CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM CONTEND FOR REFORM

Whirlpool of Ideas in The New India
By GEORGE A. FLORIS
N Indian police officer stamps our passports on board ship, Indian customs officials see to our luggage after disembarkation—and what an elaborate system they operate !—and when finally we leave the port for the hotel, we see Indian policemen trying to cope with the Bombay traffic.
India remained, John Bull departed. Or did he?
When we see the crowds of people playing a n d watching cricket in true English fashion, or survey the dinner jackets at an evening dance in the hotel, or scan through the principal Indian newspapers, all written in English, in a format reminiscent of The Times, or read the English shop-shields even in the suburbs and the villages, or discover that English is still the medium in Parliament, in the High Court, in the universities. even at the construction works of the hugc Damodar Valley Project.— we begin to wonder.
After all, is not India still a member of the Commonwealth headed by Her Majesty? Was not Mr. Nehru in the Coronation procession? Are not India's international currency transactions still regulated in London, the centre of the sterling area? Is not India's development programme inter-related with the British sponsored Colombo Plan? All these facts assume an increased significance after a few weeks of extensive touring all over the new India.
AS a matter of fact, there 1--are. today more nonAsiatics, and particularly British, living in India, than under the Raj.
These Eutopeans in independent India are reminiscent of the refined upper class in H. G. Wells's "Time Machine," who were given all the good things in life by the rugged workers but who never knew when those very workers would seize them and eat them.
Similarly, Europeans a n d Americans in India still live in their special quarters, draw high salaries, are served by cheap native "bearers," they still join clubs "for Europeans only"—yet, at the same time, they live in continuous uncertainty, not knowing how long the Indian Government will be prepared to renew their working permits.
THERE is one point we must duly consider if we want to understand the whimsical political climate in India today, and India's peculiar, often irritating vacillations between the Communist East and the Democratic West.
Whatever degree of independence India now possesses, she did not attain it by her own strength but was given it by a resolution of the British Parliament— at a price of accepting partition of the country.
Instead of having conquered complete and unconditional independence, India had just changed her ties to Britain from those of political affiliation into those of moral indebtedness.
This humiliating sense of gratitude can easily lapse into a spiteful enmity, especially since it is intermingled with bitterness over the establishment-of Pakistan. The
reception of independence from the hand of the British, that of the $190 million grain loan from the hand of the Americans sufficiently explains India's flirtations with Russia and China.
WHILE America is a melt
ing pot of people, India today appears to be a melting pot of ideas, as if the Congress Government. representing a party that combines the most heterogenous elements, would try to put into practice the classical ideal of Tory democracy : the will of the dead, the living, and the unborn. The result is a most complicated constitutional life, a highly diversified society, and a truly "mixed economy" : a mixture of feudalism, capitalism and socialism.
The feudal princes receive general annuities for the land and power they had to surrender. In their remaining palaces they still can display all the oriental splendour of the olden days.
While the Maharajas represent the picturesque past, the "will of the dead," the industrialists and the trade union leaders represent the present, the "will of the living."
Although the unions may press and even exact many of their demands, we do not need to feel sorry for the industrialists. While in Europe the entrepreneurs have either easy market and difficult labour, sellers' market and full employment, or else difficult market and easy labour, buyers' market and unemployment—their Indian colleagues enjoy the "best of two worlds"; here is a permanent shortage of employment as well As of various goods.
Thus, the manufacturers, while they lament their manifold plights and plead with the Government for tax relief and a slow-down of labour ' legislation, conveniently control both market and labour.
These businessmen now build their new homes on the elegant Marrine Drive in Bombay, in Calcutta and in New Delhi. While the peasants, though now a little better fed, continue to work in the blazing sun, and the workers— those who are happy to hold their jobs in the growing unemployment—though now slightly better paid, continue to work in the excruciating heat of the factory halls, air-conditioning equipments are installed in the important offices.
THE socialism is represented by State-sponsored development projects—altogether 102 are now under construction. The best known among them is the one named after the Damodar river, although its various projects are spread over three rivers, intended to promote navigation, irrigation and powergeneration over a vast area near Calcutta. The development schemes as well as the big Sindri fertiliser factory are. no doubt, playing their part in the improvement of the food situation.
THE Government and the leading circles, so accommodating to the "dead" and the "living," do not show the same amount of solicitude towards the 'unborn." While the slaughter of the recklessly roaming cows, the elimination of useless animals, is in most parts of India still a taboo, birth control, the elimination of "useless" human beings, became the guiding star of the limited welfare activities which exist in India.
While in London some observers are now worried about the emergence of a "brown imperialism" aiming at world conquest, here in India one gets the impression that the authorities and the ruling classes are anxious to pro mote above anything the genosuicide of their own people. If it were up to them, the result of the "family limitation" propaganda would not be so modest as it has been so far.
But if those in charge fail to control children before their birth, they are equally ineffective in controlling them afterwards. At any rate, so it appears at the sight of the large number of small beggars in the cities and even in the villages, although the countryside is, on the whole, in a better shape both morally and physically.
A new Indian film entitled "Boot Polish," exhorts poor children not to beg, but earn a living —as shoe-shine boys.
Begging as a profession is in no way confined to children. There are vast numbers of all age groups who apparently fail to be integrated into the three-fold mixed economy. At the street-corners disease or deformity is not something to be ashamed of : lepers stretch out their fingerless hands, people suffering from elephantiage display their afflicted limb, the sightless eyes and the protruding trunks of missing arms are all effectively exhibited to appeal to the charitable conscience.
THERE are.some, only too plausible, stories of horror circulating.
Some clever businessmen had allegedly set out to organise the "beggars' market." They somehow manage to impound the unfortunate human wrecks, give them shelter and a daily bowl of rice, but in return they force them to surrender their daily takings. Security versus liberty in the mendicant society.
These businessmen are too farsighted to concentrate on the present by neglecting the future. They demonstrate in a manner that makes the flesh creep that children are an asset, not a liability, even in India. They run kidnap gangs—in Delhi alone about 150 children were kidnapped in one year--and make their small victims the profit-wielding beggars dtonmce caught, ht, these unhappy children are maimed and defaced in order that their piteous appearance shall move the benignant
donors in the streets. Some of these children were afterwards recovered by the police, but they were still so much under the hypnotic power of their capturers that they could not tell properly what had befallen them.
THE principal political credo of contemporary Indian society is Neutralism, an attempt to steer clear of the two main power groups not only on the level of international politics, but also in the manner of conducting the country's domestic affairs. Indeed, they make a virtue of the necessity.
As we have seen, economically they are still dependent on the Western Powers, and, to compensate for this irritating sense of dependence, emotionally they are attracted to the Communist camp. These two opposing attachments are thus transformed into a pair of mutually interfering forces which produce equilibrium.
This neutralism, deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of people and Government, led to the genuine indignation over the proposed American military aid to Pakistan. Not only because they fear that a strong Pakistan may be tempted to end the seven years old Kashmir dispute with a coup de force. Perhaps more than that, the historic memories of the days of Sir Robert Clive are in the back of their minds; how foreign military, aid could be turned into foreign domination over a divided sUb-continent,
THE neutralism is comple mented by a rising tide of nationalism, seeking to incorporate the French and Portuguese enclaves on the peninsula, and, domestically, to enforce the use of the Hindi language at the expense of the English as well as the numerous local languages, and to propagate the wear of Indian traditional garments by both male and female.
Curiously enough, this new nationalism does not see anything objectionable in the establishment of birth-coptrol clinics, in spite of the fact that the increased food output in recent years has blunted the main argument of the "family planners."
The dominant religious belief, competing with strong waves of materialism, is a sort of neoHinuism, wanting to combine the best of European humanism and Asiatic religion." This is a brief description of the Indian society that took over the country from the British Raj.
WHILE there are many individuals and organisations seeking piecemeal adjustments for their own benefit, there are two main groups who want to reform society down to its very foundations—the Christians and the Communists.
It would require a long study to attempt a full explanation of the disheartening fact that while so far the Communists have managed to conquer 10 per cent. of the people and are still making many addicts especially among the students, the number of Christian converts still lags in the region of 1 per cent.
Perhaps the main reason is that while Christendom is rightly recognised as something intent to change basically the old way of life, Communism is still generally regarded as just another political party, and the atheism of the doctrine is overlooked by many Hindu adherents.
Moreover, t h e Communists strive on poverty and challenge the existing economic order — the three-fold mixed economy that may be expedient but is, by its very nature, precluded from being dynamic or inspiring. The Christian challenge, on the other hand, does not point directly at the economic system but affects something far more valued by the Indian intelligentsia. To quote Fr. Robert Antoine, S.J., a prominent expert on the subject:
"The attitude of Indian intellectuals towards the Gospel is reminiscent of the story of the rich young man : a deep attraction towards Christ; the meeting with Christ and the call to total abnegation: the parting with Christ because of a preferential choice in favour of the great treasure of intellectual autonomy" ("The Gospel and Modern Indian Thought").
WHILE the authorities allow all political freedom to the Communists, the Christian missionaries have to put up with occasional vexations and, worst of all, are prevented from replenishing their ranks with new arrivals from the West.
Still, Catholic work in India progresses. It is intended--and in this respect Cardinal Gracias is giving the lead—that the Church in India should take on a true Indian character and, this way, refute the accusations of those who would dismiss her from the national life as a foreign body.
Priests and nuns adjust themselves to the Indian way of life and respect the local traditions as much as it is compatible with the profession of their faith. They teach in schools, they attend to the Sick, and—with all the tact and precaution required by the present conditions — they continue to spread the Gospel.