its mounting troubles, the Congress Party still has three great sources of strength: the personal magnetism of Nehru, the organizational genius of Patel, and the still eloquent ghost of Mohandas K. Gandhi.

To millions of Indians, Gandhi's friend Nehru is still the father-protector; he tirelessly travels all over his vast country to see and be seen by the people. Recently he visited remote Ladakh, in the Himalayas, where he had his picture taken with two local lamas. But except for Nehru, there is scarcely a major figure in India today who could command loyalty or respect should the 59-year-old Nehru follow Gandhi. Few can see beyond Nehru and his logical successor Patel.

But Patel is 74 and suffering from a weak heart. Last week he flew to breezy Bombay in a specially pressurized Dakota, to rest and recuperate. No one knows when & if he will return. In New Delhi, 25 leading pandits began an eleven-day yagna (sacred ritual prayer session) for Patel's early recovery. It was a prayer echoed by many an Indian for his country's future.

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