Irritating Admiration

Nothing irritates India's fastidious Prime Minister Nehru more than the tasteless and insistent hero worship heaped upon him by the Indian masses. Admirers who bend to touch his sandaled feet are often rewarded with a gentle kick; officials who prepare fancy receptions may find themselves denounced as "wasters of the people's time and money." Last week in the modest farming town of Hubli, in southwestern India, Nehru sat contentedly on a bamboo-railed platform, swatting flies while the chairman introduced him to the crowd of 2,000. Glowingly, the speaker described the guest of honor as "a man of great heart and unsurpassed wisdom."

Nehru leaped from his chair, seized the welcoming speech from the chairman's hand and tossed it toward the crowd. "Let's stop this disgusting thing henceforth," he said angrily. "I do not want to hear my own praise. I have no time for that sort of thing. I am interested in what you are doing." As the chairman slunk back to his chair, the astonished crowd muttered its approval. The story, told over and over again across India, was the kind that in the past has always brought Nehru not less, but more, hero worship.

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