Towards Disenchantment

India is the most important of our neighbors. We must know India better.

--Mao Tse-tung

India, the most populous nation outside the Iron Curtain, has leaned so far backwards not being anti-Communist that she often appears to be pro. This, despite the Western trend of her economy, her parliamentary democracy, her British legal and military tradition, and her own good reasons to fear the rising might of Communist China. "We propose to keep on the closest terms with other countries," Jawaharlal Nehru insists, "unless they themselves create difficulties."

Last week, at last, there were sharp indications that India might be edging towards disenchantment with Communism and Red China, even if this did not mean relaxation of her "neutrality." The reasons: first-hand experience of Communist oppression and inhumanity in Korea's prisoner-of-war explanations, and mounting concern at Red China's troop concentrations, banditry and infiltration along India's 2,000-mile northern frontier.

"A Pit of Snakes." When the Indians first went to Korea, they were sure that the U.N. was holding the anti-Communist P.W.s under duress, that the U.N.--not the Communists--was menacing the peace. They told the P.W.s at once that they would protect the P.W.s' "right to be repatriated" (not the right to non-repatriation). When the first explanations bogged down, Indian newspapers automatically blamed the U.N. "The U.N. command has actually obstructed the neutrals' work," said the National Herald of Lucknow, which is run by one of Nehru's favorite editors. "The U.N. side has not played fair," cried the Hindustan Standard. "It has allowed prisoners to be influenced and indoctrinated."

But when the P.W.s fought the celebrated battle for Asia's mind in the explanation tents (TIME, Oct. 26 et seq.), the Indians who were there heard the P.W.s, proud and passionate men like themselves, bitterly denounce Communism and forsake their homes rather than live with it; they heard the lies and sly half-truths of the Communist explainers. They were hurt, then angry, as the Communists snarled at them in defeat, and accused the Indian command of double-dealing: they were grim when the Communists put the P.W.s through hour-long inquisitions, and were ready to screen the P.W.s themselves rather than tolerate any more of such violence. "It is inhuman!" snapped India's Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya. "We have placed our foot into a pit of snakes," said one of his officers.

That news got back to India. "Prisoners refused to come out," reported the Hindustan Times, "preferring even to be shot instead." And the Indian Express had this to say about the stalled Korean Peace Conference: "The Communist attitude strikes one as not only obstructionist and unreasonable, but also full of dangerous potentialities."

Icy Winds. Last week Jawaharlal Nehru observed his 64th birthday, rising as usual at 5 a.m. for an hour's yoga exercises, including standing on his head. Then he went to the National Stadium, where 50,000 schoolchildren shouted birthday greetings to Chacha (Uncle) Nehru. He gave no indication that he felt the chill winds from the north. Yet if he did not recognize them, or chose not to speak of them, there were some Indians who did.

Along the Indian-Chinese frontier, the longest frontier in the world between oppression and a democracy, Communist infiltrators are burrowing into the border states of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim--which lie upon India's side of the great Himalayan battlement (see below). From this frontier, where ice-winds howl and lichen creeps around the tall mountains, an Indian Army Mission reported: "Long considered impregnable ... the frontier . . . [is] now looked upon as a possible route of infiltration, if not of invasion."

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