INDIA: The Patient One

As the Indian Express was unkind enough to point out last week, just ten years ago Prime Minister Nehru was patiently explaining his neutralism to the U.S. Congress and winding up with these ringing words: "Where freedom is menaced, or justice threatened, or aggression takes place, we cannot and shall not be neutral." Last week, with freedom menaced, justice threatened and aggression taking place just across the Himalayas from him, Prime Minister Nehru advised everyone to be patient.

He had not wanted the Tibet question debated in the U.N. When it was debated there anyway (at the urging of Ireland and Malaya). Nehru's wire-haired man-about-U.N.. V. K. Krishna Menon, dismissed Red China's aggressiveness as little more than the ebullience of youth, and deplored only China's choice of victims. "We tell them," he said, "that they can kick up their heels, but not against those who have not offended them." To some indignant Indian editorialists this seemed tantamount to inviting Red China to attack Formosa, Hong Kong. Laos or any other nation that displeased it, just so long as peaceful India were left alone.

26 Abstentions. When the vote was finally taken in the U.N. General Assembly. 45 nations approved a resolution implicitly "deploring" Red China's aggression in Tibet, and all nine nays were Communist. Red China thus stood roundly condemned before the world for its actions. But significantly, 26 nations abstained on the resolution. Among the abstainers, besides India, were such decidedly anti-Communist nations as France, Britain, Belgium, Portugal and Spain. Britain's Sir Pierson Dixon explained that his country has misgivings about Tibet's legal status, and therefore the U.N.'s right to intervene; he wants no embarrassing precedents set. On similar grounds, France regards Algeria and India considers Kashmir an internal affair. Krishna Menon expressed his nation's "distress" over events in Tibet but did not think "a warming up of issues" would help relax international tensions.

For a moment, India's determination to hear, see or speak no evil seemed to be paying off. Red China announced a token withdrawal of its troops from the disputed Indian border outpost of Longju, and the Hindustan Times thought it could see a new Chinese "peace offensive." The offensive did not last long.

Nine Dead. At week's end word reached New Delhi that Chinese and Indian troops had clashed in their bloodiest border battle yet. "Now the fat is really in the fire," cried one Indian official. The fighting took place, New Delhi announced, at a place called Hot Springs in the district of Ladakh, 45 miles from the Kashmir-Tibet border. When two Indian constables failed to return to their camp from a patrol, a searching party of 60 to 70 Indians set out to look for them. From a hilltop Chinese troops opened fire. The Indians fired back, but were soon scattered by "grenades and mortar." By fight's end, nine Indians were dead and ten captured.