SPAN Some unusually attentive SPAN readers may notice a change in our masthead on this page. "What is that new publishing organization?" they might ask. Here's the answer: The name of the United States Information Service (USIS) has been changedto the International Communication Agency. You may wonder why this change has taken place, and what it means for the American Government's information and cultural programs in India. Let me explain. In 1977President Jimmy Carter submitted two government reorganization plans to the U.S. Congress. Both plans aimed at improving the operations of the U.S. Government at home and abroad. The first reorganized the White House executive staff to make it more responsive to the newPresident's concept of his office: one of openness, flexibility, closenessto the people. The second plan created the International Communication Agency, which came into being on April l' of this year. The new agency combines responsibilitiesand functions formerly performed by the U.S. Information' Agency(including the Voice of America), and the Bureau of Educatismal and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State in Washington, D.C. The programs of both units had previously been carried on under the general umbrellaof the USIS in India and other countries. In a joint statement, Ambassador John Reinhardt, the newly-eonfirmed Director of the International Communication Agency, and the Deputy Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, spoke of the Carter Administration's belief-shared with many important American groups-that the United States "must step up our efforts to broaden international communications between the government and people of our nation and the governments and people of other nations." Messrs Christopher and Reinhardt went on to spell out what the new agencywould seek to do : • Reflect accurately to other peoples and governments the values of American society; • Convey the diversity of thought and cultural vitality of the United States; • Ensure that other countries know where the United States stands on international issues and why; • Assist Americans to understand the intellectual and cultural wealth and diversity of other countries; • Forge relationships between Americans and others that can contribute to mutual understanding and the capacity to cooperate in solving common problepls; • Provide the President and the Secretary of State with accurate assessments of foreign opinion on important issues; • Seek to reduce barriers to the international exchange of ideas and information. Substitute "India" for "other countries" and this statement of intent precisely expresses what the International Communication Agency will seek to do in India. All the programs formerly. associated with the name of the United States Information Service will continue, as will those of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs administered abroad by USIS. We will offer programs from the United States to Indian radio and television. The Voice of America will continue to beam news, music, and feature broadcasts to this country. American specialistswill visit India and be available for seminars, conferences, lectures and interviews. We will distribute news releases and official texts explaining accurately the American viewpoint on matters of mutual concern. SPAN willcontinue to publish articles on a wide range of subjects, many by Indian writers. Our libraries will serve those who are interested in American life and letters from A to Z. The new International Communication Agency willalso sponsor cultural programs and presentations, such as the American jazz groups that participated in the recent much-heralded Jazz Yatra in Bombay, and the world-famous Alvin Ailey dance group that performed in New Delhi. American artists will be represented at exhibits such as the Triennale; American films at festivals, such as the recent Filmotsav in Madras. Indian publishers will be assisted in publis~ing significant American textbooks: Leaders in Indian society will be enabled to visit the United States; their counterparts in the United States will be able to visit India. Former Senator J.W. Fulbright, creator of the program which bears his name and which has arranged 125,000 academic exchanges between the United States and other countries since 1946, has expressed the hoPe that the program will be "expanded" under the new International Communication Agency, "because it is becoming a part of an agency which is dynamic." In a word, programs and activities will go on as usual under the International Communication Agency, only-we hope- "bigger and better"" -J.W.G.
2 3 4 5 10 14 16 18
Inspection of U.S. Nuclear Facilities
20 22
Making the Zero-Error Tire
29 30
Niranjan Jhaveri Talks About Indian Music and Jazz
33
On the Lighter Side
34
Americans Redefine the Social Contract
36
A Day to Remember
Landsat 3: Benefits for Man U.S. Space Shuttle to Carry Indian Experiments by Everly Driscoll
India, the United States and the New International Economic Order by E.P. W. ~ Costa --
Jazz Yatra 1978
by Krishan Gabrani
by c.y. Gopinath /
.
Balasaraswati: First Lady of Bharata Natyam
by Erazim Kohak by Mary M. AndersoJ
39
40 42
45 49
Guaranteeing Human Rights in the United States by Charles Abernathy
Front cover: Popular American,star Joe Williamssings with Clark Terry and His Jolly Giants at JazzYatra '78 in Bombay.Seestory on pages22-29. Backcover: A tractor tire at a curing press of the J.K. tire plant in Kankroli, Rajasthan. Built with the technicalcollaboration of General Tire International of America,the plant manufactures both radial and conventional tires. See page 20. JACOB SLOAN, Editor; JAY W. GILDNER,Publisher. Publishedby the International CommunicationAgency,on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed by Aroon Purie at Thomson Press (India) Ltd., . Faridabad. Photographs: Front cover-Avinash Pasricha. Inside front cover-Bill Benedict. courtesy DuPont Magazine. 5-6-7-9-Avinash Pasricha. 10 left-Snowden, courtesy Vogue © 1972 The Conde Nast Publications; 10 right, 12 top, 13 top-Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archives; 12-13 bottom-courtesy Youth Times. 16-17-Char1es Steinbrunner. 18-19-Avinash Pasricha. 21-courtesy J.K. Industries, Ltd. 30-Avinash Pasricha. 31 top-courtesy Baiasaraswati; bottom-Sandip Ray. 32 bottom-Frank Wohl. 37-N. Thiagarajan, courtesy Hindustan Times. 4O-Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 41-Gerard Malanga. 44-courtesy Frank Fischbeck. 49-Ro1and L. Freeman. Back cover-courtesy J.K. Industries, Ltd.
Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged. exCept when copyrighted. For permission. write to the Editor. Price of magazine: one year's subscription (12 issues), 18 rupees; single copy, 2 rupees 50 paise. For change of address. send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to A.K. Mitra, Circulation Manager, SPAN Magazine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. (See change of address fonn on page 48.)
INSPECTION OF U.S. NUCLEAR FACiliTIES PRESIDENT. CARTER ASKS SENATE APPROVAL
President Jimmy Carter has asked the Senate to approve a bilateral treaty with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would permit the IAEA to inspect all U.S. nonmilitary nuclear facilities. ' Ratification of the agreementapproved by the IAEA's board of governors on September 17, 1976-would fulfill a IO-year pledge by the United States to accept voluntarily Agency inspection of peaceful American uses of atomic energy. The IAEA safeguards are applied to all countries that have ratified or acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty' (NPT), except for the nuclear-weapons . signatories-the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The White House said that the United Kingdom, is also offering voluntarily to accept safeguards. It was not known if the Soviet Union planned to follow suit. The three other known nuclear powers-France, thet,?eople's Republic of China and India-are not signatories to the NPT. A total of 102 nations have placed themselves under the IO-year-old treaty. In a statement, the White House called the U.S. offer "tangible evidence of our belief that the NPT does not discriminate against nonnuclear weapons states." The United States first offered to place its nonmilitary nuclear installations under IAEA safeguards in a statement by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967-seven months before the NPT itself was signed. "I want to make it clear to the world," President Johnson then said, "that we in the United States are not asking any country to accept safeguards that we are unwilling to accept ourselves." Under the offer, President Johnson pointed out, "the IAEA would be able to inspect a broad range of U.S. nuclear activities, both governmental and private, including the fuel in nuclear power reactors owned by utilities for generating electricity, and the fabrication and chemical reprocessing of such fuel." Over the following 10 years, Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
safeguards by submitting to the Senate for ratification a treaty with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The treaty would make all U.S. nuclear facilities, except those with direct national security significance, eligible for the application of safeguards by this international agency. "Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 99 nonnuclear weapon member states are required to accept IAEA safeguards on all of their peaceful nuclear facilities. While the NPT does not impose this duty on nuclear weapon states, the United States' voluntary offer to enter into such a safeguards agreement has been extremely important in inducing other nations to adhere to the treaty. U.S. willingness to accept the same safeguards as the NPT requires for nonnuclear weapon states is tangible evidence reaffirmed that offer, finally put into of our belief that the NPT does not treaty form with the IAEA governors discriminate against nonnuclear weapon states. It also demonstrates the U.S. 21 months ago. Dr. Jessica Tuchman of the U.S. Na- conviction that the application of intertional Security Council staff told national safeguards neither hampers the reporters recently that the agreement development of nuclear power nor puts being sent to the Senate would answer the safeguarded party at a commercial the argument of some nations that inspec- disadvantage. "This offer by the United States to tion requirements would place them at a disadvantage. bring its nuclear facilities not having "One of the major reasons why some direct national security significance under countries have hesitated to sign the NPT," international safeguards was first made she said, "is that they fear that the inspec- on December 2, 1967,by President Lyndon tion requirement will put them at a Johnson. It has been endorsed by all commercial disadvantage. It's hard for succeeding Administrations. "Upon entry into' force, this treaty us to argue that it won't when we don't will be an additional signal to the world, do the same thing." Said President Carter in his letter to including both nuclear supplier and recipient nations, of our continuing support. the Senate requesting its approval-as required by the Constitution for its rati- for the universal application of IAEA fication: "Universal participation in the safeguards, and our desire that all nations adhere to the nuclear Non-ProliferaNPT is the goal of our nonproliferation policy. The entry into force 'Ofthis agree- tion Treaty. "The safeguards call for inventory and ment would encourage that participation design information to be submitted to and would fulfill our long-standing the IAEA. The Agency's fundamental commitment to accept safeguards." Following is the text of the White safeguards measure is the accounting House statement announcing the treaty of nuclear materials. The U.S. will submit to the Agency accounting reports on action: subject to safe"President Carter today fulfilled a 10- nuclear materials 0 year United States pledge for nuclear guards."
LANDSAT 3: BENEFITS FOR MAN Landsat 3, the American earth resources satellite launched on March 5, will enable man better to understand, manage and conserve the land, mineral and water resources of our planet. An improved model of one of the globe's most widely used space systems-the Landsat Earth Resources Satellite-was launched on March 5 from California's Western Test Range. The 900-kilogram Landsat 3, placed in a 9l7-kilometer-high orbit, circles Earth once every 103 minutes, complementing coverage from Landsat 2. (Landsat 1 was turned off in January 1978 after five and one-half years' operation.) After Landsat 3's full activation, the satellites will photograph the same north-to-south strip of the surface 185 kilometers wide every nine days. Each satellite covers the same area every 18 days. Chief of Landsat operations, Dr. Anthony J. Calio of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), called the new satellite "a significant step toward our goal of all-weather, Landsat 3 is given a final check-out before it is day-and-night coverage of Earth's environment and resources. With im- launched into orbit. The craft, which covers the provements to Landsat 3; we hope to globe every 18 days, incorporates many improvegain new insights into the value of these ments over the previous Landsats. data for understanding, managing and conserving the planet's diminishing The second improvement is in resoluresources." tion. Scientists will be able to see 50 Landsat systems provide, among other per cent more detail than they could data, information about earth's forest, previously. Areas as small as 40 meters . water; range and desert lands, including can be identified and studied. Geologists soil, vegetation and agricultural crops; hope this will be useful in locating geowater quality and pollution as well as logic structures that may contain mineral, new sources of water; urban development; oil, gas, water and other resource deposits. and geologic structures and mineral NASA policy to provide data to anyone resources. for a small processing fee, plus the efforts Two improvements in Landsat 3 should of international organizations such as the enhance data in at least two areasU.S. Agency for International Developin the detection of diseased crops and ment (AID) to demonstrate use of the in the location of geologic structures technology and sponsor training centers associated with mineral and oil res.ources. have resulted in widespread use of Landsat An additional sensor will record heat data. Officials from at least 130 nations emitted from surface objects such as have contacted the Earth Resources Obvegetation or polluted water both day servati~ns Systems (EROS) Data Center and night. in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for either Landsat 1 and 2 had four sensors for orientation, training or information. AID recording reflected 'solar energy in wave- has provided $60,000 each to 12 developlengths corresponding to blue, green, ing countries to purchase equipment and infrared and near-infrared. Every surface to travel to study remote-sensing in feature reflects solar energy in ways the United States. characteristic of its physical properties Thirteen countries have participated and thus has a unique and recognizable or are now participating with AID in "spectral signature." This energy recorded . Landsat programs. Earth stations to on sensors can be converted to pictures,· receive Landsat data directly from the or to color-coded maps, or retained in . satellites by using U.S. facilities ha",e its original digital form. proliferated. India is presently building
an earth station near Secunderabad, under an agreement with NASA. The four stations presently in operation are located in the United States, Canada, Italy and Brazil. The economic returns to both hightechnology and developing countries from Landsat have been invaluable. For example: • A three-year experiment to determine whether Landsat data could be used to predict world wheat production, with 90 per cent accuracy, has been successful and will be expanded in 1978 to include additional crops. U.S. oil company exe- . cutives like Dr. Fred Henderson, president of GEOSAT (a consortium of petroleum exploration companies), call Landsat "a major step toward improving our geologic interpretations [of potential oil and gas deposits]. " • Tanzania is combining Landsat data with ground observations to evaluate the soil potential of its Arusha district. • The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is conducting worldwide soil studies to improve agricultural production. • Canada is monitoring forest fires, Brazil is overseeing a program of controlled development of large areas of the Amazon forest, Colombia and Venezuela are predicting water run-off. • Gambia and Pakistan are monitoring pollution carried by the Banjul and Indus rivers. Gambia found that the pollution affected a beach area that is being developed as a tourist resort. Paki- . stan has used Landsat data to locate the best sites for a new port, while Bangladesh has been able to measure the accretion of new land to islands it} the Bay of Bengal where the government hopes to plant trees and carry out agriculture. • Most nations are using Landsat data to produce detailed land maps. In 1971 the German rocketeer and U.S. space pioneer Wernher von Braun predicted that Landsat data would yield to the United States alone economic returns exceeding the total U.S. investment in space. That prophecy is now being fulfilled, not only for the United States, but also for many other nations of the globe. 0
u.s. SPACE SHUTTLE
TO CARRY INDIAN EXPERIMENTS SP AN's science correspondent in America reports on a recent international symposium in Washington, D.C. Scientists from many countries, including India, outlined their plans for use of the space shuttle-and the spacelab aboard it that will perform important experiments. The u.s. space agency is now accepting "reservations" for space shuttle flights for the years 1982 and 1983. India, Canada and the European Space Agency (ESA) have reserved space on early flights, according to Chester M. Lee, manager of flight cargo schedules for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Iran and West Germany have already made partial payments for the first flights, and Japan is considering participation. "We have all the cargo we can handle scheduled for 1980 and only a few spaces remaining for the launch in 1981," Lee told government officials, engineers and space scientists attending an international meeting in Washington, D.C., from March 7 to 10. The Goddard Memorial Symposium on the international uses of the space shuttle and spacelab drew 400 participants from India, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States. A prime topic at the symposium was the European spacelab, being built by ESA to fly in the shuttle's cargo bay. The multipurpose facility will be used for experiments in earth observations, astronomy, physics, solar and atmospheric chemistry, biology and space manufacturing. At the shuttle symposium, Dr. Arnold Frutkin, NASA administrator for international affairs, called the¡$400 million investment by ESA in the spacelab a "remarkable contribution." NASA and ESA will equally share the first spacelab flight, scheduled now for December 1980. Selected as participants were 222 scientists. Of the 17 "principal investigators" chosen as coordinators of U.S. research, two are from outside the United States: T. Obayashi of the University of Tokyo and S. Biswas of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay. Spacelab-I will be an international venture, with 14 countries represented-Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Austria, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Spacelab-2, scheduled for April 1981, will carry the experiments of 47 U.S. scientists and 12 British scientists. Spokesmen from France, India and Japan outlined their countries' future space plans, including experiments aboard the shuttle. Professor Pierre Morel of the University of Paris said that the shuttle would be more economical and convenient for orbiting self-contained packages as well as sophisticated heavy experiments" "We recognize the great potential of the shuttle for carrying heavy loads ... such as the space telescope," he said, adding that "European astronomers are anxious to use the telescope." V.S. Rajan of the Indian Space Research Organization noted that the Indian investment in space research over the next five
Drawing above shows the Spacelab mounted in the Space Shuttle Orbiter. The Spacelab is a multipurpose laboratory being developed jointly by the space agencies of 10 European countries and the Unitf?d States.
years-$550 million-will exceed its total investment of the last 15 years. Indian scientists have two experiments on the first spacelab. In addition, a communications satellite, INSAT, is to be launched for India by the shuttle. Hiroshi Uda of Japan reviewed his country's space program, which includes launches by its own boosters as well as experimental communications and weather satellites launched by the United States. Study groups are investigating a wide range of future space experiments for Japan. These comprise astronomical and atmospheric observations, a space materials processing plant, biology laboratories and lunar and planetary exploration. Japan has an experiment on Spacelab-1. Spacelab-l will be carried by Shuttle Orbiter Number 102, which is now being built in California. The first of its six test flights-manned launches into space as opposed to low-atmosphere maneuvers completed last autumn with Orbiter 101-is now scheduled for June 1979. Orbital tests will measure various flight dynamics of the shuttle and test equipment for earth observations, space physics and astronomy experiments as well as the Canadian teleoperator. On tJ:le third test flight, pilots will attempt to rendezvous with the Skylab space station, to boost it into higher orbit with a U.S. teleoperator propulsion system now being built. At present, Skylab is slowly being dragged earthward, and will, if no action is taken, re-enter the atmosphere between March and November of 1979. If corrective maneuvers with Skylab now under way are successful, however, the Lab's descent to earth will be delayed until the shuttle can boost it higher. Following the successful completion of six orbital test flights, the shuttle will be operational. 0
A PERSPECTIVE OFCHANGE:1978-80
I DIA,THE UNITED STATES AND THE ... NEWINTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER ,
A noted economist argues that the 'moods of history' have changed for both India and the United States. The new understanding between the two countries can strengthen the forces of cooperation today and help build a new international economic order • One of the great weaknesses of all historical analysis of the shape of things to come is that it bases itself on the past. Often enough, when events shape themselves on stable trends, the present is a child of the past and, predictably, the future will appear ~s a child of the present. Historians, with their colleagues in current journalism, can, in these conditions, assess the future with fair accuracy. Even economics, that wayward child of the market place and the dominant government-sponsored sector, can appear fairly convincingly out of input-output tables and the new magic of simulation with computers. If the world. of the next decade were like the decade before the OPEC revolution of October 1973, the pattern of the New Economic Order could be seen as what it was in the '60s-a dialogue in futility. Even UNCTAD,IV
in May 1976 and all the North-South dialogues of 1977, whether at summit or subsummit levels, have, seen with Third World eyes, been exercises in frustration. Where then is the need for a fresh review of the state of play in the New Economic Order in May 1978? The answer is tentative but intensely relevant so far as India and the United States are concerned. There is evidence in the events of 1977-unique separately for both countries-that the moods, the men, the moments of current history have changed significantly. If, indeed, President Jimmy Carter's presence in the center of the debate has gathered together a new focus of imagination in the North, and Prime Minister Morarji Desai's new international status suggests a powerful presence of cooperation against confrontation in the South, may it not be that
Prime Minister Morarji Desai in the 'south' and President Carter in the 'north' can Indo-American cooperation can provide a new framework for the international debate to be resumed at a different level of understanding? At critical points of history, personal equations are decisive. The New Economic Order, by the facts of life in the last quarter of the century, has stamped its inevitability on the North and South separately. The contours, how-
encouraging evidence of accepted principles of international sharing which, in its simplest form, is the basic parameter of the New International Economic Order. But 1977 heard, on January 20, in Jimmy Carter's inaugural speech, a commitment of a quite different kind. "The United States alone cannot guarantee the basic right of every human being to be free of poverty and hunger and disease and political repression. We can and will cooperate with others in combating these enemies of mankind. "The United States alone cannot insure an equitable development of the world resources or the proper safeguarding of the world's environment. But we can and will join with others in this work. "The United States can and will take the lead in such efforts. In these endeavors we need your help, and we offer ours. We need your experience. We need your wisdom. We need your active participation in a joint effort to move the reality of the world closer to the ideals of human freedom and dignity." What can this commitment mean for the rest of the President's term of office until January 1981? It cannot be that these are meaningless generalities. The new President is a deeply religious man. Was not the afternoon of Sunday, January I, his day of arrival in New Delhi, reserved for prayer and religious observance? His solemn commitment cannot be a set of catch phrases. Nor does he seem to be imprisoned by the mood of indifference to the Third World which marked the collapse of United States intervention in Vietnam. The best assessment of the American mood is that it recognizes the vital importance of the Third World's cooperation. But the United States will not go along alone. Its resources will not be spent, as they were between 1955 and 1975, in finding new allies in the Third World to fight communism. Anticommunism is not any more the crucial focus of American foreign policy. Alongside the change in the pattern of global confrontation, the United States, as of 1977, is committed to a much more "","-_humaneapproach to the Third World.
ever, differ and, while some degree of convergence is apparent in the generalities, the details often diverge. It is the argument of this article that Indo-American cooperation, after President Carter's visit to New Delhi from January 1 to January 3, 1978, will assist the forces of convergence. In the process it may well be that issues which seemed important in the '60s, such as food and foreign exchange, will recede into the background. It could be that the Third World, like India between 1975 and 1977, can surmount both these obstacles in the next 25 years. The major tasks of this period would be reduction in national inequality and the joint development of global economic programs in a manner and form that would satisfy Third World aspirations. The instrument of change, because it is to be brought about by agreements between governments, bilaterally, multinationally, and finally globally, is predominantly political. In that sense, the new structure of institutions for decision making is a component of many national wills which, in turn, will determine the extent of accommodation in industrialized nations and the extent of compromise and patience in the developing countries. Recent history has, it is true, no great examples to show that all the factors required for success exist in the organized international community as currently constituted. Nor, until 1977, did patterns of economic power show
help resumption of the international economic debate at a new level of understanding. The abolition of hunger, the acceptance of human dignity equally for all men, imply that the United States is shedding its great power approach of dictating to others. It is working on a human rights approach outside as well as inside its borders. What, indeed, is the New International Economic Order but a human rights approach in the international field? One of the errors common in rating a country's response to an issue is to assume that it is rigid. The Indian image of the United States is often that of a great superpower, wealthy and, therefore, arrogant with "interests" firmly ranged against those of "poor" Third World countries. The humane image, which the historians see in the time of President Abraham Lincoln and now perhaps of President Jimmy Carter, is often hidden, while the image of Richard Nixon, seen as a somewhat ruthless operator of the politics of power, remains. In truth, a country varies its personality with every major change in its leadership. Jimmy Carter's approach is different from that of Gerald Ford: both the issues and the personal equations in negotiation are differently seen. Let it be remembered that India was sought out by Jimmy Carter, though, to be sure, the March 1977 nonviolent revolution was the source of India's new attraction. But this underlines the same point. Just as the United States image has changed for India, so has the Indian image changed for the United States. The "tilt" in American policy in ¡1971 has disappeared in Indian eyes. And in American eyes, the Indian "tilt" toward the Soviet Union disappeared in 1977. Indo-American relations, devoid .of "tilts" both ways, are now moving on an even keel. But this means-what few people recognize-that the differences in the United States and Indian positions on the New Economic Order are not so wide apart after all. Just as the personal equations have dramatically changed, so has the intensity.
of certain issues in the dialogue. For example, much of the debate of the '60s, increasingly acrimonious because of the failure of the industrialized nations to perform, consisted of a notional idea that 1 per cent of GNP should be transferred each year from "rich" to "poor" countries. In retrospect, this seems to be a totally mistaken strategy for removing disparities: fractions of 1 per cent of GNP being neither here nor there. At the time of the greatest aid from the United States to India-in the mid-'60s for example-the rates of Indian gross product growth were falling, not rising. It is arguable that American aid to India, while very helpful on food, particularly in the drought years of 1965-66 and 1966-67, did not change the economy significantly except to provide most welcome budgetary support for the Central Government. Since the great PL-480 agreement when over Rs. 1,600crores were transferred to India for joint projects-a very generous gift-we have not yet been able to formulate precise projects for the use of all this paper money. This should give us a clue to the serious change. It is not money, however large, that brings an economy to new life. Transfers of money only underline an underdeveloped economy's weaknesses in management, foresight, technology, and personnel in skilled and sophisticated work. Without appropriate projects rapidly executed to cushion new money with goods, lavish foreign aid1 per cent of GNP or even less-only generates inflation. Of that kind of infructuous aid, we have already had too much.
The issue then is no longer the small debate on transfers of money from "rich" to "poor" nations. Of course, the rich nations should transfer more: but not that alone. It must be transferred as a package with sophisticated technology, some equipment, some opportunity for exporting products under favorable con-
ditions to compete with industrialized countries. In other words, it must be recognized that the processes which create income in industrialized nations must be embedded in Third World soils. Who is. to do the adoption or adaptation to Third World conditions? Obviously, the Third World countries themselves. In India we have thus absorbed the Green Revolution and now the White Revolution. In the process of transferring fertilizer use, with or without plants, India's rate of agricultural growth can be doubled from about 3 per cent to 6 per cent per year within a decade. But where and for whom this technology is to be developed, is India's decision, not that of the United States. In what form should the New International Economic Order be developed as a classic prototype between IndIa and the United States? If we could clear our minds in the case of this partnership, perhaps it would help many other Third World countries to choose projects in a sustained mature relationship with the industrialized countries. We should not seek aid or trade concessions as a perpetual giving and receiving syndrome; we should seek equal access to sophisticated technology, assisted if necessary with finance on grant or loan conditions. The objective to be reached is not parity in wealth creation, for this is impossible. It is the abolition of primary poverty within a time span-over possibly half a century of working cooperatively within a framework of realism. The Third World must cease to have "marginal" men: It must also cease to have within each nation a North-South dialogue of "very rich" against "very poor" people. This latter purpose is not part of the New International Economic Order. We cannot blame the global society for Third World disparities while we cheerfully, at every turn, create disparities within each nation. On a broad perspective, India has carried the same percentage below a poverty line for 15 years. Who, except ourselves, is to blame? The new Carter-Morarji dialogue must be conceived as an element in a new relationship in certain areas of good economic operation. It is astonishing how two major elements of India's priorities in issues of the New International Economic Order have changed in two years. India was a "severely afflicted" country after the OPEC price
hike drove India's adverse trade balance up to Rs. 1,250 crores in 1974-75 and 1975-76. But India had no adverse. trade balance in 1976-77 and, notwithstanding the gloomy prophets, will probably have a small, but significant, favorable trade balance in 1977-78. The idea that India needs foreign exchange support from either industrialized nations or OPEC is misplaced. This happy situation could go on for some years, because inward remittances of over Rs. 500 crores in 1977 could continue and cover small adverse trade balances. Much will, it is true, depend on exports, and the shadow of a recession might mean lower export earnings in 1978 and 1979- though probably not in the longer haul. However, "normal" bilateral and World Bank loans can provide, as in 1977, about Rs. 1,500 crores net annually. India is rightly not concerned now about her international payments. A similar concern with food and Third World hunger probably needs rephrasing for the '80s. India has, and will continue to have, large surpluses. There is no reason, why, if indeed there are world food shortages in the mid-'80s, India should not contribute, say from 1983 onward, 10 million tons of foodgrains each year to an international food reserve. This reserve should now be taken out of the North-South postulate that food and buffer stocks should be the responsibility of the industrialized nations. The Third World-why not with India leading?can hold its own reserves. All that can reasonably be asked is that the technology for higher agricultural productivity should be shared globally. In this sense the proposals made by President Carter on January 2, 1978, and welcomed by Prime Minister Desai, represent a new framework of operation, bilateral at present but phrased in an appropriate multinational setting. President Carter said: "I would like to see an intensified agricultural research program, aimed both at improving productivity in India and at developing processes that could be used elsewhere. "This program would be based in the agricultural universities of our two countries, but would extend across the whole frontier of research. "And beyond research, I would like to identify joint development projects where research can be tested and put to work. "Prime Minister Desai and I may now
instruct our governments to focus on these matters and com,e up with specific proposals within the next few months. "One of the most promising areas for international cooperation is in the regions of Eastern India and Bangladesh, where alternating periods of drought and flood cut cruelly into food production. Several hundred million people live in this area. They happen to be citizens of India, Bangladesh and Nepal. But they are also citizens of the global community. And' the global community has a stake in ensuring that their needs are met. "Great progress has already been made in resolving water questions, and we are prepared to give our support when the regional states request a study that will define how the international community, in cooperation with the nations of South Asia, can help the peoples of this region use water from the rivers and the mountains to achieve the productivity that is inherent in the land and its people." This is the changed perspective of an appropriate pattern of cooperation between the United States and India. It is no longer a question of aid or even trade: both are marginal to the major breakthroughs in agriculture and rural development that India is pursuing. The joint development ofIndia's eastern rivers, many of which rise in Nepal and flow on to Bangladesh, could mean a transformation of the lives of perhaps 200 million marginal men. The financial obligations which may be very large-perhaps Rs. 20,000 crores-will need imaginative financing arrangements over a decade, in which, inevitably, the industrialized nations and OPEC countries may find some major place. But, again, this is not a demand from the South for resources from the North. Rather, it is a global obligation in which North and South as equal partners each play their appropriate roles with dignity, the South accepting obligations from its increasing output also to serve the world community. This is the major change in the structure of India's approach to the New International Economic Order. Global responsibilities belong as much to the Third World as to the industrialized nations. Perhaps in the choice of projects in Third World countries there may now be a stronger domestic, rather than an international, orientation. But even here, no difficulties appear. As both President h
or brick by brick. But how else can any great edifice be built to stand and endure? Carter and British Prime Minister James Callaghan made clear, they have no wishbeyond providing some resources to signify participation in the integrated rural development concepts which they support-to influence national decisions in any way. Similarly, they accept the guidelines proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for transnational corporations. Much of the debate in the sixth and seventh special sessions of the General Assembly expressing fears of the predatory role of multinationals is misplaced. No industrialized nation now questions the sovereignty of Third World governments and their right to formulate their own policies for international investment. In India the operations of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act have been effective. These national measures, therefore, do not figure in the international debate. Their inclusion in the General Assembly resolutions was probably redundant. The current release of tension between India and the United States has, it is obvious, brought forth in an amazingly short time, a different feeling in India toward the acrimonious dialogue often called the North-South confrontation. This should give us a clue to the long-term solution of the problem in other Third World countries. Although the New International Economic Order is truly a multinational dialogue, its resolution can best take place on a case-by-case bilateral basis. For example, between India and the United States there are now no major issues that cannot be solved bilaterally. Similarly, it would seem after the visit of Prime Minister James Callaghan that there are no issues in economic policy with the United Kingdom that cannot be solved bilaterally. The sum of many bilateral solutions is, in effect, a multinational solution. But a multinational debate under the auspices ofUNCTADor any other international forum-is too full of conflicts, even between Third World countries themselves, for much progress to be made. The processes of bilateral summitry have been proved now to be much more fruitful. Only a postscript should be added on the more or less academic long-term goals of international sharing, 40 or 50 years from now. Once dire poverty has been removed in the Third World, the levels of inequality
lose their current total repugnance. Where should the lines be drawn? Jan Tinbergen's report to the Club of Rome, based on assumptions discussed later and described as "Reordering the International Order," gives as good norms as any. They can be presented in question-and-answer form as follows: Firstly, what would be an acceptable ratio, at an appropriate date from now, for the real income per capita of the developed and developing world? Answer: Three, to one. Secondly, what would be the appropriate time for this objective to be fulfilled? Answer: 40 years. Thirdly, what rates of average growth of real income per capita are to be assumed for this purpose for the next 40 years? Answer: 1.7 per cent for developed countries and 5 per cent for developing countries. Fourthly, what does this imply in growth of population in Third World countries? Answer: A population growth rate of 0.1 per cent only, less than the current low U.N. forecasts. Fifth, since destitution and hunger must also be physically as well as financially overcome, what rise in the world's food production will be necessary so that all those living in the Third World do not suffer from shortage or malnutrition? Answer: Growth in food production at about 3 per cent per year, against 2 per cent at present. These figures do not provide any detailed design for the reordering of national plans and still less of a design for their international coordination. It may suffice to say that if developing countries increased their GNP at the rate of 6 per cent per year and developed countries only did 3 per cent per yearboth practical possibilities-in about 50 years, an acceptable framework of this type could come about. But neither the industrialized nations nor the Third World can underwrite such sweeping generalization as a basis for ordering their economies oVer the next half century. It should be enough that convergence on doctrines of international sharing should be actively pursued. What then is the current state of play on the New International Economic Order? Mter the explosive rise of OPEC countries and now the recognition that breakthroughs in other Third World coun-
tries are taking place- India happily being one such economy in. 1977-the acrimonies of the '60s and mid-'70s must abate. This does' not remove any of the hard realities of unequal flows of income between the countries with high technological and marketing advantages and weak primary producers in the Third World. But the postures of anger and confrontation have been overdone. The issues are more readily resolved in an atmosphere of friendliness. This friendliness is growing with more humane elements in most industrialized countries -notably the United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and France-overcoming what might be described as the rigidity of the commercial sector. What has happened in India in January 1978 with the higWy positive visits of President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister James Callaghan could be highly instructive. It is not world conferences but bilateral understanding at the apex of summit levels that breaks down differences. But each nation has also a new review of economic change to interpret and include in its own postures. To those insensitive to change, the New International Economic Order is a hopeless and unending confrontation. To those who have seen recent fruitful exchanges-such as that between India and the United Statesthere is hope for much larger convergence and cooperation. The purpose is still a New International Economic Order. The design for the next decade is the elimination of Third World destitution. Its instruments are men of good will on both sides. Its methods of negotiation are likely to be bilateral, summit meetings if possible. The New International Economic Order will not come in a rush. It will come piece by piece or brick by brick. But how else can any great edifice be built to stand and D endure? E.P.W. da Costa, a well-known economist, is editor and publisher of Monthly Public Surveys and Monthly Commentary on Indian Economic Conditions. Both of these are publications of the Indian Institute of Public Opinion,of whichhe is the founder and managing director.
rllBWILL
!OTIBTR1IIP The genius of Charlie Chaplin, who died recently, has been well known to generations of film lovers throughout the world. For India, the Tramp was the archetypal comedian, to be imitated by all those who came after him. An Indian commentator recalls the great comedian and his tempestuous career spanning almost three quarters of a century. The first film I ever saw was quence is something I will The Gold Rush and I have never carry with me all my life. But ceased to be grateful for it. It even more vivid as a memory, introduced me not only to for we all lived in sheer terror Chaplin, but to the magic of of her, was the sight of the what is aptly called the silver Mother Superior literally rolling screen-magic which has surviv- in the aisles as Chaplin played ed even the rigors of being a hide and seek with the bear, film critic for 20 years. while the log cabin perched precariously on the edge of the The setting was most unlikely: precipice. an Irish school, Loreto Convent, There was one thought howperched on a hill among the pines of Shillong, now in ever, which has troubled me Meghalaya. The nuns, by that down the years. Not at the stroke of genius which nuns, time, because I firmly believed however cloistered, retain when that Charlie actually ate his they are educationists, not only¡ shoes and shoelaces. Only after decided to have a weekly film I became a film critic and thereshow for the schoolgirls, but fore a cynic, did I start wonderchose The Gold Rush as the ing: what were the laces, the curtain-raiser. The shoelace se- shoes and the nails made of? The answer is given by actress Minta Durfee: "It took us weeks to cook up the routine in The Gold Rush when Chaplin eats his boots. The shoelaces were made of licorice, so were the shoes. The nails were some kind of candy. We had something like 20 pairs of boots made by a confectioner, and we shot and shot that scene, too. Charlie ate it as if it were the most sumptuous meal served at the. Astor. He knew that an audience liked a character to play against himself." Never having met Chaplin
in person, I, nevertheless, treas~ ure some firsthand accounts of Charlie from those who did know him closely, whether personally or professionally. It was at the Tehran film festival, December 1976, that I met his two enchanting daughters, Josephine and Jane. Talking to them was one of the most difficult tasks I have faced in my career. They were both shy, and Jane was tongue-tied to the extent that she just stuck out her tongue and bit it in embarrassment, like an Indian village girl, when I asked her anything. That is, until I got the girls speaking about their father. He was then a very old man, and I asked Josephine how he was spending his days: "Well, he still works on composing music for his old, silent films. He says he is now in slow motion. And it is true, it is difficult for him even to walk." I had the great pleasure of interviewing Marlon Brandoa deux, with Satyajit Ray-for television. Inevitably the discussion came round to how he liked being directed by Chaplin in The Countess From Hong Kong, admittedly a very slender film, which had featured both Brando and Sophia Loren. Brando gave a fascinating description of how Chaplin,. even for a simple act like lighting a cigarette, insisted on Brando doing it in a particular way. Brando illustrated Chaplin waving his hand in a particular way, to show him how to light the cigarette. That point is elaborated in the chapter on Chaplin in Kevin Brownlow's book The Parade's Gone By: "Having worked out a bit of business for Brando, Chaplin did it himself, combining Chaplinesque grace with the suggestive vulgarity of the music hall. . .. 'No, you're going to take longer to do that, you know,' he said to Brando (who had taken the Alka Seltzer at a short gulp). The old professional was advising the young
Facing page: Half a decade separates the white-haired Charlie Chaplin at left from the bowler-hatted "hero" of The Kid, seen with child star Jackie Coogan. Above: The Gold Rush showed Chaplin at his typical best-the pathetic little fellow being thrown out into the biting cold by a bully. Right: The Tramp spends his last pennies buying flowers from the blindflower girl in the silent City Lights.
apprentice. At this point it was clear that Brando was expected to imitate Chaplin rather than to develop his own performance. ... It was as exciting as watching a Chaplin film no one knew existed." The man who conceived that great universal character, the Tramp, wa~ copied all over the world-the Bombay cinema had its own Charlie, complete with Chaplin moustache, and Raj Kapoor's underdog from Awara onward is very much Chaplin's Tramp in thin disguise, most particularly in Kal Aaj Aur Kal, which features three generations of the Kapoor family. If India loved Chaplin, Chaplin did not
love India less. In his autobiography, he recalls his fascinating meetings with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Both in these and in his encounter with Winston Churchill, Chaplin's support for India in her fight for independence and his respect for her great leaders are evident. But his relationship with his country of adoption, the United States, of which he never became a citizen, was one of lovehate. The vicissitudes of his personal life (four marriages, three divorces, endless scandals) had already generated some public antipathy; charges of moral unworthiness and leftist leanings in those Cold War years led to his departure from the United States in 1952. There was a great reconciliation, however, when in 1971 Chaplin, reduced to tears, received a special Academy Award from an equally emotional Hollywood which had once so frowned on him. For Chaplin, it was a triumphant return to the country .where he had lived the best years of his life, made his greatest films, and where, indeed, the Tramp himself had been conceived. And here, in his own words, is the story of how he invented that inimitable character: "I was in my street clothes and had nothing. to do, so I stood where [Mack] Sennett could see me. 'We need some gags here,' he said, then turned to me, 'put on a comedy makeup, anything will do.' I had no idea what makeup to put on .... However, on the way to the wardrobe, I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. I had no idea of the character, but the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was .... When I entered the [hotel lobby] set, I felt I was an imposter posing as one of the guests, but in reality I was a tramp, just wanting a little shelter. I entered and stumbled over the foot of a lady, I turned and
Above: Limelight was the last film Chaplin made in America before his 20-year separation from the country where he himself came into the limelight. The haunting score he wrote for this film became a bestselling record. Right: An autographed portrait of the young Charles Spencer Chaplin.
raised my hat apologetically, then turned and stumbled over a cuspidor, then turned and raised my hat to the cuspidor. B~hind the camera, they began to laugh .... "The world has been laughing ever since. And so the Tramp was born, and has now passed into immortality, together with its creator. Chaplin had human failings, but he also had great human qualities. Alistair Cooke describes Chaplin's loyalty to humble old colleagues whom he never deserted: "Alfred Reeves had come over on the ship with Chaplin and the London vaudeville troupe and until he died he was Chaplin's only manager. ... At least half a dozen of
Above: Modern Times, which satirized the dehumanization of workers by modern industry, was among those Chaplin films that aroused the ire of ultraconservatives. Left: The Chaplin trademarkscane, derby hat, ill-fitting clothes, and oversize, dirty shoes.
the vaudevillians who appeared in the earliest Chaplin primitives could be spotted in character parts a quarter century later. ... As the most creditable example, there was Rollie Totheroh, who was Chaplin's cameraman in 1915.... Totheroh, a diffident and thoroughly competent craftsman, was still there, shooting Monsieur Verdoux, 32 years later. " Another quality, recorded by his old friend, Dagmar Godowsky, was his almost childlike enjoyment of films, not least of all, his own: "I loved going to see his movies with him," says Godowsky. "He used to laugh till he cried - then he would nudge me and say, 'Wait till you see what's going to happen now!' When
it happened, he was convulsed. 1 think 1 enjoyed watching Charlie watching Charlie more than the movie." Perhaps we should leave the fast word to that great actress, Gloria Swanson, who paid Chaplin a surprise visit on the sets of The Countess From Hong Kong and watched him direct Brando and Loren in his unique fashion. Later, while driving back to London, she said: "Well, wasn't that a nostalgic time for me. To walk on that set and be greeted with open arms. He looked as fit as a fiddle. He was bouncing in and out of his chair. ... Did you notice that he isn't as articulate with words as he is in pantomime, when showing people what he wants? What an artist! 1suppose he is the most creative person it is possible to meet." He was, and a grateful world will always remember Charlie. 0
About the Author: A writer on films and the media, Amita Malik is the author of Ip.dia Watching: The Media Game and other books.
ZIBO 1I0STIL: IITII BAPLII TRADITIOI there was more than the clown in common between Charlie Chaplin and Zero Mostel, both of whom died recently. They made ¡llions laugh, Chaplin on the screen, Mostel on the stage. Mostel's clowning was, like Chaplin's, "a disguise that enabled him to sneak into the realms of high art," as Newsweek's Jack Kroll put it. Mostel had the perfect physical proportions for a comic- "a onderfully over-ripe body, cat-burglar feet, Balinese-dancer hands." e could do anything-sing, dance, shout, simper, soar. He had an ncomparable gift for mimicry. No wonder he became "the finest, most original inventive actor of the American stage." Mostel began his career as a painter, discovered his comic talents hile lecturing on art. He became a nightclub comic, then graduated o the stage where he gave some memorable performances. In Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros,he transformed himself before the very eyes of the audinee from man to beast, using no props or makeup. As the poor milkan in Fiddler on the Roof, he conducted confidential dialogues with God. In Paddy Chayefsky's The Latent Heterosexual, he was explosive-displaying "lust for men, lust for women, lust for money, lust for lust itself." He died without portraying the role people wanted o seehim in-Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Zero Mostel's enormous comic talents were tapped for children's educational television-for the famous "Sesame Street" programshen he was 59. Dressed in diaper, long underwear and a top hat, he sed his rubbery face and expressive eyes to project opposite concepts, uch as hot-cold, heavy-light, tall-short. The photographs here show ow effectively Zero did the job. Samuel Joel Mostel was christened Zero by an inventive press agentduring his nightclub comic days. Like the Indian mathematicians fold, Mostel gave the Zero a new meaning, a new dimension: it ,tood for life and laughter, for energy and passion-for everything, ot nothing. D
~hese pantomime photos of Zero Mostel show him illustrating some simple concepts or children on the American educational television program "Sesame Street." elow: He blows on his hands to indicate "cold," fans himself with a hat to show 'warm." Right: Mostel becomes "tall" by pulling himself to his full height; he ramatizes "short" by hunchingforward on a short cane, using a pair of old shoes.
INDEPENDENCE FACTORY Wilna Carroll is one of an estimated two to four million people in the United States-and millions more around the world -afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis. This disease causes painful inflammation of the small joints of the hands and wrists and can make even simple chores-like putting dishes on a shelf, turning the pages of a book, opening a door or buttoning a shirtdifficult or impossible. Until just a few years ago, Wilna Carroll had to depend heavily on her husband, Fred, and their two teen-age daughters to help her do the things she couldn't do by herself. "Everything was all right when we were home," says Fred Carroll, "but when the girls were in school and I was at work, Wilna was on her own." Today, Mrs. Carroll is no longer dependent on her family; she is very nearly self-sufficient, thanks to her inventive husband and the tools and aids he began making for her in their own garage workshop. It all began in January 1974 when the Carrolls bought a new car. They ordered it with every possible automatic device for Mrs. Carroll's ease of driving-power windows and door locks, adjustable seats-but one problem remained. Mrs. Carroll couldn't turn the ignition key far enough to start the car. "We wrote to the manufacturer in Detroit to ask for help, but they wrote back and said there was nothing they could do," recalls Fred Carroll. So he went out to his own garage and created a simple device to do the job. It fits right over the key and can be operated with hand or knee. Simple as it was, it made all the difference in the world to Wilna Carroll-she could now drive the car herself whenever she needed to go somewhere. After his success with the ignition starter, Carroll quickly saw ways to solve other problems. He designed and built a brush with a long, curved handle so that Mrs. Carroll could brush her own
hair, a reacher-gripper to reach items on overhead shelves and other useful devices. Meanwhile, workers at the Armco Steel Corporation in Middletown, Ohio, where Carroll works as a maintenance electrician, were making plans for their annual Founder's Day observances. Armco's founder, George M. Verity, had been very active in community affairs, and when he died in the 1940s, employees suggested that a day be set aside each year to perform community services in his memory. Each department chooses its own project, and planning is done on company time. That year, the workers in Carroll's department decided to expand on the-work that he had been doing in his garage. They designed and produced more self-help devices to be used by people with arthritis and similar handicaps, and donated them to the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. The project was such a success that, when Founder's Day was over, Carroll and his coworkers moved back into his garage and continued working on their own time. They began scouring the area-especially city dumps-for scraps of wood and metal that they could turn into useful items. As word spread about the work they were doing, donations began coming in from individuals and compailies. Baldwin Piano Company contributed wood scraps that were turned into handles, General Motors contributed vinyl and aluminum tubing, and a number of other organizations also helped. All the items made in the Carrolls' garage workshop were donated to the Arthritis Foundation, a nonprofit organization, which distributed the devices to those who needed them. A few self-help aids like those Carroll and his friends made were already available commercially, but they were expensive and didn't begin to fill all the needs of people like Wilna Carroll.
Wilna Carroll (center), afflicted with arthritis, now brushes her own hair with a long-handled hairbrush. It is one of the many self-help items designed by her husband (at left, with some of his inventions). Atfar left is another simple device- to turn the car ignition key.
Begun as a small project in a garage by an American determined to help his arthritic wife, Independence Factory now helps thousands of handicapped people throughout the United States lead fuller, more independent lives using a variety of simple, easy-to-make self-help devices. The project grew and grew until the Carrolls' two-car garage housed an electric arc welder, a metal-cutting torch, a drill press, an air-operated paint sprayer, a special metal-cutting saw, an assortment of small hand tools and a lot of busy people. The Carrolls' two cars had to be parked outside. In 1976, having thoroughly outgrown the garage, the volunteers moved into a building rented from the nearby city of Middletown for a token $1 a month. Although Carroll and his coworkers from Armco still do most of the production and design work-about 10 of them work 30 to 50 hours a week in addition to their regular jobs-the whole community is involved now. "We never dreamed that what we were doing would be of interest to anyone outside our own area," says Fred Carroll, but similar projects are now forming in Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia. With the move into new quarters, the group decided they needed a name: They chose Independence Factory, "because what we do gives people who are dependent on others independence." The Independence Factory is still staffed entirely by volunteers, some of whom are handicapped themselves. Carroll hopes that in the future handicapped workers will be able to take over all production at the factory and earn enough money by selling the self-help devices to be self-supporting. Toward that end, a board of governors has been set up for the factory, and the members include doctors, physical and occupational therapists and other community leaders. Carroll and his coworkers at the Independence Factory are very much interested in sharing what they have learned with others. They have produced three manuals so far, with stepby-step instructions for making over 100 devices. Called How
to Make It Cheap, the manuals are available free to anyone who requests them. Some of the items included are: • a buttoning aid made from bent wire and a piece of mop handle; • a page turner for books ma,de from a spring-type doorstop and a long handle; • long-handled fingernail clippers; • a cutting block with skewers to hold food as it is being cut; • large-diameter pens and pencils to provide a better grip; • a variety of door openers; • long-handled cooking and eating utensils. In volume three of How to Make It Cheap, the crew turned their attention to the special needs of multiple-handicapped and brain-damaged children. They discovered how to modify a standard wheelchair so that severely handicapped children, who had never been able to move about on their own, were now mobile. "It was amazing, the difference it made," says Carroll. "We built a special chair for one little girl, and her disposition changed completely. She could move around by herself for the first time, and she was much happier." That little girl's disabilities, like Wilna Carroll's arthritis, cannot be cured. But having the tools available to build a more normal life-being able to move about unaided or just to brush one's own hair-can make a big difference. "We haven't been doing all we can for handicapped people," says Fred Carroll. "If I've learned anything in the last few years, it's that one or two or three people, if they give it all they've 0 got, can really change things."·
TECHNOLOGY: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE The exhibition of American technology now touring some of the major Indian .cities offers nostalgic glimpses into the past, and a peek into America's tomorrow.
Eighteenth-century American radios, telephones and typewriters, 20th-century washing machines and vacuum cleaners, a xerox copying machine, a computerized grain-quality analyzer, a hologram that produces three-dimensional images, a color television set, American fabrics old and new, small power tools and construction materials needed to build American homes, solar energy applications of the future-all this is part of the "menu" at the exhibition "l'echntllogy: the American Experience," now touring India. Through words, pictures, artifacts and working models, the exhibition demonstrates how American technology has enriched the lives of the American people. The exhibits are housed in five circular modules in an open-domed setting, and displayed by means of chrome tubes and plastic panels. Thousands of people have viewed the exhibition in Ahmedabad (January 3-22) and New Delhi (February 17March 12). It is now touring Bombay (April 2-May 7), thence to Bangalore (May
31-June 25), Madras (July 28-August 20) and Calcutta (September IS-October 8). The exhibition has been sponsored by the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture in collaboration with the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, and India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Preparation of the exhibits was an IndoU.S. effort. Two dozen artifacts, several hundred photographs and 14 slide projectors came from the United States, along with two American experts. They worked with CSIR and with Indian designers and artists to prepare panels, mount pictures, arrange the lighting and the decor. CSIR extended logistical support. "The lessons of the exhibits are obvious," says The Statesman, New Delhi. "For a country to develop, it must foster and 0 encourage technology." Facing page: A fish-eye view of the American technology exhibition. Above: A model of a oncepopular American automobile chassis. Left: A 19th-century American microscope.
INDO-U.S. JOINTVENTURE
MAKING THE
ZERO-ERROR TIRE In collaboration with General Tire International of America, J.K. Industries manufactures sophisticated steel-belted radial tires. Driving from Udaipur on the national highway to Delhi, one is struck by the sudden change in the landscape. The lush greenery and the magnificent lakes of the picturesque city give way to vast, unending stretches of brown, barren land, broken here and there by an odd patch of green. This panorama extends as far as 75 kilometers when one reaches the small, unknown town of Kankroli. Here, in this wilderness of Rajasthan, sits a huge, sprawling modern building. This is the tire factory of J.K. Industries, Limited. Built with the technical collaboration of General Tire International Company, Akron, Ohio, the Rs. 335 million plant is equipped with some of the world's most sophisticated machinery and is capable of manufacturing 500,000 tires and tubes of various sizes and descriptions annually, including radial tires, which are technologically the most advanced. In its quiet, rural setting, ho~ever, the gigantic factory seems- to an uninitiated visitor from the city at least -completely out of place. Is it, one wonders, the right location for a tire plant? The answer is provided by Hari Shankar Singhania, chairman of the J.K. tires operations: "We in J.K. have always felt that for any economic development to be meaningful, the gains of industrialization must trickle down to the most backward regions of the country." A suave, unassuming person, he continues in a voice that is so low that at times it is hardly audible: "When we started building the factory in June 1975, we faced a number of hardships due to the remoteness of the place-problems like transporting building materials and massive machinery from far-off places. Still, we finished building and installing the machinery in 16 months. And on January 5, 1977, we commenced commercial production. The plant employs about 1,000 persons, more than half of whom are from Kankroli or the neighboring areas." Entering the factory premises, one soon becomes oblivious of the desolate surroundings. Inside, the whole place throbs with frenetic activity. On the left is the warehouse, outside which a fleet of trucks is being loaded with tires <;testinedfor places everywhere in India-and some overseas. In the corridors of the administrative offices to the right, young, intense engineers and executives walk up and down. In the lobby here are displayed a dozen or so tires of different sizes with names as fancy as one can imagine- Tuflug, Higrip, Rapier, Chetak and Load King. And so to the offices of George Vela, one of the two engineers from the American collaborator's plant now at Kankroli to assist J.K. in its tire operations. We ask how radial tires are superior to the conventional ones. "Radial tires are a completely new breed in pneumatic tires," says Vela. "They are as different from the conventional tires as jet planes are from piston planes. In the radial tire, the body cords are arranged like spokes in a wheel to absorb vertical movement and provide maximum casing strength. These are supported and protected by twin belts made up of multiwire brass-coated steel cords." He adds: "The
presence of steel belts gives almost 100 per cent extra mileage and ,saves fuel consumption up to 5 per cent. Again, because of sophisticated tire engineering and tread design, radial tires provide a car with extraordinary safety during sharp turns-even at such high speeds as 100-kilometers an hour." With more than 20 years' experience in the field of tire technology, Vela rattles off a dozen other advantages of the radial tires: They have more muscle, yet are very flexible; they offer easy handling and superb traction on the highway; the steel belts minimize the chances of a puncture: they are better able to follow vehicle motion and keep a firm grip even on slippery roads; and, finally, each radial acts as a mini-shock-absorber. At the plant, a layman soon realizes the futility of trying tQ comprehend the technical intricacies built into a seemingly simple-looking tire. Nevertheless, a tour of the plant is a rewarding experience. If for nothing else, for the small cabin at one end of the hall where a neon sign outside reads: "Danger. X-ray is on." What is an X-ray unit doing in a tire plant? "The X-ray machine," says technical manager S.N. Ayakad, "is one of the most sensitive tools we have to check quality. It can detect the minutest flaws built into a tire. And this is of critical importance: a radial tire has to be perfect. Most often, the only way to correct a defect in a radial is to scrap it. We also have another very sophisticated machine, the uniformity unit, to check the perfect balancing of a radial tire. We have an elaborate system of quality checks which begins right with the raw materials." "First tests for quality control must begin with the raw materials," says Eugene Sinopoli, a young Italian-American chemical engineer from General Tire, now at Kankroli. "Any deviations from the specifications will later show up in the tire." Vela and Sinopoli will be soon returning to the United States. But J.K. Tires have a team of qualified and experienced technical and management personnel. Some of them have been trained in the latest technology at the General Tire plants in the United States. And many American engineers have come to assist and train J.K. men at t1}eKankroli plant. "General Tire has been very cooperative," says Singhania. "They insist that we adhere to their specifications, and we donot for their sake but for our 'own: A radial tire is a precision product. Besides, it is expensive-it costs about 40 per cent more than a conventional tire. So we cannot afford to be complacent about quality. In fact, our tires undergo over 500 tests all the way through from raw materials to the finished product." "That is why," he says with a sense of pride, "we call it the Zero-Error Tire." D Facing page: The making of a tire at the 1.K. Kankroli plant. Top right: A sheet of rubber reaches the mill for processing. Top left: The processed sheet is shaped under pressure into tire treaqs and sidewalls. Below: A view of the "expander," a machine that gives final shape to a radial tire.
East and West met in Bombay recently in an exciting festival of jazz which featured world celebrities. The interaction of jazz and Indian music was one of the highlights of this week-long festival.
"Let's try something with 6," said Eddie Moore. It was an unusual ensemble. There were two drumsets, and on a podium between them, a group of South Indian percussionists in dhotis and plain shirts. The drummers were Eddie Moore, a black, and David Grigger, a white American. Their Indian counterpart was Palghat Raghu, and to him "something with 6" may have meant something or nothing. He shifted his mridangam ready to play and waited attentively. David Grigger's hi-hat begap to speak, snip-chichsnip-chich-snip-chich, and in an instant a cultural gap of thousands of years dissolved
like mist in sunlight. Palghat Raghu's fingers tapped hesitantly and found the cadence, his head signaled that "something with 6" had been identified, and the mridangam clattered triumphantly. Eddie Moore struck up on his drums. The small Bombay audience had never seen anything quite like it. A swinging sound only a few centuries old, and a classical music with millennia behind it; two cultures an ocean and a continent apart, with no right to have anything in common, yet meeting and discovering old friendships. Every morning for a week in February at the Birla Matushri Sabhaghar, East and
West came together. An audience of American and European jazz musicians listened, rapt, to Indian classical sounds. Anything that catches a jazz man's ear may be the putty for his next musical work. On the pavement outside the hall the scene repeated itself when a snake charmer set up and began to play. The cream of world jazz, Chris Woods, Clark Terry, Sadao Watanabe, Stan Tracey, Don Ellis, and others stood around in a fascinated circle. Evening, and the roles were reversed as the West played for the East in a February week festival of jazz, Jazz Yatra '78. Some of the most luminous names in world jazz went onstage at the Rang Bhavan to weave their spell over Bombay. Something more: it has never happened before in India, on such a scale, in such a style, with such success. Bombay heard familiar strains, unfamiliar music, tantalizing sounds, experimental sounds, was stimulated, tapped its feet, heard excellence and acknowledged it, stood and clapped, and refused to go home. The man who put it all together, Niranjan Facing page: Sonny Rollins, one of the festival patrons, on the tenor sax. Rollins' improvisations have influenced almost all modern tenor saxophonists. Far left: Palghat Raghu plays the mridangam with drummer Eddie Moore-an East-West harmony that was typical of the mood of the festival. Left: Don Ellis, who once formed a Hindustani Jazz Sextet, plays the manjira to start off the concert. Below: Clark Terry conducts an international orchestra, with musicians picked from bands of various countries represented at the Jazz Yatra.
Jhaveri, is founder of a society of jazz buffs in Bombay called Jazz India. According to him, "This show has generated a tremendous amount of good will for India. The foreign musicians have seen the best of Indian culture: apart from the morning sessions, they have had sight-seeing and yoga lessons, and they've told me how very thrilled they all are, how they'd never enjoyed a jazz festival more." Jazz music's fans in Bombay are in small numbers, fastidious and devoted. They bunked classes, took leave from work, and traveled from as far as Delhi and Calcutta to be in Rang Bhavan on February 12. They came to hear Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry and the Jolly Giants, the Don Ellis Quintet, Sadao Watanabe from Japan, Albert Mangelsdorfffrom West Germany, Zbigniew Namyslowski from Poland, Asha Puthli, the girl from home back home again. And a glittering array of others from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, the United Kingdom. The musicians had India in common: many of them had visited before, or trained in Indian music, or experimented with it. All were certainly interested in it. Few of the audience had not heard of Willis Conover, or tuned in to his popular 45-minute program on the Voice of America, "Music USA." Called the "Ambassador of Jazz," Willis Conover has perhaps done more than any other single man to spread the gospel of jazz over the world, with his broadcasts and personal visits. Willis was Jazz Yatra's compere, and his resonant radio voice and informative introductions to the artists did much to bring the crowd and performers together. At Jazz Yatra, there was an unexpected close relationship between the 4,OOO-odd people in the open-air arena and the musicians under the arc lights on stage. Like Indian music, jazz stars the performer rather than the composition. It needs creativity, and creativity needs understanding and applause. How inspired a solo riff is depends only half on the musician. The audience does the rest. Jazz Yatra's sound system, 3,000 watts of. music power set up by a German company, Dynacord, took every sound from the stage to the audience virtually untouched. Five mikes attended the drumsets alone. The result: not a nuance, semitone, or tap was lost. When Sonny Rollins played a low register tattoo on his tenor sax, you could also hear his fingers dancing on the keys; and over the ovation you could hear the exhausted, exhilarated panting of tired genius. Even Vilayat Khan, the star of the last morning session, commented on the rapport he had felt with the audience. From the first day, musicians came in to ~ Text continued on page 27 ~ Clark Terry playing the trumpet. This celebrated jazz musician, earlier a featured soloist with Duke Ellington's orchestra, has been acknowledged as a soUrce of inspiration for many of today' sjazz stars.
3 '"0':
resounding applause, and were only reluc- stage to tell the Danish All Stars she had tantly allowed to leave. A member of Jazz never been "so moved" in all her life. India remarked, "Bombay.audiences never More than a rich musical experience, stop surprising me. When this first began, Jazz Yatra was an organizational miracle. I could not see a single jazz enthusiast. Jazz India began as a group of keen jazz Now I'm not so sure." Some of the music buffs too poor to host an international stayed close to rock origins or 12-bar blues. festival. Yet they have had a tradition of The British group Nuc!eus,and the Australian hosting international musicians in Bombay Galapagus Duck played excellent, identifi- concerts. Karin Krog performed at Hotel able jazz rock. Clark Terry and his Jolly President in 1975 with Louis Banks, Braz Giants gave traditional jazz, heavy on exper- Gonsalves, and Ashish Khan on sarod. A tise, equally competent on showmanship. few months later, Jazz India came into being A lot of it was versatile 4-beat music, and with about a hundred members. Since then, Chris Woods on tenor sax improvising they have given Bombay jazz fans an average in counterpoint with Clark Terry on trum- of a jazz concert a month. In 1976, when pet was boisterous and lively. When Joe Watanabe and his brother-in-law Honda, Williams, perhaps America's premier jazz a first-rate pianist, were passing through singer, sang "Everything Must Change," Bombay, Jazz India put them on stage to he added an intensely personal dimension to . jam with Indian musicians. "In a country Quincy Jones, and left the audience catching like ours, we have no right to let intertheir breath on the last line, "Music makes national musicians pass through without me cry." Don Ellis invaded the stage like giving them a chance to play," says Jhaveri. a typhoon, sweeping the crowd almost The idea for an international jazz festientirely on vivacity and energy alone, a val was daring, and, some thought, just tightly knit, exuberant show. Randy Thurber too ambitious. It became possible only beattacked the keyboards as though they were cause the music fraternity of the world was playing him, convulsing and arching, his also interested in playing India. Not a own chords electrocuting him, as it were. single foreign musician at Jazz Yatra charged Sonny Rollins, hopping from foot to foot for the concerts. The sophisticated sound like someone with no time and a lot to say, came free from Dynacord, and a coming left Bombay stunned with his pulsing, wide- together of tourism authorities and Airranging solos. These are some of the best India took care of air fares and freight. Willis Conover thought it was "the best first jazz festival of its kind" he had ever seen. To Eddie Moore, Sonny Rollins' drummer, "The atmosphere here is incredible for music. I never thought it could be so good." For Indian musicians, it was an encounter beyond their wildest imaginings. The young drummer of the Jazz India ensemble, Johnny Saldanha, said, "These are the people we used to read about in Downbeat, and listen to on tapes and LPs. Who'd have thought I'd be sitting in the same green room with them while they tuned up and rehearsed and horsed around ?" On Jazz Yatra's last day, the show went mUSIcIans alive, and you didn't need to on till 1:30 in the morning, and students know about New Orleans, or Satchmo, lined the ledges of the St. Xavier's college or John Coltrain, or fusionists to under- terrace nearby, getting the full benefit of stand their language. the exquisite sound. It all ended rather At the other end of the jazz journey were suddenly after a farewell riff by some musirepresentatives of the avant-garde move- cians. "Let's do it again," said Willis ment., To many, the Danish All Stars were Conover, and it was over. An unbelieving incomprehensible music. They made noth- Bombay refused to leave and stqod and ing easy for their listeners. Yet each of them remonstrated for half an hour. Then taped has formidable musical credentials, and music was switched on to drown them out. John Tchicai is probably one of the world's The song was "Isn't she lovely?" which three best alto sax players. (The other two, Sonny Rollins had played earlier the same Sadao Watanabe and Zbigniew Namy- evening. Holding on to that memento, slowski, were also at Jazz Yatra.) But the East went home while the West packed 0 think back: When Charlie Parker and the up its instruments. others at Minton's turned jazz about-face to march off in a new direction called Bebop, About the Author: c.y. Gopinath, 26, formerly they were thought far out, too. And if some with JS, Calcutta, is now on the staff of Reader's of the avant-garde jazz sounded formless Digest, Bombay. A music buff and occasional and an abstract polyphony of discord to composer, he was part of an impresario group, some, there were others who found it re- Seagull Empire, while in Calcutta and closely markable. An unlikely-looking teacher of assQciatedwith their musicals Q (1976) and You're Bombay, no great jazz' fiend, rushed back- ~ Good Man, Charlie Brown (1977).
NIRANJAN JHA VERI TALKS ABOUT INDIAN MUSIC AND JAZZ The organizer of Jazz Yatra describes how many well-known jazz musicians around the world have adapted the rhythms of Indian classical music to their compositions, creating an Indo-Afro-American musical language which conforms to the basic credo of jazz-that 'music should swing.' For years, people in the West have been left Miles Davies and formed a band of his comparing Indian classical music with jazz own called the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which because both are improvised. But until became very popular because of its rock recently, there was no real affinity between elements and that intangible feel of Indian the two ; Western jazz is harmonic; Indian music. He then went further toward Indian classical music, modal. Jazz has a great music and founded the Shakti group, one deal of harmonic complexity; in Indian of the most popular in the West today. music, the complexity is melodic and It is difficult to call this a jazz group, although rhythmic. About 15 years ago, the feeling its music is definitely for jazz audiences. began to gain ground in Europe and America The group has in it Zakir Hussain (AlIa that improvisation based on harmonic chord Rakha's son) on the tabla, L. Shanker, the progression had gone about as far as it could South Indian violinist, and aghatam player. go. Jazz musicians began to feel stale. They Formerly, jazz was group -music, with began looking for some way of getting out collective improvisation playing an important of their rut. part. Today you hear more and more musiH was about this time that jazz musicians cians doing extended solos. - For example, became aware ofIndian music, where melody John Coltrain will never do a 3- or 5-minute is improvised upon within the discipline of solo piece; when he gets into a tune, he will a mode or system. Ravi Shankar was the - turn it into a complete work of art, exploring right man at the right place at the right time. all the feelings in it, developing the theme Jazz musicians were immediately attracted to and the mood in detail, much as we do in Indian horizontal improvisations. The har- our music. With Sonny Rollins, it's very monic (jazz) is called vertical improvisation much the same. Keith Jarrett has a record because a chord is vertical, and you sound in which he devotes one whole side to the several notes together; improvisations are development of an Indian raga. Albert horizontal because you go from one note to Mangelsdorff, who has been to India many another. Some jazz musicians were also times, made jazz history by giving a whole attracted to a certain spiritual feeling in solo recital on the trombone, and accompanyIndian music with its religious background. ing himself Indian style using jor and jhala, Many of the top jazz musicians were attracted which gave him a strong beat and rhythm. Miles Davies veered away from cool jazz, not only to India's music but to its philosophy and religion, as well; they got more or less getting into rock and Indian modal (raga) seriously involved with yoga and meditation. forms. He had Badal Roy, an Indian tabla For example, Sonny Rollins experienced player, in his group for some two years, as certain things happening in his music that well as an American electric sitar player he could not understand, and he was dis- who called himself Balakrishna. turbed. He began studying Zen Buddhism; Miles Davies' group has had a great impact then he realized that the origin of Buddhism on the whole jazz scene. Musicians like was in India. So he went to Swami ChinmayaRollins, MacLaughlin, Coltrain, Jarrett have nanda's ashram in Powai where he stayed for graduated from the Miles Davies group, three months, taking lessons in the Gita branched off and made a success of their and Vedanta-he did very well, the people own thing-sometimes more than Davies in the ashram thQught. himself. Many musicians come on their John MacLaughlin, the famous guitar own to India. Don Chary, the famous trumpet player in Miles Davies' group, was involved player who was at one time with Ornette with meditation and expressed something Coleman's group, studied dhrupad with of it in his music. His guru called him one of the Dagar brothers in Bombay. Mahavishnu-that's how he got the name Don Ellis, who figured prominently in the John Mahavishnu MacLaughlin. Later he New York avant-garde scene, later studied under Harihar Rao. To sound the microtones better, he had a trumpet specially Left: Ed Soph, one of Clark Terry's Jolly made with a fourth valve. He used a lot of Giants, at the drums. The Jolly Giants are actually Hindustani rhythms, and even wrote a part of a 17-person band called "The Big Bad book on their use in Western music. Later Band" -in black slang "bad" connotes excellence.
he organized the Big Band on the U.S. West Coast, and for the first time broke the 4-4 beat in jazz, incorporating oddtime signatures and yet making it swing. Jazz musicians are extremely enterprising. They adapt anything new that they can use so long as it doesn't obstruct basic aims-viz., the music must swing: All innovations must enhance rather than restrict their freedom of expression. Don Ellis, who got an Academy Award for his music in The French Connection will use tempos like 5-4, 5-8, 13-4, and still make the music swing. Sometimes he'll explain the beat to the audience and make them clap. Instead of dividing 16 into four equal parts, he'll divide it into 7-8 plus 9-8, making 7 with 3-2-2 and 9 with 3-2-2-2. There's a record of his called "3-2-2-2-1-2-2-2" which he wickedly describes as his area code and telephone number. The sax player Charlie Mariano was in Malaysia and met a South Indian nadaswaram player, came to India with him, lived in a tiny village with his guru and studied the nadaswaram. Now he is going to give recitals on it in Europe and America. The Indian flute has also got into jazz. Chris Hindrey one day heard a very competent player called Raghunath Seth, and was amazed by the way Indian flutists produce a continuous sound even when moving from one note to another, much higher or lower. He went to Bombay and studied under Raghunath Seth for some time. The days of the jam session are over. Of course, five different musicians may still come together and play the blues, but it's not "in" these days. The music has become somewhat more "serious," if that is the right word. I only hope that this does not take all the fun out of the music, because then it will destroy itself. For the present that does not seem to be happening. In fact, Western audiences are thrilled by the new sound they hear, without knowing that it has an Indian content. The whole jazz scene is changing today-from the Afro-American to what one might call the Indo-Afro-American. A lot of exciting new things may come out of this new musical culture. Jazz may even develop into a musical language common to the whole world. 0
THE FIRST LADY OF BHARATA NATYAM Peerless exponent of a great art, Balasaraswati is honored as much in America as in India. Photos here show the dancer today (facing page), many years ago (above left), and in a still (left) from the recent short film on her made by Satyajit Ray. (See story on following page.)
NearlY 16 yea" ago, Ted Shawo, a legendary figure in American dance, introduced to the United States a dance legend from India-Balasaraswati. He told an enthusiastic audience at the Jacob's Pillow 'Dance Festival in Lee, Massachusetts: "This is a historic night. ... Today you are in the presence of greatness. " Balasaraswati's dance performance on that historic night "cast a hypnotic spell over the audience," said dance critic Richard Happell. He added: "Balasaraswati's delicate and beautiful art is timeless and knows no frontiers .... While the music sounded strange to American ears, it was intriguing and evocative of the long cultural history of India." Ted Shawn told guests later that night that presenting Balasaraswati at Jacob's Pillow was one of his greatest accomplishments. Balasaraswati has since visited the United States several times, and has performed in many major American cities. She has conducted a summer school in San Francisco;' she has given lecture demonstrations, taught scores of American
Above: K. Ramiah, dance director in Balasaraswati's troupe, guides a summer program student at Mills College in Oakland, California. Right: Balasaraswati in a classical dance pose.
students, inspired rave reviews, charmed dancers of all styles, and promoted Indo-U.S. good will as few individuals have done. In 1977, Balasaraswati and her daughter Lakshmi, who is also an accomplished Bharata Natyam dancer, toured 15 American states in a five-month visit beginning in May. A highlight of their tour-sponsored by the Balasaraswati School of Dance and Music in Berkeley, California-was their participation in the American Dance Festival held in New London. Balasaraswati and Lakshmi are scheduled to visit the United States again in May 1978. "The intelligent interest and appreciation of Americans have helped stimulate Indian artists," says Mohan Khokar, secretary of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and an authority on Indian dance. "Balasaraswati is an example. She is lionized in the United States, almost worshipped." An example of the admiration she evokes in the United States is a review of Balasaraswati's art in Dance magazine, written several years ago by Faubion Bowers, an American expert on Asian dance. He said that watching Balasaraswati perform is "a supreme moment of esthetic realization." He added: "Her dancing is not easy to grasp. It is intricate, deceptive, evasive. It grows in the mind, and this process continues long after the performance is concluded. Afterward you ask yourself, 'What have I seen?' The answer is startling, because Bala's images are suffused with the passions of human experience." For her part, Balasaraswati has been delighted with the earnestness and dedication of her American disciples. "These students are so intense," she said once. "They seem to understand instinctively the stories of love, hate, despair and fear that I tell in the dance." Now 60 years old, Balasaraswati has been showered with laurels in India and abroad. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1955, and a doctorate from Rabindra Bharati University in 1964. In South India, she is described with affection and reverence as "Abhinaya Saraswati," the Goddess of Emotions. Commenting on Balasaraswati's achievements, and on the universality of her art, Mohan Khokar says: "Balasaraswati is the last remnant of a dying generation, and symbolizes the quintessence of excellence of the traditional Bharata Natyam idiom. The spirit of the art almost oozes forth from her." How do today's dancers react to Balasaraswati? Leela Samson, who was trained at Kalakshetra and has often watched Balasaraswati on stage, says: "Her forte is in her abhinaya. She can interpret the emotions very well, and carry off any situation with grace and naturalness. There's an old-world charm about her movements which today's dancers cannot duplicate. " Chitra Anand, another well-acclaimed young dancer, says: "Most dancers excel in a particular aspect of abhinaya-such as, for example, eroticism. But Balasaraswati has a tremendous range and depth. Whether she portrays a child, a young girl, a sweetheart or a saint, she is superb. You tend to forget the physical aspect as you watch her-there's about her a quality of eternal beauty." Which is perhaps why Balasaraswati is admired all over the world. As Ted Shawn put it, her art has indeed been "an international force for peace and amity among peoples." D
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
!ALETTER
V FROM 11I1
AMERICA
AMERICANS REDEFINE THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Americans have always fiercely defended their right to a government by the consent of the governed; after two turbulent decades, the social contract stands further strengthened. The America in which I live and work shows few outward signs of upheaval. Quite the contrary, it feels far steadier, less distraught and distracted than it was five years ago. The undertone of bitter disaffection, distrust and lack of confidence which dominated the Watergate era has largely disappeared. In spite of everything, Americans today seem more at home in their country than they have in many years. Perhaps the best measure of disaffection is the way the ordinary person in the street responds to the inevitable petty frustrations of social existence. Of late, Americans have had to put up with a great number of frustrations. As in all countries, inflation has taken a painful bite out of wage-earner and lowersalaried incomes. Unemployment has introduced an element of job insecurity. The energy crisis chilled American homes and threatens to curtail America's cherished mobility. Yet the dominant response is not rage and resistance, the characteristic response of disaffection. Rather, it is one of coping, of making do, of finding ways. April-income tax time in the United States-was when rage and resistance could have become most easily manifest. American income tax is over 90 per cent self-assessed, and depends heavily on citizen cooperation. Amid reports of income tax evasion in high places, Americans could even find moral justification for sabotaging the tax systemif they wanted to. But they do not seem to want to. They grumble, as American taxpayers have always grumbled. But they pay up, grudgingly but voluntarily, offering effective testimony that they still regard this as their country, that they identify with it and accept responsibility for it. What has happened in the United States, I would suggest, can best be understood in terms of the breach and restoration of the "social contract." The term may sound anachronistic. It was first introduced by 17th-century rationalists to explain the apparently irrational fact that people surrender individual interest for sake of common weal and cooperate with and in social management. It is still a useful term for describing the tacit understanding which exists between the rulers and the ruled, between the managers and the managed, and makes the daily functioning of the society possible. Public power in a democracy, after all, does not come out of the barrel of a gun
but rather out of the willingness of the governed to regard the man with the gun-or badge-as a legitimate representative of their own interests. Social contract is still useful shorthand for the conditions of willingness to let ourselves be governed. . The implicit social contract in the United States is rather complex because, unlike most countries, it has two distinct governing elites, the pOlitical and the economic, and has always insisted on maintaining their nonidentity. That, indeed. may be the basic article of the American social contract: that the affluent and the politically prominent shall be nonidentical. While some degree of overlap is inevitable, Americans have always insisted that the two managing elites must check and balance each other, and have been highly sensitive to any conflict-more exactly, any collusion-of interest. The fundamental article of the contract with the economic elite can be summed up as holding that while rewards may be disproportionate, the rules will be fair. Americans have been willing to tolerate an extraordinary display of glaring economic privilege on the condition that the rules of the economic game will provide equal opportunity for each citizen to aspire to and perhaps even reach a similar pinnacle of affluence. The contract with political managers rested on an analogous condition: that public power will be open to public inspection and control, that any citizen will be free to aspire to and perhaps reach positions of political privilege-and, most of all, that the rules shall be fair. Americans are allergic to secrecy: they are committed to the principle of public disclosure as a means of keeping their politicians-honest. These, in sum, are the basic articles of the American social contract and, while the degree of confidence in the system has waxed and waned over the years, on the whole the system has worked remarkably well. The United States has provided its people with a surprising degree of economic mobility. Similarly, while it has its family dynasties in politics-the Roosevelts, the Tafts, the Kennedys-it has also provided room for newcomers like the magnificent, peppery little man, Harry Truman, and now the peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Even the noncollusion of elites, perhaps the most difficult to fulfill, has not been an empty letter. Americans have succeeded not only in keeping the government out of business-which was not difficult-but also, to a surprising degree, in keeping business out of government. Members of the economic elite, upon achieving political prominence, have not only gone through the ritual of divesting themselves of offending holdings, but have also repeatedly exercised their public power to temper the profit motive with considerations of public interest. Trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt was a very rich man. So were Franklin
Erazim Kobak is a professor of philosophy at Boston University and an editor of Dissent magazine. He has published a number of books, including Masaryk on Marx and The Victors and the Vanquished.
D. Roosevelt, author of the New Deal, and John F. Kennedy, confronting the steel industry over a price hike. The system has failed on occasions, but the point is that it has also worked, and that Americans were confident that it was working. The American social crisis of the late '60s may well have reflected a recognition of the strain which modern age placed on the social contract. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the mid-'50s warned against the "military-industrial complex," a glaring collusion between two elites. Since his time, Americans have become aware of the degree to which modern conditions foster such collusion. One of the basic rules of the game appeared to have been violated-and perhaps rendered unenforceable. Instead of seeing himself as a swing factor on a scale on which big business and big government balance each other, many an ordinary American 10 years ago saw himself as hopelessly impotent against the overwhelming combination of government and business. The strain on the economic clause of the American social contract has been no less severe. The rise of majQr producing units forced a shift of small enterprise into services, but the rise of conglomerates made even the service and distribution fields inaccessible to. small enterprise. At the same time, Americans have become aware of pockets of deep, persistent poverty. Equality of economic opportunity appeared seriously questionable.
The political system remained as the sole safety valve. Americans may not have thought that it never errs, but they remained surprisingly confident that it plays by the rules. Yet in recent years, this faith, too, came under strain. Vietnam suggested to many that decisions were being made in secret, that public statements could not be trusted. Watergate revealed some of the machinery behind the scenes. On all three scores, the American social contract seemed broken. The system continued to function-there was no constitutional crisis. But beneath the surface the social crisis was profound. Watergate appeared superficially far more disruptive: it was a genuine constitutional crisis. Yet the constitutional crisis had the effect of restoring America's confidence in its basic social contract. The resignation of President Richard Nixon was not only evidence of breach of contract - but also its reaffirmation. The same was true of the extensive probes around Watergate. Americans were not so much shocked at what was revealed-they had suspected as much-as reassured that it was revealed. Public affairs again became public, and Americans freed themselves of the sense of being governed by a secret and secretive clique. Similarly, in economics, the growing public sentiment for closer supervision of corporate giants represents reconstitution rather than revolution. Americans are finding ways of affirming their basic tenet: that the rules should be fair. They are not calling for nationalization of industry-that would violate the cherished tenet of noncollusion of political and economic interest. But they are discovering that laissc;;zfaire is not enough: that fairness in economics needs to mean first of all not that everyone can make a fortune, but that everyone can earn a fair wage, receive medical care, old-age pensions and assurance of employment security. That is the new model: assurance of basic needs being met, supervision of economy in service of public interest-by design, not by accident. This is leading to the reformulation of the third tenet. The idea of noncollusion, which used to mean simply separation, has come to mean active mutual check; not only autonomous economy as check on political power, but the use of political power to give directions to and place limits on the autonomy of economic power. Tacit agreement is working its way into the texture of American life. The structure is readjusting. From without, the process can appear turbulent. But there is reason to believe that the external changes reflect a newly won social stability. In the early '70s America passed through a troubled half decade when its society was in turmoil while its institutions showed little change. Today the institutions are changing, but beneath them, I believe, there is the stability of a new social contract. 0
A DAY TO REMEMBER Like India, which observes January 30 as Martyrs' Day to honor those who died for the country's independence, America pays homage to its war dead on Memorial Day, held each year at the end of May. Tomb of the Unknowns (above) at Arlington Cemetery near Washington, D.C., is a national shrine where a sentry keeps constant vigil.
Rajghat (facing page) is the venue of prayers and bhajans each January 30 to commemorate the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
M
emorialDay at the end of May is one of America's major patriotic holidays, some of whose observances bear a striking resemblance to. certain Indian celebrations. On this day Americans honor the nation's war dead by decorating with wreaths and flowers their soldiers' graves and memorials. In like manner in India on January 30, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, garlands are placed on the monument raised in memory of the martyred Father of the Nation; and on the same day, two minutes of silence are observed to honor all who lost their lives in India's freedom struggle. In a deeper sense, the American Memorial Day has come to stand for reconciliation and good will, a time when old enmities and differences are healed. India has such a day in its spring time holi festival, a most important aspect of which I is the setting aside of caste and other differences, a time when individuals must make every effort to forget and forgive¡ old grudges. Memorial Day, as it evolved, also became a traditional time for American families to honor their personal forebears, especially their recently dead loved ones. In the same way, a Hindu reverently observes each anniversary of his parent's death, and remembers his ancestors with sraddh ceremonies during a yearly fortnight called pitri paksha. Actually, since remote antiquity, people of all cultures have in varying ways performed rites of thanksgiving to forefathers who gave them life and security. The American practice of leaving. flowers at family graves is an old one inherited from European ancestors, still performed in the spring, a season everywhere heralded as a time ofrebirth. But in the United States after the close of the Civil War in 1864, these seasonal memorial rites took on the connotation of nation~l rebirth, instrumental as they were in helping to reunite a nation, as well as individual families. For on the battlefields of this four-year "war to unify the States," men from the North fought blood brothers who lived in the South, and soldiers in gray bore arms against Northern cousins uniformed in blue. The loss in all of 618,000 native sons, with nearly a million casualties, left a heritage of grief and bitterness throughout the land. That Memorial Day is now closely
associated in the hearts of the American people with reconciliation and reunification of the country is due in part to ladies of the South, where suffering was most acute. Though their aristocratic way of plantation life was destroyed with the abolition of slavery, their towns and cities were in ruins, and their economy in a state of collapse, shortly after the cessation of hostilities a group of Mississippi ladies, together with a former chaplain of their Southern armies, went to a local cemetery and placed spring flowers on the graves of fallen fighting men. The whole nation was deeply moved when the New York Herald reported, "The women
of Columbus, Mississippi, have shown themselves impartial in-' their offerings to the memory of the war dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of Confederate (Southern) and of the National (Northern) soldiers." The touching incident became a symbol of amity and understanding between the States, and prompted the inauguration of an annual "Decoration Day," as May 30 was originally designated. It inspired Francis Miles Finch to write "The Blue and¡ the Gray," a poem memorized by schoolchildren down through the generations, orated at Memorial Day ceremonies to this day. Its closing stanza says:
heads bowed in a moment of silence. personal security were blessings as comAfternoon found the Veteran's Hall, the mon as sunshine, (and stem) from the Armory building, the city park, or the old American principle that all owe school auditorium packed with citizens due submission and obedience to the gathered to hear ringing patriotic orations lawfully expressed will of the majority .... by local military and government officials. Here under the shadow of the nation's Evening festivities closed with a commu- capitol, let them rest, asleep on the nity supper prepared by townswomen. nation's heart, entombed in the nation's And many remember the Memorial love." Day in the nation's capital when in In the vibrant oratory in vogue at the 1917 the old G.A.R. veterans in fading time, General Sheridan, alluding to the The strongest impetus for popularizing gray uniforms marched, for the first recent laying down of arms, addressed Memorial Day observance .came from time, down Pennsylvania Avenue side Memorial Day crowds saying, "From the G.A.R. (Gran<fArmy of the Republic), by side with their Southern brothers in Southern gulf to Northern lakes, from an organization of Northern veterans blue. For as the years passed, hearts Northern lakes to Atlantic and Pacific formed at the end of the Civil War to were mellowed and the note of Northern coasts, we are one .... All over the land a secure funds for hospitalized, wounded triumph waned. Thomas Bailey Aldriche's single flag flew out its folds, a symbol soldiers, and to help needy families left essay on Memorial Day says, "The earlier of victory, index of a reunited people." by the dead. Story has it that the wife sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving And decades later President Hoover told of the first G.A.R. commander, after a softening solemnity .... While the se- the nation on Memorial Day, "The Union seeing Southern women decorating the questered country churchyards and burial has become not merely a physical union war graves, persuaded her husband to places near our great Northern cities of the states, but rather a spiritual union inaugurate an annual Decoration Day. were being hung with May garlands, in common ideals of our people. Within In 1878 an order went out to G.A.R. the thought could not but come to us it is room for every variation of opinchapters in every town with instructions that there were graves lying southward ion, every possible experiment of social to observe May 30 by "strewing flowers above which bent a grief as tender and progress. Out of such variety comes and otherwise decorating the graves of sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped growth, but only if we preserve and comrades who died in defense of their unseen flowers upon those mounds." . maintain our spiritual solidarity." country during the late rebellion (as the There was hardly a Memorial Day in American cities and towns still celebrate war was referred to in the North) and any part of the country where William Memorial Day with mainstreet parades whose bodies lie in almost every city, Carlston's well-known poem was not of marching veterans and soldiers of village, or hamlet churchyard in the recited: more recent wars marching behind military land. It is the purpose of the commanderbands, and floats decorated in red, white in-chief to inaugurate this observance with Cover them over with beautifulflowers and blue. People still lay bouquets of the hope that it will be kept from year to Deck them with garlands, those flowers at the graves of loved ones and year .... Let no ravages of time testify brothers of ours, of soldiers from all conflicts, and view to coming generations that we have forLying so silent by night and by day. televised ceremonies at Gettysburg Nagotten as a people the cost of a free and Cover them over, yes cover them over, tional Memorial Park or Arlington undivided Republic." Parent and husband, brother and lover, National Cemetery where their President Many Americans today remember Crown in your hearts those dead places a wreath on the Tomb of the Memorial Day ceremonies when, for heroes of ours, Unknowns or other war memorials. At decades, these proud "Old Vets" of the Cover them over with beautifulflowers. these solemn ceremonies, the speaker's G.A.R. marched in cadenced step down theme is invariably one of unity, reconthe main streets of countless towns and ciliation, remembrance of ancestors and cities between flag-lined sidewalks and those who laid down their lives for the rows of cheering spectators. Above war Who goes there, in the night, nation-and of the hope for peace throughmemorial halls, the Stars and Stripes were out the world. Across the storm-swept plain? flown at half-mast till midday, and at . They are the ghosts of a valiant war, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Adfull staff in the afternoon. Crowds followed A million murdered men! dress, though' delivered in 1863, will along behind parades of marching bands, always be an integral part of May 30 Who goes there, at the dawn, drum and bugle corps, and formations orations, for its immortal words [see of civic leaders singing cherished Civil Across the sun-swept plain? facing page], as none other, portray the War songs- "We are tenting tonight on We are the hosts of those who swear heart and spirit of Memorial Day which the old camp grounds," "Marching It shall not be again! they foreshadowed. D through Georgia," and "Onward Christian soldiers." As the procession neared At the first formal, official observances About the Author: An American who lives in the cemetery, the strident patriotic music of a national Memorial Day, General New Delhi, Mary Anderson has an abiding was hushed while drums beat a muffled James Garfield, later to become President, interest in the traditional social and religious tattoo. Flowers and flags were placed on was the principal speaker. He reminded customs of the Asian people. She has written a every grave marker, and when a bugler the vast audience that stood among the book, Festivals of Nepal, and articles about sounded the plaintive notes of "Taps," war graves that " ... peace, liberty and Buddhism and thefestivals of Taiwan. No more shall the war cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever When they laurel the graves of our dead! Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment-day; Love and tears for the Blue, Tears and love for the Gray.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as afinal resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can neverforget what they did here. It isfor us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that causefor which they gave the lastfull measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth offreedomand that government of thepeople, by thepeople,for thepeople, shall not perishfrom the earth."
"TheArtist and His Mother," a painting by Arshile Gorky, evokes same mood as poem at right.
Kaddish I
In her last sickness, my mother took my hand in hers tightly: for the first time I knew how calloused a hand it was, and how soft was mine. II
Day after day you vomit the green sap of your life and, wiping your lips with a paper napkin, smile at me; and I smile back. But, sometimes, as I talk calmly to others I find that I have sighed-irrelevantly. III I pay my visit and, when the little we have to say is said, go about my business and pleasures; but you are lying these many weeks abed. The sun comes out; the clouds are gone; the sky is blue; the stars arise; the moon shines; and the sun shines anew for me; but you are dying, wiping the tears from your eyessecretly that I may go about my business and pleasures while the sun shines and the stars rise. IV
The wind that had been blowing yesterday has fallen; now it is cold. The sun is shining behind the grove of trees bare of every leaf (the trees no longer brown as in autumn, but grayish-dead wood until the spring); and in the withered grass the brown oak leaves are lying, gray with frost. "I was so sick but now-I think-am better." Your voice, strangely deep, trembles; your skin is ashenyou seem a mother of us both, long dead. V
The wind is crowding the waves down the river to add their silver to the shimmering west. The great work you did seems trifling now, but you are tired. It is pleasant to close your eyes. What is a street-light doing so far from any street? That was the sun, and now there is only darkness. VI Head sunken, eyes closed, face pallid, the bruised lips parted; breathing heavily, as if you had been climbing flights of stairs, another flight of stairsand the heavy breathing stopped.
The nurse came into the room silently at the silence, and felt your pulse, and put your hand beneath the covers, and drew the covers to your chin, and put a screen about your bed. That was all : you were dead: VII Her heavy braids, the long hair of which she had been proud, cut off, the undertaker's rouge on her cheeks and lips, and her cheerful greeting silenced. VIII My mother leaned above me as when I was a child. What had she come to tell me from the grave? Helpless, I looked at her anguish; lifted my hand to stroke her cheek, touched it and woke. IX Stele Not, as you were lying, a basin beside your head into which you kept vomiting; nor, as that afternoon, when you follo'Yed the doctor slowly with hardly the strength to stand, small and shrunken in your black coat; but, as you half turned to me, before you went through the swinging door, and lifted your hand, your face solemn and calm. X
We looked at the light burning slowly before your picture and looked away; we thought of you as we talked but could not bring ourselves to speakto strangers who do not care, yes, but not among ourselves. XI I know you do not mind (if you mind at all) that I do not pray for you or bum a light on the day of your death: we do not need these trifles between usprayers and words and lights.
Charles Rezoikoff, who died in 1976 at 81, was one of America's distin-
guished poets. Writing on Reznikofj's 80th birthday about his book, Inscriptions 1944-1956, poet Harvey Shapiro said: "Here was an unfashionable image of a poet, worn, used. An urban man describing his dark streets with a classical restraint. The poems were lyrical." Among Reznikofj's other books are Testimony: The United States 1885-1890; Recitative; and Family Chronicle, a prose work. He also wrote a number of plays and novels.
'5 A famous writer reviews a classic of western exploration that recorded in fascinating detail the lives of the early American Indian tribes of the legendary Wild West. Francis Parkman was by no means the kind of person one would expect to be an adventurer. He was sedentary by habit, a Harvard scholar, and exceptionally frail of physique. Nevertheless, in the American West of the 1840s, the legendary Wild West known as the home of the noble savage (this description being applicable, in the legend, to the cowboy as well as to the Red Ind:an), Parkman was a pioneer. The Oregon Trail, the first and probably the best of his books, is a personal record of the long, hazardous trip he made west of the Mississippi in 1864, a trip made into territory full of relatively untamed tribes who were in preparation for war. Parkman met the ancestors of the present Red Indians: in the prairie, in the forest: warriors and hunters. Firewater, the Red Indian name for liquor, had already come with the fur trappers to the northwestern part of America. He recorded its effect upon the Dakota Sioux he consorted, briefly, with: he recorded the lives of these people, and though the tribes w~re already dwindled, and somewhat too ready to fall into the ways of the white man, the ghost of their former glory still inhabited them. Parkman saw this: he also observed that the noble savage is essentially squalid, especially when he is compelled to abandon the savage state. Though he may have ridden into the West with a certain number of ingrained opinions about the Red Indians (those ingrained opinions no writer can ever fully shed as he moves around his world), he rode there to be informed, as no writer, before or since him, ever did. "I had come into the country," he says, "almost exclusively with a view to observing the Indian character. Having from childhood felt a curiosity on this subject, and failing completely to gratify it by reading, I resolved to have recourse to observation." There the true writer, rather than the scholar, speaks. He speaks once more in the next paragraph. "I wished to satisfy myself with regard to the position of Indians among the races of men; the vices and the virtues that have sprung from their innate character and from their modes of life, their government, their superstitions, and their domestic situation. To accomplish my purpose it was necessary to live in the midst of them, and become, as it were, one of them. I proposed to join a village, and make myself an inmate of one of the lodges." This, amazingly, he achieved. He rode westward from Boston as 1846 turned itself toward spring and the first
The early American Indians lived in simple lodges like this one. Hunting equipment lay within reach.
flowers, with a friend, Quincy A. Shaw: neither knew what lay ahead. Parkman was then 23: at that time, though there is no birth certificate to prove his age, a boy who was to be known as Crazy Horse was six years old. He was to be involved in the battle of the Yellowstone River and in the massacre of Custer's troops. Parkman never met the child, or if he did, obviously does not remember: why should he have done so? Crazy Horse, known by his clan amidst the Sioux as "the Strange Man of the Oglalas," was mysterious from his birth. When Parkman came into the lodges of the Dakotah branch of the Sioux, these lodges were not unpeaceful: but he describes some of the reasons which motivated the Ghost Dancers and Crazy Horse to fight. Shaw and he left St. Louis, which now produces debutantes
THE OREGON TRAIL'
in enormous quantities, along what was called the Oregon Trail, their wagons and ponies aimed toward the bulky solidity of the Rocky Mountains beyond the huge, slow flow of the Mississippi, through the states now known as Missouri and Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. This was before the years of the gold rush to California, which started in 1849: those who went in the emigrant wagons of 1846 went to fll.d open land, arable land: or because they were traders, not farriily units, they went to bring back the hides of the enormous, foolish American bison, whose herds still blackened the prairie. The traders were brave men, even, since they married squaws to keep up friendly relations with the local tribes, astute men (astuteness and courage do not always accompany each other), but they were also brutal men. Henri Chatillon, who acted as guide and interpreter to Parkman, was one such person. He had his squaw: he shot, at least so far as
Parkman recounts, no Indians: but he seems to have shot everything else in the prairie, a habit which Parkman came to emulate: the party appears to have shot hundreds of bison, or, as they were and are called by Americans, buffalo, purely for the delicacies of tongue and hump: the rest of the huge carcass rotted in the plains. Parkman met his first Indians in Kansas, close enough to the Eastern coast and its civilization to have been reduced to "the dregs of the Kansas nation, who, while their betters had gone to hunt the buffalo, had left the village to go on a begging expedition to Westport ... this ragamuffin horde .... " Later, along the endlessly unfolding miles of swamp, desert, and scrub, on which supermarkets now stand, he encountered a party of Delaware Indians, whose chief cast an eye over him. This chief sounds like a specter from his native forests. "An old man," says Parkman, " ... (who) rode a tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of reins, was attached a string of rawhide. His saddle ... had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's skin being attached to it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups ... and . . . a thong of hide passing around the horse's belly. The rider's dark features and keen snaky eye were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which like his fringed leggins, was well polished and blackened by grease and long service, and an old handkerchief was tied around his head." Parkman was by no means a bad writer, though his chief value to history was as an explorer and observer. The description of the Delaware chieftain is sufficiently vivid, but there is a beautiful final touch to it. The old man rode up to Chatillon and inquired who the chief of this white party was. Chatillon indicated Parkman, who was closely scrutinized for some minutes by the aged warrior, who then, to quote Parkman, "sententiously remarked,-'No good! Too young!'" He then rode after the straggle of his tribe in the roadside dust ahead. The Delawares were at this time the most feared tribe in the prairies: a nation of warparties who rode as far as Mexico. Though Parkman did not have much time to describe the old Delaware chieftain in terms of personality, he did, being thrown together with them for weeks or months, produce rambling but evocative accounts of the personalities of some of his white companions, such as Deslauriers, a trapper, and Tete Rouge, a former soldier in the U.S. Army, who accompanied him on his way back down the Oregon Trail. The pity of it is that he has nowhere in the book produced a description of Indian psychology, though his descriptions of the customs and habits of the Dakotas are brilliant and thorough: perhaps he did not really understand Indian psychology. He cannot be blamed for this. The Red Indians, rather like the Australian aborigines and the Polynesians, are a race whose origins, in the absence of any written documents, are mysterious in the extreme. The general notion now seems to be that the American Indians, at some point in prehistory, migrated over the Bering Straits from Asia to Alaska, and then h':iclded southward
Parkman was not a bad writer, but his chief value to history was as an explorer and observer. over the Americas, but nobody is quite sure. Nor is anyone quite sure how they acquired the horses on which the Plains Indians were so heavily dependent, and which formed so important a part of their culture, as did the horses the early Aryan settlers brought to India. Some people say that these horses, running free in the North American prairies, were the descendants of the steeds of the Spanish who came to Mexico with Cortez, and who trotted up a thousand miles from the south once their riders were killed by the Aztecs. This is as plausible an answer to the matter as any answer can be to any query about the history of American Indians. This history is an enigma. The customs of the Sioux which Parkman observed in the lodge of Meneseela, a warchief with whom he stayed at the end of his odyssey, are so complicated, in the sense that they crisscross other primitive cultures, that a long study would be needed to understand them. For example, the reverence for the horse was shared with the Caucasians, or Aryans, who came across the Himalayan passes to India. The habit of offering an honored visitor dogmeat is common to the other side of the inhabited world, in China, even in Melanesia. The custom for a young man to torture himself by fastening hooks in his back is a custom in South India and among the aborigines of Australia. Who were the Red Indians? Where did they come from? Parkman could neither answer these questions, nor does he seem to ask them of himself, but he observed and recorded their customs for posterity. To paraphrase Whitman, he "was the man, he suffered, he was there." He certainly suffered. He was ill all the time. The Indians had no salt, so what he ate was, to a palate nurtured in Boston, rather tasteless, though he courageously calls what the trappers and traders called pemmican, and the Sioux wasna, "a nutritious preparation." This delicacy was a mixture of buffalo meat and wild cherries, pounded together and dried in the sun. It may have been nutritious, but Parkman, later in the trip, compares eating it to chewing leather. Apart from this, he had, on ceremonial occasions, dogmeat (having eaten it in New Guinea, I can sympathize with Parkman's frequent illnesses) and whatever he could shoot for himself. He was a very intelligent man, his book reveals it: this was all before the question of ecology loomed over the horizon. He shot everything he could see, at least everything not human. He went buffalo hunting with Meneseela's warriors, driving his ruined body' beyond the point of endurance. (He lived to be 70, but was ill from the time he came back down the Oregon Trail.) It is frequently said that the white hunters killed off the enormous herds of bison, but, a~cording to his account, so did the Indians, and¡with an equal amount of wastage: except that the Indians, having taken humps, tongues, and entrails, took the hides as well. . When in 1877 (Parkman was still alive) Crazy Horse died, shot in prison while trying to escape, one ¡of the reasons offered for his fight (and the fight of all the other Plains Indians) against the white men was because of the wasting of the buffalo herds.
According to Parkman, this was the common practice of white men and Red Indians. The end came as the Indian Wars ended, and people like Buffalo Bill Cody wandered the wrecked prairies, shooting what they could find, in this case not as much as Parkman found. The great, foolish, beautiful bison were wiped out: in their place, on the prairies, the great, foolish, unbeautiful cities came. Parkman could be called one of the last true American pioneers: the quiet American who looked into his land. He explored an old culture which was rapidly dying: he did not, in 1846, expect the new culture about which he wrote a year before his death in 1893. "For Indian tepees," he said, "with their trophies of bow, lance, and dangling scalp locks, we have towns and cities, resorts of health and pleasure seekers, with an agreeable society, Paris fashions, the magazines, the latest poem, and the last new novel. ... The buffalo is gone and of all his millions nothing is left but bones: the wild Indian is turned into an ugly caricature of his conqueror." He may not have entirely liked the Indian he saw in Meneseela's lodge nearly 50 years before. But he saw what was departing: an odd, coherent culture: a culture which could not be preserved but should be recorded. He admired some of the Indian chieftains he met enormously: the Whirlwind, MahkoTatonga, Kongra-Tonga, Big Crow. He wrote of them, and it is their only memorial. This thin, pale, sick rider across the prairies and into the lower slopes of the Rockies, performed his incredible task for his own satisfaction, and for the satisfaction of history. For him the peacepipe was prepared: with him the peacepipe was smoked. How would we know, without his obstinate, ill eye being cast around him, his observation operative while his ailing heart hurt and phlegm rose to his coughing mouth, that the Sioux mixed willow bark with their pipe tobacco? How would we know how they ate, what they cooked, what they wore? These . are not minor points in history. Had one had a gallant and literate observer of humanity like Parkman from the small brutish Neanderthals till now, able to record and see the minutest details of man as he has lived, we might better be able to comprehend man as he will live, and we might even be able to visualize man as he should live. D
Dom Moraes (left, shown with West Irian tribesman) is a writer of distinction in prose and verse. Winner of the Hawthornden Award for his book of poems A Beginning, he is the author of several books, including A Matter of People, a study of world population.
GUARANTEEING HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES The American Constitution guarantees the civil and political rights of citizens. Dynamic private organizations in the u.s. have spurred government action on economic and social rights-such as those relating to jobs, education, medical care and a decent standard of living. After years of lip service in international documents, human rights moved to a center stage position in the 1975 Helsinki Accords which ended the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Participants at that conference agreed, in an almost unprecedented step, to a follow-up meeting to review each nation's promise to "encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms .... " The conference recently met again in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Western nations, including the United States, took an activist position at Belgrade, demanding that ,each nation live up to its promises. The United States has also, through President Jimmy Carter, made human rights a central theme of its foreign policy. Given this American activism,and considering the traditional skepticism which has greeted any nation's commitment to human rights, one might well ask, does America practice what it preaches? Does the United States protect human rights at home? An answer must be divided into two parts: (1) the protection of civil and political "rights; and (2) the protection of economic and social rights"
Civil and Political Rights Since the incorporation of civil and political rights into international law came largely at the behest of the United States and Western European nations, based upon out domestic political systems and social ethics regarding individual worth, it is not surprising to find that the United States has a very fully developed set of protections for civil and political rights. These protections include both substantive freedoms guaranteed through the Constitution as well as an almost fail-safe dual procedural system for vindicating and protecting the guaranteed substantive rights. The First Amendment to' the U.s. Constitution protects freedom of speech and religion, and this has been construed widely to include other ..freedoms such
'~In most ways," said President Carter recently, "there is no such thing as a typical American. In ancestry, religion, color, accent, cultural background-even country of birth-' we are as varied as humanity itself. But if anyone thing does unit~ us, it is a co'mmon belief in certain basic human rights."
as freedom of thought and conscience and freedom of association. These freedoms are very clearly illustrated by several recent cases from the U.S. Supreme Court. The most important of these, The New York Times v. United States (1971), involved a civil suit brought by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to restrain The New York Times and Washington Post newspapers from, printing a secret Defense Department document which had been stolen or otherwise covertly removed from government files. By a six-to-three vote, the Supreme Court held that the publications were protected by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and a free press because, although damaging to the executive department, the government papers would play an important role in informing public opinion about' the Vietnam war. And in Gregory Chicago Charles F. Abernathy, quthor of this article, (1969), the Supreme Court upheld the is an eminent legal scholar aiula professor of right of equal rights and antiwar activist law at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Dick Gregory to lead- a protest against segregated housing policies which he examine witnesses, and the right to receive claimed were promoted by state officials. from the state all information which Freedom of speech in the United States' might exonerate the defendant. Most is not simply a political concept with importantly, the defendant is entitled a goal of informing public opinion about to a trial by a jury of 12 fellow citizens ,affairs of government. Rather, Ameri- before an impartial judge. can courts have taken the view that the The due process. clauses also protect First Amendment serves the wider goal other fundamental rights outside the area of personal self-development ,and self- of criminal law. These include the right fulfillment. to unrestricted travel, the right to marry The Supreme Court's decisions there-and bear children, and the right to privacy. fore protect not only political speech, The Supreme Court, in fact, has been but also books, motion pictures, and other so sensitive to the protection of these entertainment media which promote ideas rights that it regularly draws newspaper which government might want to restrict criticism from those who believe the or censor. A "marketplace of ideas" court has gone too far in protecting is fostered so that governmental and civil rights. In 1973, inits decision in Roe social change may take place in the v. Wade, the Supreme Court held that context of pers~asion, not coercion. the right of privacy included the right Other fundamental rights in the United to have an abortion without governmental States are protected by the due process interference, a decision which has been clause of the Fifth Amendment and the both widely praised and hotly contested 14th Amendment. Many of the rights 'in newspapers throughout the country. covered here involve criminal law and Finally, it is the 14th Amendment to are attempts to prevent government from the Constitution which provides that taking unfair advantage of its citizens. , ,no state shall "deny to any person within Protection actually begins before the its jurisdiction the equal protection of formal accusation or charge is filed. the laws." This provision has proved All persons, including those accused of to be unusually important in protecting crimes, have the right to close their against arbitrary governmental actions, homes and belongings to police unless especially those based upon racial conthe officer has a warrant or good reason siderations. Although the United State~ to believe that a crime has been committed. was historically a nation of black slavery, Even when he is only informally suspected, that institution was abolished over 100 of a crime, a person has the right to an years ago, and in the -last 15 years no attorney, provided without charge to nation has faced up to its racial problems poor persons. and tried to solve them as has the United After formal charges have been filed, States. a defendant has further rights, including The protection provided for racial the right to a speedy trial, an interpreter minorities is for all practical purposes abat trial if necessary, a right to cross- solute. Overt discriminatory statutes and
v.
practices have in fact reached such a low ebb in the United States that most cases, now involve only the so-called "de facto" discrimination. These are cases in which no purpose to discriminate can be shown, but plaintiffs allege that a policy has a discriminatory result or impact. The very sophisticated level which the United States has attained in fighting racism also shows up in recent so-called "reverse discrimination" cases. These involve compensatory programs which try to remedy past discrimination by guaranteeing a certain percentage of jobs, legislative seats, or medical school seats to minorities. The white persons who are excluded by virtue of the affirmative action plans have charged, in a touch of historical irony, that white persons are being denied the right to equal treatment under law solely because of their race. The Supreme Court has also interpreted the equal protection clause broadly to protect other social groups in society, such as religious and ethnic minorities, aliens, women, and other groups which might be subject to historical prejudice. Moreover, the Constitution's command of equal protection is supplemented by a vast array of statutes which specifically cover governmental officials and private persons who would discriminate. Such statutes forbid most types of discrimination in the sale and rental of housing, hiring and promotion of employees, education, and participation in any program receiving Federal Governmental grants. There is much reason to believe that the constitutional right to equal protection is something more than a mere paper guarantee. Thanks largely to the efforts of the U.S. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the U.S. Supreme Courf in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) unanimously struck down state statutes requiring separate educational facilities according to race, launching the United States' modern efforts to integrate not only its schools, but all of its society. These efforts have proved to be remarkably successful, especially in the last 10 years. In 1968 the percentage of black students enrolled in all-black schools in the old segregated South stood at 68 per cent, but by 1972 that figure had been reduced to 9.2 per cent. The remaining problems of school segregation appear to center around large urban areas where token integration is greatest. Most of this can be traced to the fact that most urban school districts are themselves populated by a majority, of black students. Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles all have "minority" enrollments exceeding 50 per cent, and
those districts alone contain one-fifth of the black students and one-fifth of the Hispanic students in the entire nation. Recent demographic and sociological studies suggest that the remaining unintegrated schools in urban areas result from ordinary factors such as individual choice, and the lack of integration is not, with some exceptions, the result of governmental action which was intended to cause school or housing segregation. These studies also suggest that the degree of self-imposed segregation is no greater than that of immigrant minorities which in the past congregated in cities, and may be expected to decline just as have the degrees of segregation in many older ethnically segregated neighborhoods. This picture emerges then: We have an America which is reasonably and effectively integrated except for pockets of urban school systems that are predominantly black not because they are segregated by official action but because the cities themselves are predominantly populated by black persons. Finally, many of these predominantly black urban school systems, such as those in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia, are themselves controlled and operated by city governments that are headed by black persons. The school desegregation process has on the whole gone quite smoothly, far more smoothly than appeared during the turbulent years of the 1960s. A recent survey of 29 representative communities showed that 27 reported no disruption of public order or the educational process during school integration. No system can be totally effective in
SPAN IS available at leading news stands at As. 2.50 per copy. An annual subscription at
As. 1 8 for 12 issues saves 40 per cent and conveniently brings SPAN to your home or offIce .
. • •
. •~----.u. • .• . •
--'"
.
. .
protecting human rights. Mter all, we must in the final analysis depend upon government itself to check its excesses. This leads us to the second major feature of the U.S. system for protecting civil and political rights-the United States has developed a fail-safe system of multiple safeguards to ensure that constitutional rights are protected. The most important feature of this system is the independent Federal judiciary which holds the uncommon power to review the acts of legislative and executive officials. These judges are appointed for life, thus insulating them from political pressure. The independence of state powers, however, is not wholly usurped. States still have the power to provide stricter safeguards for the protection of human rights, the Federal guarantees acting only as a minimum which all states must meet. Though no nation can have a perfect record on the protection of human rights, the United States has gone far in that direction by its adoption of civil and political rights in its Constitution and its adherence to a fail-safe procedural system for guaranteeing these rights. Though officials sometimes err, as they ever will, government as a whole plays a positive role in securing rights, not the negative, begrudging role as in some nations. The respect which Americans accord to dissenters and civil rights actift'ists can be seen in the faces of American Government at all levels. Andrew Young, an outspoken civil rights activist of the 1960s, is now the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Thurgood Marshall,
leader of the NAACP's attack on segregated schools, is now a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Julian Bond and Maynard Jackson, who fought segregated governments in the South in an earlier time, are now political leaders in Georgia, Jackson serving as mayor of the city of Atlanta.
Economic and Social Rights Unlike civil and political rights, economic and social rights-the right to work, the right to adequate health care, the right to education, and the general right to a decent living-have not traditionally fallen within the scope of Federal protection. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution envisioned that such day-to-day activivities would be supervised by the state governments. The Federal Government first became seriously involved in promoting economic and social rights in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression. Limited programs begun at that time were designed to relieve agricultural and industrial unemployment, as well as provide a minimum level of income to retired persons. The United States' greatest effort and almost revolutionary new commitment to promoting economic and social rights have come in the last 10 years as the U.S. Congress has enacted a vast array of programs to insure that each American is adequately clothed, housed, fed, and provided with health protection. The right to work is protected through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 which grants collective bargaining rights to unionized workers. But that
SPAN
is only the tip of the iceberg. A Federal minimum-wage law ensures that no worker is exploited through inadequate pay, and a variety of regulatory programs monitor and protect the working conditions in America's industries and shops. Another set of statutes, passed as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, protects the equal rights to work; that is, it seeks to insure that working rights are not infringed on account of race, sex, creed, religion, age, or national origin. These protections cover both governmental employees and workers in private industry. The Federal Government has also increasingly sought to insure that each American enjoys a minimum standard of living. Unemployment compensation programs cover some 70 million workers in commerce, industry and government, and are designed to insure that a worker's standard of living may be maintained without interruption during a time of unemployment. In recent years, combined expenditures under these programs have exceeded $10,000 million. Other programs are designed to aid persons who are in more chronic financial difficulty. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is a relief program commonly known in the United States as "Welfare." It makes cash grants to families based upon their financial need, with 90 to 100 per cent of need being met in the populous urban states in which most welfare recipients reside. The Federal Government has also enacted three other programs similar to
AFDC. Medicaid is a health-assistance program which provides care to AFDC recipients and others whose incomes are too small to pay for medical care. Over 23 million Americans received such care in 1976 at an expenditure of $14,000 million. Together with the Medicare program for older Americans, Medicaid pays approximately 25 per cent of the nation's total health care budget. This is a dramatic change in the U.S. Government's affirmative role in the right to health care-in 1950 no Federal medical aid program for the poor even existed. Similarly, the Food Stamp program provides specific assistance to poor persons for purchase of food, and its liberal standards for participation extended benefits to almost 20 million peJsons in 1975 at income levels up to $12,000 per year. Finally, a variety of housing assistance programs developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provide low cost or free housing to those who need it. No one suggests that all economic and social problems in the United States have been solved. Although ... the number of jobs available increases dramatically each year, growth has not been sufficient to provide jobs to all of the now-grown members of the post-World War II baby-boom generation. Consequently, teen-age unemployment is high, especially among blacks and those who have not finished high school. The United States also faces some lingering problems of racial discrimination in social life.
Yet two characteristics about American life stand out. First is the dynamic capacity of private social organizations in the United States which continually raise the public's consciousness and fight for greater protection of human rights. Just as the NAACP fought for racial equality during the last several decades, we can expect it and other social organizations to carry the fight forward in the future as new problems arise. Second, and of equal importance, government is on the side of social change and progress in protecting social and economic rights. The legislative revolution of the 1960s, which first effectively promoted economic and social rights, appears to be continuing unabated. U.S. cit(zens do not believe that their system is the only way of protecting human rights. But they do believe that their system, even with its imperfections, meets the demand of international law that human rights be systematically protected by government. As always, Americans want to win both sides of the argutJlent: we contend that we meet quite easily international standards regarding human rights, yet at the same time domestically we press the government to make still further efforts to promote ciVil, political, economic and social rights. Maybe this time we can win both sides of the argument, because that constant domestic pressure and commitment toward human rights insures that we will continue to live up to international standards. 0
CHANGE OF ADDRESS FORM
SPAN
To: SPAN Magazine Subscription Service Post Box 213 New Delhi 110001
When notifying SPAN about a change in your address. please attach the address label from a recent SPAN envelope in addition to filling out the form below. Since four to six weeks are needed to process a change of address. please let us know about any change promptly. NEW ADDRESS
Name Address
Bank Draft 0
BLOCK
LETTERS)
_
I enclose payment of Rs. 18 in favor of SPAN Magazine by "A/G
o
(USE
_
Postal Order 0
Payee" P.o
_
City
_
Money Order (receipt enclosed).
MAIL TO:
Circulation Manager. SPAN Magazine 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001