INDIA: Chariot of Freedom

A flag of orange, white and dark green—with a spinning wheel rampant on the white—is the banner of the Indian National Congress, the party name of Mahatma Gandhi’s followers. Last year the 3,000,000 enrolled, dues-paying members of the party resolved that they must have a physical nucleus, a permanent Congress City of their own at some place completely away from British-dominated cities. Last week this great constructive dream of a multitude of squabbling politicians came to a physical culmination.

The site chosen was in virgin territory, some 200 miles north of Bombay and eleven miles from the nearest railway. It was on the vast estates of fierce-mustached, smoldering-eyed, trembling-lipped Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, one of mild Saint Gandhi’s wealthiest followers. As might be expected, this great mogul, scion of a rich Bombay family of landed proprietors, is no radical. He insists that “In accordance with ancient Indian tradition we must see that the landlord ever remains the father and guardian of his tenants!” But although he is violently opposed to the Socialistic tenets of many of his fellow party members, he was glad enough to give the land.

Ten thousand Indians soon began work on the 3,000-acre Congress City site, many of them volunteers toiling for love of Saint Gandhi & Mother India. Last November the timetable of the builders was badly upset when the Tapti River unseasonably rose in flood, and failed for six long weeks to subside. During this time it was impossible to ferry across the angry waters the pipe and corrugated iron sheeting needed for the Congress City. The Congressman in charge of the work, Mr. Nanda Lai Bose, a dry goods merchant by profession, went upriver in search of a shallow ford, discovered a bamboo forest, and drastically decided to build most of the City of bamboo. Three thousand villagers were set to chopping the long reeds. Huge rafts of bamboo swept down the flood, were lassoed from the banks as they came opposite the site, and Congress City was soon rising in record time amid the great mogul’s cotton and corn fields. Milk is an important ingredient in nonviolent, teetotal Saint Gandhi’s politics, and 500 head of cattle were soon creating difficulties among the bamboo stalks, for it is almost impossible for a sincerely pious Hindu to be firm with the cow, a sacred animal. Finally bamboo cages were built in which the cows were gently confined. Meanwhile whips were cracking over bullocks as these nonsacred males helped drag bamboo and build Congress City.

City & President. Last week about 450 acres of the City, with an avenue two miles long, had been completed as special trains began pouring in from every part of India, bringing about 100,000 persons from afar, while another 100,000 came on foot or arrived in jolting bullock carts from nearby provinces. All 200,000 were fed daily in Congress City and 50,000 were lodged there, the rest sleeping in tents or in the open. They learned that 750,000 rupees ($285,000) had been spent to build Bamboo Town, which includes a functioning electric power house, superb floodlighting, a radio broadcasting station. They nodded approval at the news that by Saint Gandhi’s will no jangling, distracting telephones were ever to be installed, no clattering factories ever built. An impressive structure of bamboo was pointed out with awe: “That is the Mahatma’s hut.”

Exalted and mysterious Saint Gandhi is today far above being elected President of the Indian National Congress. But if he made only three brief, modest appearances, he still guided it with skill. The big splash was reserved for Subhas Chander Bose (see cover). Seventeen years ago, having just completed his education at Cambridge University, Alumnus Bose, en route back to India to take a Civil Service post, was so impressed by reading an appeal by Saint Gandhi for passive resistance that he at once resigned his new job. At Calcutta, able Alumnus Bose led demonstrations against the British, including the “Black Flag” demonstration in 1921 against the then Prince of Wales, news of which was not so much suppressed as drowned in press eulogies of Edward. After this, although twice elected mayor of Calcutta, Mr. Bose spent most of his time in jail, and he finally got out of jail only last year.

Among the slick, satisfied top handful of Congress politicians, most of them obviously enjoying the incense of power and prestige, Subhas Bose stands out. Two months ago Gandhi and the Congress steering committee made him the sole nominee for Congress President. Indians then began referring to him as President, for his subsequent election was only a formality, and President Bose made a flying visit to London where he sought vainly to arouse British interest. “Ethiopia, Spain and China have successively forced themselves on the attention of the Civilized World,” he exclaimed disgustedly. “India has receded into the background and the British public appear to heave a sigh of relief that, whatever else happens, the knotty Indian Question has been finally solved. . . ” Britain has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually!”

Addressing a mass meeting of Indian students in London, Subhas Bose begged them all to get themselves into jail struggling for Mother India’s freedom. His speech was clearly seditious, but His Majesty’s Government were not going to add to their present worries by having a London bobby arrest the Indian President just before his Congress “of 200,000 met. So last week up the two-mile avenue at Congress City came every morning 51 bullocks with horns covered with gold leaf,wearing garlands of bells and drawing a single chariot in which, beaming through his horn-rimmed glasses, rode Congress President Subhas Bose.

Passing under a triumphal arch of bamboo resembling Noah’s Ark, he entered a bamboo palisade. There he spent the day squatting upon matting with acres of other squatting Congressmen. Most of the speakers could not be heard by more than a fraction of the listeners, but whenever the Congress has met this has always been true and Indians do not mind. To them a palaver of this kind is a great emotional experience and they pay little heed to the shrill, monotonous speeches. Then every nightfall President Bose climbed back into his chariot and was drawn home in triumph by the 51 golden-horned bullocks.

“Land to the People!” Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, acting through the Viceregal Government at New Delhi and the British provincial governors in India, has been quietly active against Saint Gandhi & Co. for several months. On April 1, 1937 the provinces of British India came under the new Indian Constitution, which was chiefly the work of Sir Samuel Hoare (TIME, June 29, 1936). It had been planned that on April 1, 1938 the Indian states which are still ruled by native princes should enter, under the Constitution, into an All-India Federation, and next winter George VI was to have been crowned Emperor of this Federation.

None of the Indian princes, although they have been under the heaviest pressure from New Delhi to enter the Federation, had last week signed on the dotted line. Last December, speaking for His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, “Richest Man in the World,” and ruler of India’s most important state, Sir Akbar Hydari said of Federation: “So far from being anywhere near finality, we have not yet reached the state of negotiations.” A few weeks ago, after personal aides of King George and experts of the India Office had journeyed out to the Empire, judged the temper of the Indian people in 1938 as best they could, the Coronation Durbar was indefinitely postponed by His Majesty.

Today the India Office is afraid to let Their Majesties go to New Delhi even for a visit, let alone a Durbar. The princes are afraid that if they join the All-India Federation their states will be overrun with radical Gandhi Congressmen and preachers of sedition, with or without violence. The Indian National Congress, which opposes Federation tooth & nail, is afraid that if the native states are permitted to come in under the Constitution the entire All-India Federation will be a setup so rigid that it may take generations to overthrow the Rajas, Maharajas and Nawabs. And the 3,000.000 members of theCongress—whatever may be Saint Gandhi’s mild views—believe Congress agitators who tell them that the lands of the princes and all large Indian landowners sooner or later are going to be taken and given to the people.

Chamberlain Scores. As a curtain raiser to the Congress City palaver, Mr. Gandhi, in his political capacity of Boss, fortnight ago ordered the native premiers of the United Provinces and Bihar to resign with their cabinets. They obeyed. The two cabinets were composed ofCongress members, and the ostensible reason for Saint Gandhi’s orders was the “scandalous action” of the two local British governors in “refusing the advice” of the two premiers that the jails of the United Provinces and Bihar be opened. The refusal was in accord with the safeguarding clause of the Indian Constitution, and fairly reasonable since the amnesty would have turned loose, among other jailbirds, 15 Congress members serving time for murder, robbery, derailing of trains, manufacturing infernal machines.

The Congress last week was to have been a sounding board from which President Bose and others could make an all-India issue of the action of the British governors in using their veto power. “King George has no such veto!” stormed a few Congress spokesmen truthfully enough, but the issue made little headway. Most of the 200,000 sojourners in Congress City were too busy playing politics to be bothered with a big issue.

Moreover, the great majority of those who attended the meeting were small fry, politically and economically. Even Congress members who hold cabinet rank in Indian provinces are held down by Saint Gandhi to a salary of 500 rupees per month (non-Congress assistants get some 2,500), are forced to travel third class, refuse social invitations from the British governors. Because of these restrictions, a great sensation was caused recently when Saint Gandhi was found to have partaken of two bananas, an orange, three walnuts and a cup of boiled milk at the house of Sir John Anderson, then governor of Bengal. The tempest of excitement this raised among Congressmen, only too eager to get on eating and dickering terms with their British masters, was stilled by Saint Gandhi in his own way. He announced that he no longer pays his Congress dues, is no longer a Congressman, thus can sip boiled milk and crack walnuts with whomever he likes.

Under such circumstances, the Congress last week contented itself with passing one big resolution: a blanket rejection of All-India Federation. The United Provinces cabinet who had so defiantlyresigned as a curtain raiser, quietly withdrew their resignations as a curtain downer, carried on this week under the British Raj. Dispatches announced that the resigned native cabinet of Bihar, after a little further haggling with their British governor, were also expected to withdraw their resignations. Thus His Majesty’s Government, whose game is quietly to keep pressing mercurial Indians into the mold of Sir Samuel Hoare’s Constitution, appeared to have gained rather than lost ground.