Coming Struggle

Dominant political party of India is the Indian National Congress. It boasts a paid-up membership of 4,500,000 (yearly party fee: 9c,), puts on spectacular demonstrations, governs, through the seats it holds in the provincial legislatures, nine of the eleven provinces of British India.* Periodically it scares British governors with threats of boycotts and passive resistance campaigns.

Biggest Congress personality is 69-year-old Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Politically astute as well as religiously ascetic. Saint Gandhi has long been a virtual Congress dictator, his word being law and his selection of party officials final.

Squirming under the Gandhi thumb, however, has been a group of educated, progressive, Westernized young Indian Leftists. While admiring Saint Gandhi's past contributions to the cause, they have nevertheless deplored the fact that the Mahatma's closest advisers have long been a group of rich Hindu moneylenders and merchants, that the Saint is not even faintly inclined to socialist principles. They also take no stock in Mahatma Gandhi's belief that machines are wicked, that earthquakes are demonstrations of God's wrath and that the primitive Indian village life is the ideal way of living. And more significantly, they have lately come to believe that the Mahatma was far too prone to compromise with the British.

Politician Gandhi has usually softened the rebels' ardor by giving them big jobs in the party and then hamstringing them with trusted conservative advisers. Elected last year to the Congress presidency--with Saint Gandhi's blessing--was fiery young Subhas Chander Bose, a Bengal leader with a long record of terrorist activities. Considered at first a weakling in politics, President Bose soon began to kick at the Gandhi traces. He forced Millionaire Jamnalal Bajaj, good friend of Gandhi, to resign as Congress treasurer for "reasons of health." He curried to the masses by charging that Indian Congress officials had jailed trade unionists, used the British police to shoot strikers, limited civil liberties. Most serious charge of all, however, was that Gandhi was leading Congress to accept the federation of British India and the Indian States. This measure, advocated by the British but fought by all Leftist Indian leaders, would unite the semidemocratic British Indian provinces with the 562 autocratic native states in such a way that the British and their satellites, the princes, would have by far the biggest say in the government.

With President Bose's one-year term about up, Saint Gandhi looked around for a more tractable successor. Complicating factor, however, was that the President decided to run for another term, thus openly challenging the Gandhi leadership for the first time. First Gandhi nominee was bearded Persian Scholar Moulana Abul Kalam Azad, a Mohammedan. He promptly withdrew after being hooted out of a meeting. Nominee No. 2 was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Gandhi's right-hand man. He also withdrew. Final choice was Dr. Patthabhi Sitaramayya of Madras, who received Saint Gandhi's and the Congress high command's endorsement, election seemed a sure thing.

Last week the delegates of the All-India Congress Committee met for the annual elections. Unexpectedly they turned thumbs down on Leader Gandhi's man, re-elected Leftist Bose, by a vote of 1,575-to-1,376. Saint Gandhi took his defeat hard. He charged fraud, claimed the Congress was fast becoming a "corrupt organization" and intimated that his supporters might bolt the Congress organization. The Mahatma himself is not a dues-paying member of Congress. To President Bose his re-election was simply a victory for anti-federation.

Many Britons have of late forgiven Saint Gandhi his past sins as leader of the anti-British movement and have come to regard him as one of their best friends. To them the Bose election was an unhappy augury of dire things to come, perhaps of future challenges to British power. Of particular significance was one of President Bose's recent statements: "We must launch a struggle!" Under Subhas Bose's direction a "struggle" might not be as bloodless as the civil disobedience campaigns of Mahatma Gandhi.

As an ominous beginning the All-India Committee passed a resolution demanding that India be allowed to write her own Constitution and urged sending to Britain a six-month ultimatum as the proper period for a reply to India's "national demand." Failing a satisfactory answer in that time, the Party would be free to take matters into its own hands.

*There are, in addition, 562 native states.

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