The leader of a smuggling gang is the son of the Chief Minister of a State!

And because he is the son of the Chief Minister he defies the police!!!

I am prepared to prove it if an impartial enquiry is conducted!

If proved false, I am prepared to court imprisonment.

—So announces, a prominent member of the P.S.P. from Punjab.

Smuggling is rampant in the North - from gold to opium!

The number of undetected cases amaze the public - but the P.S.P. leader’s statement explains the reason why these black deeds go unchecked! When the culprit happens to be related to those placed in power, how can there be justice?

Because of this very same reason, it may be impossible to prove the charges too—for the highly placed know how to work out their way of escape.

Whatever may be the truth behind such allegations, none can doubt that the term V.I.P. is a screen powerful enough to hide the most heinous of crimes.

From time to time we find police officials endowed with a skill and a soul, unearthing cases of smuggling, but then, when these culprits are brought before a court of law, most of the evidence that the investigator laboriously found out melt into thin air, and the ‘accused’ get the benefit of doubt, and saunter back to his, sinister Villa!

Officials with less enthusiasm, take these as lessons, and refuse to look into these misdeeds - for why should they, when they know full well, that the means of escape are easy.

The recent police drive against smuggling has revealed that Delhi is a big centre of trade in illicit opium.

During the last one and a half months, police have rounded up 225 smugglers and seized a large quantity of opium and illicit liquor.

A high police official told pressmen that the number of smugglers arrested and the quantity of opium seized showed that illicit trade was carried on in Delhi on a large scale.

Persons engaged in this nefarious activity in many cases were men considered to be ‘very respectable’ in society, he said.

The narcotic was mostly smuggled from Rajasthan, Patiala and other places in Punjab.

An upcountry daily publishes this news!

Another upcountry weekly points out that the head of the smugglers in Punjab, happens to be the son of a Chief Minister - of course Congress!!

What ought to be the reaction in Congress circles, we do not know. Perhaps there are some who envy the fortunate ones!

It can happen only in Bharath - the birth place, so they claim, of the sacred principle of Co-existence!

Whether, those that pay lip-service to this laudable principle would come forward at some distant date at least, to translate this into action or not, the principle has found a happy abode inside Bharath.

Here we find dame democracy co-existing with dare devil, dictatorship!

Here we find, increased food production side by side with high prices!

Co-existence, is to be found in very many other charming ways!

With an iron hand, so they say, smuggling is put down and along with this, we are presented with the fact that men who are highly placed in society are directing this smuggling business - from gold to opium!

Prohibition co-exists with cock-tail parties.

Religious discourse and darshans, are arranged and Rock- ‘n’ - Roll is no taboo—they co-exist!

Why, sweepers are being shot down dead, and sermons on Non-Violence are preached with equal zeal!!

Verily, co-existence is having its fullest flourish in Delhi.

There is the austerity drive along with the hurried programme of building new mansions.

Delhi has become the fashionable capital for the fortunate ones—no day passes without a party and nobody is prepared to miss the mirth!

While fathers preach basic education principles, mothers are busily engaged in paying hurried visits to Switzerland to hug and to kiss, the children of course, who are having ultra-modern education there!!

Where else can one find such an abundant demonstration of the principle of co-existence?

None dare doubt this co-existence, for do they not find Pandit Nehru inaugurating Charka classes with the same enthusiasm as when he inaugurates atomic research centre.

Delhi talks enthusiastically about ‘economy’ in every sphere and with equal vigour is maintaining a palatial hotel —working at a loss!!

Delhi issues dictums on decentralisation with as much of fervour as it grabs all available power from the States and locates all sorts of departments in the city!

Delhi talks of Asokan simplicity and at the same time indulges in Shajahan style building programmes.

The goal set before Delhi is Socialism and the means to attain that goal is to declare strikes as illegal!

Deficit Budget is decried - as for as States are concerned - but deficit budget has become the order of the day as far as Delhi is concerned.

Paradoxes, one is tempted to term this state of affairs—Delhi calls this as co-existence par excellence!

Mr. Kumarappa, cites an instance, to prove the mentality at work in Delhi.

Sweepers are shot dead
slogan of socialism sung.

“The technique of how the rich exploit the weak was spotlighted at the time of my visit to New Delhi to attend the Planning Commission “Advisory Board” says Mr. Kumarappa.

It seems he took a ‘tonga’ to go to Rashtrapathi Bhavan, from the railway station.

“I am a poor man, I shall get into trouble if I take you to the Bhavan. Tongas are not allowed.”

So pleaded the tonga-vallah and Kumarappa it seems assured him, that nothing untoward would happen.

But at every turn, soldiers, constables, chaprasis barred the progress of this pilgrim.

“Panditji is to pass this way to preside over the Planning Commission meeting - so we are clearing the road for him”
informed a Sikh young man - a sentry.

Kumarappa was angry - but he convinced the sentry that his very purpose was to attend the same meeting - and then the tonga was allowed.

And then, of course, Kumarappa met Pandit Nehru. Let this venerable old man narrate, what transpired:—
“I told Panditji that a bullock cart driver in a democracy was as good a citizen as the Prime Minister—it was an insult to deny him the use of public road. Pandit Nehru said, the restriction was placed in the interest of the bullock cart driver—as those roads were frequented by military lorries and accidents might happen in which the bullock carts would be the worse sufferes.

"Sir! you are a lawyer used to a special pleading, but to a simple man like me, your argument looks upside down. When there are two persons in public and the presence of one is likely to be a menance to the other, my common sense would lead me to restrain the source of danger rather than the possible victim. Accordingly I would put up a notice that motor cars and lories are not allowed and thus protect the bullock cart.”

This evoked a peal of laughter!

Yes, a peal of laughter! That’s all what one could get now-a-days, at Delhi, when men like Kumarappa plead for the poor and the downtrodden! Delhi, the seat of imperial monarchs, has now become the citadel of a dazzling and daring dictatorship donning the democratic garb, as it suits its purpose remarkably well.

Having had his schooling at Sabaramathi, poor Mr.Kumarappa is forced to think that the Gandhian principle is strictly adhered to, at Delhi.

The Gandhian principle is being praised, and allowed to co-exist with an imperial splendour which the great Moghuls themselves found to be too costly!

Nehru’s India is at once a nest for the doves and a ravine for the vultures! - for whatever the consequence Bharath is wedded to the principle of co-existence!

(This India! - a poem composed by Charan Prasad published by the “Illustrated Weekly of India” depicts the truth thus.)

Naked, pot-bellied, rickety, loafing boys,
Girls with wrinkled cheeks, dust-ridden hair, hot, hungry eyes,
Women, woebegone, weary hunger-stricken, with suckling babes,
Men, haggard, spiritless, babbling useless words,
The millionaire, with smooth, sensual face and a commercial tongue,
The fake Sadhu, ash-haired pacing the streets on and scheming round.
The desolate fields, crazy crowded streets,
The shrunken faces, half-naked masses, animal criss-crossing in two’s and three’s.
The very heavens raging fire and flood, and rivers o’erflooding the plains,
Doomed villages, washed-out crops and panicking humanity.
This India, stark, wretched with heart-breaking pangs,

What sun awaits her dreadful nights, what glorious dawns to gild her wasted plains?

(11-08-1957)