For two months this summer, seven students from the University of California at Los Angeles toured colleges in a dozen Indian cities. The 17th group to visit this country under a programme called Project India, the visitors found that students here share the same immediate interests-jobs, careers, marriage-and the wider concerns of social and political justice, war and peace.
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Answering questions from Indian students are Dan O'Dell, top, Pat Durousseau, above, Marsha McGaugh, below left. Visitors usually commanded rapt attention, as shown by the girls below.
IN THELADIES common room of a college in Surat, an American student is surrounded by a group of girls, all crowding around asking questions. On the fringes of the group, girls stand on chairs so they can see the visitor. Communication is difficult because the medium of instruction here is Gujarati, and a question may have to be repeated three or four times. But the questions themselves-on marriage, social customs, the war in Vietnam-are thoughtful and intelligent. The American girl speaks slowly and distinctly, pausing every now and then to see if she is being understood. "We were both trying so hard," she said later, "that it was quite a thrill to find I was communicating with them." This situation is far from typical of Kristine Samuelson's visit to India. One of seven students from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) who toured Indian colleges this summer, Kristine and her friends had spirited discussions with students in a dozen Indian cities. In lecture halls, at teas, and on picnics, conversation ranged across all of the things that interest and concern young people. This year's UCLA group was the seventeenth to come here under Project India, a programme based on the premise that personal contact is the best way for students of both nations to understand each other. "Students everywhere talk the same language," says Larry Biegel, adult adviser to the UCLA students, "they have the same basic interests---:iobs, careers, marriage. Also, we can talk without inhibitions because none of us are specialists in foreign policy or economics or law. In fact, we're
experts only in being students." Indian students, the visitors found, are greatly interested in what their American counterparts are doing, and so there were frequent questions on the examination system in U.S. colleges, on student-faculty relations, part-time jobs, and life on the campus; and they discovered that for Indian students dating is a subject of widespread and inexhaustible curiosity. The visitors also faced some extremely critical questions, some of them based on misinformation, exaggerated news reports or ignorance of the facts. Project India students are free to answer questions as individuals, and tbey are quick to stress that criticism of the U.S. Government does not mean condemnation. Here is one student's answer to: "Were the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King politically motivated?" and "Why is your country so violent?" "I do not feel," the student replied, "that the murders represent the will of the American people; and I look upon them as individual acts, not as pari of a political conspiracy. I believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans are basically peaceloving-for instance, no one in my family owns a gun. It is true that guns are too easily available in the U.S. and I personally feel that our Congress should pass more stringent gun-control laws. Maybe in this regard we can learn something from India which has extremely effective gun-controllegislation." Most misconceptions are cleared up if they are talked about enough, said Project India members. And, as they discovered, there is lack of information about local customs and language usage on both sides.
Take the day at a Bangalore college when student leader Dan O'Dell got up after a panel appearance, holding a stack of written questions. "I'm afraid there's no time to answer all these today," he said, "but there's one student among you whom we will have to meet later. He's submitted lots of questions, some of them very good. His initials are P.T.O." Both O'Dell and his colleagues were completely mystified when the whole student body roared with laughter. (The initials for Please Turn Over are not used in America.) Though panel discussions, seminars and classroom visits were effective, Project India members felt that the most meaningful discussion occurred in small groups, when there was "a real interchange of things that are close to your heart." It is only here, they said, that confidences can be shared, that students will reveal their innermost thoughts, hopes and fears. Not all the time was spent in discussing weighty problems. There were basketball and volleyball games, picnics an9- excursions, visits to Indian students' homes, when the Americans were showered with gifts and hospitality. As they left for the U.S. a few weeks ago, members of Project India took with them a host of memories: of a road they helped build in a Madurai college; of a student meeting at a technical institute in Bombay which ended with a spontaneous "Three Cheers for Project India." At the end of their visit, Kris Samuelson said, "We only hope that we've helped a few Indian students to look at the U.S. in perspective, just as our visit here has helped us begin to understand India a little better." END
"I wanted the President's face so engraved on my mind that I could place him in any situation I wanted," Wyeth says. "I wanted to live and breathe like a Kennedy."
Above: Wyeth answers a telephone call from an admirer as his mother listens in. Below: With Kennedy pictures around him, Wyeth works on the portrait that took him two years; one was spent on discussion with Kennedy family.
resigned to his paint-filled bloodline. "I learn a lot from it," he admits, "a lot more than I would from rebellion." Around Chadds Ford, there is not much of that. And of father rejection, Jamie shows not a trace. A half-dozen of Andy's oils hang in Jamie's house, and he could fit in more. "I like them all a lot, to be perfectly frank," he says. To be sure, all Wyeths like other Wyeths the way-for an apt example-all Kennedys rally behind kin. But when the youngest Wyeth did a posthumous portrait of the most celebrated Kennedy, all went less than serenely between two very protective dynasties. Lincoln Kirstein, the New York ballet patron, and Robert Montgomery, Eisenhower's TV guide, both posed for Jamie Wyeth portraits. But the young painter never once set eyes on John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Two years after the assassination, New Frontiersmen languishing in Washington let the notion drift north to Chadds Ford that young Wyeth might be asked to do the official White House portrait of the late President. Wyeth was ~ot interested in the commission, but offered to try his hand at a portrait he would not promise to anyone. "That way, I'd be free to destroy it if I didn't like it." About then, the White House Historical Association commission went to sixty-two-year-old Gardner Cox of Boston, a Harvard man who had known Kennedy slightly. In the art circles of the east, it looked as if the Kennedys had commissioned Jamie Wyeth. He was seen around Hyannis Port beaches, the right New York parties and the U.S. Senate, soaking up the atmosphere of his subject. Letters in the President's archives, photos by his close friends, and even the impounded Zapruder film of the death ride were shown to the young painter. Wyeth replayed Kennedy's speeches, read a shelf of biographies and was -brought in I.or talks with the President's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, and his aide, Dave Powers. "I wanted the President's face so engraved on my mind that I could place him in any situation I wanted," Jamie says. "I wanted to live and breathe likle a Kennedy." (Around Chadds Ford, he even talked like one, according to his father.) To know the family physiognomy sinew by bone, Jamie filled sketchbooks with life studies of Robert
and Edward (Teddy) Kennedy, the President's brothers. After months of that, Bobby was a discard. Closeup, he came out an altogether different Kennedy. "Fascinating, my God, yes, but not JFK's type at all." From then on, Teddy, the brother with the Presidential face, was Jamie's life model. On a trip through Rhode Island, stumping for Senator Claiborne Pell, an altogether exhausted Teddy ended up one day's oratory in a Providence hotel room with his wearied advance man and young Wyeth. The Senator wanted to know exactly what impact he was making on voters. As Teddy listened, one eye was fixed hard on the advance man while the other peered through him to some time and place far from that night in Providence. Right there, Jamie caught the expression he had been watching for-the calculating gaze that masks the political mind forever diverted to some scene still unplayed. That look, to Wyeth, is congenital in Kennedys. Nothing but foreboding was coming through on the full-length portrait Jamie had been working on at Chadds Ford. One more day in Washington watching the brothers, between backslaps, being tough in the Senate convinced Wyeth that no Kennedy ever looked like a man marked for martyrdom. And surely the squeaking clean smile the President wore in public conveyed little of the stirred-up man inside. That night in Chadds Ford, a full-length Kennedy portrait went into the fire, and with it, Wyeth's chance to add more unreality to a myth. In the morning, he started over. What he finished disappoints most idolaters and is far from unqualifiedly admired by some who helped get it painted. While Jamie Wyeth was still at work on his portrait of President Kennedy, President Johnson made his' Administration's most newsworthy aesthetic judgment. The same White House Historical Association that Wyeth thought had approached him about the late John Kennedy left no room for doubt in its dealings with Peter Hurd, the portraitist it had commissioned to do
On a wintry morning the young artist leaves his studio in Chadds Ford. Pennsylvania, for New York City to show his portrait of the late President to Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.
THE MAKING OF A 'NATION'S NEW SONGS
PARENTSMAYNOT understand today's music but they are intimately aware of it. Baffled by the thundering beat of the Beatles and their followers, taunted by the plaintive lyrics of song writers like Bob Dylan, they are always shutting the door to block the music out. But they can't escape it. In the '40s there were only a handful of record companies dominating the market, and the featured singers of love songs and ballads accompanied by big orchestras stayed at the top of the best-seller list week after week. Today, there seem to be as many new record companies as there are new artists and groups-with new hits popping up all over. For one thing, the market is a much bigger one today than it was in the '40s. Single discs today frequently sell 750,000 to a million copies. It was a rare record twenty years ago that did that well, and in the '30s a sale of 60,000 was considered excellent. The market is now so big that many different kinds of songs, sounds and styles can be big hits simultaneously, sharing only a small portion of the market. After World War II, radio changed under the pressure from television to low-budget music and news programmes. Pop records became the programmes' mainstay. City and country blues and hillbilly music all were available on the air alongside the Broadway show tunes and the popular ballads. For the first time young people had a truly wide choice in what they wanted to listen to on the air. What they wanted was new; it marked a welding of several strains of American music. Just as the Swing Era big-band sounds of the '30s were based on Negro big-band jazz and blues, so were the first pop hits of the new generation based on contemporary rhythm-and-blues. Singers moved from the network radio show "Hit Parade" to become big popular sellers by re-doing songs that were already hits in the Negro blues market. Blues has always been the Negro's secular music. Negro religious music-the spirituals-evolved into a less restrained form in the '20s and '30s known as gospel music. Gospel is a swinging music with overtones of blues (though its artists disclaim the blues element). Another vital strain in today's music is hillbilly; that is where the twanging guitars come from. Hillbilly and Western music have been commercially successful for years. All of these styles merged in the early '50s in a thumping, freewheeling kind of music which we now know as rock 'n' roll. The humour, the relative frankness about sex and the language of the moment that characterized blues have carried over into rock 'n' roll, which gets its name from a rhythm-and-blues hit of the early '50s. The song used the phrase, "We gonna rock, we gonna roiL" It was picked up by disc jockey Alan Freed, who used it on the air to describe the music. The term caught on like an oil-well fire. Reprinted by permission from Time-Life Books Special Report, The Young Americans. Š 1966 Time Inc.
It is obvious, culturally apd commercially, that today's rock 'n' roll music is more explosively alive than ever. The Beatles, with their wild costumes, moptop hairdos and electric guitars, have become the greatest musicbusiness box-office attraction of all time. In the early '60s, Bob Dylan became a folk singer of unparalleled impact. In 1964 he decided to make the switch to rock 'n' roll. In the words of Joan Baez, the high priestess of folk music, Dylan "stepped out of the folk music bag completely and into the rock 'n' roll bag." With a style combining elements of both-the big beat, the sound and lyrics with a "message"-he sold more than a million single records and a half-million albums in ten months, and dominates and influences the styles of dozens of other rock 'n' roll groups. As it happens, there is a shortage of comprehensive theories to explain this cultural phenomenon. It doesn't seem to be enough to cite rebellion against parental authority. Many of the rock 'n' roll fans are now adults. Murray "the K" Kaufman, a New York disc jockey, claims that "more adults listen to me than teen-agel's." Nevertheless, it is younger people who have given the music its lease of life. "It hurts to listen to rock 'n' roll sometimes," a fifteen-year-old says. "The songs are about something that's happened to you, maybe, or you know someone it's happened to." Yet what the song is "about" need not lie in the lyrics alone. The same fifteen-year-old girl takes issue with song writer Malvina Reynolds, the sixty-eight-year-old author of "Little Boxes," who believes the lyrics are important. The fifteen-year-old says she listens "for the sound first, and then for the beat and then, maybe later, the words." But it is indisputable that Bob Dylan's songs, beginning with his "Blowin' in the Wind" and going on through "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Like a Rolling Stone," have inspired record-buying youngsters to learn the words. The persistent and increasing popularity of this music is almost certainly related to the shifting values of the society, to the new style of life of the nuclear age. Recently a young Californian wrote: "It's true the young generation is frightened. But not of the Bomb. The Bomb is just a symbol. What the kids are afraid of are the adults. The Bomb, after all, is useless without someone to trigger it. Only the adults are afraid of the Bomb." Whether or not this view of the nuclear age is realistic, one obvious fact about the new music is that the lyrics of Broadway and the romantic supper club will no longer satisfy young people. Their byword is: "Tell it to me the way it really is." Soothing voices and honeyed words are not going to convince these kids, says Malvina Reynolds, that "love is all," and "if you're good everything will be wonderful." Adults may find the music unromantic, along with its hirsute, outlandishly dressed performers. No teen-age rock 'n' roll idol gets his teeth capped or his nose straightened. Bob Dylan's image is one of determined, tousled casualness. That of Sonny Bono, who is sort of a plebeian Dylan, is one of outright sloppiness. Phil Spector, a 28-year-old recording executive, performer
"I belielre OUI'music is l)el'uaps the nlost tl'uthful, I'ealistic nlusic of this 01' any other era. Parents ",110 in the' 40S lived, in the dream world of such suppel' club idols as Tonlmy DOl'sey and Glenn ~Iiller find it hard to understand ,,,hat to(la~7's Inusic is all about."
and composer of such contemporary hits as "Spanish Harlem," seems to embody the new youth in the music business. He wears long hair, Benjamin Franklin glasses and ruffled shirts. Asked why by Los Angeles commentator Michael Jackson, Spector countered: "Benjamin Franklin wore glasses like this, Beethoven and Bach wore ruffled shirts and Jesus had long hair. You're telling me I remind you of Benjamin Franklin, Beethoven, Bach and Jesus?" Instead of adult notions of romance and fulfilment, imperfection and disillusionment are major themes in the songs themselves. The lyrics often speak frankly of urban problems and alienation, of "the rat race" (as the Drifters sing it, "You gotta fight from nine to five/In this steel and concrete jungle/You gotta fight to stay alive/It's a rat race"). Along with the songs of alienation are two other currents in popular music. First, there is the out-and-out teen-age sub-culture music of such groups as the Beach Boys, and Jan and Dean, and their '-'surfing_ sounds" of Southern California beach life. There are other songs about drag racing, automobiles in general, high school romance, teachers and sports. Then there are the protest songs, including "If I Had a Hammer" (written by Lee Hayes and Pete Seeger), and Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (a poetic protest against racial discrimination). The anti-war songs ("The Universal Soldier" and "Eve of Destruction") are as far from the "supper club" tradition as anything that ever emerged from American popular music. Yet when we think of rock 'n' roll, we automatically think of the Beatles, who have been around for several years, are still on top, and still in many ways the most interesting of the hundreds of groups purveying the music. As always, the Beatles are rather in a class by themselves. Intellectuals have discovered the Beatles' style through their films, but more and more musicians and singers are recording the Beatie songs, and finding them both melodically and lyrically admirable. Musicologists marvel at the Beatles' sophistication. At the Big Sur Folk Festival in California in the summer of 1965, half a dozen folk singers, including Joan Baez, wanted to end up singing an ensemble number by the Beatles. They had to abandon their efforts to rehearse a Beatles song because it was too complicated melodically and harmonically to be learned in a short time. Bob Dylan is also a law unto himself. He may already be one of the most influential poets of all time, since he has intuitively found a way to reach an audience of millions with his work. When poems set to music, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Blowin' in the Wind" can also be hit songs, there is reason to believe that modern poetry is changing its hitherto exclusively academic face. According to Malvina Reynolds, nothing like it has happened since Elizabethan times. The trend is not confined to Dylan. Pete Seeger, who has been singing folk songs for twentyeight years, has made hits out of poetic material, including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (now in its third hit version) and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" a musical arrangement of verses from Ecclesiastes with an added final line about peace and its attainability, "I swear it's not too late."
But, asks the bewildered adult, why all the noise and horrible twanging guitars? A quote from Bob Dylan, "The only beauty's ugly, man," would give a clue. It implies xejection of older values touched upon by Malvina Reynolds. There is also a feeling young people have of living in a world of loudness, a culture of noise from freeways and jets, where quiet and privacy can be found only in the midst of sound, as in the eye of the hurricane. If grown-ups equipped with ears cannot escape the music, those with eyes are no more able to avoid the dances. Teen-age dances have, indeed, been widely imitated by grown-ups as society and fashion discovered them in places like the Peppermint Lounge in New York. It started with the twist (which aging Negro actor Step in Fetchit claims to have invented but which was made popular by Chubby Checker, a husky Negro singer). Now, of course, there is a long, variegated list that includes the hully gully, the jerk, the watusi, the locomotion, the hitch-hike, the monkey, the pony, the swim, etc. Whatever the names mean-actually very little-the dancing is basically a set of motions choreographed to the musical arrangement by the individual dancer himself. It all involves gyrations of the pelvis and torso, and it is all a complete departure for the stiff, straight clutch of the senior prom at the Essex House in New York City and Glen Island Casino in Westchester County, New York, which launched the Swing Era with Glen Gray, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. Oscar Brown Jr., the Negro singer, composer and commentator, believes the dances, as well as the music, stem from the Negro. Brown once told Variety) the Bible of show business, "There are these guys wearing light blue shirts and $35 neckties sitting up at Rockefeller Centre all day trying to figure out new ways to entertain the masses. But an unlettered Negro comes home from a construction job and in his leisure time makes up a musical form or dance idea that will sweep the country and maybe the world ... the black bottom, the Charleston, the lindy hop, and all the variations on the twist. They all stemmed from poor Negroes." "The fox trot is a folk dance," a 14-year-old once told me. "And I've never seen the frug in my life. The kids in my school do all kinds of dances. The dip (you just dip); the shotgun (you stand there like you're shooting somebody); the skate and the stroll. The jerk is what everybody does. Some of the others you can do while you're doing the jerk." Andrew Fletcher of Saito un, a salty eighteenth-century Scottish politician, said, "Give me the making of the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." One thing stands out about the new youth. This is a thinking generation. That it finds the Beatles and their ilk attractive may startle us. BLlt, as one high school girl wrote me, "Beatlemania has strengthened our faith, our beliefs and our hope in not only ourselves but in you and him and her and them and- everyone. We're not asking for much because we already have a lot. Naturally we defend our Beatlemania as legitimate and good. We've already found out that life is good. Our next step is to live it." Everything considered, I think Andrew Fletcher would have been proud to have made the songs of this generation. END
And so on, like adolescents since the beginning of time in all countries and all eras. If the '60s can be compared to any other decade of this century, it must be the '30s. The '30s were the time of the Great Depression and the time of some of the most intense concern about social and political activity in the history of the United States. Although the Wobblies (International Workers of the World) and other radical groups showed the United States in the early 1920's the face of radical politics, it wasn't until the '30s that the average American came face to face with the Left. The college student as our intellectual representative took up vociferously the need for social and political change. The Communist Party, Popular Labour, Socialism, and their armies attracted the college generation of that era which hoped to find in radical politics a formula for a better world with social equality and economic security for all. Then, as now, there was a concern with the great issues of social morality and justice, a proliferation of organizations, increased sexual activity and political activism. However, the student of the '60s is calmer, not just cooler than the student of the '30s. He has learned that social change requires more than enthusiasm, fine slogans and dedication.
A tremendously active moral search is going on among American youth today and out of it are emerging strong commitments of great value and virtue. Nevertheless he is far from passive as a student rebellion dramatically proved a few years ago on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. It was sparked by a university order restricting political activity on campus, particularly the banning of a longstanding student practice of collecting money and enrolling members for off-campus political and social causes. In protest, a small group of radical activists, labelled the "Free Speech Movement," was joined by masses of students and, in spirit at least, by many of the faculty, in demonstration after demonstration against the administration's authority. In one all-night sit-in, 800 were arrested. A survey showed that more than half were in the "honour student" class, 260 had received academic awards, twenty had. published scholarly articles. and fifty-three were scholarship winners-"among the brightest in the university." The Berkeley protest was not a garden-variety student rebellion. It had far broader implications-the assertion of the importance of the individual against the overwhelming bigness and complexity of modern life. It involved an intense desire on the part of the students for more voice in how the university was run and more
intimate contact with the faculty. This attempt to bring the human element back into education was echoed on many other campuses. Even though the membership of the "Free Speech Movement" is small (it has been estimated that there are only 12,000 members in all the "new left" student organizations), its influence has spread to smaller colleges and State universities. Even where there have been no demonstrations, there is a political awareness that runs throughout the student body. It was reflected in the Presidential election in 1964. Whether a student was for Barry Goldwater or Lyndon Johnson was less important than the grounds on which he argued. In each instance, the ideological positions of opponents about freedom, integrity, dignity and social justice were considered paramount, and the decision of whom to be for took little account of whether the choice was good for everyday business or whether it would be bad for the student's future career. In part, the style of argument represents the fact that we live in an affiuent society in which almost no matter what a student does, opportunities will still be open to him. But it also represents what he cares about. The idea must carry conviction. The rebels of the '60s are the rebels for "something." It is often hard for them to define just what and decide which nuance of an issue to be for, but broad agreement exists on the necessity to consider such decisions and definitions. This phase may be coming to an end. As soon as any social movement reaches the point where it can be broadly delineated and concisely described by the sociological observer, it has reached its peak. It is impossible to predict what will follow, but the outlook is optimistic. The next phase will reflect much from the ones before it, just as the current phase owes so much to the '30s and '40s and carries the burdens of the '50s. We can be sure that the succeeding phases will have to go over much of the same ground and re-do much of the same thinking without knowing it. It is in the nature of man, especially in this age group, to have to make his discoveries repetitiously, without always learning from past experiences and past troubles. But one can hardly deny the value of the tremendously active moral search that is going on among American youth today-and the strong commitments that are coming out of it. This, perhaps, is more important than whether or not youth is on the right track in all cases. As Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: "It is required of a man that he should share the passion and the action of his time-at the peril of being judged not to have lived." END
Gathered to demonstrate against a campus regulation, university students at Berkeley, California, listen to one of their leaders.
support from eighteen delegations. The name of another young Negro, Julian Bond, was proposed for the Vice Presidential nomination but, at 28, he was seven years below the qualifying age. The United States is a young country and since the days of the founding fathers the young have played a vital role in its history. From Thomas Jefferson, who was thirty-three when he drafted the American Declaration of Independence, to John F. Kennedy, the youngest man to he; elected President at the age of forty-three, the accent has been on youth. President Kennedy spoke of the torch having been passed to "a new generation of Americans . . . tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage." The sincerity and idealism of the young President fired the imagination of youth not only in America but in many other countries and inspired them with the urge to fight social injustice everywhere and strengthen the forces of peace and progress. After John F. Kennedy's assassination, some of the glamour of his personality and ideals was reflected in the image created by his brother Robert Kennedy who also emerged as a spokesman of the young and a champion of the underdog. What success he would have eventually achieved in this year's Presidential contest, if tragedy had not overtaken him as it did his brother in 1963, is a moot point. But his victory over Senator McCarthy in the California primary greatly raised the hopes of his supporters, and his popularity with many young Americans, who played a significant role in that victory, was never in doubt. Youth in America, as in India and elsewhere, is restless and impatient with the inhibitions and injustices of modern society. It expects national and world leaders to initiate new, positive action to effect muchneeded social and economic changes. In the words of U.S. Ambassador to India Chester Bowles: "There was never a period in history when bold, fresh thinking was so urgently needed. The old world, with its restrictive habits of mind and its shortsighted thinking, is now being drastically challenged by modern production and communication technology .... Much of the responsibility for achieving an orderly and creative transition rests on people under thirty years of age." END
Dear Sir: Dear Sir: I enjoyed reading about "Those quaint American ways" in the August 1968 issue of SPAN. My first visit to the United States was paid in August this year when, together with other members of the Indian delegation to the 39th International Eucharistic Congress held at Bogota, Colombia, I broke our journey at New York, Washington and Miami. When alighting from the buses that took us sightseeing in North American cities, we were invariably admonished to watch our step. Also, when we were disembarking from the boat at the end of a visit to the Statue of Liberty in New York, we were repeatedly warned: "Watch your step! Watch your step!" although there was hardly any danger of our falling into the sea. In none of the various cities outside the United States, which we visited on the way to and from Bogota did we ever receive the friendly warning: "Watch your step!" Is the frequent admonition to watch one's step just a quaint American custom or is there good reason for it? PHILIP FURTADO Bombay
Editor's Note: Aside from the courtesy, the warning "Watch your step" is a form a/protection against possible claims for damages arising from accidents.
Dear Sir: I was very pleased to read your article " 'Ashram' of Indian Art and Archaeology" in your July 1968 issue. On page 8, however, your correspondent makes me say that "the arch span of the nave of the church of St. Francisco D' Assis in Old Goa is slightly larger than that of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome." What I really said was "St. Paul's, London," but subsequently, in the course of the interview, I mentioned St. Peter's (whose nave can accommodate half a dozen St. Franciscos) very often, which must have confused the interviewer. JOSE PEREIRA Varanasi
Dear Sir: The feature on India's sheep and wool industry by P. R. Gupta, appearing in the August 1968 issue of SPAN, makes interesting reading. The author refers to the cross-breeding programme now under way in some of the States. It would not be out of place to note that experiments are currently being carried out at the Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University under-a
scheme sponsored by the Indian Council of Agri¡ cultural Research to explore and evaluate the method of artificial insemination for sheep with the object of improving the quality oflocal breeds. From the Indian viewpoint, the value of developing sheep for increased mutton production to help combat malnutrition is as significant as wool production, but the article does not stress this point. More research into aspects of feeding, management and disease control of sheep is urgently needed. It is relevant to quote our late :i>rime Minister Pandit Nehru who said: "National progress neither lies in the repetition of the past nor in its denial; new patterns must inevitably be adopted through research." DR. PARVESH CHANDER KAKAR Hyderabad
Dear Sir: The article entitled "Centre for Medical Progress" published in SPAN, August 1968, is very interesting and informative. I found that in the NationalInstitutesofHealth (NIH) the operation theatre is completely different from the theatres we have in our country. Since SPAN is read by all sorts of people, I am sure this type of article, with suitable illustrations, will help in revolutionizing the medical research programme in this country. SYED J. MAHMUD Delhi
Dear Sir: I was happy to read- Dr. Palayani-M,' Balasundaram's introduction to "Those Quaint American Ways." In the article he has-given his reminiscences of the 1940's but his impressions might well be those of a modern Indi?n studentin the United States. Being a student, I liked this article sinc-e it throws light on university life in other countries. The author has given a clear and interesting picture of campus and hostel life in the United States but he has omitted one detail of interest to students. How are "freshers" treated there?-Is there any ragging and do they tease the newcomers? I enjoyed reading the article and I hope every Indian student will read it. NIRAJ NARAYAN New Delhi Editor's- Note: "Freshmen" -first year students --are subjected to mild ragging at many American universities' and colleges. A common practice is the enforced tipping of a small cap to all upper classmen.
they exert on a bill before it is brought to the floor of the House. An interesting aspect of this is the role of the Congress back-benchers, and whether or not they have a neutralizing effect on the Congress High Command. It will also be necessary to study the interaction of the various cerned with the question of legislative Opposition parties in Parliament, and the procedures-how parliamentary time is way in which they influence legislation." apportioned, how questions are admitted, For her study of the decision-making how the agenda is drawn up, how the process, Judy Brown plans to work on minutes are recorded. At the end of my specific bills due to come up in Parliament. "I would like to handle something roustay here, I plan to write a comparative study of legislative procedures in India tine," she says, "not something sensational." Mrs. Brown holds a master's and Ceylon." There is another reason, adds Seeva- degree in international relations, with area nayagam, why his visit to India is parti- emphasis on Indian studies. "I hope to cularlyopportune. "Ceylon at the present use my work and experience here as the time," he explains, "is still governed basis for my doctorate," she says. Dr. Savita Sharma already has her by the Constitution left by the British. There is considerable agitation now for doctorate in sociology from Groningen a Comtitution written by the people of University, the Netherlands, but she welCeylon. The general consensus is that our comes the opportunity offered by the ParConstitution should be rather like that of liamentary Fellowship. "I've always wantIndia, especially your section on Funda- ed to study the working of government at mental Rights which we admire very much. first hand," she explains. A research scholIn the present climate of Constitutional ar at the University of Rajasthan, she says, change in Ceylon, I intend to make a "In a country like India where the popustudy of the Indian Constitution, viewing lation is largely illiterate, an important political question is the extent to which the it in the light of my country's needs." Another of this year's Fellows, Mrs. mass of the people participate in governJudy Brown of American University in ment. "What I would like to do here in Delhi Washington, D.C., is studying the decision-making proÂŤess as it operates in a is to interview a group of M.P.s to find parliamentary democracy. She says, "As out how they think, how they view their the Congress Party commands a large role as part of the legislative process, how majority in Parliament, I would like to they respond to the needs and demands study the various interest and pressure of their constituencies. Later I would like groups within the party and the forces to take a sample survey among the people
Their experience as Parliamentary Fellows is demonstrating "how a political system can be used to achieve change, to realize youth's dream of a brave new world."
to determine their level of political con-' sciousness, their degree of motivational commitment, whether they know about our economic plans, whether they have a sense of participation in them, whether or not they really know what is going on in the country." Dr. Sharma embodies much of the impatience and idealism of youth, qualities that are evident in the other programme participants. Their experience as Parliamentary Fellows, as an observer noted, "will show them how a political system can be used to achieve change, to remove inequalities, to realize youth's dream of a brave new world for all." Coming as they do from different parts ofIndia and from other countries, the 1968 Parliamentary Fellows constitute a varied and divergent group, which includes: the head of the department of political science of a university in Hamilton, New Zealand; a practising attorney from Brazil; and a journalist from Nepal. Among the Indian participants are university teachers, lawyers, and officials of Parliament and several State legislatures. One of them, Miss Rita Patel of Gujarat, is an expert mountaineer, a member of the successful Mt. Trishul expedition. Another is S.N. Brelvi, son of a former editor of the nationalist daily Bombay Chronicle, who plans to follow his father's profession. Whatever their backgrounds and interests, the Parliamentary Fellows will have one thing in common: they will all be richer for their experience as ring-side spectators of the Indian political drama.
Fellowsfrom abroad examine bronze Nataraj in National Museum during a special week-long orientation that preceded regular programme.
Against backdrop of Parliament House, right, foreign Fellows pose with officials of ICPS. From left: B. K. Maskay, Nepal; Antonio Rulli, Jr., Brazil; K. Seevanayagam, Ceylon; ICPS senior research officer S. Rangaswami; Judy Brown, U.S.; W. T. Roy, New Zealand; and Dr. Subhash C. Kashyap, ICPS project director.