COMMUNISTS: Bhai Bhai in India

Starvation, squalor, teeming restlessness and ill-concealed resentment haunt the alleys and byways of refugee-swollen Calcutta, India's biggest (pop. circa 7,000,000) and most turbulent city. There last week, in greater numbers than ever, hysterically cheering Indians turned out to greet the touring missionaries of Muscovite good will, bulletheaded Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev and his straight man, Soviet Premier Bulganin. Streets along the line of entry were scrubbed and decorated with triumphal arches; the city's swarming sacred cows had been driven into back alleys, and red flags fluttered on every side.

For hours before the Russians arrived, a crowd estimated at more than 2,000,000 jammed the center of the city. Only a comparative handful were within viewing distance when at last Khrushchev, Bulganin and their host, West Bengal Chief Minister Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, showed up in an open Mercedes-Benz. At the intersection of two of Calcutta's big streets, the Russians waved their straw hats, and Khrushchev cried out in their own language: "Hindi Russi bhai bhai!" (Indians, Russians, brothers, brothers!). Instantly the crowd burst forward, shattering police lines and bamboo barricades to swarm over the car. Some clutched Bulganin's coat. Others seized Khrushchev's hands and arms. As the Indians piled their weight upon the Mercedes, it broke down. With police aid, the visitors pulled themselves clear of the clustering crowd and fought their way to a nearby police van. Behind them, the happy mob pulled the Mercedes apart. Safe at last from their frantic fans, the Russians sped on in the paddywagon to reach an official reception at Government House one hour late.

Genial Generalities. The reception in Calcutta provided the final crashing chord to a barnstorming tour which had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of any campaigning vote-seeker. But while Moscow's good-will ambassadors swelled with complacency at the air of universal approval surrounding them, their Indian hosts had begun to entertain some sober second thoughts. Bursting with genial, jocular generalities all along the line of march, the fun-loving Red Rover Boys had progressively proved more and more forgetful of the fact that Nehru's India still hugs a determined neutralism close to its heart. In one breath they decried the West's preoccupation with H-bombs; in another, they boasted loudly of their own recent experiments with the same weapons—never pausing to reflect that to Indians, all hydrogen is deplorable in fissionable form. They cheerfully compared Gandhi to Lenin, which takes some doing. Khrushchev also, fantastically, proclaimed: "The English, French and Americans started the Second World War and sent new troops against our country—the troops of Hitlerite Germany."