WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : A PLEA TO THE FOREIGNERS 237
Levellers’ Rebellion or to the Peasant’s Revolt in English History, merely because it could logically be described as a battle for freedom ? To do so will be to respond to a false cry of freedom. Such crude conduct would have been forgivable, had it proceeded from groups not intelligent enough to make a distinction between freedom to live and freedom to oppress. But it is quite inexcusable in radical and leftist groups led by Messrs. Laski, Kingsley Martin, Brailsford, Louis Fisher and other well-known champions of democracy. When pressed to explain why they don’t support Indian Parties which stand for true democracy, they are reported to meet the charge by a counter question. Are there any such parties in India ? Insist that there are such parties and they turn round and say : if such parties exist, how is it the Press does not report their activities ? When told that the Press is a Congress Press, they retort : how is it that the foreign correspondents of the English Papers do not report them ? I have shown why nothing better can be expected from these foreign correspondents. The Foreign Press Agency in India is no better than the Indian Press. Indeed it cannot be better. There are in India what are called foreign correspondents. In a large majority of cases they are Indians. Only a very few are foreigners. The selection of Indians as foreign correspondents is so made that they are almost always from the Congress camp. The foreign correspondents who are foreigners fall into two groups. If they are Americans they are just Anti-British and for that reason pro-Congress. Any political party in India which is not madly Anti-British does not interest them. Those who are not in the Congress will testify how hard it was for them to persuade the American War Correspondents who trooped into this country in 1941-42, even to entertain the possibility of the Congress not being the only party, much less to induce them to interest themselves in other political parties. It took a long time before they recovered their sanity and when they did, they either abused the Congress as an organization led by impossible men or just lost interest in Indian politics. They never got interested in other political parties in India and never cared to understand their point of view. The situation is no better in the case of foreign correspondents who are Britishers. They too are interested only in that kind of politics which is first and foremost Anti-British. They are uninterested in those political parties in India whose foremost