Pandit's Mind

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One summer, a quarter of a century ago, streams of Hindu pilgrims came for their annual ritual bath at the confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Jumna. The British authorities, noting that the currents were dangerously fierce that year, forbade the ablutions, and erected a high palisade to keep the pilgrims from the water. Thereupon thousands of Hindus, disciples of Gandhi, squatted before the palisade in the scorching sun, hour after nonviolent hour. Among them was a young, Cambridge-educated Brahman named Jawaharlal Nehru. As he recalls:

"I was fed up with sitting there. So I suggested to those sitting near me that we might as well cross over the palisade, and I mounted it ... Somebody gave me a national flag, and I stuck it on top of the palisade, where I continued to sit."

This uncomfortable, prominent and median posture accurately describes Jawaharlal Nehru's position in the world today.

A Disappointment. The legs-astride position of Prime Minister Nehru on the vast fence that runs through the world is of considerable importance to the U.S. If this great, learned and widely beloved man swings a few inches either way--toward the democratic West or toward Communism--his shift can sway the suspended minds of millions in India and throughout Asia. The future of the democratic West depends in large measure on whether it can succeed in winning the confidence and friendship of the Asian peoples whom, until recently, it ruled. Western policymakers have hoped that Nehru--a man with known Western sympathies--is the Asian statesman who could lead a non-Communist Asia into the Western camp.

Nehru has dashed these hopes.

He has told his countrymen and all Asians that the West is their traditional enemy, and that the conflict between Communism and the West is not their concern. Nehru has tried to persuade the U.S. that it should end the Korean war by giving in to Chinese Communist demands, including Peking's admission to U.N. In speeches, formal notes, and through his ambassadors, Nehru has tirelessly urged his proposals--and has denounced the U.S. for not accepting them. He has also helped create, in Europe and in Asia, the mood known as "neutralism."

Americans, on whose affairs and prospects the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru thus has considerable influence, would like to understand that mind.

A Moralist. In many ways Nehru is a deeply appealing figure to Americans. Some of them had a fleeting glimpse of him when he came to the U.S. in 1949 and thought him mighty civil and handsome. No other living Asian leader, with the exception of Chiang Kaishek, has fought so doggedly for his country's aspirations. He is not the kind of man who invites a slap on the back and a friendly "Hi, Pandit" (which, according to Geoffrey Gorer, a studious misinterpreter of U.S. folkways, is the only basis on which Americans really like anybody). Nehru has said of himself that he failed to identify himself with the unending procession of humanity, "and then I would separate myself and, as from a hilltop, apart, look down at the valley below."

Nor are Americans able to warm completely to his rambling style of speech and thought (he sounds at times like Eleanor Roosevelt, if she had read more philosophy). He acts as a statesman, politician and diplomat, but he often speaks as a moralist. Americans, who are far more preoccupied with moral matters than Nehru would give them credit for, are always willing to listen to a moralist.

What is Nehru saying? That bloodshed is evil; that force is self-destructive; that love is the only real conqueror. He says there is something wrong in a world that contains both poverty and technical progress, the reality of war and the yearning for peace. He appeals to everyone who thinks that it is probably sinful to be rich, and certainly sinful to have the atom bomb. His central thesis is Gandhi's: never compromise with evil, not even for the sake of ultimate good.

Thus Nehru the moralist, to whose terrible truisms the only answer is a shamefaced nod.

Now William Blake looks at us with all

the eyes of Asia, And it is not so; we are accused and

silenced.

But Nehru, at least to Western eyes, is no inscrutable, innocent madman of integrity like William Blake. Why, then--Western minds would like to know--doesn't Nehru the moralist make Nehru the leader hang his head in shame? Perhaps he does; but the practical West, which must deal with net results, is necessarily less concerned with Nehru the paradox than with Nehru the politico.

Like millions of Indians who follow in his train, Nehru is a paradox. He is not a typical Indian: he is a Westernized Oriental. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the godparents of Fabian Socialism, are in a truer sense his creators than Vishnu and Siva.

An Agnostic. In religion, Nehru is a typical Western agnostic. In politics, he is a Western liberal with Socialist leanings. The mind of Jawaharlal Nehru (born 1889) came into consciousness during a quiet period of Indian history. The great Mutiny of 1857 was only a rankling memory, and the Indian National Congress, which was to become the first instrument of liberation, was a polite assemblage in morning coats. It was Western influence that made Nehru a nationalist. Garibaldi was his hero long before Gandhi was. Nehru's family were wealthy and progressive aristocrats; religion, to the men of his house, was "a woman's affair."

Paradoxically, it was a Westerner who first brought Nehru to Hinduism: his Irish tutor was a Theosophist, and such an influence that at the age of 13 Nehru was inducted into the Theosophical Society by Mrs. Annie Besant* in person.

Nehru's attitude toward religion has not basically changed. In later years he would say (like any Westerner who admires the Bible "as literature") that he did not understand or feel drawn to the Bhagavad Gita, but "liked to read the verses."

He went to Harrow and Cambridge, where he acquired the old school tie and what he himself called the "vague humanism" of the day. Nietzsche was "all the rage," as were the prefaces of Bernard Shaw and the sexual case histories of Krafft-Ebing. It was an age which considered religion at best a polite convention and at worst, the opium of the masses. Like his fellow liberals, Nehru believed that science would solve all human problems.

Nehru acknowledges the human need for religious faith, but "the spectacle of what is called religion . . . has filled me with horror . . . Almost always it seems to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition and exploitation, and the preservation of vested interests." He acknowledges the mysteries of existence with a polite bow: if the scientific method, the only sound approach to life, does not cover all situations, man must "rely on such other powers of apprehension as we may possess." He concedes that "there might be a soul."

In one of his books Nehru revises Voltaire's famous sarcasm (if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him): if God did exist, it would be necessary not to worship Him.

A Socialist. Neither Nehru nor his followers are very clear about what Nehru's Socialism involves. Nehru turned to Socialism as he turned to champion the Boers, the Sinn Feiners, the Suffragettes, or Republican Spain: because he has a heartfelt sympathy for the underdog. The closest he has come to defining his idea of practical Socialism is a "democratic commonwealth" with the key means of production owned by the state, but much industry in private hands. This is what he has striven for in India, but he has plainly agreed to postpone plans for large-scale nationalization.

He shares all the Socialist's emotional tenets about the capitalist order. In consequence, he has the Socialist's undisguised contempt for capitalism, reinforced by the aristocratic Brahman's contempt for the bania (shopkeeper) caste. He speaks of the "bania civilization of the capitalist West," of the West's "cutthroat civilization." Utterly unlike Gandhi, he admires modern production methods, and wants to bring them to India (he has announced that India will in time develop her own atomic energy program). But as a Socialist he believes that capitalism, after its prodigies of production, is bound to make a bloody and cruel mess of distribution. This view is based on the standard British Socialist reading of 19th Century economic history. His understanding of 20th Century American capitalism is negligible. Of American history he has a fair textbook knowledge, and of the American

Revolution he writes with polite admiration (though with none of the enthusiasm he has lavished on the French and Russian Revolutions).

Again & again he has made the classic Socialist predictions about the U.S. He wrote in 1933: "It is said there have been so many [technological] improvements since 1929 in the U.S. that millions of people who have been thrown out of work can never be employed, even if the production of 1929 were to be kept up."* At the end of World War II he wrote: "The vast technological changes that have taken place [in the U.S.] will lead to very great overproduction or mass unemployment or possibly to both . . . The U.S.A., the wealthiest . . . country in the world, becomes dependent on other countries' absorbing its surplus production."

Nehru equates U.S. capitalism with imperialism. He wrote: "[The Americans] do not take the trouble to annex a country, as Britain annexed India; all they are interested in is profit, and so they take steps to control the wealth of the country ... A country may appear to be free and independent if you consult geography or an atlas. But if you will look behind the veil, you will find that it is in the grip of another country, or rather of its bankers and big businessmen . . ." When India got its independence, Nehru was braced to resist the onslaught of rapacious U.S. business. When it did not come, he was more chagrined than relieved. One of the reasons for his 1949 trip to the U.S. was to interest American capital in India.

The Korean war surprised Nehru into another paradoxical position. At first he approved, and applauded, U.N. (and U.S.) actions. Said he: "These young men of the U.S. who are fighting and dying in Korea certainly do not represent dollar imperialism." But once MacArthur's men were across the 38th parallel, Nehru became more & more neutral against the U.S.

Nehru has spoken admiringly of U.S. political democracy, but, as a Socialist, he considers "economic democracy" (i.e., a state-enforced minimum economic level) just as important. In Nehru's mind, the U.S. and Soviet Russia come out just about even: "All the evils of a purely political democracy are evident in the U.S.A.; the evils of the lack of political democracy are present in the U.S.S.R."

What About Communism? Nehru is no Communist, no fellow traveler. He has called Communism "unscrupulous" and condemned its violent methods. He has firmly, even ruthlessly suppressed Communism inside India. But he objects more to Communist methods than to Communist ideas. Said he: the Indian Communists were "lunatics or utter idiots if they thought that throwing a bomb here or burning a tramcar there could influence millions of people." He admits a strong emotional attraction toward Communism and the Soviet Union. More in sorrow than in anger, he has spoken of the "excessive use of violence in normal times" in Russia, but he also holds that Soviet Russia's "success or failure . . . does not affect the soundness of the theory of Communism."

Nehru disapproves of the Russian tendency to seize other countries, following the pattern of the Czars. Nevertheless, he professes to believe that China's Mao Tsetung and Indo-China's Ho Chi Minh are essentially national patriots; he denies that they are controlled by Moscow. When Chinese Communist forces invaded Tibet (TIME, Nov. 6), Nehru protested vigorously. But when Peking agreed to some Nehru proposals for a peaceful Tibetan settlement, he seemed to feel confirmed in his theory that the Chinese Communists will behave like gentlemen if treated right.

When Nehru was a young politician, the Soviet Union was the world's most vocal enemy of colonial imperialism. For years he accepted the Communist proposition that imperialism and fascism were the same thing. He completely refuses to admit that Soviet Russia has developed a new imperialism compared to which Britain's regime in India, lathi charges and all, was a riot of freedom. Nehru's great enemy today is yesterday's imperialism. He still seems to believe that Europe's waning colonial powers are a greater danger to Asia than the rising might of Communism.

What About Gandhi? There is no doubt that Nehru's desire for peace is deep and sincere. Yet his efforts for peace are what most perplex his Western admirers. He has said: "The policy India has sought to pursue is not a negative and neutral policy. It is a positive and vital policy that flows from our struggle for freedom and from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. How can . . . peace be preserved? Not by surrender to aggression, nor by compromising with evil or injustice, but also not by talking and preparing for war." In spite of this Gandhi-like doctrine, Nehru's government has fought one successful war (against Hyderabad) and maintains a large army, poised for fighting, in Kashmir.

The key to this contradiction is the fact that Nehru has to govern India, and Gandhi never did.

Nehru loved Gandhi and was loved by him. He followed all Gandhi's commands in the battle for Indian freedom, and was designated by Gandhi as his political heir. Yet Nehru was no true disciple of Gandhi: he disagreed with Gandhi on most essentials, and often failed to understand him. Nehru "could not take seriously" an idea which Gandhi took very seriously: that India should eschew modern industry and return to the culture of the spinning wheel. He disapproved of Gandhi's preaching sexual continence; that, said the onetime student of Krafft-Ebing, would lead straight to neuroses.

Gandhi held that materialism is sin. Nehru demurred: he is a materialist himself. They disagreed on Socialism: the Mahatma considered its doctrine based on the "belief in the essential selfishness of human nature." Nehru felt the beauty of Gandhi's ethics, but refused to accept the religious beliefs on which the ethics were based. Nehru declared himself "repeatedly angry" with Gandhi's emphasis on religion and mysticism.

Nehru accepted Gandhi's policy of nonviolence and ably helped carry it out: he saw in it a magnificent and practical weapon against the British. But he would never accept the moral principle underlying nonviolence, i.e., that it is more blessed to be hit than to hit. (Nehru has been known to get off a political platform to cuff unruly listeners.)

Gandhi said affectionately of Nehru: "When I am gone he will begin speaking my language." Since Gandhi's death Nehru has indeed tried to speak Gandhi's language, but he has not acted by Gandhi's faith. He says: "Protecting oneself, unfortunately, means relying on the armed forces and the like, and so we build up, where necessity arises, our defense apparatus. We cannot take the risk of not doing so, although Mahatma Gandhi would have taken the risk, no doubt, and I dare not say that he would have been wrong . . . But we are small folk and dare not take that risk . . . [You] ask me what you are to do--if you are slapped in the face, should you turn the other cheek, as Christ said . . . ? The police force is not supposed to turn the other cheek when it is slapped." Nehru, however, forgets this practical attitude and tends to apply Gandhi's principles to Western preparedness or to the U.N. action in Korea. Nehru is all for nonviolence--when it comes to governments other than his own.

When Moslem tribesmen, apparently with Pakistan's sanction, raided Kashmir in 1947, Nehru refused to turn the other cheek. He ordered the Indian army to move and restore order. Cried he: "Aggression of every type must be resisted." Since then, largely on legalistic grounds which add up to a stubborn "They started it," Nehru has refused all U.N. proposals to settle the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan (TIME, Nov. 10, 1947 et seq.).

Last year Nehru condemned the North Korean attack on the Korean Republic, then refused to condemn the far larger attack by Communist China. Nehru seems to feel that there is a kind of quantitative morality about war: it is all right to fight a little war to stop a little aggression, but it is wrong to fight a bigger war to stop a bigger aggression. (This is the same kind of logic that considers one atom bomb morally wrong and ten "conventional" bombs morally all right.)

Too Little Force, Too Little Faith. How would Gandhi have reacted to the Korean situation? He would certainly not have behaved as Nehru has. For Gandhi never turned away from evil or denied its existence. He fought evil in his own way, which was essentially to suffer rather than to inflict suffering, to die by the sword rather than to kill with the sword. Gandhi did not believe in unresisting meekness but in non-violent resistance ("A rabbit that runs away from the bull terrier is not particularly nonviolent").

Gandhi might well have denounced the Communists, as he denounced the Nazis in World War II, but he would have called on the West to fight them with non-violent weapons, as he suggested that the Nazis should be fought. The West might not have been able, or fit, to follow that advice, but the moral conflict would have been clear: a conflict between a saint and worldly men. The conflict between Nehru and the West is not a conflict between saintliness and worldliness, but between two forms of worldliness--Nehru's neutralism masquerading as otherworldliness. As one writer on India, Herrymon Maurer, has put it: "[Nehru's] middle ground is the dangerous ground: it provides neither enough faith nor enough force."

Nehru has said, in defense of Indian action in Kashmir: "Anyone knows I hate war, but to talk complacently of peace when something worse than war is possible is to be blind to facts." Yet he has denied the West's right not to be blind to worldwide Communist aggression. In short, in the biggest moral challenge of his day, Moralist Nehru has declared his neutrality. As Maurer puts it: "Nehru typifies intellectuals not only in India but in the West. Nehru's confusion is their confusion. A very great deal of what is called pacifism or tolerance or good will among

Western liberals consists of a refusal to identify evil."

Asia's hungry millions strain, and sway with tides of fear and longing that no well-meaning intellectual can really represent or long control. An accident of history has made Nehru, a half-Western Oriental Socialist, the nominal spokesman for a continent in travail.

To the uneasy liberals of the West, Nehru represents conscience, a constantly reproachful presence in an evil-ridden world--a world, they thank Freud, they never made. But sooner or later conscience must act, and often sooner than it likes; Nehru's privileged balancing act cannot go on forever. The American way of life is not to be confused with God's way--granted; but it is evident that the world is going either in America's direction or in Russia's. Nehru will not admit that hard historic choice, as far as Asia is concerned: Asia, he cries, must go her own way.

The age is dominated by force--by ideas clothed in force: the Red army of Communism v. the gathering might of the imperfectly democratic West. To one or the other of these poles the whole world is compelled. Nehru wants India, and Asia, to be let alone--not to be compelled in either direction. But history is not interested in happy Socialist endings, or in wistful fairy tales.

* Born Annie Wood, in London (1847), Mrs. Besant was a Suffragette, a Fabian Socialist, a fighter for birth control and companionate mar riage. When George Bernard Shaw took a brief romantic interest in her, she drew up a "contract of cohabitation" which caused Shaw to beat a hasty retreat. "Good God," he exclaimed, "this is worse than all the vows of all the churches on earth! I had rather be legally married to you ten times over!" She was converted to Theosophy (a watered-down Western copy of Hinduism) while reviewing a book by its founder, Mme. Blavatsky, went to India where she dressed in the native sari, became the leader of the world wide Theosophist movement (present member ship: 150,000). In 1909 she adopted a twelveyear- old Indian orphan boy, Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she declared to be a reincarnation of Christ. Today, having renounced his divinity, he is an itinerant lecturer on mystic subjects, some times known as "the messiah in plus fours." In 1929 Mrs. Besant tried to start a Theosophist colony at her Happy Valley ranch in California, to breed super-Americans. She said the Califor nia climate favored such an experiment, but she eventually gave it up. Like all Theosophists, she believed that she had several bodies which helped her in her work. Before she died (she was burned on a funeral pyre), Annie Besant said: "I shall return immediately in a Hindu body, to continue the task of building a greater India."

* U.S. production today is almost twice what it was in 1929.

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