INDIA: Inqilab Zindabad

In the first days the full impact of Mahatma Gandhi’s peculiar program of civil disobedience had not yet had effect. Riots spread around Bombay, like boils, over the face of the Central Provinces. A few were reported in Bengal, where the Japs may invade from India’s northeastern border.

The death of a Moslem police inspector sounded another warning of communal riots. Police had orders to warn crowds to disperse, then use tear gas, then ironbound lathees, then, as a last resort, to fire. Student demonstrators tried to confiscate all hats and neckties—symbols of Western domination—worn by Indians and Europeans in Bombay. Then they seized topees, burned them merrily in street-corner bonfires. This week, with rioting still sporadic, the pressure of an Indian National Congress party boycott and a general slowdown of the war effort faced the British.

Having clapped all Congress leaders into jail, the British were prepared to deal with rioting. The Raj even hoped that prompt action would break the back of the Congress party once & for all. Optimistically, Government officials announced that resistance was virtually under control. Immediately new riots broke out in Madras, where four men were killed trying to attack a railway station. Ahmadabad mills closed. A Karaikkudi mob tried to free an Indian being jailed. Calcutta brooded restlessly, heard threats of work stoppages at vital war plants. Poona, Nagpur, Cawnpore, Wardha reported fresh riots. An airplane dropped tear gas on a crowd of Bombay mill workers. The New Delhi Town Hall was burned.

The British claimed Gandhi’s program of disruption called for: 1) closing shops to destroy public morale; 2) interference with telephone & telegraph lines; 3) fomenting strikes in munitions and war materiel factories; 4) interference with A.R.P. services; 5) dislocating transport; 6) a strike by lawyers.

Whether or not these assertions were true, Gandhi could not publicly affirm or deny: he was locked up in a luxurious jail, the Aga Khan’s million-rupee “bungalow” at Poona. But the British threatened use of the whip on rioters, execution of anyone sabotaging trains or communications.

Race. No European was killed, but there were ominous undertones of racial antagonism. From a rooftop in Old Delhi a TIME correspondent watched a riot area a mile and a half long in Chandni Chauk, heart of the bazaar district. Exploding tear-gas bombs sent the demonstrators into alleyways, wiping their eyes. Then banners peeked around corners again, lines re-formed and marched forward. The sound of rifle fire or sudden panic would send the demonstrators racing away. When police charged or fired into the crowds, angry roars burst with the hysterical fervor of a high-school cheering section. It sounded like: “Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” Soon the crowd began chanting “Inqilab Zindabad!” (Revolution Forever!)

At one end of Chandni Chauk troops were drawn up under the old Mogul Fort built by Shah Jahan, who also built the Taj Mahal. (Inside the Fort, where the Shah kept his harem, the walls are inscribed: “If there is a heaven, this is it, this is it!”) At the other end of the area, mounted police faced Congress adherents packed in the Clock Tower Square.

Riot. The first Bombay riots were as fierce as those in Delhi. Later they became better organized. Nearly all schools having a majority of Hindu students were on strike. Some Moslem students joined in. Hindus forgot caste and opened their homes to injured rioters of varying degrees of touchability. Members of the Communist-dominated Students Union distributed hastily printed pamphlets urging Congress members and sympathizers not to dissipate themselves in “anarchistic” outbursts.

In the midst of the confusion strange events occurred: a cricket match took place within earshot of a Shivaji Park protest meeting; the Bombay Rotary Club met and heard a lecture on acoustics. The great bar in the Taj Mahal Hotel was as busy as ever, but Americans, numbering 724 in the Bombay consulate area, were warned to leave.

The U.S. State Department announced that U.S. troops were to remain aloof from the trouble. Some Indians hailed this notice as evidence of good will and support from the U.S. Lauchlin Currie conferred with the harassed Viceroy. There were other straws in the wind, pointing either toward further trouble or possible settlement.

Reverberations. One man was heavily sentenced for raising the Congress flag, but an editorial comment pointedly criticizing the British attitude was allowed to appear. As fearfully as Hindus waited for word that Gandhi might try a fast-to-the-death, the Moslems waited for word from Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Moslem League. In his marble-floored Malabar Hill villa, Jinnah talked for two hours with TIME Correspondent William Fisher. He regretted the interruption in the war effort, said he would be agreeable to any proposition for formation of a national government, provided it gave Moslems “a fair break.” This week he threatened to end his “cooperation”‘if the British “betrayed” him by making peace with the Hindu-dominated Congress party. Said Jinnah (whom Pandit Nehru attacks as a tool of wealthy landowners and a stooge for the British): “I would do it even if the British shot me down. I would do it even if it meant my own death. All I would have to do would be to give the word to my 80,000,000 followers.”

Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar (“C.R.”), who resigned from the Congress party in protest against Gandhi’s threatened campaign, and the great Indian Liberal Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru urged mediation. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Labor spokesman for India’s 40,000,000 Untouchables, backed Britain but held aloof. Communists wavered on their party line. Bombay big-business interests begged the Viceroy to attempt negotiation.

The Congress party went underground, changed its headquarters from day to day. Minor leaders still out of jail printed pamphlets urging that the fight be carried on passively. They drew new support and sympathy when Gandhi’s Boswell and private secretary, Mahadev Hiralal Desai, died in custody at Poona (see p. 42).

Gandhi’s terrible meekness had sent terrible tremors through Mother India.