SIDELIGHTS : : A newspaper has two sides to it. On the one hand, it is a business like any other business, carried on for profit and depending on profit for prosperity or existence. On the other hand,, it may be described as a public utility service, a service which may be performed well or ill, but to the interests of the public. These two elements in the life and purpose of a newspaper are not always in accord; they may even violently conflict. Yet on their harmony the character and usefulness of a newspaper must depend.—C . P. SCOTT.

SWATANTRA—SEPTEMBER 27, 1947

A WRITER in a recently started weekly journal called upon one of the Ministers the other day to go and drown himself in the Cooum. I cite this as an example of advice that is never likely to be acted upon by those to whom it is addressed, however vigorously or captivatingly the advice may be phrased. Good journalism should restrict itself to purposes capable of being realized. In the expounding of opinion there is no charm in getting the plaudits of those who are already on your side. Achievement consists in forcing readers who belong to the “other” side to change over to your own under the irresistible compulsion of argument. In British journalism J. A. Spender excelled all others in this sort of achievement.

*               *          *

Lord Northcliffe said of Spender that he was the only man who could edit The Times, but it is with the Westminster Gazette that Spender’s name is primarily associated. In a note on spender’s completion of twenty-one years of editorship, the Manchester Guardian wrote, “The Westminster is the one journal in London which sells on its leader. It is unlike all other London leaders in that it is addressed to and read by the thoughtful section of the opposite party.” Spender was a devotee of the Liberal Party and the Westminster while he edited it was regarded as the most authoritative exponent of Liberalism in the British Press. But party loyalty never led to decline of intellectual independence in his case. In a laudatory letter to Spender, Sir Edward Grey said, “You manage to combine independent thought with unswerving support of the party in a way which is rare. It makes your articles like the opinion of a valued colleague. I know nothing else in journalism like it.”

*               *          *

Spender made a mark for reasonableness “not unsalted with wit”, and his peculiar combination of sanity, sincerity and scrupulous fairness which always made for moderation of expression was a source of constant exasperation to unreasonable opponents who found themselves powerless to deal with him in the customary styles of invective and denunciation. Spender used reason as the supreme journalistic weapon in a rather coldblooded way, but he had a passion for taking himself seriously and facing most respectfully the arguments of those who differed from him. He was a warmhearted apostle of journalistic integrity who felt sorely distressed professionally whenever he saw the power of the Press used for purposes that did not conduce to the public good. On such occasions he went out of his way to remonstrate with newspaper proprietors and persuade them to return to the paths of social duty.

*               *          *

Once when Lord Northcliffe conducted in the Daily Mail a campaign which Spender felt was doing a great deal of harm to the public, he went to Lord Northcliffe and objected to the campaign and begged him to put a stop to it. The story of how Lord Northcliffe dealt with his appeal is given by Robert Hichens in his just published autobiography, Yesterday:

“Northcliffe touched a bell and gave an order. The order was that the circulation sheets of the Daily Mail, from before the beginning of the campaign to that moment, should be brought to him. They were brought, and Lord Northcliffe showed them to Spender. The sheets proved that even since the beginning of the campaign which Spender considered so harmful to public opinion the circulation of the paper had been steadily rising.

“You see!” Lord Northcliff said.

Spender said, “Yes ! Well?”

Lord Northcliffe simply moved his broad shoulders, as much as tosay, “How can you possibly expect me to stop a campaign that is doing so much good to the paper?”

And the interview came to an end.

*               *          *

The Northcliffian tradition has spread from Britain to the rest of the world. It has not spread the Press of this poor country. We have journals run to create bad blood because the creation of bad blood is popular with excited groups primed for mutual recrimination and belligerency and happens for the time to be commercially profitable. It was the distinction of Spender’s Westminster that though it lost money and had, compared with the millions of readers of the Northcliffian Press, an inconsiderable circulation, it commanded a greater weight of influence per reader, having regard to the character of its readers, than any other London paper existing then or since. A revealing reminiscence indicating the superiority of the Westminster in the matter of continual gripping of intelligent readers’ interest is given by Sir Robert Edgcumbe:

“I was travelling to London on a Thursday afternoon, and was alone in my compartment. At Hatfield Lord Salisbury got into the same carriage, and as the train moved off he was handed three evening papers. Shortly after we started he took them up, opened first the Globe and immediately threw it upon the floor of the carriage; then he opened the Evening Standard and treated it in a similar manner; lastly he opened the Westminster diligently until we arrived at King’s Cross station.”

*               *          *

Some papers are just glanced at by their readers and thrown away. Some are bought for racing tips. Some for the appeal to avarice they contain in the form of lavish crossword puzzles. Some for the pictures of captivating pin-up girls which they print. And quite a lot (of late) for the predictions they venture as a regular feature to lure the anxious and the despondent tossed about in the sea of life’s troubles, with imaginary paradises of impending good fortune. These inroads on journalism by skilled exploiters of crowd hungers serve to confound professional eminence and success with the mere knack of putting through techniques of remunerative sensationalism. They have been tending to vulgarise the Press and to deprive it more and more of its social purpose. A great pity!

*               *          *

The date of publication of this issue of Swatantra synchronises with the silver jubilee of K. Iswara Dutt’s entry into journalism. His friends and admirers are celebrating the happy occasion in a fitting manner. Dutt is now Public Relations Officer in Hyderabad. It is a singularly difficult and delicate post to hold at the present juncture. It is remarkable that not even a tiny smear of the wild passion roused in all and sundry by the state of affairs now prevailing in that gravely disturbed State should have clung to him in the process of his official duties so closely connected with its Government. This gift of coming unscathed through storms that would have broken to pieces and wrecked the career of any less indomitably pleasant spirit, is Dutt’s unique asset. He has conquered all difficulties with a social charm that has taken most of India’s great, captive. Of Arthur Mee, a man of wonder in Britain’s Fleet Street, whose expertness in fitting every conceivable topic on earth with relevant tit-bits of historical interest, accounted to genius, admirers used to ask, Wherefrom did he gather all this knowledge? Early in his career Arthur Mee began a collection of cuttings from every available source which in course of time grew to such dimensions that a huge cabinet of many drawers was required to accommodate them all. It was insured for a thousand pounds. The result of his analysis and assortment of every scrap of general information collected through years of daily examination of the Press was to build up Arthur Mee into a prodigy of encyclopaedic knowledge with stupendous mastery over a vast variety of miscellaneous subjects. Dutt has a stock of cuttings that can be worthily compared with Mee’s. It is a rich treasure house from which invaluable results can be expected. Acquaintance with it has fashioned Dutt into a literary craftsman of exceptional polish.—(September 27, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.—GEORGE ELIOT.

SWATANTRA—SEPTEMBER 20, 1947

WHEN Dr. T. S. S. Rajan moved in the Assembly on Monday that the food situation be taken into consideration, Mr. B. S. Murthi said “I request that the Prime Minister be present.” The speaker said “The leader of the House (Dr. Subbaroyan) is here.” Mr. Murthi repeated “I want the Prime Minister to be here.” Dr. Subbaroyan said that the Minister in charge of Food would be able to cope with the situation.

*               *          *

Nobody ever said or could have thought that in situations which the Food Minister could not cope with, the Prime Minister is the one to be looked up to. Was it because the Constituent Assembly could not cope with its work that a regular contingent of Madras Ministers rushed to Delhi abandoning the province to its fate in the midst of a daily worsening famine crisis? No other province has contributed so many Ministers to the benches of the Constituent Assembly as ours, and no provincial Ministry made such little mark there as the Omandurians did. The story is told of one of the members of the Assembly, of how when a committee discussion was going on as to whether the Centre or the Provinces should have the residuary powers, he coped with the situation by suggestion “By why not divide them on some equitable basis?” Guess who.

*               *          *

It is scarcely likely that any demand for the presence of a Prime Minister like Churchill would have emanated from any member of Parliament in the war period. It would have been assumed that he was unavoidably detained by urgent indispensable work elsewhere, and due respect would have been paid to the multifariousness of function of a strenuous office making simultaneous demands on the holder’s time and energy. At less momentous times Parliament did insist on the presence of absentee Ministers. And speakers have been known to uphold the view that it was the right of legislators to be listened to directly instead of by proxy by the Ministers and it was the duty of the Ministers to give personal attention to the criticisms made on the floor of the House about the administration of their respective departments.

*               *          *

The Russian delegate at the UNO is reported never to have been absent from any of its sessions even for a single minute. Sri Prakasam while Premier set up a very high standard in the matter of attendance in the legislature. He attended each day of each session punctual to the minute and stayed to the end of business every day, allowing himself no respite whatsoever. Only on very rare occasions was C.R. in legislature. Legislators including Ministers are paid for with public funds to attend sessions of the legislature and bestow their judgments on the topics coming up there, and evasion of attendance is a lapse from the strict code of rectitude. It is like being paid for a work and shirking it.

*               *          *

When Dr. Subbaroyan said that the Food Minister “could cope with the situation even in the absence of the Prime Minister,” the implication conveyed is, apparently, that the Prime Minister is a tremendous parliamentary force held in reserve, to be called in only when other ministerial resources are taxed to the utmost and found inadequate to meet the situation. Why should anybody insult public intelligence by indulging in fictitious make-believes of this sort that can deceive nobody? The plain truth of the matter is that in the Prime Minister we have one whom it is hopeless to bolster up as an able parliamentarian.—(September 20, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow-men; and along those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.—MELVILLE.

SWATANTRA—SEPTEMBER 13, 1947

WHEN two persons live together for long, each takes on a little of the characteristics of the other. The morose man is made jolly by contiguity with the cheerful—and the cheerful one is made dolorous by the company of the dismal. We all act and react on each other to such an extent that to live together is barely possible without a substantial exchanging of one’s qualities with another’s Imitation is an unconscious human trait. It takes place through all antagonisms, unknown even to those passing through the process. It has been so between the Andhras sand Tamils and Malayalees inhabiting Madras City. Amalgams in rich variety of the separate collective virtues and vices of the three categories can be seen therein in consequence of their being thrown against each other in schools and colleges, offices, workshops, buses, trams, streets and cinemas.

*               *          *

There is charm in the fraternization of dissimilar units. For all purposes except war, the attractionsof heterogeneity are superior to the advantages of homogeneity. Variety is the spice of life in capital cities which have grown out of visitors from far and near taking roots in them often without loss of contact with their original homes. As there is going to be no war between province and province, no dire necessity is involved calling for a change in the present multi-lingual pattern of cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Delhi. Like great leaders who outgrow provincial stature with their greatness and attain national status, they belong to the whole country and to no province. Their life will be impoverished if they are forced administratively into the narrower dimensions of linguistic uniformity. The wide diversity among persons and groups in art, philosophy, religion, language and the like constitutes the very essence of culture—a thing to be not only cherished but to be protected in every possible way. It will be profitable to all concerned if the principle of linguistic unity in administration should bypass the three or four big multi-lingual cities situation on the border between different language areas. So they can serve as microcosms of the vast variety of the nation’s life and cultures, hospitable homes for all present residents, with no section appropriating rights of exclusive sovereignty over the rest.

*               *          *

Andhras in their pristine condition in their town or village homes are very different from Andhras abroad. They are given to outspokenness sand emotionalism. Fervour comes to them more easily than to Tamils with their genius for caution. There is a dash of defiance to established things in every Andhra heart. They are incorrigible nonconformists. They love to march in the vanguard of revolution. Their collective heroism is of a high order. While they lack tenacity they are endowed with an abundance of the pioneering spirit. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. The reserves and restraints dictated by considerations of conventional propriety are comparatively less effective in their behaviour as also the strains that belong to social sophistication. The generality of them have a happy go-lucky temperament. Their susceptibility to kindness and grateful expressions of demonstrative affection is as marked as their capacity for organising black flag processions and boycott campaigns against disliked individuals at short notice. Personal indentification with public affairs is habitual with them—so that their attitude to leaders eminent in public life is one of personal obligation. Conversely they react resentfully with a sense of personal injury towards those who in their opinion have let down the public and not acted worthily in public matters. Their sensitiveness to affronts is acute and is apt to lead them into manifestations of reckless vehemence. Unpopular leaders are only too well aware of the advisability of keeping at a safe distance from them and the danger of getting too near. Premier Omandur, for example, recently ran to Tanjore in order to hurl a threat of prospective coercion against defaulting Andhra producers.

*               *          *

The Tamils are the world’s inveterate rationalists. They are hard to bluff. They excel in organization and executive capacity. A silent contemptuous disregard of frothiness in any form moves them to shift substance from shadow and concentrate on pursuits of effective benefit ignoring the lures of mere vainglory. They will endure much in the present for the sake of a benefit in the offing. Their practical sagacity, added to their flair for the consolidation of small gains to ulterior ends, has marked them for success in business and administration, but the inroads of infectious communalism of a virulent sort in their midst, have latterly been making havoc with their powers of combination for social and public purposes. They need a little of the lovable imperfections of the Andhras, just as the Andhras need something of the admirable practicality of the Tamils, for evolving into a higher order of citizen, and the intermingling of the two classes in a common capital would seem to have rendered this inestimable service to each except in the political field where, through some inscrutable malevolence of fate, neither has copied the virtues of the other. It has been given to the Malayalees to combine in themselves the gregariousness of the Andhras and the sturdy realism of the Tamils.

*               *          *

I regret an error in last week’s Sidelights and sincerely apologise for it to readers of Swatantra and all others concerned. It was stated that travelling allowance is not paid to legislators if they arrive in the city more than a day prior to the meeting of the legislature and the holding of the Congress Legislature Party meeting just two days in advance of the legislature se3ssion was for the reason that a large attendance was not desired at the Party meeting. Actually, under the scheduled arrangement, it was not T.A. (travelling allowance) that the Party members have to forego but D.A. (daily allowance). There is a world of difference between the two and the substitution of the one for the other mars the value of the whole argument and was grossly unfair to the Premier. I do not know what amends to make for so inexcusable a blunder.—(September 13, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.—COLTON.

SWATANTRA—SEPTEMBER 6, 1947

IT is now over five months since Sri Omandur was elected leader of the Congress Legislature Party. The election of leader under the Party rules is for a year. For more than five months out of the year, the Party has had no executive committee. The executive committee is as much an integral part of the Party machinery as the leader and it is an unheard of thing that such an integral part should be allowed to be missing for so long a time.

*               *          *

Now at last a meeting has been arranged for election of the executive committee. The meeting is fixed to take place on the thirteenth. The legislature is to meet on the fifteenth.   If the leader had intended that the Party meeting should be attended by the smallest possible number of people, he could not have pitched upon a more favourable date. Travelling allowance is not paid to legislators if they arrive in the city more than a day prior to the meeting of the legislature. It follows that except at the cost of their T.A. members of the Congress Legislature Party cannot attend the meeting scheduled for the thirteenth.

*               *          *

It would appear that it was pointed out to the leader that by postponing the date of the meeting by one day a far larger attendance could be had. But the date remains unchanged evidently for the simple reason that a large attendance is not desired. The smaller the meeting, the easier the maneuvering so as to get ‘safe’ and acceptable members packed into the executive committee. The Premier seems to have studied his legislators at least to the extent of knowing that the majority of them are not likely to forego any allowance due to them in order to attend any meeting. Honest man that he is with a far from flattering opinion of the honesty of others, he has taken to capitalizing that greatly self-advertised virtue of his to political ends in ways novel and unique unrecorded in history as ever having been thought of previously by others in a similar position.

*               *          *

The establishment of a Premier’s Secretariat is a stroke of genius on Sri Omandur’s part that secures for Madras an innovation not found elsewhere in India. Other Premiers are content to treat the whole of the Secretariat as their own and the attractions of a Secretariat within a secretariat  are lost on them. Exercise of power by proxy is inevitable when power is greatly desired but the knowledge and experience required for exercising it competently is lacking. One of our publicists with a very big reputation found at an early stage of his ambition that his brain was not equal to his opportunities. He loved to deliver addresses and have them well thought of and reported in the papers the next morning with commendatory comments. But on his own resources he could never prepare a speech. Secretaries were therefore engaged. He had a regular secretariat at work collecting ideas for future speeches, and when occasion arose they would put up drafts of speeches, but the great man who had to deliver them was hard put to it when it came to deciding which speech to choose. So he appointed another secretary to select one out of the various speeches for actual use.

*               *          *

Advisers tend to multiply as high offices are occupied by persons lacking capacity to discharge their responsibilities properly with their own resources of judgment. An economic adviser is an inescapable adjunct to a Minister for Finance when the Minister on account of ignorance gets lost and has to be helped out. There is an adviser in the offing for every Minister not knowing what to do with the power that has come to him. The dispersion of administrative control among innumerable known and unknown advisers has led to a veritable chaos of cross purposes, in the midst of which food has become scarce despite plenty of production, corruption has become rampant, communalism a flourishing political gospel and blackmarkets established institutions in the economy of the day.  

   

*               *          *

The limits of Sri Omandur’s capacities for leadership stand unfolded before the public in a record singularly barren of any good to the people governed. He was supposed to be a saint indifferent to material inducements who could be depended upon to renounce his title of leader at the appropriate time at the bidding of the makers of his fortune. He has sorely disappointed those that banked on this assumption. And as the Congress High Command themselves were among those that shared such an assumption, he has become a problem to the High Command who want to get rid of him but do not know how. Power has gone to his head and become an intoxicant, as it is naturally bound to do in the case of persons unfamiliar with it and not endowed with the largeness of vision required for sustaining its strains without loss of equilibrium. What with prodigious concentration of effort over small things he has brought a great office down to a comical level. Most of his colleagues must by now be feeling him to be an extremely irritating and impossible leader to get along with. He seems to have placed reliance in the rousing of communal passions for maintaining his position—a Justicite in Congress garb. A misfit if non-communalism is to be the sheet-anchor of Congress politics.—(September 6, 1947) S A K A.                                                                                      

SIDELIGHTS : : The strength of criticism lies only in the weakness of the thing criticised.—LONGFELLOW.

SWATANTRA—AUGUST 30, 1947

THE present Ministry has been in office for five momentous months—time enough for a review of their work. Individually the record of the Ministers has been inglorious. Most of them have been barren, some positively reactionary, and one or two, in charge of important portfolios, so conspicuously incompetent as to have become a public menace in their present positions. From none has any outstanding constructive policy, conceived in the public interest for improvement of the prevailing miserable conditions of life, so far come.

*               *          *

At all times sycophants gather round Governments. At a time like the present when so many controls are in operation, existence is impossible without official favour for certain classes of people engaged in particular occupations. These are now the life and soul of the prodigiously advertised “receptions” that the Ministers get, and they have learned to do a very flourishing business out of it. They and the police form a buffer between the public and the more unpopular of the Ministers. The old enthusiasm of the people for Congress and Congress leaders is rapidly vanishing.

*               *          *

The present set of Ministers shave already cost the Congress and general goodwill of the masses. The Ministers have sunk to a position lower in public confidence than even the Advisers. It is recognized that the Advisers were good administrators in a bad setting, unlike the Ministers who are squandering the invaluable advantages of a good setting by bad administration.

*               *          *

The Food Minister has created round himself an atmosphere of challenge about his own personal response to his department’s procurement injunctions. He is thrown on the defensive—a plight far from dignified for the holder of an officer whose good faith is to be taken for granted if he is to do any good work, and on whose wisdom and reputation for disinterested public spirit the whole food economy of the province and the success of its procurement operations hang. Dr. Rajan has deteriorated considerably since the days he acted as Health Minister in C.R.’s cabinet. He has lost his guts. While formerly he commanded respect as a strong man, he now evokes derision as a dabbler in intrigue concerned only in tenaciously clinging to a post of which the main object he has signally failed to justify.

*               *          *

Of the other Ministers, the Finance Minister has by now completely succeeded in establishing his position as one who knows very little of finance. It is dangerous to the safety of the province to permit Sri Gopala Reddi to administer a subject of which he knows so little. Sri Chandramowli has confessed in public his impotence as against the permanent administrative service. Why should a self-confessed impotent Minister stay on? For whose benefit? As for the Industries Minister, precious little has come from him by way of plans for industrial regeneration. But he seems very willing to place the power of the State into the hands of his own business colleagues of pre-ministerial days—a thing that calls for careful investigation about the advisability of ever entrusting the Industries portfolio to a company-promoter. Sri Avanashi has gone about like a veritable Don Quixote waging hectic battles against imaginary evils in public education, ignoring its essential needs, confounding its cultural mission with the sowing of illwill and communal passion, and generally making a mess of things and vainly mistaking it to be so much of progress. The other Ministers have just fallen into the ruts of old routine. They show no sign of ever being able to break new ground in conformity with the need of the times.

Sri Omandur the Premier is reported to be having a tough time with his colleagues as they with him. He has turned out to be no weakling. He has shown that he possesses personal rectitude. He has exhibited a firm will in the matter of calling erring Ministers to order when in his opinion they erred. He has abstemiousness, he is non-acquisitive and he is not disposed to throw out his favours rashly. He is capable of dealing with nepotism sternly. But all his virtues are fashioned into a small mould and spoiled by a narrow outlook; they are applied to trifling details; they are therefore lost in the sands of littleness. The Premier lacks constructive vision and the spacious judgment appropriate to his great office. He has a parochial mind that is being perpetually lost on the fringes of the stupendous problems confronting him as the head of the administration. In history, it is not the easy-going licentiates but the puritans of irreproachable personal character and sectarian temperament living in the iron cages of rigid pre-determined values, that have done the greatest harm.—(August 30, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.—ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

SWATANTRA—AUGUST 23, 1947

FOUR of the members of the Indian Dominion Cabinet are real leaders of men in the sense that large masses of people hang on them for guidance. Three of them have risen to power on the crest of Gandhian influence, but three more dissimilar beings can rarely be found adorning the effective leadership of a single political organisation. Jawaharlal of the three represents a grand contradiction in Congress politics which has continued up to date under the shelter of national preoccupation with the major activity connected with the anti-imperialist struggle. But the moment for the resolution of the contradiction has come, along with independence—a moment foreseen by Subhash Bose, that can no longer be postponed indefinitely.;

*               *          *

Subhash said of Nehru, ”He is looked upon by almost everybody in India as an infallible guide on everything, even though on his own showing he vacillates at every step. You find the peasant hails him as his spokesman, labour as their protagonist, the Communist patronises him, the capitalist dotes on him, the artist hails him as a pathfinder in belles letters, the mill owner gushes over him ignoring the disconcerting fact that he is actually spinning away, without conviction, to prove a worthy heir to Gandhiji and a friend to the Daridranarayana—a word he abhors . . . An artist may afford to be decorative . . . . He may even hug the charming inconsistencies to cut a picturesque figure. But for a man of action, a statesman, an administrator and above all for one who bids fair to grow into the world figure, it were madness even to dream that one could do without a backbone . . . . I will beg leave to prophesy: if he really wants to serve India through politics he must first of all make sure of his foundations.  For, if he does not take care to seek solid ground under his feet, the ground won’t seek his feet either.” (From The Subhash I Knew by Dilip Kumar Roy)

*               *          *

Unlike Nehru, Sardar Patel is all backbone and no vacillation and the same can be said of Rajendra Prasad also. But Rajendra Prasad is an individualist immersed in practical work for social welfare, devoid of personal political ambition and with no taste for intrigues connected with power consolidation on party lines. He acts on the principle of “one step enough at a time” and refuses to be drawn into the controversies that lie beyond. A man with no rancour and incapable of making enemies. Power has come to him unsought through sheer character, universally recognized by all warring groups as one of unique purity and straightforward rectitude. His genius for evading conflicts tends now to concentrate the struggle for primacy in power between Nehru and Patel, though it is not unlikely that his very detachment may finally bring him to the top, over the heads of both. For the time being, all the glamour of titular limelighted premiership belongs to Nehru, while Patel goes on quietly gathering the strings of effective control over the party into his own hands, planting dependable lieutenants of his own in key positions in the administration and in the important offices that influence and dominate public opinion. The major voice in the determination of all the big appointments is that of Patel. He has capital at his elbow. Unlimited access to the wealth and resources of rich traders and owners of industry who look to him for patronage and protection, control over the most powerful and influential of the departments of Government at the Centre and over the whole mechanism of vote-catching, his own single-track will, burdened by few scruples in the pursuit of power, and the supreme asset of a lifetime’s close association with the Mahatma to an extent precluding  for ever,  under any circumstances, any possibility of an open breach combined to make Sardar Patel the most dreaded and formidable among the leading figures propelled to supreme office in the new Dominion of India.

*               *          *

(1)    Rajendra Pasad; (2) Jawaharlal Nehru; (3) Vallabhbhai Patel; (4) Baldev Singh; (5) Bhabha; (6) Dr. S.P. Mookherjee; (7) Abul Kalam Azad; (8) Rajkumari Amrit Kaur; (9) Dr. John Mathai; (10) R.K. Shanmukham Chetti; (11) Jagjivan Ram; (12) N.Y. Gadgil. (13) Rafi Ahmad Kidwai; (14) Dr. Ambedkar.

Dr. Ambedkar is the only non-Gandhian member of the Central Government entitled to political recognition on the basis of mass suffrage. Dr. Mukherjee of the Hindu Maha Sabha and Sardar Baldev Singh represent no doubt very important communities. But they have not attained that level of unchallengeable representative hold over their respective communities that belonged to Mr. Jinnah in the case of the Muslim League and is exercised by Dr. Ambedkar over the scheduled castes. They could have been ignored, or replaced by others from the same fold, without any convulsion being caused thereby. But Dr. Ambedkar is the very spearhead of the hopes and aspirations of millions of India’s suppressed humanity dubbed and treated as untouchable over the ages. If democracy is a force symbolizing the enslaved to redemption, and if that force can be said to be incarnated in one individual more than in others, that individual is Dr. Ambedkar. He is different from Jagjivan Ram who, according to all accounts has given a very good account of himself as a member of the Interim Government, but who required to be carried on the shoulders of Rajendra Prasad for initial recognition of his status as administrator. But Dr. Ambedkar’s stature needs no stilts to be brought to the level of the topmost leader of any other party. His ability is as great as his learning and knowledge, and both are well matched by the vigour of his resistance to monopoly and privilege and his devotion to the cause of the downtrodden in the land.

*               *          *

Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad and Ambedkar are thus the only ones in the Cabinet whose political importance is equal to their official position as administrators and who can therefore be depended upon to exercise their judgment independently without nervous fear about the consequences of dissenting from the wishes and viewpoints of powerful patrons. In the case of none of the others can it be said that their position as members of Government is matched by their influence as leaders of men. Maulana Azad who shone well so well as Congress President and conducted himself with such unwearying dignity during the recent most difficult period in Congress history, makes somehow a far from happy impression as Member for Education. He has lost his historical position and sunk into comparative un-importance since he assumed a portfolio. In the case of some of the other members, lack of political importance as judged from a national scale, is counter-balanced by admirable individual qualities. Dr. Mathai, for example, has vast experience in the management of industrial concerns without the capitalist bent of mind which is the besetting bane of industrial magnates. The Tatas in whose service he rose to distinction have ever been less concerned with profit than with national prosperity and the advancement of science—and they have not monkeyed with the intrigues of power politics. They have to be differentiated from the Birlas who have taken patriotism in the stride of business, whose whole outlook is one of acquisitiveness and whose strangle-hold over the Congress exposes that great institution today to the taint of capitalist bias and the aversion of millions of socialistically inclined anti-capitalist people. But Dr. John Mathai is that invaluable rarity, a Socialist of liberal outlook with managerial experience of capitalist industry. Rare qualities are credited to Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur too, and to Rafi Ahmad Kidwal. But in their case as well as of those among the rest not so well endowed, promotion has come by favour, which means that the ambition of securing camp-followers has prevailed over other considerations with the arbiters of our national destiny responsible for the formation of the country’s Government.

*               *          *

Shanmukhan Chetti’s  appointment as Finance Member is of special interest for the displacement of C.R. involved in it—a step well in accord with the power-hunter’s repugnance for tall poppies in his neighbourhood, and ominously illustrative of dark and unhappy possibilities in the relations between the South and the Centre in the coming days. Shanmukham Chetti is an advocate of relaxation in political standards, given to taking such pleasure as come his way without squeamishness. I reproduce here what I wrote of him six years ago as it might be of some interest to readers now: “Sir R.K. Shanmukham has revealed himself to be a progressive constitutionalist. He has shed the trappings of the patriot, but he has acquired considerable success as an administrator. He has the true administrator’s gift of discovering dependable men for fulfilling difficult tasks. He is an economist of vision and insight, and is very able in the expounding of complicated themes. His sense of logic is keen and vigilant, and in all administrative matters, he strives to render justice by keeping an open mind. He is prudent and tactful and is endowed abundantly with commonsense. He has got entangled into membership of a reactionary political party, but his Justicite persuasions, based on expediency, are apparently a result of his frank acceptance of his own limitations for the hardy functions of Congress membership.”—(August 23, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : From exactly the same materials one man builds palaces, while another builds hovels.—G. H. LEWES.

SWATANTRA—AUGUST 15, 1947

TWELVE of the 32 Presidents of the United States were elected to that high office without a majority of the popular vote. This could happen because, in most of the States, the people do not have a chance to vote directly for the President. They vote for electors who in their turn are pledged to vote for the candidate of the party to which they belong. William Langer, one of the Senators, has now introduced in the Senate an amendment to remove the outworn machinery of the electoral college and to provide for the election of the President by a direct vote of the people.

*               *          *

Describing the electoral college as a relic of the stage-coach era when there were no facilities for rapid communication, Langer says, “I want to make absolutely certain that the man sworn into the Presidency of the United States is the man that the majority of the people want.” One other very important change advocated by him is that the job of nominating candidates for the Presidency should be “taken out of the hands of the politicians and placed where it belongs—squarely on the shoulders of the American people.” The selection of the highest executive officers of the State, he argues, should be taken “out of the atmosphere of smoke-filled backrooms and political horse-trading.” He appeals to the people of the United States “to rise up in their might” and demand the abolition of the electoral college ; to insist upon their fundamental right to nominate and elect the President by a direct popular vote. He assures them, “The people can have that right if they want it, and as soon as they want it. But they will never get it if they wait for the politicians to give it to them on a silver platter.”

This worn-out mechanism of electoral college, this relic of a bygone stagecoach era, which they are now attempting to get rid of in America, is just what the framers of our constitution here in India have chosen to borrow from the American constitution. This is a great pity. Before the discredited electoral  college system gets established permanently as an integral part of the constitution, public opinion should be roused to the need of preventing it and act promptly to prevent it. In a democracy people have no rights other than the over-riding right to appoint their own Government. If they lose that right, they lose all. They have to protect it against the professional people wanting office, seeking it with a hunter’s instinct, looking up on Government as their trade and drawing the line at nothing in the effort to get power and hold power.

*               *          *

Not only the electoral college system, but every device that conduces to the defilement of political democracy with trickery and chicanery should be resisted. One such device in Madras is worth noting as a revealing exhibition of the character of the present leadership. One of the first acts of Omandur’s regime was the introduction of a rule precluding any change of leader except with a two-third’s majority in the party. The rule makes nonsense of the High Command’s argument in connection with the dethronement of Prakasam—“He had lost the confidence of the majority of members in the party, so what could we do about it?” If the rule had preceded the crisis, the ex-Premier could not have been dislodged at all. The present position is that with only one vote more than one-third, Omandur can successfully defy any attempt on the part of the rest of the legislators to oust him. The rule is a fraud on democracy.—(August 15, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : It is an observation no less just than common, that there is no stronger test of a man’s real character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.—PLUTARCH.

SWATANTRA—AUGUST 9, 1947

THE removal of C.R. from the Union Cabinet apparently for elevating him to the Governorship of West Bengal, actually places him in cold storage for the time being. It does not seem to be a sound practice to impose leaders of one province as Governors in others. For one thing, it violates the spirit of the constitution which has provided for Governors to be elected directly by the people on adult suffrage. Are the people of any province ever likely to choose their Governors from the candidates of another? Interim appointments should conform as near as possible to the pattern of government and administrative personnel that may reasonably be expected to take shape when the new constitution comes into full operation. Supposing the High Command had selected as Governors persons likely to be confirmed in the same office even under the impending suffrage, and supposing in due course they actually get so confirmed, what a feather it would be in the cap of the selectors. They would have shown themselves capable, then, of voluntary adjustments to the authentic realities of public opinion and established their mettle as democrats and won honour as such.

*               *          *

Perhaps the repugnance of the High Command to the whole lot of Andhra leaders as such has landed them in the present morass of having to pick Governors from anywhere except the actual territory to be governed by them. Tamil leaders stand no higher in the regard of the central Congress dictatorship, but it has been given to C.R. alone to break the North India monopoly of control over all-India affairs and establish himself squarely and firmly in the highest Congress conclave on equal terms with its other members and on a footing other than patronage. He stands as a symbol to demonstrate that, in the matter of contribution to federal leadership, Madras is not completely wiped out, of the Congress map.

*               *          *

If Governorships were to go by election now and C.R. were to stand, he will be confronted in Tamil Nadu with the communal forces that are being violently egged on under Omandurian inspiration. None will vote for him in Andhra. The whole of Andhra is a boiling cauldron of rage over the dethronement of  Prakasam for the establishment of a Premier like Omandur. Had the present Ministry acquitted itself creditably and improved conditions of life for the people, it might have hoped in course of time to quieten the public resentment with which its advent was greeted. But even its most energetic protagonist has come on record condemning it as in no way better than its predecessor. It has brought the food position to a desperate muddle.  Corruption is on the increase. The strain of sheer existence is being made unbearable for millions, while the Ministry is digging itself deeper daily into the mire of a hatred cult of communal colour, hoping thereby to divert attention from its own incompetence and futility. But the mounting distress of the multitude can neither be fed on manufactured communal rancour nor put off with tactics.

*               *          *

The feuds of recent months have not led to any good. While ministerial energies are being utilized to the full in a strenuous struggle just to survive, there is no chance of any surplus being left over for constructive effort over measures of tangible benefit to people. All this strain would be at once removed if peace could be re-established between the anti-Prakasamites and the ex-Premier. There seems no way out of the tangled mess of present-day politics in the province until the enormous goodwill and popular backing that belongs to Sri Prakasam is converted into an asset of Government instead of being allowed to confront it resentfully as now. The most natural way of effecting such a conversion would have been to make him Governor. He is anyhow marked for the Governorship of Andhra after the formation of the province, should he choose to stand for it, since under adult suffrage no one would have the ghost of a chance for competing against him successfully in that area. He certainly deserves as well at the hands of the Congress High Command as Pakwasa or Jairam das Dowlatram. Rarely have I ever come across such a fury of anger as is now burning in the heart of the common man of Andhra over the Congress High Command’s studied neglect and insult of leaders held in honour by him, and especially Sri Prakasam. One of them, a loyal Congressman of repute who went to jail everytime the mandate came, burst out the other day, thus: “For seventeen years I have been paying four annas to the Congress regularly. But now I am disgusted with the ways of the High Command. For the first time in seventeen years I have withheld my subscription to the Congress this year.”

The old empire that the Congress had over the allegiance of the masses is being lost to it; and great as Sardar Vallabyhbhai Patel’s services were to the Congress in time past, his handling of affairs over the past two years has done much harm to the credit and influence of the Congress with common people in general. C.R.’s relegation to West Bengal is an ugly move in a threatened process of power-consolidation at the Centre, with the Sardar holding all the strings. Sir R.K. Shanmukham Chetti’s talents are undeniable and deserve to be made accessible in some consultative form; but not, as a Minister of State. Ministerships should come as nobody’s gift. With C.R. got rid of, all that is needed for the Central Executive to be brought into the hollow of the Sardar’s hand is that Nehru should be made President and Rajendra Prasad sent to Behar. These moves too were not left unattempted, according to report. It is comforting to be informed that the Mahatma stepped in before too late to counter them.—(August 9, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : A wide diffusion of property and a general equality of condition are the very foundation stones of popular government; a high concentration of wealth is incompatible with universal suffrage; a broad distribution of opportunity and assurance to labour is necessary to the security of republican institutions; the revolutions which have shaken other societies to which have shaken other societies to pieces have sprung from the antagonism of private interests and popular power, fired by ambitious leaders.—A BEARD.

SWATANTRA—AUGUST 2, 1947

MR. Casey, ex-Governor of Bengal, writes thus of Pandit Nehru: “Next to Mr. Gandhi he is, without doubt, the most respected public figure on the Congress side. And yet one hesitates to call him a popular figure. He is reliably said to be intolerant of opposition, or even of critical comment, even from his friends. It may be that, in spite of his many gifts, this intolerance will make it difficult for him to command the full co-operation and loyalty of his colleagues over a period of time.”

*               *          *

Intolerance of opposition is the new danger besetting Congress leadership as it primes itself to get into the saddle as the ruling party in the country. Hitherto a certain patriotic quality was inherent in the position of the Congress as the dominant anti-imperialist organization. The whole world loves patriots. That is why scoundrels put on the guise of patriots to win the world’s regard which otherwise they have no means of getting at, and we have an adage like, Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But whatever the motive, patriotism, in the context of a struggle for national liberation, levels up those who go in for it, into action and behavior calling for hardihood and sacrifice. As the Congress came to be recognized as the main party pledged to the attainment of national liberation, the stamp of Congress membership sufficed as a hallmark of patriotism. Irrespective of personal qualities, the very jailors of Congress prisoners, paid slaves of the imperial power, looked upon their charges with respect as their potential deliverers and were correspondingly crest-fallen if not conscience-stricken over their own vocation. There were few among those at large that were not a little shamefaced over their enjoyment of liberty while the patriots of the Congress were under incarceration.

*               *          *

With the withdrawal of British power, the whole of the vantage position of a fighting party credited with patriotic fervour, is lost to the Congress, as it were overnight. There is no longer a foreign power to fight with, in the old form of occupational Government. Other tests of patriotism are urgently needed. What shall they be? All the confusions and conflicts now being witnessed are at bottom a sign of multifarious interpretation of the true content of patriotism in the true content of patriotism in the changed circumstances of the moment, with no longer an external authority to contend with.

*               *          *

The struggle for new definitions has begun among the Congressmen themselves, but the boundaries of the struggle do not fall within the Congress organization, the whole of our public life is contained in them. It must be said that in the matter of overt behaviour at least, the minorities have begun to play their part handsomely. Mark Qhalikuzza-man, one of the fathers of the Pakistan movement, saluting the Union Flag! The majorities, feeling their power, are attempting to set themselves up as the sovereign authority in the State, and for the time being, the power of majority organization is being developed on communal lines and nowhere so markedly as in the Congress itself, notwithstanding the professed non-communal objective of Congress politics all these years. The League and the British have between them communalized the Congress. Attempts towards a new equilibrium based on the decommunalisation of public life through administrative flat, are being reported from C.P. and U.P. But their influence has left the Southern Presidency unaffected. Just as, in Pakistan, the rule of the League is being shaped into a communal Muslim rule, here in Madras the rule of the Congress is being shaped, not into a Hindu rule but into a communal non-Brahmin rule.

*               *          *

Muslim rule in Pakistan will be popular with Muslims so long as the emotional satisfaction of communal authority over an excluded class like Hindus, suffices for the Muslim majority. But no emotion, however pleasant, can take the place of food, and the struggle of the hungry against any rule denying them food and a fair share of the good things of life, is bound before long to assert itself, gathering allies from all communities. Disparity between the rich and the poor is the eventual cause of every variety of disturbance leading society to chaos and bloodshed, and though communalism of one sort or another may for a while veil its true character, it cannot take the place of a helpful lasting remedy for it. Hatred doctrines sand exclusive appropriations of power and its benefits cannot create the atmosphere of mass goodwill necessary for the stability of any State. Widespread prosperity alone can do it. With freedom won, the mass distribution of prosperity, in place of the present privation, is the proper objective that should engage the ambitions of the public-spirited, and in the new setting, the type of patriots needed for leadership are neither the honoured fighters of the Congress in the independence struggle, nor opportunist communalists seeking to rouse the ignorant passions of the multitude against particular sects to make careers for themselves,-- as the Nazis under Hitler sought to rouse the passions of the Germans against the Jews,--but intelligent and constructive planners for an economy of plenty impervious to exploitation by monopolist profit-seekers. The test of the new democracy is that none that is a citizen should be excluded from any of its benefits. The danger it has to overcome is that of majority tyranny. Its freedom should be freedom for all who do not endanger others’ freedom.—(August 2, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : We have to analyse the character and composition and the incalculable future of that great instrument of power, the Indian National Congress. It is a matter of great interest and equally of great anxiety.—NATIONAL HERALD.

SWATANTRA—JULY 26, 1947

THE latest Congress Bulletin contains the text of Sri Shankarrao Deo’s circular to Provincial Congress Committees defining the Congress attitude to Socialists. It says that “the Socialists collect funds for their own party organization and not for the Congress” and “the Congress therefore cannot and should not help in collecting funds for another political organization.” It says further that “for similar reasons it is equally undesirable for Congress Committees to present addresses and to otherwise take part in welcoming Socialists.” The importance o f these directives consists in the breach with precedent that they prescribe. From the high altitude of the position that the Congress seeks nothing for itself, that it wants power not for itself but for the whole country and its people, the Secretary of the organization has pulled it down to the level of non-co-operation with all other parties, of refraining from helping any of them with collection of funds or even with a welcome.

*               *          *

From the language of Sri Deo’s circular it would look as though Congressmen are to be taught that the separate existence of a party apart from the Congress is a thing to be looked askance at. Evidently the Congress bosses feel that the time has come and not merely for a parting of the ways with the Socialists but for an actual fight with the Socialist Party. They want to see the party put down. In their anxiety to put the Socialists down, they appear to be drawing closer even to the Communists who till the other day were the target of vehement attack by Congress leaders and most of whom are even now held under detention in Congress administered province. Sardar Patel is credited with confidence in his own ability to keep the Communists in order under any circumstances. He is not so sure of the Socialists, and Jai Prakash in particular seems to have become for him a recurring headache.

*               *          *

Jai Prakash Narayan is the glamour man of Indian politics at the present moment and the Socialist Party’s biggest asset. A Bihar peasant’s son brought up in a village it is said he saw a tramcar for the first time at the age of nineteen. Then the thirst for western learning took possession of his soul and he went to America where he stayed for eight years and studied in five universities earning his keep all the time by working as a farm labourer. In the 1942 movement he was listed as Public Danger Number One and rose to eminence with the concentrated attention that the authorities then bestowed on him. He has high mettle and immense popularity but the purpose of his striving is uncertain. It wavers between the methods of the revolutionary and the dialectic excitements of the academic intellectual. The Socialist’s service of labour is hampered by the party leaders’ addiction to middle class modes. Socialist policy in any given crisis is apt to resolve itself into a series of dilemmas left to be solved by the drift and pressure of circumstances rather than the conscious exertion of a directing will. Just now they seem to be torn between the lure of power and office under the shadow of Congress patronage and the desire to play a heroic role as the common man’s champion against the swiftly developing Congress-capitalist alliance and authoritarianism.

*               *          *

In the early days of the Socialist Party Jai Prakash Narayan lost his best workers to the Communist Party. In South India, at any rate, the C.S.P. was almost bodily transformed into the C.P. and the most energetic and prominent of Andhra, Tamil and Kerala Communists happen to be erstwhile Congress Socialists. All the discontents in the land and the disaffected of other parties have made their contribution to the rank and file of the Communist Party which therefore holds the palm in the whole country for energy, executive efficiency, propaganda drive, organizational thoroughness and skill—and fanaticism. While misery stalks the land, the fascination of Communism cannot but grow in India. Stamped as it is with the lure of the worldwide vogue and immortal renown of Lenin’s great name, it might have become the biggest of Indian political forces, but wrong leadership on recent crucial occasions inspired by slavish clinging to the coat-tails of Lenin’s administrative successors in Russia, has sadly impaired the growth and prestige of Communism in our midst. It is however being swiftly redeemed from the past blunders of its own leadership by the still worse blunders of the Congress leaders now. When the passion of Communists is released from thraldom to the gospel of text-book dogma emanating from Moscow and is applied to the service and direction of popular urges, when its present rigidity is replaced with a broad humanitarianism, the resulting power and influence might well make Communism, in the wake of the coming adult suffrage, the most formidable of India’s political forces, and not the least potent of international influences with all the energy of Russia minus that military expansiveness of the Soviet which is being dreaded so much elsewhere in the world.—(SWATANTRA July 26, 1947 ) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence.—LAVATER.

SWATANTRA—JULY 19, 1947

THE golden jubilee of the firm of G.A. Natesan was celebrated the other day in the presence of a very distinguished gathering. Mr. Natesan is the last representative of a type of journalism that is fast ceasing to exist. Nowadays the difference between business and public spirit has become pronounced. It has become difficult to combine both. If only because the taint of capitalism attaches to successful business which is frowned upon by the vast body of proletarians that shape public opinion. People are no longer taken in by the patriotic professions of merchant princes running newspapers, who are discovering to their cost, after having built up huge fortunes with chains of papers, that their influence has not grown with the money earned by them.

*               *          *

The capitalist proprietor of the big daily who gets planted in journalism as a managing editor through the lever of ownership has outlived his brief period of glory and is nowadays more of a pathetic figure than an important one in the circles which he vainly seeks to dominate. This is because of the incorrigible uncommercial character of working journalists as a class wherever they may happen to work in the world. Working journalists have stubbornly refused to learn the facts of commercial life, to the despair of their employers who never could completely subdue them to their will with the economic weapons so potent in other fields of employment. The Hindu is perhaps the only daily in the country where a reverential attitude to the owner is conceded by the journalist members of the staff. In other offices characterized by direct proprietorial assumption of the editorship, a little residue of hostility is always mixed up with the routine loyalty needed to keep things going. Willing obedience is yielded not the paymasters but to the masters of the profession whose worth, irrespective of pay or position is sensed by the rank and file with an unerring collective instinct. The atmosphere of newspaper offices is not conducive to the peace of mind or equanimity of proprietors setting themselves up as editors without proper qualifications. They are assailed in their seats by a pervasive derision which saturates the whole place without any need on the part of anybody to utter a word. We find therefore so many of the “bosses” rushing like mad to the four corners of the globe in quest of tributes to their vanity denied them in their own offices.

*               *          *

Mr. G.A. Natesan was fortunate in the acquisition thirty-five years ago of a namesake with the energy and working power of a battalion of “subs” but without an iota of that refractory tribe’s yearning for independence and autonomy. In the whole history of Indian journalism I do not think anyone gave so much for so little as B. Natesan has to G.A., in service of the Indian Review and other publications that have brought wealth to the house. Mr. G.A. Natesan’s genius lay in making commerce appear like public spirit and making public spirit as profitable as commerce. His influence therefore kept abreast of his prosperity and his prosperity was multiplied by his influence, and there is no knowing to what pinnacle he might have risen, had not Gandhian non-cooperation come on the scene shattering the whole structure of our public life and the foundations of recognition, reward and preferment for its leading figures.

*               *          *

By no means a zealot in any cause, Mr. Natesan is an expert in social relations with an enormous passive receptivity, the greatest of all aids for eliminating unpleasantness and getting on successfully and well with all varieties of men. Of Sir Alexander Cadogan, the British delegate to the U.N. General Assembly, it is stated that he is a perfect product of the iron rules in the education of a British Foreign Office diplomat, that calm, good temper, patience and caution are for ever spread over his deportment, that when he speaks no manifestation of personal brilliance is ever allowed to come to the surface, he never laughs, never makes hasty gestures, and seeming all the time to be gazing into the distance, he is an adept in the game of non-committalness that diplomats have to play. Our Natesan laughs and loves gaiety, and is socially light, buoyant and agreeable, but without being grave and portentous he is capable of teaching lessons to Sri Cadogan himself in the matter of non-committalness. He is a skilled artist in mobilizing social contacts to desired ends, and as I wrote on him on another occasion, confidences pour into his ear as air rushes into a vacuum.  He seems marked out by nature for diplomacy and ambassadorial missions, for which openings have begun to come to Indians only just now. It is a pity they have come too late for the exercise of Mr. Natesan’s gifts.—(SWATANTRA July 19, 1947) S A K A.

SIDELIGHTS : : In some cases newspapers pursue purposes other than the purely journalistic, and that determines their line. That may happen if the proprietor is a partner in other business enterprises, or if the paper belongs to a business concern, which has nothing to do with it, or if there are o ther business commitments, which influence the attitude of the paper in the treatment of certain problems. Every editor of a certain American newspaper, so it is said, was given a list of sixteen public corporatioins, in which the proprietor was ‘interested’ and about which not a critical word was allowed to appear in the journal.—Dr. IGNAZ ROTHENBERG.

SWATANTRA—JULY 12, 1947

AN American chronicler with a reputation as a careful reckoner of crowds, gives these reports of Mr. Wallace’s reception:

In Cleveland—“A cheering capacity audience of 3,000 in the public music hall; more than a thousand were left standing outside. Tickets cost 60 cents to $2.40.”

I Chicago—“A frenzied, cheering crowd of more than 20,000 overflowed the Chicago Stadium. It was a sell-out, and the scalpers even did some business at the doors.”

In Detroit—“Five thousand Detroiters paid 50 cents to a dollar to hear the former Vice-President, and an overflow crowd of 4,000 heard him through a public address system in a park across the street.”

In Los Angelos—“Twenty-seven thousand tickets were sold for the mass meeting. Top price was lifted to $3.60.”

And so on.

*               *          *

Of Wallace’s visit to England, “which began as a private affair and turned into an international event,” Critic wrote thus in “New Statesman”:

“I can recall no other private visit to this country which has been so fully reported and discussed. One rather naïve reporter made the odd comment that we were justified in saying that Wallace’s visit had roused public attention by the fact that 2,000 tickets had been sold for a Central Hall meeting (London). Actually, the 3,000 tickets for the Central Hall meeting were sold out in a few days as a result of one annual advertisement in this journal (New Statesman). Subsequent enquiries and complaints showed that we could have sold out the Albert Hall three times over if it had been obtainable. There were 5,000 people  (on cup-tie afternoon) at the Manchester meeting; crowded meetings were held at Liverpool and Stoke; and, judging by enquiries from all over the country, similar crowds were anxious to hear Mr. Wallace in a score of English and Scottish cities.”

Yet Wallace is no spell-binding orator. Of his Central Hall speech in London referred to in the paragraph above, an English journal reported, “Wallace’s delivery was dull. He read his speech, mostly with his eyes on his prepared script. Once he stumbled badly, and had to correct what he had misread . . . He seemed taken aback by the brilliance of Crossman and Priestley who preceded him.” The political value of public gatherings is proportionately increased when they meet to hear speakers that have little to offer them by way of oratorical thrills. As the entertainment value of a speech diminishes, the public importance of the crowd listening to it tends to increase. When people gather in large numbers to listen to the dull platform performances of non-brilliant lecturers, (even paying a fee for it!) it is an indication of popular sympathy for the ideas associated with them, without reference to skill in presentation or any gifts of forensic artistry.

*               *          *

Little minds in his own country have reproached Wallace as a “starry-eyed idealist,” but Wallace really is one of the very few true internationalists of our time with a vision of world welfare extending beyond his own native country’s frontiers. One central idea runs throughout his political thought. It is that the root of famine, misery and strife all the world over lies in the fact that far too many men are struggling with primitive tools to gain a wretched living from refractory uneconomic holdings. They have to be relieved through the pressure on land being relieved and alternative employment in industry found for some of them. Realising the need for a worldwide balance between agriculture and, industry, Wallace holds that the biggest social objective of mankind at the present day is to raise the standard of tillers of soil everywhere to the level of living of industrial peoples. Wallace would have America’s dollars used in the promotion of industrialization to raise the standard of life of primary producers in backward countries, rather than to buy allies as Truman has been doing in Greece and Turkey.

*               *          *

But Wallace has neither a party machine nor the support of any organized interests in his attempts to win public response for his ideas. To politicians in modern times bent on winning public support, the Press next day is even more important than their immediate audience, but Wallace, with none to pull strings for him in the underworld of manoeuvre and intrigue from which the daily Press of America draws its guidance and inspiration, found his speeches ignored in the papers after his break with the President, and his avenues of approach to the judgment and conscience of American voters cut off. From this isolation he has won back Press publicity, partly with an adventure of his own in journalism by taking up the editorship of the weekly, New Republic, but mainly by forcing world attention on his views with a European tour. He is no longer neglected by the Press of his country and substantial coverage is being given of late to his political tours.

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When the Press denies fair reporting, the equilibrium of responsible government is gravely disturbed. The outbursts of hostile sentiment that have been so frequently greeting our Madras Ministers when they make their appearance on  public platforms nowadays, are a form of reaction to many a resented deviation of the daily Press from the strict proprieties of impartial reporting. Perhaps because most of the editors of our newspapers are themselves immersed up the neck in intrigues behind the scenes to promote the fortunes of this or that combatant for honours or leadership, there is nothing like objective fairness in the reporting columns of the papers controlled by them. Space is allotted not in proportion to the public importance of speakers or the merit and worth of their speeches, but in accordance with a table of preferences and exclusions got up by the man in control very often with far from creditable motives completely divorced from professional journalistic standards. The effect of the shady system of bans and boosts that prevails in many a newspaper office (to the hurt and degradation of conscientious reporters that are sought thereby to be turned into hacks) is a source of constant exasperation to the public whose helplessness against the authors of the system drives them to seek other ways of letting the steam off. The orderliness of social behaviour all the world over would seem to have a direct relation with the quality of the Press; and if we had newspapers of greater integrity in our midst it is not unlikely that there would have been less of violence and disturbance in public meetings and social life.—(SWATANTRA July 12, 1947) S A K A.