JUBILATION ON NEHRU'S BIRTHDAY
By Kailas Chandra
- BOMBAY ~- New Delhi has become an ideal experimental ground to "test" the theory of "peaceful coexistence" and , nonalignment" and with it the slogan of Nehru's "democratic socialism." It is indeed a bewildering . spectacle. —
The joint exercises of the Indian, U.S., British and Australian Air Forces have: just concluded. As "raiding" and "defending" planes were ‘tak~ .ing to the sky, the Soviet cosmonauts were being lavishly feted on the ground -- stealing the headlines in newspapers. What better demonstration of "nonalignment" could one ask for? oe
'.General Adams, commander in chief of the U.S.Strike Force in south and southeast Asia, was in Delhi for talks, On November 19, the concluding day of the joint air exercises, General Walter Sweeney, ” commander of the USAF Tactical Air Command said, "Cooperation between the Indian Air Force, U.S.Air Force, RAF and Australian Air Force appears to have been superb, Our men are professional airmen, here to do a training job. This they have done in a fine manner to what, I am sure, is our mutual benefit,"
General Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is expected on a three-day. visit to India in December at New Delhits invitation to discuss “future military plans® AS a. sequel to joint air exercises. Elusive African Market
Against this rather ominous background, Indian diplomats in Arab and African countries assembled at the Ministry for External Affairs to receive a pep talk on how to "devise nonaligned attitudes which will be consistent and relevant in the situation now unfolding,” Prime Minister Nehru is rather worried over the newly independent African states pursuing their own. domestic and foreign policies, quite embarrassing to his "nonalignment," The.Indian traders, despised by local populations among whom they settled in Africa, are “nessing up things for him,
In the wake of a drive towards "“Africanisation" of the administrative services in the newly. independent states like Kenya, there is of late a steady stream of Indian settlers returning home from Africa, The longcherished dreams of Indian industrialists of capturing the new and still undeveloped African market are being shattered,
Nehruts seventy-fourth birthday November 14 was celebrated as "Chil~ drents Day" throughout the country. But the occasion did not generate as much enthusiasm in the faction-ridden ruling Congress party as it did among the amorphous mass of nonparty "Nehruite socialists" and “fellow travelers" around the Communist party of India [CPI].
. In Bombay, the day was celebrated with two mass rallies organized under the auspices of. the "Blitz National Forum." (Blitz is a popular pro- Nehru English weekly edited by R.K.Karanjia, who is often described by conservative Congress members as pro=Communist.) .The official Congress
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organization, controlled by rightwing critics of Nehru, however, ignored the occasion,
Former Defence Minister V.K.Krishna Menon, elected to parliament | from ‘Bombay city, "the lone defender of Nehru socialism among Congressmen," spoke at both rallies. His theme was: "If you don't buile socialism and remove economic inequalities you will go down as a nation." But he did not explain exactly how India is to achieve the goal of socialism.
- Incidentally, Menon, who was being witch~hunted as a "crypto Commun- - ist" by the right-wing Indian press immediately after the Sino-Indian border conflict last year, is drawing large crowds at his Bombay meetings. "Kamara j Plan" Proves Disappointing
Meanwhile Prime Minister Nehru, reportedly "spending anxious hours wondering how. to reorganize his government” -- after he had relieved some of his unpopular colleagues from the Central Cabinet under the so-called. "Kamaraj Plan" -- does. not seem to have made much progress. By the time . parliament assembled for its winter session, he had announced the inclusion in the Central Cabinet of a jurist, Mohamadali Chagla (former Chief Justice .of Bombay High court and, till recently Indiats High Commissioner in London), to take charge of the innocuous Education portfolio,
There was not much "reorganization" of the Cabinet either, The only change is that the former Education minister, Humayun Kabir, has been “ placéd*in charge of a separate Ministry for ‘petroleum and Ghemicals," The office of another minister, C. Subramaniam (from South India) hitherto in charge of "Steel and Heavy tndustries" has been "redefined" as minister ‘in | charge of "Steel, Mines and Heavy Engineering"! ; -A newcomer . from Uttar Pradesh, Bhakt Darshan, has been asked to take over as deputy minister for Education.
The Kamara j Plan which was inaugurated with a bang thus ended with a whimper, The master plan aimed at resolving the political and organiza~ tional crisis facing the ruling party and the Nehru government... Its collapse came as a big surprise to even the staunchest supporters of the Prime Minister. The only real change that has taken place during the last two months is that Kamaraj Nadar, author of the plan, who surrendered the chief ministership of his home state of Madras, has been persuaded to accept the presidentship of the ruling Indian National Congress.
There are of course still rumors that the Central Cabinet will be further "reorganized" with perhaps new additions. But those "leftists" who expected the Nehru government to move leftward on the exit of Morarji Desai. and. S.K.Patil have been sorely disappointed, Krishnamachari on the Trumpet
The new finance minister T.T.Krishnamachari, who replaced Morar ji Desai, is going out of his way to please the capitalist class, Even the. pro-Nehru Link, a New Delhi weekly, could not help complaining about the "new turn" towards reaction, Reviewing. the "State of the Economy," Link
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said November 17: "He [Krishnamachari] blew hard on the trumpet of socialism and withdrew a few of his predecessor's more indefensible levies to. give an impression of difference, But he went even farther than his predecessor ever dared to provide both moral support to the private sector's arguments and steps to boost the capital market,"
The credit liberalization measures announced by the finance minister had made it possible for the scheduled banks to increase their borrowings from the reserve bank by about. fifty per cent, benefiting only the. speculators. This "turn" cannot be explained away by "Nehruite socialists."
Here is how Romesh Thapar, a "Nehruite socialist" (and also a. "Dangeite Communist") gives expression to his own sense of frustration in the Economic Weekly of Bombay [November 16]:
"tn a sense, Nehru is the master architect of the labyrinthine of economic, political and social structure which baffles those who try tosee order in the disorder, Significantly despite his physical and spiritual exhaustion he alone at the moment possesses these qualities which can -bridge the gulf between the rulers and the ruled and assist a breakthrough to new perspectives, Yet, he is also the major obstacle to such a breakthrough, His inaction reduces India to impotence,"
The same writer further says: "Consider the reality as Nehru enters his 75th year, more than any other Indian of his time, he has devoted his energies to planting the seeds of democracy in the authoritarian hothouse that is Indian society. . ..Almost singlee«handed he has campaigned for secular, civilised attitudes, against communalist and caste divisions, And with many others, he too, has confused and blunted those: movements which sought to strike at the roots of these national aberrations. Over the years he has urged his people to espouse socialist remedies to eliminate poverty and destitution, to usher in an egalitarian humanist society.
"Over the years,-too, he has acted to prevent the laying of a firm foundation for such a society. This startling ambivalence in his attitudes, and consequently his total neglect of the need to support institutionally the processes of democracy, secularity and socialism, also finds full reflection in the formulation of his foreign policy, In° this complex manner Jawaharlal Nehru has become not only a bulwark FOR progress but also a bulwark AGAINST progress. This, perhaps, explains his towering strength in the past and his pathetic weakness today." "A Nation Stands Leaderless"
The average petty-bourgeois intellectual who has no faith in the revolutionary potential of the proletariat to change society is disillusioned and frustrated because he had pinned too much hope on Nehru to achieve a miracle for him, Thapar also complains that a "modern Indian who has been nourished on the thought and activity of Nehru, and who has still half his life to live, is unable to go beyond the man * who in a sense moulded him," oo
He strikes a despondent, yet correct, note when he says that "there are no organised mass movements, no dynamic institutions, no basic propul-
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sions, to carry forward the gains of the Nehru era, He bemoans the fact that “a nation - ‘stands leaderless even as the Teeden goes through the motions of leading."
This, according to him, "is in essence the root cause of the paralysis, the crisis, the tragedy of India, in her sixteenth year of freedom,!
_ As a member of the Communist party of India for years (at any rate till recently), Thapar ought to know better, The responsibility for sabotaging the creation of an alternate leadership capable of "carrying forward the gains of the Nehru era," must lie with the traditional left parties, including the CPI which sought to create an illusion around the personality of Nehru,
Only a genuine working-class party armed with the ideology of Marxism= Leninism can rise above the limitations imposed on the Indian society by "Mehru socialism," which aims fundamentally at consolidating a capitalist — economy ina backward country like India.
‘Productive forces, and along with them social forces capable of ushering in a new era, can be liberated from the stranglehold of backward capi-~ talism only by means of a socialist revolution in India, —
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