INDIA: The Lone Fireman

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Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was as busy last week as a solitary fireman putting out a brush fire.

In dashing cold water on the ardor of his countrymen angered by Red China's crushing of Tibet and its repeated threats against Indian "expansionists," Nehru protested that it would do no good to answer Chinese abuse with Indian abuse.

There was blunt talk nonetheless. The Ambala Tribune warned that "by killing Tibetan autonomy, the Chinese have advanced their gun posts to India's northeast frontier," and have brought India's great cities within the range of Tibet-based bombers. An influential Indian geographer, Dr. S. Chandrasekhar, back from a trip to Red China, wrote in the Illustrated Weekly of India: "It will be a sad day for Asia if, after a struggle for two centuries, she overthrows European imperialism only to become victim of another and more sinister imperialism." And in Parliament's first chance to debate the Tibetan question, Nehru was bluntly asked to "face reality" and re-examine the aims of Red China.

Against Whom? As Nehru, dressed in white cotton, mounted the Prime Minister's bench, anxious citizens jammed the public galleries, formed queues into the street. In a dampening speech, Nehru stood fast on his policy of neutrality and nonalignment in pacts, even knocked down suggestions that India join Pakistan for the united defense of the subcontinent (TIME, May 11). "We do not propose to have a military alliance with any country, come what may, and I want to be clear about it," Nehru said. He was all for settling mutual problems and living in peace with Pakistan, but "I do not understand when people say we must have a common defense policy." He added, ingenuously: "Against whom?"

Imperturbably, Nehru denied that his 1954 agreement with Red China about Tibet had been violated by Communist aggression, and he delivered a history lecture that seemed to suggest that if the Communists had not broken the mold of Tibetan society, someone else inevitably would have.

$60 a Year. Only on the subject of Red China's repeated issuance of maps showing large chunks of Indian territory as belonging to the Chinese state ("cartographic aggression," one paper called it) did Nehru show warmth. He complained that this Communist habit "has been a factor in creating continual irritation."

As the leader of a state more populous than Latin America and Africa combined, plagued by a per-capita income of $60 a year and a runaway birth rate, Nehru has strong reasons for fearing Communism at home and abroad. His solution has been to excuse China, suppress information about happenings in Tibet, and to muffle India's outrage. But last week many Indians were wondering if Nehru's way was the right one. Their doubts were voiced by the Praja Socialist leader, Acharya Kripalani, who told Nehru in Parliament that "our efforts to save the friendship with Red China will result in this: they will only credit us with cowardice."