India: Visitor in a Sari

• Share

It had taken quite a while to get India's Prime Minister to the U.S. The invitation had been extended originally to Lai Bahadur Shastri in January 1965, was put off somewhat tactlessly by Lyndon Johnson three months later, and re-extended in October. When Shastri died before he could make the trip, the invitation went out anew to his successor, Indira Gandhi.

India's new leader has been plagued by a torrent of problems at home, and last week, when she was finally able to get away, another snag developed: Air India's navigators went on strike for higher wages, grounding the Boeing 707 that she was to use for her trip. Undismayed, Mrs. Gandhi climbed into a slower, medium-range Caravelle of India's domestic airline for the 18-hour flight to Paris, which required four refueling stops.

After lunch and talks in Paris with Charles de Gaulle, Mrs. Gandhi boarded a more suitable transport for her transatlantic flight: a White House 707.

The President and the Prime Minister had much to talk about. President Johnson hoped to help strengthen India so that it can take its place along with Japan as a bulwark against Chinese Communist expansion in Asia. In the talks, he would gently insist that India must take steps to control its population growth, revamp its outmoded agricultural methods, and find some modus vivendi with Pakistan so that the two bitter foes do not expend their economic resources arming against each other.

Indira Gandhi was eager to thank the President for the 3,000,000 tons of emergency food that have already begun to arrive in India, would argue that India deserves full resumption of the U.S. economic aid that was cut off during last fall's border war with Pakistan. She welcomed, too, the opportunity of placing India's viewpoint on world problems before the President. "We have been talking at each other a great deal," she said before leaving Delhi. "It will be good to talk with each other."