Cymbals & Symbols

By plane, ship, train, automobile and bullock cart, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had been campaigning all over the country, stirring up votes for India's four-month-long first general election. He had traveled 23,000 miles, made as many as ten speeches a day, addressed 25 million people. In fact, he had been just about everywhere but in his own constituency in Allahabad. There was no need to canvass Allahabad, he said rather airily.

Last week he got distressing news. His only opponent in Allahabad, 52-year-old Prabhudatt Brahmachari, who wears a luxuriant grey beard, orange-and red-rimmed spectacles, a saffron robe and a long white loincloth, had been quietly building up the vote. Quietly was the word for it: he had done it without uttering a single sound, except an occasional loud laugh.

One Plank. Back in 1921 Brahmachari, like Nehru, came under the spell of Mahatma Gandhi, but Brahmachari became a sadhu, or holy man. He took vows of silence and celibacy, was jailed several times by the British (once along with Nehru), set up a camp on the banks of the River Ganges to study the Hindu epics, and wrote the first 60 volumes of a 180-volume biography of the Hindu god Krishna. One day last October he cried out: "He nath Narayan!" (meaning, "Oh, Lord God," the holy man's only departure from silence). An attendant brought him his Shaeffer fountain pen and paper. He wrote: "If today I participate in an election, it's because my innermost voice bids me do so."

Brahmachari had but one plank in his platform: uncompromising opposition to the Nehru-sponsored Hindu Code Bill, which sanctions inter-caste marriage, relaxes the prohibition against marriage between cousins seven times removed, and, for the first time, makes divorce possible --though still very difficult--for Hindu women. Wrote Brahmachari: "The Hindu Code Bill will ruin religion, confuse castes, undermine the authority of the Scriptures, damage Hindu culture, split every family, pit brothers against sisters, and profit only lawyers." Nehru, he said, is "a black Englishman [who] studied in the West . . . and is so stuffed with its ways that he wants us all to adopt Christian customs."

Holy Man Brahmachari toured Nehru's constituency in a 1931 Dodge sedan, accompanied by a troupe of Hindu singers. To the chanting of Hindu psalms, he danced on the platform, rhythmically tapping a pair of small brass cymbals. A disciple read from a pamphlet he had written. Brahmachari on U.S. divorce: "I have heard that in America . . . women marry and divorce as many as three husbands a day, and there are some women who have had several hundred spouses each." On U.S. marriage: "An Indian student, visiting an American cemetery, found a young woman seated by the side of a tomb, fanning it with her hand. He asked her: 'Are you trying to emulate the famous love of the Hindu women for their husbands?' He explained that in India women think that their husbands are almost gods. The young woman said: 'My husband and I loved each other, but when he died he made me promise that I would not remarry so long as his tomb was wet. I am fanning it so that it will become dry quickly and I can marry my current sweetheart.'"

Hearing that Brahmachari's pamphlet had sold 76,000 copies, Nehru came rushing back to Allahabad last week with the challenge: "I shall fight to the end for the Hindu Code Bill. No country can dream of progress if it neglects the cause of its womenfolk." Snapped Nehru: "Rich people are behind Brahmachari.. . None else but the big black-marketeers, moneylenders, and landlords who are scared that Congress will soon do away with their feudal possessions." This week, as Allahabad voters went to the polls, Nehru seemed to have his constituency under control again. The whole country was pretty much his, too.

No Repeaters. Religious fanaticism was an expected obstacle in India's great democratic election experiment. Unexpected was the emergence of the Communist Party as Nehru's major parliamentary opposition. In the state assemblies of Travancore, Hyderabad and Madras (with the voting in 187 seats still uncounted), the Communists have captured 99 seats out of 658. Contrary to early fears, the huge electorate (176 million) have behaved with great orderliness at the polls, where their fingers were marked with indelible ink to prevent repeating, and where symbols have been substituted for the names of candidates on ballot boxes for the benefit of the 80% of voters who-cannot read.

Everywhere Nehru's Congress Party candidates are symbolized by a pair of yoked oxen, the Socialists (who are being left in the shade) by a large banyan tree, the Communists by a sickle and three ears of grain. One Benares independent chose a camel, startled the Holy City by staging a procession of 100 camels through the streets. Another chose a rose, began distributing roses among his constituents. An anti-Prohibitionist made his symbol a bottle (he lost). The Religionists went in for rising suns and burning lamps. Holy Man Brahmachari chose a boat.

With one-third of the balloting complete last week, the position of the main parties was: Congress Party, 68%; Communists, 10%; Socialists, 4%. Forecasts of the final vote (complete Feb. 15) give Nehru's Congress Party 400 out of 497 seats in the federal legislature, and majorities in 24 out of 26 state assemblies.

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