Significant Shift

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru finally caught up last week with Indian public opinion. In a speech to Parliament, he used, for Nehru, harsh words in reply to the weeks of billingsgate that have poured from Peking's press and radio. Nehru was "greatly distressed" at Red China's brutal suppression of the Tibetan revolt and at the "hapless plight" of the Tibetan people. In answering the charge that the Dalai Lama was being held against his will at Mussoorie (TIME, May 4), he obliquely called the Red Chinese liars. "They have used the language of the cold war," said Nehru, "regardless of truth and propriety." Characteristically, Nehru regretted that on his own side "a small group of irresponsible people in Bombay" had thrown garbage at a picture of China's Mao Tse-tung.

Long Scoffers. Nehru's lashing out at the Communists, after years of a kind of neutralism that often had harsh words for the West but muted its displeasure with the Communists (and even publicly underwrote Peking's "peace-loving" intentions), won him cheers in the Assembly. Congress Party President Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, was tougher. Speaking in Kerala, the only Red-ruled state in India, she flatly declared that "Communism and democracy are incompatible--they are opposite." For the first time, there is widespread discussion of the threat posed to India by the armed might of Red China, and one Bombay weekly deplored the fact that "the portfolio of Defense is in the hands of a Cabinet minister [Krishna Menon] known for his leanings toward Communism." Indians who have long scoffed at what they called the West's "preoccupation" with Communist plans for world conquest now sound much like the people they once derided.

The death throes of Tibet were made graphic as some 7,000 rebel refugees surged across the border into India. Many were wounded; some still carried the weapons with which they had futilely battled the Red Chinese. At Misamari, an abandoned Indian airport that was used in World War II as a take-off point for flying over the Hump into China, work is being rushed on a refugee camp, a hospital and maternity station. Unlike the Hungarian refugees, who were easily absorbed in Western countries, Tibetans may have serious difficulty adjusting to any society more complex than their own, and are ill-fitted for prolonged existence in the steamy, elephant-haunted jungles of Misamari.

Raging River. Although Nehru's feelings about China were undoubtedly strong, they were couched in his own curious brand of spongy language ("An attempt to explain the situation by the use of rather worn-out words, phrases and slogans is seldom helpful"). If he hoped thereby that Peking would as softly reply, he misjudged his antagonist. Peking began a hue and cry about how "intolerable" Nehru's remarks were, and set in motion the whole dreary ritual of thousands of agitation meetings to condemn Nehru.

Red China's bullying behavior forced all eyes in its direction. When Nehru last week journeyed to the Nepalese border to dedicate a new dam that is being started on the raging Kosi River, a crowd of 100,000 gathered to hail him and Nepal's youthful King Mahendra, 38. Afterward, the two leaders conferred for several hours. King Mahendra fears Nepal may be the next victim of Red China's aggression, is well aware that on Communist maps his mountain-locked country is shown as Chinese territory. In the desperate hope that Moscow might have a restraining influence on Peking, Nepal (to India's great surprise) has just signed a $7,000,000 aid agreement with the Soviet Union, and has been careful to express no official sympathy for the Tibetan rebels. But the most surprising change is a sudden shift in the long-embittered relations between India and Pakistan. Even though an Indian jet bomber was shot down last month when it violated Pakistani air space, both nations are doing fresh thinking about the future. Pakistan's President Ayub Khan publicly urged that they should "learn to live like good neighbors" without "frightening or fearing each other." In the light of Tibetan events, he said, Pakistan and India must join together for the defense of the subcontinent. A columnist in the respected Times of India called for a summit meeting between Ayub and Nehru to arrange an Indo-Pakistan alliance that "would constitute a powerful factor making for stability in Asia."

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