Day .46- JAWAHARLAL NEHRU - The Discovery of India (Continued)

                         India's Sickness: Famine

India was very sick, both in mind and body. While some people had prospered during the war, the burden on others had reached breaking point, and as an awful reminder of this came famine, a famine of vast dimensions affecting Bengal and east and south India. It was the biggest and most devastating famine in India during the past 170 years of British dominion, comparable to those terrible famines which occurred from 1766 to 1770 in Bengal and Bihar as an early result of the establishment of British rule. Epidemics followed, especially cholera and malaria, and spread to other provinces, and even to-day they are taking their toll of scores of thousands of lives. Millions have died of famine and disease and yet that spectre hovers over India and claims its victims [ Estimates of the number of deaths by famine in Bengal in 1943-44 vary greatly. The Department of Anthropology of the Calcutta University carried out an extensive scientific survey of sample groups in the famine areas. They arrived at the figure of about 3,400,000 total deaths by famine in Bengal. It was also found that during 1943 and 1944, 46 per cent of the people of Bengal suffered from major diseases. Official figures of the Bengal Government, based largely on unreliable reports from village patwaris or headmen, gave a much lower figure. The official Famine Inquiry Commission, presided over by Sir John Woodhead, has come to the conclusion that about 1,500,000 deaths occurred in Bengal 'as a direct result of the famine and the epidemics which followed in its train.' All these figures relate to Bengal alone. Many other parts of the country also suffered from famine and epidemic diseases consequent upon it].

This famine unveiled the picture of India as it was below the thin veneer of the prosperity of a small number of people at the top—a picture of poverty and ugliness of British rule. That was the culmination and fulfillment of British rule in India. It was no calamity of nature or play of the elements that brought this famine, nor was it caused by actual war operations and enemy blockade. Every competent observer is agreed that it was a man-made famine which could have been foreseen and avoided. Every one is agreed that there was amazing indifference, incompetence, and complacency shown by all the authorities concerned. Right up to the last moment, when thousands were dying daily in the public streets, famine was denied and references to it in the Press were suppressed by the censors. When the Statesman, newspaper of Calcutta, published gruesome and ghastly pictures of starving and dying women and children in the streets of Calcutta, a spokes-man of the Government of India, speaking officially in the central assembly, protested against the 'dramatization' of the situation; to him apparently it was a normal occurrence for thousands to die daily from starvation in India. Mr. Amery, of the India Office in London, distinguished himself especially by his denials and statements. And then, when it became impossible to deny or cloak the existence of widespread famine, each group in authority blamed some other group for it. The Government of India said it was the fault of the provincial government, which itself was merely a puppet government functioning under the Governor and through the civil service. They were all to blame, but most of all inevitably that authoritarian government which the Viceroy represented in his person and which could do what it chose any-where in India. In any democratic or semi-democratic country such a calamity would have swept away all the governments concerned with it. Not so in India where everything continued as before.

Considered even from the point of view of the war, this famine took place in the very region which stood nearest to the theatre of war and possible invasion. A widespread famine and collapse of the economic structure would inevitably injure the capacity for defence and even more so for offence. Thus did the Government of India discharge its responsibility for India's defence and the prosecution of the war against the Japanese aggressors. Not scorched earth but scorched and starved and dead human beings by the million in this vital war area were the emblems of the policy that Government had pursued.

Indian non-official organizations from all over the country did good work in bringing relief, and so did those efficient humantarians, the Quakers of England. The central and provincial governments also at last woke up and realized the immensity of the crisis and the army was utilized in the relief operations. For the moment something was done to check the spread of famine and mitigate its after-effects. But the relief was temporary and those after-effects continue, and no one knows when famine may not descend again on an even worse scale. Bengal is broken up, her social and economic life shattered, and an enfeebled gene-ration left as survivors.

While all this was happening and the streets of Calcutta were strewn with corpses, the social life of the upper ten thousand of Calcutta underwent no change. There was dancing and feasting and a flaunting of luxury, and life was gay. There was no ration-ing even till a much later period. The horse races in Calcutta continued and attracted their usual fashionable throngs. Trans-port was lacking for food, but racehorses came in special boxes by rail from other parts of the country. In this gay life both Englishmen and Indians took part for both had prospered in the business of war and money was plentiful. Sometimes that money had been gained by profiteering in the very foodstuffs, the lack of which was killing tens of thousands daily.

India, it is often said, is a land of contrasts, of some very rich and many very poor, of modernism and mediasvalism, of rulers and ruled, of the British and Indians. Never before had these contrasts been so much in evidence as in the city of Calcutta during those terrible months of famine in the latter half of 1943. The two worlds, normally living apart, almost ignorant of each other, were suddenly brought physically together and existed side by side. The contrast was startling, but even more startling was the fact that many people did not realize the horror and astonishing incongruity of it and continued to function in their old grooves. What they felt one cannot say; one can only judge them by their actions. For most Englishmen this was perhaps easier for they had lived their life apart and, caste-bound as they were, they could not vary their old routine, even if some individuals felt the urge to do so. But those Indians who functioned in this way showed the wide gulf that separated them from their own people, which no considerations even of decency and humanity could bridge.

The famine, like every great crisis, brought out both the good qualities and the failings of the Indian people. Large numbers of them, including the most vital elements, were in prison and unable to help in any way. Still the relief works, organized unofficially, drew men and women from every class who laboured hard under discouraging circumstances, displaying ability, the spirit of mutual help and co-operation and self-sacrifice. The failings were also evident in those who were too full of their petty rivalries and jealousies to co-operate together, those who remained passive and did nothing to help others, and those few who were so denationalized and dehumanized as to care little for what was happening.

The famine was a direct result of war conditions and the carelessness and complete lack of foresight of those in authority. The indifference of the authorities to the problem of the country's food passes comprehension when every intelligent man who gave thought to the matter knew that some such crisis was approach-ing. The famine could have been avoided, given proper handling of the food situation in the earlier years of the war. In every other country affected by the war full attention was paid to this vital aspect of war economy even before the war started.

In India, the Government of India started a food department three and a quarter years after the war began in Europe and over a year after the Japanese war started. And yet it was common knowledge that the Japanese occupation of Burma vitally affected Bengal's food supply. The Government of India had no policy at all in regard to food till the middle of 1943 when famine was already beginning its disastrous career. It is most extraordinary how inefficient the Government always is in every matter other than the suppression of those who challenge its administration. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that, constituted as it is, its mind is completely occupied in its primary task of ensuring its own continuance. Only an actual crisis forces it to think of other matters. That crisis again is accentuated by the ever-present crisis of want of confidence in the Government's ability and bonafides [The Famine Inquiry Commission, presided over by Sir John Woodhead (Report published in May, 19f 5), reveal in restrained official language the tragic succession of official errors and private greed which led to the Bengal famine. 'It has been for us a sad task,' they say, 'to inquire into the course and causes of the Bengal famine. We have been haunted by a deep sense of tragedy. A million and a half of the poor of Bengal fell victims to circumstances for which they themselves were not responsible. Society, together with its organs, failed to protect its weaker members. Indeed there was a moral and social breakdown, as well as administrative breakdowns.' They refer to the low economic level of the province, to the increasing pressure on land not relieved by growth of industry, to the fact that a considerable section of the population was living on the margin of subsistence and was un capable of standing any severe economic stress, to the very bad health conditions and low standards of nutrition, to the absence of a 'margin of safety' as regards either health or wealth. They consider the more immediate causes to be: the failure of the season's crop, the fall of Burma leading to stoppage of imports of Burma rice, to the 'denial' policy of Government which brought ruin to certain poorer classes, to the military demands on food and transport, and the lack of confidence in the Government. They condemn the policy, or often the lack of policy or the ever-changing policy, of both the Government of India and of the Bengal Government; their inability to think ahead and provide for coming events; their refusal to recognize and declare famine even when it had come; their totally inadequate measures to meet the situation. They go on to say: 'But often considering all the circumstances, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it lay in the power of the Government of Bengal, by bold, resolute and well-conceived measures at the right time to have largely prevented the tragedy of the famine as it actually took place. Further, that the Government of India failed to recognize at a sufficiently early date the need for a system of planned movement of food grains.... The Government of India must share with the Bengal Government responsibility for the decision to decontrol in March, I9t3.. . . The subsequent proposal of the Government of India to introduce free trade throughout the greater part of India was quite unjustified and should not have been put forward. Its application, successfully resisted by many of the provinces and states. . . might have led to serious catastrophies in various parts of India.'

After referring to the apathy and mismanagement of the governmental apparatus both at the centre and in the province, the Commission say that 'the public in Bengal, or at least certain sections of it, have also their share of blame. We have referred to the atmosphere of fear and greed which, in the absence of control, was one of the causes of the rapid rise in the price level. Enormous profits were made out of the calamity, and in the circumstances profits for some meant death for others. A large part of the community lived in plenty while others starved, and there was much indifference in face of suffering. Corruption was widespread throughout the province and in many classes of society.' The total profit made in this traffic of starvation and death is estimated at 150 crores of rupees (Rs. 1,500 millions). Thus if there were a million and a half deaths by famine, each death was balanced by roughly a 1,000 rupees of excess profit!].  Though the famine was undoubtedly due to war conditions and could have been prevented, it is equally true that its deeper causes lay in the basic policy which was impoverishing India and under which millions lived on the verge of starvation. In 1933 Major General Sir John Megaw, the Director-General of the Indian Medical Service, wrote in the course of a report on public health in India: 'Taking India as a whole the dispensary doctors regard 39 per cent of the people as being well nourished, 41 per cent as poorly nourished, and 20 per cent as very badly nourished. The most depressing picture is painted by the doctors of Bengal who regard only 22 per cent of the people of the pro-vince as being well nourished while 31 per cent are considered to be very badly nourished.'

The tragedy of Bengal and the famines of Orissa, Malabar, and other places are the final judgment on British rule in India. The British will certainly leave India, and their Indian Empire will become a memory, but what will they leave when they have to go, what human degradation and accumulated sorrow? Tagore saw this picture as he lay dying three years ago: 'But what kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries' administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth they will leave behind them!'

India's Dynamic Capacity

The stream of life goes on in spite of famine and war, full of its inherent contradictions, and finding sustenance even in those contradictions and the disasters that follow in their train. Nature renews itself and covers yesterday's battlefield with flowers and green grass, and the blood that was shed feeds the soil and gives strength and colour to new life. Human beings with their unique quality of possessing memory live in their storied and remembered pasts and seldom catch up to the present in 'The worlde that neweth every daie.' And that present slips into the past before we are hardly aware of it; to-day, child of yesterday, yields place to its own offspring, to-morrow. Winged victory ends in a welter of blood and mud; and out of the heavy trials of seeming defeat the spirit emerges with new strength and wider vision. The weak in spirit yield and are eliminated, but others carry the torch forward and hand it to the standard-bearers of to-morrow.

The famine in India brought some realization of the terrible urgency of India's problems, of the overwhelming disaster that hung over the country. What people in England felt about it I do not know, but some of them, as is their way, cast the blame on India and her people. There was lack of food, lack of doctors, lack of sanitation and medical supplies, lack of transport, lack of everything except human beings, for the population had grown and seemed to be growing. This excessive population of an improvident race, growing without notice or warning and upsetting the plans or planlessness of a benevolent government, must be to blame. And so, economic problems suddenly assumed a new importance and we were told that politics and political problems had to be put aside, as if politics has any meaning at all unless it can solve the major problems of the day. The Government of India, one of the few representatives of the laissez-faire tradition in the world, began to talk of planning, but of organized planning it had no notion. It could only think in terms of preserving the existing structure and its own and allied vested interests.

The reaction on the people of India was deeper and more powerful, though it found little public expression owing to the widespread tentacles of the Defence of India Act and its rules. There had been a complete collapse of the economic structure of Bengal and tens of millions of people had been literally broken up. Bengal was an extreme example of what was happening in many parts of India and it seemed that there could be no going back to the old economy. Even the industrialists who had prospered so much during the war were shaken up and compelled to look beyond their narrow sphere. They were realists in their own way, rather afraid of the idealism of some of the politicians, but that realism itself led them to far-reaching conclusions. A number of Bombay industrialists, chiefly connected with the Tata enterprises, produced a fifteen-year plan for India's development. That plan is still not complete and there are many lacunae in it. Inevitably it is conditioned by the ways of thinking of big industry and tries to avoid revolutionary changes as far as possible. Yet the very pressure of events in India has forced them to think in a big way and to go out of many of their accustomed grooves of thought. Revolutionary changes are inherent in the plan, though the authors may themselves not like some of them. Some of these authors of the plan were members of the national planning committee and they have taken advantage of a part of its work. This plan will undoubtedly have to be varied, added to and worked out in many ways, but, coming from conservative quarters, it is a welcome and encouraging sign of the way India must go. It is based on a free India and on the political and economic unity of India. The conservative banker's view of money is not allowed to dominate the scene, and it is emphasized that the real capital of the country consists of its resources in material and manpower. The success of this or any other plan must inevitably depend not merely on production but on a proper and equitable distribution of the national wealth created. Also, agrarian reform is a fundamental prerequisite.

The idea of planning and a planned society is accepted now in varying degrees by almost everyone. But planning by itself has little meaning and need not necessarily lead to good results. Everything depends on the objectives of the plan and on the control-ling authority, as well as, of course, the government behind it. Does the plan aim definitely at the well-being and advancement of the people as a whole, at the opening out of opportunity to all and the growth of freedom and methods of co-operative organization and action? Increase of production is essential, but obviously by itself it does not take us far and may even add to the complexity of our problems. An attempt to preserve old-established privileges and vested interests cuts at the very root of planning. Real planning must recognize that no such special interests can be allowed to come in the way of any scheme designed to further the well-being of the community as a whole. The Congress governments in the provinces were hampered and restricted in all directions by the basic assumption of the Parliamentary statute that most of these vested interests must not be touched. Even their partial attempts to change the land tenure system and to impose an income-tax on incomes from land were challenged in the law courts.

If planning is largely controlled by big industrialists, it will naturally be envisaged within the framework of the system they are used to, and will be essentially based on the profit motive of an acquisitive society. However well-intentioned they might be, and some of them certainly are full of good intentions, it is difficult for them to think on new lines. Even when they talk of state control of industry they think of the state more or less as it is to-day.

We are sometimes told that the present Government of India, with its ownership and control of railways, and a growing control of and interference in industry, finance, and, indeed, life in general, is moving in a socialist direction. But this is something utterly different from democratic state control, apart from being essentially foreign control. Though there is a limitation of certain capitalist functions, the system is based on the protection of privilege. The old authoritarian colonial system ignored economic problems except in so far as certain special interests were concerned. Finding itself unable to meet the necessities of the new situation by its old laissez-faire methods, and yet bent on preserving its authoritarian character, it goes inevitably in a fascist direction. It tries to control economic operations by fascist methods, suppresses such civil liberties as exist, and adapts its own autocratic government as well as the capitalist system, with some variations, to the new conditions. Thus the endeavor is, as in fascist countries, to build up a monolithic state, with considerable control of industry and national life, and with many limitations on free enterprise, but based on the old foundations. This is very far from socialism; indeed, it is absurd to talk of socialism in a country dominated by an alien power. Whether such an attempt can succeed, even in a temporary sense, is very doubtful, for it only aggravates the existing problems; but war conditions certainly give it a favourable environment to work in. Even a complete nationalization (so-called) of industry unaccompanied by political democracy will lead only to a different kind of exploitation, for while industry will then belong to the state, the state itself will not belong to the people.

Our major difficulties in India are due to the fact that we consider our problems - economic, social, industrial, agricultural, communal, Indian states—within the framework of existing conditions. Within that framework, and retaining the privileges and special "status that are part of it, they become impossible of solution. Even if some patchwork solution is arrived at under stress of circumstances, it does not and cannot last. The old problems continue and new problems, or new aspects of old problems, are added to them. This approach of ours is partly due to tradition and old habit, but essentially it is caused by the steel-frame of the British Government which holds together the ramshackle structure.

The war has accentuated the many contradictions existing in India—political, economic, and social. Politically, there is a great deal of talk of Indian freedom and independence, and yet her people have probably at no time in their long history been subjected to such authoritarian rule and intensive and wide-spread repression as exist to-day, and out of this to-day to-morrow will necessarily grow. Economically, British domination is also paramount, and yet the expansive tendency of Indian economy is continually straining at the leash. There is famine and widespread misery and, on the other hand, there is an accumulation of capital. Poverty and riches go side by side, decay and building up, disruption and unity, dead thought and new. Behind all the distressing features there is an inner vitality which cannot be suppressed.

Outwardly the war has encouraged India's industrial growth and production, and yet it is doubtful how far this has led to the establishment of new industries, or is merely an extension and diversion of old industries. The apparent stability of the index of India's industrial activity during war-time indicates that no fundamental advance has been made. Indeed, some competent observers are of the opinion that the war and British policy during it have actually had a hampering effect on India's industrial growth. Dr. John Mathai, an eminent economist and a director of Tata's, said recently: 'The general belief. . .that the war has tremendously accelerated India's industrial progress is a proposition which, to say the least, would need a lot of proving. While it is true that certain established industries have increased their production in response to the war demand, several new industries of fundamental importance to the country, which had been projected before the war have, under stress of war conditions, been either abandoned or been unable to reach completion. My personal view is that, on a careful balance of the various factors in the situation, it will be found that, unlike countries such as Canada and Australia, the war has been more a hampering than an accelerating influence in India. I agree, however. . . that India has sufficient potential capacity to supply her basic manufactured needs.' Such statistical evidence of industrial activity as is available supports this view, and indicates that if pre-war progress could have been maintained at the old rate it would have led not only to the establishment of new industries, but also to far greater production as a whole [Mr. J. R. D. Tata, speaking in London on May 30th, 1945, also denied that the war had enabled India materially to expand her industries and industrial capacity. 'There may have been isolated cases of expansion, but on the whole, when armament factories and other specialized industries connected with the war have been excluded, there has been none. A number of projects would have been started if there had been no war. I can speak from personal experience of projects that have been abandoned because of the impossibility of obtaining bricks, steel, and machinery. Those who talk about industrial and economic progress in India during the war do not know the true position.' Again he said: 'I must prick this bubble. It is nonsense to say that India has materially advanced and gained by the war. For one reason or another there has been no important progress or development in India. Rather there has been considerable retardation. In fact what has happened is this. As a result of the war and India's contribution towards it, we have millions dead in Bengal owing to famine. We also have had famine of cloth. Thus, it is clear, that economic progress has been conspicuous by its absence.' ].

What the war has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt is India's capacity to convert this potential into actuality with remarkable speed, given the opportunity to do so. Functioning as an economic unit, she has accumulated large capital assets within five war years, in spite of all the obstructions placed in her way. These assets are in the form of sterling securities which are not available to her and which, it is stated, will be blocked in the future. These sterling securities represent the expenditure incurred by the Government of India on behalf of the British Government as well as the U.S.A. They also represent the hunger, famine, epidemics, emasculation, weakened resistance, stunted growth, and death by starvation and disease of vast numbers of human beings in India.

Because of the accumulation of capital assets, India has paid off her big debt to England and has become a creditor country. Owing to gross negligence and mismanagement, tremendous suffering has been caused to the people of India, but the fact remains that India can accumulate these huge sums in a short period of time. The actual expenditure on the war incurred by India in five years greatly exceeds the total British investments in India during more than 100 years. This fact brings into pro-per perspective how little the progress made in India has been during the past century of British administration—railways, irrigation works and the like of which we hear so much. It also demonstrates the enormous capacity of India to advance with rapidity on all fronts. If this striking effort can be made under discouraging conditions and under a foreign government which disapproves of industrial growth in India, it is obvious tlu-t planned development under a free national government would completely change the face of India within a few years.

There is a curious habit of the British of appraising their economic and social achievement in present-day India by criteria derived from social achievement here or elsewhere in the distant past. They compare, with evident satisfaction to themselves, what they have done in India during their regime with changes made some hundreds of years ago. The fact that the industrial revolution, and more especially the vast technological improvements of the past fifty years or so, have entirely changed the pace and tempo of life somehow escapes them when they think of India. They forget also that India was not a barren, sterile, and barbarous country when they came here, but a highly evolved and cultured nation which had temporarily become static and back-ward in technical achievements.

What values and standards are we to apply in making such comparisons? The Japanese made Manchukuo within eight years highly industrialized for their own purposes; more coal was being produced there than in India after many generations of British effort. Their material record in Korea compares well with other colonial empires [Hallett Abend, who was the New York Times correspondent in the Far East for many years, says in his book 'Pacific Charter' (1943): 'In fairness to the Japanese it must be conceded .

that in a material sense they have done a magnificent job in Korea. When they took it over the country was filthy, unhealthy, and woefully poverty-striken. The mountains had been denuded of their forests, the valleys were subject to recurrent floods, decent roads were non-existent, illiteracy was prevalent, and typhoid, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, and the plague were epidemic annually. To-day the mountain is are reafforested; railway, telephone, and telegraph systems are excellent; the public health service is highly efficient, good highways abound; flood-control and irrigation works have vastly increased the food production, and fine harbours have been developed and well managed. The country has become so prosperous and healthy that the 1905 population of 11,000,000 has risen to 24,000,000 and the average scale of living to-day is almost immeasurably higher than it was at the turn of the century.' But Mr. Abend points out that all this material improvement has not been insti-tuted for the benefit of the Korean people but so that greater profits might go to the Japanese].And yet behind these records there is slavery, cruelty, humiliation, exploitation, and the attempt to destroy the soul of a people. The nazis and the Japanese have created new records in the inhuman suppression of subject peoples and races. We are often reminded of this and told that the British have not treated us quite so badly. Is that to be the new measure and standard of comparison and judgment?

There is a great deal of pessimism in India to-day and a sense of frustration, and both can be understood, for events have dealt harshly with our people and the future is not promising. But there is also below the surface a stirring and a pushing, signs of a new life and vitality, and unknown forces are at work. Leaders function at the top but they are driven in particular directions by the anonymous and unthinking will of an awakening people, who seem to be outgrowing their past.

India's Growth Arrested

A nation, like an individual, has many personalities, many approaches to life. If there is a sufficiently strong organic bond between these different personalities, it is well; otherwise those personalities split up and lead to disintegration and trouble. Normally, there is a continuous process of adjustment going on and some kind of an equilibrium is established. If normal development is arrested, or sometimes if there is some rapid change which is not easily assimilated, then conflict arises between those different personalities. In the mind and spirit of India, below the surface of our superficial conflicts and divisions, there has been this fundamental conflict due to a long period of arrested growth. A society, if it is to be both stable and progressive, must have a certain more or less fixed foundation of principles as well as a dynamic outlook. Both appear to be necessary. Without the dynamic outlook there is stagnation and decay, without some fixed basis of principle there is likely to be disintegration and destruction.

In India from the earliest days there was a search for those basic principles, for the unchanging, the universal, the absolute. Yet the dynamic outlook was also present and an appreciation of life and the changing world. On these two foundations a stable and progressive society was built up, though the stress was always more on stability and security and the survival of the race. In later years the dynamic aspect began to fade away, and in the name of eternal principles the social structure was made rigid and unchanging. It was, as a matter of fact, not wholly rigid and it did change gradually and continuously. But the ideology behind it and the general framework continued unchanged. The group idea as represented by more or less autonomous castes, the joint family and the communal self-governing life of the village were the main pillars of this system, and all these survived for so long because, in spite of their failings, they fulfilled some essential needs of human nature and society. They gave security, stability to each group and a sense of group freedom. Caste survived because it continued to represent the general power-relationships of society, and class privileges were maintained, not only because of the prevailing ideology, but also because they were supported by vigour, intelligence, and ability, as well as a capacity for self-sacrifice. That ideology was not based on a conflict of rights but on the individual's obligations to others and a satisfactory performance of his duties, on co-operation within the group and between different groups, and essentially on the idea of promoting peace rather than war. While the social system was rigid, no limit was placed on the freedom of the mind.

Indian civilization achieved much that it was aiming at, but, in that very achievement, life began to fade away, for it is too dynamic to exist for long in a rigid, unchanging environment. Even those basic principles, which are said to be unchanging, lose their freshness and reality when they are taken for granted and the search for them ceases. Ideas of truth, beauty, and freedom decay, and we become prisoners following a deadening routine.

The very thing India lacked, the modern West possessed and possessed to excess. It had the dynamic outlook. It was engrossed in the changing world, caring little for ultimate principles, the unchanging, the universal. It paid little attention to duties and obligations and emphasized rights. It was active, aggressive, acquisitive, seeking power and domination, living in the present and ignoring the future consequences of its actions. Because it was dynamic, it was progressive and full of life, but that life was a fevered one and the temperature kept on rising progressively.

If Indian civilization went to seed because it became static, self-absorbed and inclined to narcissism, the civilization of the modern West, with all its great and manifold achievements, does not appear to have been a conspicuous success or to have thus far solved the basic problems of life. Conflict is inherent in it and periodically it indulges in self-destruction on a colossal scale. It seems to lack something to give it stability, some basic principles to give meaning to life though what these are I cannot say. Yet because it is dynamic and full of life and curiosity, there is hope for it.

India, as well as China, must learn from the West, for the modern West has much to teach, and the spirit of the age is re-presented by the West. But the West is also obviously in need of learning much and its advances in technology will bring it little comfort if it does not learn some of the deeper lessons of life, which have absorbed the minds of thinkers in all ages and in all countries.

India has become static and yet it would be utterly wrong to imagine that she was unchanging. No change at all means death. Her very survival as a highly evolved nation shows that there was some process of continuous adaptation going on. When the British came to India, though technologically somewhat back-ward, she was still among the advanced commercial nations of the world. Technical changes would undoubtedly have come and changed India as they have changed some western countries. But her normal development was arrested by the British power. Industrial growth was checked and as a consequence social growth was also arrested. The normal power-relationships of society could not adjust themselves and find an equilibrium, as all power was concentrated in the alien authority, which based itself on force and encouraged groups and classes which had ceased to have any real significance. Indian life thus progressively became more artificial, for many of the individuals and groups who seemed to play an important role in it had no vital functions left and were there only because of the importance given to them by the alien power. They had long ago finished their role in history and would have been pushed aside by new forces if they had not been given foreign protection. They became straw-stuffed symbols of protégés of foreign authority, thereby cutting themselves still further away from the living currents of the nation. Normally, they would have been weeded out or diverted to some more appropriate function by revolution or democratic process. But so long as foreign authoritarian rule continued, no such development could take place. And so India was cluttered up with these emblems of the past and the real changes that were taking place were hidden behind an artificial facade. No true social balances or power-relationships within society could develop or become evident, and unreal problems assumed an undue importance.

Most of our problems to-day are due to this arrested growth and the prevention by British authority of normal adjustments taking place. The problem of the Indian princes is easily capable of solution if the external factor is removed. The minorities problem is utterly unlike any minority problem elsewhere; indeed it is not a minority problem at all. There are many aspects of it and no doubt we are to blame for it in the past and in the present. And yet, at the back of these and other problems is the desire of the British Government to preserve, as far as possible, the existing economy and political organization of the Indian people, and, for this purpose, to encourage and preserve the socially backward groups in their present condition. Political and economic progress has not only been directly prevented, but also made dependent on the agreement of reactionary groups and vested interests, and this may be purchased only by confirming them in their privileged positions or giving them a dominating voice in future arrangement, and thus putting formidable obstacles in the way of real change and progress. A new constitution, in order to have strength and effectiveness behind it, should not only represent the wishes of the vast majority of the people but should also reflect the inter-relation of social forces and their power relationships at the time. The main difficulty in India has been that constitutional arrangements for the future suggested by the British, or even by many Indians, ignore present social forces, and much more so potential ones which have long been arrested and are now breaking out, and try to impose and make rigid an order based on a past and vanishing relationship which has no real relevance to-day.

The fundamental reality in India is British military occupation and the policy which it supports. That policy has been ex-pressed in many ways and has often been cloaked in dubious phrases, but latterly, under a soldier Viceroy, it has been ex-pressed with clarity. That military occupation is to continue so long as the British can help it. But there are certain limits to the application of force. It leads not only to the growth of opposing forces but to many other consequences un thought of by those who rely upon it too much.

We see the consequences of this enforced stunting of India's growth and this arresting of her progress. The most obvious fact is the sterility of British rule in India and the thwarting of Indian life by it. Alien rule is inevitably cut off from the creative energies of the people it dominates. When this alien rule has its own economic and cultural centre far from the subject country and is further backed by racialism, this divorce is complete, and leads to spiritual and cultural starvation of the subject peoples. The only real scope that the nation's creative energy finds is in some kind of opposition to that rule, and yet that scope itself is limited and the outlook becomes narrow and one-sided. That opposition represents the conscious or unconscious effort of the living and growing forces to break through the shell that confines them and is thus a progressive and inevitable tendency. But it is too single-track and negative to have full touch with many aspects of reality in our lives. Complexes and prejudices and phobias grow and darken the mind, mental idols of the group and the community take shape, and slogans and set phrases take the place of inquiry into real problems. Within the framework of a sterile alien rule no effective solutions are possible, and national problems, unable to find solution, be-come even more acute. We have arrived in India at a stage when no half measures can solve our problems, no advance on one sector is enough. There has to be a big jump and advance all along the line, or the alternative may be overwhelming catastrophe.

As in the world as a whole, so in India, it is a race between the forces of peaceful progress and construction and those of disruption and disaster, with each succeeding disaster on a bigger scale than the previous one. We can view this prospect as optimists or as pessimists, according to our predilections and mental make-up. Those who have faith in a moral ordering of the universe and of the ultimate triumph of virtue can, fortunately for them, function as lookers on or as helpers, and cast the burden on God; others will have to carry that burden on their own weak shoulders, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.