Communists in Office

India's Communists won their first major electoral victory in the steaming southwestern Indian state of Kerala last March, but few politicians in New Delhi were inclined at the time to take the matter seriously. The Communists were behaving so correctly, and besides, as required by law they were careful to get the approval of New Delhi for most of the changes they wanted to make. Soon Britain's Manchester Guardian, reflecting the bemused judgments of Indian intellectuals, was talking euphorically of "constitutional Communism" in Kerala.

"Something for Everyone." Working ostentatiously within the legal limits of the Indian constitution, Kerala's Communist bosses have churned out a steady flow of legislation designed, on paper at least, to give something to almost everyone. The Reds' major tactical aim: to create in Kerala an active, working base for the Indian Communist Party, a base modeled to a large degree on Mao Tse-tung's remote redoubt of Yenan, from which Mao won all China.

Kerala is looking more like Yenan every day. In the countryside, Red-directed "peoples' action committees" assiduously poke their noses into everything from state transportation to the government's "fair price" food shops. When reports reached Kerala's capital of Trivandrum that some of the "action committees" were usurping the functions of the law courts, Communist Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad replied blandly: "A government is best that rules the least." The "peoples' committees," he told his followers, were the wave of the future.

Rip Off the Roof. Next, Namboodiripad & Co. set out to cut down the authority of the Kerala state police force. "The police," said Namboodiripad, "have always been used to suppress mass movements of workers and peasants." He ordered them to stand on the sidelines except in cases of "murder, rape, arson or assault."

The inevitable followed. On many tea and rubber plantations, work came almost to a halt. Red labor leaders called flash strikes on the slightest provocation. Plantation managers who balked at the strikers' demands found themselves faced with anarchy. In Kerala's 107DEG heat, workers surrounded the homes of the managers, cut off their supplies of food and water. On one plantation the workers urinated in all the rain barrels, were defeated only when the plantation manager ripped off the roof of his house and collected rain water in the bedrooms. Loyal workers who tried to smuggle food or water to their employers were beaten and stabbed.

In New Delhi, Shriman Narayan, general secretary of Nehru's Congress Party, back from a tour of Kerala, reported a "complete breakdown of law and order." Red Minister Namboodiripad was proud of it: he plans, he said, to close many of the state's jails and turn their grounds into public flower gardens. He had already freed many Communists from jail, whatever the charges on which they were convicted.

Don't Mention It. How was the Reds' program being received by Kerala's masses? In a few districts there were protests, mostly by small landlords, but by and large, plain Keralans seemed all too delighted with their new government. After all, nobody liked the cops. Besides, there was the never-ending flow of wonderful promises pouring out of the Communists' legislative cornucopia in Trivandrum, and nobody yet talked about the long-range fate of the thousands who will be out of work as production falls or plantations close down altogether.

Far more significant was the effect of Kerala on the rest of India. Despite belated but increasing concern in New Delhi, most Indians seemed to regard Kerala's difficulties as mere growing pains. This suits the Indian Communist Party fine. Already in the state of Madras, and in Communist-oriented Andhra, teachers and laborers are demanding equal pay to that promised (but not yet delivered) to their counterparts in Kerala.

The success of Kerala has created a new surge of confidence in the Indian Communist Party. Ajoy Ghosh, the party's general secretary, came out of a Politburo meeting in Trivandrum last week smiling happily. "The small party we have had until now," he declared, "is unsuitable. What we need is to develop a truly national character. We want a big party with a big membership." He seemed well on the way to getting just that.

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