Jam Tin Gesture

Angry was the babel of shrill voices which rose in the Indian Legislative Assembly in New Delhi last week. Excited, fervent Nationalist Members were denouncing the Government of India for trying to railroad through a bill empowering the police to deport all non-Indian Communists on the sweeping ground that they are a menace to the Public Safety. Passions were up because while the Assembly quarreled 33 prominent Communists were actually on trial in Meerut. charged with "conspiracy to make War against the King." Twice that ardent Nationalist, President Vithalbai Jhaverbhai Patel of the Assembly, had ruled the Public Safety Bill temporarily out of order, on the ground that to debate it might influence the verdict against the Communists on trial. Thwarted and incensed, the supporters of the Government of India threatened an appeal over President Patel's head to the Viceroy, tall-as-a-bean-pole Baron Irwin. As only angry Indians can, the legislators worked themselves up into paroxysms of oratory, jabbering and shrieking in a dozen vernaculars. All the while they were silently observed by an austere, immaculate Englishman, Sir John Simon, seated aloof in the Presidential Gallery. If Indians want greater freedom without Revolution, they had best behave when Sir John is present. He is Chairman of the Indian Statutory Commission (TIME, Jan. 30, 1928), appointed by the British Parliament to report on whether the time is ripe to grant Mother India a greater measure of home rule. Quite possibly the time did not seem so very ripe to him, last week, as he watched the jabbering legislators quarrel, watched President Patel advance to shrill a final ruling. For, suddenly, two youths in the Visitors' Gallery sprang up shrieking "Bande Mataram!" (Hail Mother!) and hurled down upon the Government benches a shower of leaflets and two bombs. Crash! and Crash!! Three benches splintered into bits. A great jagged hole was blown in the Assembly floor. Screaming, panicky legislators scrambled madly through the smoke. They found all doors locked, because, as the British police officer in charge later explained, if every exit had not been instantly barred the bombers might have escaped. When the smoke cleared, police stalwarts collared two youths who they said confessed to the bombing--one Bhagat Singh and one Butukeswara Dutt. Both carried revolvers which the police charged they had fired, though they denied it and few wit nesses remembered shots. "Nothing but two jam tins full of dyna mite and slugs!" said an inspector who examined the bombs. "Rank amateurs, thank God!" Due perhaps to this faulty technique, and certainly to a large measure of luck, no one was killed, since no one had been sitting on the three benches blown to bits. Picturesque, beloved Sir Bomanjee Delalal, 80 years old, and a millionaire Parsee philanthropist, received a nasty slug wound three inches long on his thigh. Sir George Schuster, finance member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, received what his physicians described as "a splinter wound less serious than the shock." A woman in the gallery fainted as blood spurted from her slugscratched arm. When people had time to poke about and scan the leaflets dropped with the bombs these were found to read: IT TAKES A LOUD NOISE TO MAKE THE DEAF HEAR!! Less cryptic was a manifesto posted that night and strewn about New Delhi: Whereas the only relief promised India is a few crumbs of reform from Sir John Simon, Now therefore the secret Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, in all seriousness and realizing its full responsibility, decided upon and ordered its army to execute this particular action, so that a stop may be put to this humiliating farce and that alien bureaucratic exploiters may be brought before the public eye in their naked form. Three days later, when the Assembly again met, this time with all visitors excluded, Sir John Simon, impeccable, imperturbable, and by no means in his naked form, reappeared in the President's Gallery, with his good and brave wife Lady Simon . Amid a dead hush, President Patel ruled once more to suspend debate on the Public Safety Bill, thus thwarting the Government of India's desire to have the measure passed immediately.

Three days later the Viceroy of India, totally ignoring the assembly and President Patel, enacted the Public Safety Bill by decree. "Speaking with full knowledge of much that cannot be made public," said Lord Irwin. "I declare that it was imperative for the Government of India to obtain the powers afforded by this Act." Describing the Viceroy's speech as "likely to become historic," the London Times blamed "Moscow" for the bomb outrage, rejoiced that aliens can now be run out of India the moment they are proved "communists." Bright and early next morning, Sir John Simon and commission sailed for England.