INDIA: End of Forever

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On a turf-covered plain near Delhi, a splendid assemblage gathered Jan. 1, 1877. The High Officers and Ruling Chiefs of India took their seats behind a gilt railing in an amphitheater of blue, white, gold and red, to hear Queen Victoria proclaimed first Empress of India. They rose to their feet as a flourish of trumpets announced the arrival, across 800 feet of red carpet, of His Excellency the Viceroy, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Second Baron Lytton. The proclamation was read, the Royal Standard was hoisted, and artillery fired a grand salute of 101 salvos. Mixed bands played God Save the Queen, then trumpeted the blaring march from Tannhduser. Richly caparisoned elephants trumpeted too, and rushed wildly about with trunks erect when they heard the roll of musketry.

His Highness the Maharaja Sindia was first to congratulate (in absentia) the new Empress: "Shah-en-Shah Padishah [Queen of Queens], May God bless you. The Princes of India bless you and pray that your sovereignty and power may remain steadfast forever."

Bleats of a Goat. "Forever" might have been a longer time if it had not been for a scrawny, timid schoolboy then in the northwest India town of Porbandar on the Arabian Sea, 700 miles away. Mohandas Kamarchand Gandhi was eight years old at the time of the Great Durbar at Delhi. He was already sensitive about his British rulers. His schoolmates used to recite a bit of doggerel:

Behold the mighty Englishman! He rules the Indian small, Because being a meat eater He is five cubits* tall.

Although his parents were pious Vaishnavas (a Hindu sect which strictly abstains from meat eating), Gandhi was goaded a few years later into sampling goat meat to emulate the British. "Afterwards," he reported, "I passed a very bad night. . . . Every time I dropped off to sleep, it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me; and I would jump up full of remorse."

Gandhi's frail body never grew beyond no pounds, but the youthful conscience matured into a towering spirit that laid the meat eaters low, five cubits or not. Winston Churchill had once called Gandhi "a half-naked, seditious fakir. . . . These Indian politicians," he said in 1930, "will never get dominion status in their lifetimes." But 70 years after the Great Durbar both Gandhi and Churchill were still alive, and freedom was only 50 days away.

Froth of a Flood. Last week in New Delhi, Queen-Empress Victoria's great-grandson, Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, was working hard to get out of India as fast as he could. To Hindu and Moslem politicos responsible for setting up two new dominions in India before mid-August he sent memos reminding them "only 62 more days," "only 55 more days." The British did not rely on Hindu and Moslem leaders' continuing to work together. The British wanted to clear out before India blew up in their faces.