The Impact of Andhra

From the South Indian state of Andhra last week came a stunning and unexpected check to the Communist advance in Asia. This was the place--a wrench-shaped "linguistic state" of 21 million Telugu-speaking people carved out of its neighbors in 1953--which the Communists had confidently expected to make their first political base in India. They talked extravagantly of turning Andhra into their "Yenan," a citadel from which they could subvert the rest of India. They already had 46 seats, only seven fewer than the Congress Party, in the state assembly. Andhra is their kind of breeding ground: a place of extreme and uncaring wealth, and of miserable poverty. In Andhra, four in every ten people are tenant farmers and landless agricultural laborers, susceptible to Communist promises.

The Upset. Rich and well-organized, Andhra's Communist Party went into the election campaign confidently. Last week the returns from the 8,000,000 voters were almost all in. The Communists had lost more than 80% of their strength in a sudden, numbing landslide. They managed to hold only ten of their former 41 seats against a towering new total of 120 seats for a democratic Congress Party coalition. Andhra's Communist leader, Nagi Reddi, was beaten. India's national Communist leader, Ajoy Ghosh, was reduced to humble mumbling about "my weaknesses and shortcomings." The fundamental Communist strategy of conquering free India legally through the ballot box, into which six years of painstaking work had gone, lay defeated and discredited. "I do not understand how it happened," muttered one Andhra Communist, a gaunt man with curly hair, whose job it had been to subvert the untouchables. "The stupid, dumb, illiterate masses have let us down. We should go underground and recommence our violent struggle."

The Communists had lost ground especially among Andhra's farmers, tenants and literate white-collar workers, who had once been disposed to support them. "I was attracted to Communism," said Krishna Rao, a bank clerk, "because the Reds supported our wage demands and condemned bankers. I participated in meetings where people shouted 'Death to Capitalists,' but I was shocked when I found out that my own household help was shouting 'Death to Exploiters of Toiling Domestic Servants.' "

The Hard Line. Two months ago, Jawaharlal Nehru, alerted to the menacing possibility of Andhra, flew down to campaign there for two days. His old crowd magic failed. On a wishy-washy neutralist platform (he admired "Communism," but opposed its "methods"), he got nowhere. In desperation, the tough Congress Party politicos sent in one of the toughest of their lot, S. K. ("Eskay") Patil, former mayor of Bombay.

Eskay Patil fired corrupt, naive and inefficient Congress ward bosses. While Nehru spoke softly abroad of Communists, Patil plastered Andhra with lurid pictures of Communist atrocities in Red China (TIME, Jan. 31). He exploited the fall of Malenkov as proof of Communist failure and decay. "Five acres per peasant --we will give you land," the Communists insistently proclaimed. "Give the Reds your vote," Eskay Patil responded, "and you give away your freedom."

After their triumph in Andhra, Congress Party workers tossed garlands of roses around the necks of their successful candidates and cried: "Long live Mahatma Gandhi!" Said one: "We've proved that democrats can beat the Communists in Asia as they can in Europe and America." Across the width of Indian democracy, the impact of Andhra spread. It might even, if all were well, reach the convoluted inner recesses of Jawaharlal Nehru's mind. "Andhra shows," said one Congress leader in New Delhi, "that popular support for Communism exists only in our own imagination. Andhra shows that India's masses will welcome and follow a bold lead. The myth that we anti-Communists should not openly speak our minds . . . has been exploded."

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