INDIA: The Psychosis of Fear

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Old Delhi had seen nothing like it since the fight for independence from the British Raj. Refugees and merchants, intellectuals and beggars, untouchables and children came surging from the dusty bazaars of the ancient capital, chanting "Hands off Asia" and "We don't want Pakistan to be another Korea." In Gandhi Park, the crowd milled around a great map of Asia, while Congress Party leaders attacked the "unholy and ill-designed" plan for U.S. arms aid to Pakistan.

Last week such noisy but nonviolent mass demonstrations were going on across all India, ordered by Congress and in some areas whipped up by the Communists. Prime Minister Nehru called the occasion Anti-U.S.-Bases-in-Pakistan Day.

"The Spirit of Man." Before this artfully contrived backdrop, Nehru opened a major foreign-policy debate in Parliament. Wearing the inevitable red rosebud in his buttonhole, Nehru spoke four times, for a total of three hours, mostly against the nonexistent U.S.-Pakistan arms agreement.* But first he dealt with Korea.

He had "serious doubts" about the P.W. explanations, said Nehru, because there had been "shouting and jeers" at the Communist explainers. He thought it "reasonable" to extend the period of explanations (as the Communists have demanded), and thought the P.W.s should not go free on Jan. 22, though that is what the armistice provides. Nehru then gave M.P.s the first sensation of the day: he snubbed his patient commander in Korea, Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya, who believes the P.W.s should go free on the 22nd. Nehru faintly praised Thimayya's "considerable ability," but snapped that India, and not Thimayya, was chairman of the neutral commission. "General Thimayya is not the chairman in his own personal capacity."

Nehru swung bitterly to Pakistan and the cold war. "In our quiet way," he said, "we have worked for this area as ... the no-war area. Now if military aid comes to Pakistan from the U.S., the cold war, as it is called, comes to India's borders. The past history of Asia comes up before me —the history of colonial domination gradually creeping in. Foreign armies came in small numbers; they grew; they utilized our own people." If Pakistan accepted U.S. aid, said Nehru, it would be an offense against "the spirit of man."

The ABC of Tibet. To such an indictment, the Communist opposition had little to add. But there were both conservatives and socialists who were distressed by the Prime Minister's position. Mme. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit agreed that any U.S.-Pakistan military pact would be unfortunate, but went on to imply a sisterly rebuke to brother Jawaharlal: India, she warned, must not develop a "fear psychosis." If the U.S. was charged with threatening the world, said she, "I am not prepared to believe it."

In the Upper House, Socialists objected to "the thought" of accepting aid from Russia, even if U.S. arms should be sent to Pakistan. So did many of Nehru's supporters, who called "No, No, No." But New Delhi papers reported that Nehru's ambassador in Moscow was in touch with Molotov about "undisclosed matters," and Nehru did not deny it.