The elections in India last week, which brought striking gains for the Communists, show that the political parties are crystallising into two camps. In Travancore-Cochin, in the south, the forces bred of over-population, unemployment and Communist-led trade unions, strengthened by thousands of educated men who are discontented with Mr. Nehru’s policy of reform by gradualness, gained a majority over Congress in the Assembly. Even in the backward state of Pepsu, in the north, the Communists doubled their representation in the Assembly, although Congress retained control.
These results indicate that Mr. Nehru’s hold on India is much more precarious than is generally supposed abroad. Congress has lost its missionary zeal; it has learnt that there is no quick remedy for India’s vast problems and has become more and more identified with the privileged classes. On the other side are the millions of the unemployed and the newly educated, who find that India’s independence has not brought the expected benefits and so incline to the quicker method of revolution.
Key quote
“Will future biographers retrieve fallen idols from the mud and paint them with fresh saintly colours of pink and blue and gold?”
Harold Nicolson reviews Madame de Pompadour,
by Nancy Mitford
Talking point
A winter experience in London by which I am always taken slightly off guard is that of finding myself, usually in the Tube, among a crowd of football fans. It is even more disturbing to find one or two detached from the main body. Four o’clock in the afternoon is a sad time to sober up, especially when they have been carried to the very end of the Underground among the misty semi-detached houses of Middlesex or Essex – to Hainault perhaps. Paul Jennings on encountering away fans on the Tube
