Nehru's India

FOUR and a half years is a long time for a diplomat to serve in India. Four and a half years is a very short time for a Westerner to get to know much about India. India is not only an Asian nation; it is a nation of almost four hundred million inhabitants; it is a sub-continent. Because of its many racial strains, its many regions, languages and customs, it is indeed more comparable to the whole sub-continent of Western Europe than to any one nation state in Western Europe. India's predominant religion, Hinduism, is more remote from the predominant religion of the West than any other of the main religions of the world. India is composed mainly of illiterate, ill-clad, hungry peasants living in mud or straw huts. India is riddled by a social disease, casteism, to which there is nothing comparable in the West. The Indians whom the Westerner, and especially the Western ambassador, gets to know, are almost all members of a small governing class. This class constitutes less than one-quarter of one per cent of the population, and it is not representative of the mass of the people from whom it is divided by a deep gulf. It is therefore with hesitation and humility that I submit this valedictory report I have tried not to let recent developments bulk too large in my assessment but this is difficult. This report is written at a period of low ebb in India's fortunes. The last election (1957) demonstrated the strength of the divisive forces of casteism, communalism and factionalism. The communists have secured a beachhead in Kerala from which they can expand if the Congress Party does not have a virtual rebirth. The failure of Nehru to strengthen his cabinet by getting rid of some of the reactionaries and incompetents and by bringing in new blood, arouses apprehensions that his normal lack of ruthlessness and guile added to his fatigue and increasing years may mean that he will not lead the Congress Party to a rebirth. India is facing an agricultural crisis because of its