Violent Deadlock

INDIA

The position of the British Raj in the Indian civil-disobedience campaign was summed up by a man in New Delhi: "You Americans think that we are sitting on top of a powder keg. We're not. We're sitting on an anthill. We may get ants in our pants, but we'll ride it out." Committed to smashing the power of the Indian National Congress party, the Raj cracked down harder than before.

Army officers from the rank of captain up were given permission to order their men to shoot to kill anyone damaging property or failing to halt when challenged. Patna authorities threatened to use impressed labor on road work. Two communities were fined 5,000 rupees each because they had not controlled sabotage.

Chubby, pleasant Devadas Gandhi, the Mahatma's third and youngest (27) son, was jailed. A ban on news of rioting and criticism of the Government led Indian newspapers in Calcutta (15), Bombay, Lucknow, Nagpur, Delhi and Ahmadabad to close.

Quit India. Aged (80) Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, nationalist leader and onetime Congress president, declared that rioters "are not only doing a great disservice to the country but are betraying the trust [nonviolence] imposed in them by Gandhi." But in the Wardha district of Ashti, near Gandhi's mud-hut home, four constables and a subinspector were stoned to death. Two other constables were doused with kerosene and burned alive. At Chimur four native police were pounded to death with their own lathees after they refused to join the rioters. Riots were less violent in the industrial cities, but they broke out sporadically from the State of Mysore in the south to the Province of Bengal in the north.

Pamphlets and the rallying cries of "Quit India," "Long Live Gandhi," "Long Live Nehru," "Hindus and Moslems are brothers" showed that, although driven underground, the Congress party machinery was still functioning. Lesser-known and unjailed party workers left the cities to organize strikes, sabotage and boycotts in the hinterland. After 20 years of instilling hatred of British domination in the minds of peasantry and middle-class intellectuals, they worked in well-seeded fields.

Quit Stalling. Caught between two implacable enemies, Bombay industrialists urged an end to an "intolerable situation." The ultra-British Times of India said: "Authorities have suspected for some time the presence of a Fifth Column in this country, and political turmoil has probably given strength to this element* to come out into the open. In one way such activity helps the authorities to locate danger spots, but the urgent problem is to bring about a better frame of mind among the general public."

After eleven days of silence, Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy asking new negotiations. He was curtly informed that agreement on a program of immediate Indian independence was unlikely. Monocled, shrewd, sardonic Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the Qaid-e-Azam (grand leader) and permanent president of the Moslem League, first threatened civil war if the British gave in to Gandhi. Still shouting for Pakistan (a separate Moslem state), Jinnah then sought a conference with Gandhi on the question of a wartime national government. Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar ("C.R."), who resigned from the Congress party in protest against violent threats of nonviolence, suggested arbitration by the United Nations.

At week's end neither the British nor the Congress party had won anything but turmoil and hatred. The Japanese were pleased.

* Other strength came from German and Japanese broadcasts to India. Germans claimed the British bombed an entire city, burned 24,000 persons.

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