Gandhi's toes were blistered. As he walked the flower-strewn paddyfield
paths of eastern Bengal last week, through lines of Hindus and Moslems
who wept and knelt to touch his bandaged feet, other Hindus and Moslems
in distant Bombay chopped at each other with long knives. Twenty-two
people died in the Bombay riots, including some Untouchables who were
caught in the middle.While Gandhi preached love and nonviolence to the Bengalis, an old
jailbird named Vallabhbhai Patel, who calls himself “a blind follower
of Gandhiji” and whom the British Raj had imprisoned eight of the past
16 years, had 40 Indian Communists, whom he hates, clapped into jail.In short, everything was as usual in India, where the people are more
fertile than the land and the paradoxes are more fertile than the
people. India's pullulating contradictions obscured the view at a
moment when it was more important than ever that the world understand
what was going on in the seething subcontinent.Princes & Paupers. On the 17th anniversary of the Indian Congress' Purna
Swaraj resolution of Jan. 26, 1930, India was
almost completely free of Britain but in danger of lapsing into
anarchy. The infant country faced these problems, among others: Hatred between the Hindu and Moslem communities, which flared last
August into the Great Calcutta Killing when 6,000 died, has now
hardened into a grim struggle over Pakistan.Rising
prices and falling production have intensified the conflict between
millions of the poorest and some of the richest people in the world.
Strikes are bubbling all over India. Communist power is rising. The
Congress Party is likely to split into right and left groups and the
Moslems face a similar division.While Gandhi continues to attack
industrialization, some of his most devoted followers go ahead with
plans to make India the industrial heart of Asia.Freedom for India
does not affect the princely states, where 93 million Indians
live. These are more or less despotically ruled by an anachronistic
group of princes who have, on the average, 11 titles, 5.8 wives, 12.6
children and 3.4 Rolls-Royces. Sooner or later a free Indian nation
will have to deal with them; right now the Communists are advocating
expulsion of the princes.Power Is the Spur. To bring under control this vast interplay of
seemingly irresistible forces and immovable bodies would take more than
the fanaticism of Moslem Leaguer Mohamed AH Jinnah, more than
Jawaharlal Nehru's eloquent idealism, more, perhaps, than Gandhi's
combination of mysticism and manipulation. India needed an organizer.
It had one. Gandhi listened to God and passed on his political ideas to
Vallabhbhai Patel; Patel, after listening
to Gandhi, translated those ideas into intensely practical politics.Patel has no pretensions to saintliness or eloquence or fanaticism. He
is, in American terms, the Political Boss. Wealthy Hindu and Parsi
industrialists thrust huge campaign funds into
his hands. With their money, Congress Party patronage, and ceaseless
work, he has built a machine that touches every one of India's
conflicts. In every fight his objective is the same—power for India.
