GANDHI'S INDIA

To the casual observer India and her problems present a confused tangle of issues, political and religious, imperial and native, which serves as background to Gandhi's personality. For five and a half days Gandhi has fasted in the interests of his twin ideals, a united and independent India, and the greatness of the Hindu religion. Despite an Anglo-Saxon mistrust of dramatic heroism the ordinary observer is following Gandhi's struggle with admiration for the idealist willing to sacrifice his life for what he believes to be right.

The caste system has for centuries been a guarantee of the wisdom and culture of Hindu India of which the Brahmins are the inheritors and the teachers. Should castes be abolished the Brahmins would lose their economic and social protection and their traditions would be lost in the general pressure towards democracy.

Aside from the cultural significance of the awakening of the "depressed" classes their liberation must result in the creation of economic demands by the millions whose inheritance has denied them everything but the right to live. How is India, already a country of swarming population, to meet these new demands which once stimulated are impossible to ignore?

Probably Gandhi is right in fighting for the inclusion of India's sixty million "untouchables" in a general Hindu electorate, both provincial and central, but there seems to be danger in his policy as well. Although Gandhi wishes merely to resolve the intricate Hindu caste system into four basic castes it is likely that once started the movement can only end in the break-up occurs the entire system and should this occur much will be be destroyed as well as gained.