INDIA: Great Messenger of Peace

Three cordons of police were linked arm to arm to hold back the crowd of more than 5,000 gathered at Bombay Airport to welcome homecoming Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru back from his good-will tour of Europe and Russia last week. “In the countries I visited,” Neutralist Nehru was telling the dignitaries gathered in a nearby hangar, “I was welcomed not for myself, but as a symbol, a symbol of India and peace.” At that point the weary policemen’s arms gave out, and the welcoming crowd roared across the airstrip, trampling men, women and children in their enthusiastic rush to get closer to the great man. Hastily abandoning his speech, Nehru prudently retreated out a back door of the hangar.

At New Delhi, the temperature was 100.7°, and the welcome even warmer. There, warned by Bombay, the police had put up barriers of steel tubing to hold back the crowds, who came 10,000 strong by bus, bicycle, rickshaw and bullock cart to shout “Long live the God of Peace.” But the steel was as a willow withe before a flood. As India’s President, flanked by Indian officials, proffered his returning Prime Minister a bunch of roses, the fence fell and the crowd surged forward. Somebody yanked the President to safety, but the Minister of Production lost a sandal (and kicked the other off as he fled), while the Minister of Defense was knocked flat. In the pandemonium that followed, Nehru seized a policeman’s steel-tipped bamboo lathi and, brandishing it aloft, cried at the crowd: “Stop this uproar!”

Instead of obliging, the crowd began pelting him with flowers. A jeep clattered by. Nehru leaped aboard and began deftly fielding the tossed bouquets and flinging them back at the crowd. Smiling broadly, the great pacifier was just beginning to enjoy this warlike game when a particularly heavy garland caught him square on the head and dropped him into the jeep’s seat.

Sweat was pouring from his face when at last he fought his way to the great reception tent erected in his honor. From the tangle of wrecked chairs and public-address wires, he seized a microphone and panted at the crowd: “I had a lot of things to say, but they will have to wait until a better time. I thank you for this great reception, but you have spoiled part of my happiness by this confusion.” Unable to hear this gentle reproof because the mike was dead, the crowd at last dispersed, tired but happy. As Nehru sank into a comfortable seat in President Prasad’s car, the police gathered up the casualties and carried them away on stretchers beneath an archway inscribed with the glowing words: “Welcome, Great Messenger of World Peace Nehru.”