Next to Godliness?

INDIA Next to Godliness?

Prime Minister Nehru likes cleanliness. At a session of the governing committee of the All-India Congress Party in New Delhi last week, Nehru got annoyed at the way members threw banana skins on the floor. Quick-tempered Mr. Nehru got off his platform, and while lecturing members on cleanliness, picked up the skins, put them in trash baskets.

A few days later, Nehru tried to start another cleanup. Part of the Indian press, said he, is dirty, indulges in "vulgarity, indecency and falsehood." To teach it manners, Nehru proposed an amendment to India's constitution that would impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. He asked for power to curb the press and to punish persons and newspapers for "contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offense." Nehru told Parliament: "It has become a matter of the deepest distress to me to see the way in which the less responsible news sheets are being conducted . . . not injuring me or this House much, but poisoning the minds of the younger generation."

Nehru said his measure was aimed at Communist and Hindu extremist agitation. His real targets: Atom, Current, Struggle and Blitz, four Bombay-published sensational weeklies which have consistently attacked Nehru's domestic and foreign policy, scurrilously attacked the U.S. In its next issue, Blitz compared Nehru with Hitler, said: "There is as much deterioration in the moral fiber of Nehru as there is in the moral strength of the so-called Congress [Party]. The sponsor of civil liberties in 1936 has become the wrecker of liberties in '51."

Sober-thinking Indians disliked Bombay's yellow journals as much as Nehru, but thought it was dangerous to tamper with the principle of a free press, even if only scandal sheets were at stake. Nehru answered with typical Socialist sophistry: "How much freedom of the press have we got today? . . . Practically the entire press in this country is controlled by three or four individuals or groups, or their chains."

Nehru's proposal to gag the press aroused a storm of protest all over India. At week's end, stepping cautiously, Nehru referred his bill to a select parliamentary committee for action.

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