India News

R. LAL SINGH, Editor ★ 653 North New Hampshire : Los Angeles, California : Telephone NOrmandy 8517

October 7, 1942

Dear Langston Hughes:

You have on so many occasions indicated your
sympathy for what is right and just, that I do not
hesitate to make of you the following request:

Will you issue a statement of two or three
sentences in length on the need for freedom for India?
We will publish this statement. We are issuing a
broadside for national use containing a number of such
short statements by prominent Americans. We believe
it will do a great deal to develop public opinion on
this subject. Of course, such a broadside is not all
the material we are issuing. We are doing what we can
to give factual material that will provide an adequate
basis for forming an opinion on India.

If you, yourself, are in any way undecided on
this subject, we will be most happy to send you addi-
tional material. But I am assuming that you have
followed the events of the last sixty days in India,
and that you are already sold on the need for self-rule
for India - not simply ultimately, but as a present
need which will help develop a maximum of support for
the United Nations' war effort.

Mr. Langston Hughes
Hollow Hills Farm
Monterey, California

107

A FREE INDIA NOW MEANS ADDED STRENGTH FOR THE UNITED NATIONS' WAR EFFORT

India News

R. LAL SINGH, *Editor* ★ 653 North New Hampshire : Los Angeles, California : Telephone NOrmandy 8517

October 29, 1942

Mr. Langston Hughes,
Yaddo,
Saratoga Springs, N. Y.

Dear Langston:

I have just received your statement and your poem "How About It". May I have the right to publish this poem in the next issue of India News? I think it strikes the nail on the head.

I hope you have been receiving India News right along. Where are you these days? Is there any address which is a place of departure for your mail? I have anxiously awaited a reply to many letters I have sent you. This has been the first response I have had.

I judge you have been kept rather busy with your research in New York. What are you doing in Saratoga Springs? I hope it is not beside the race course, for I am sure, like myself, you would be greatly tempted to place a bet on the nose. Of course, the great race today is, as you have so adequately expressed it in your poem, the race of freedom for all peoples against jim-crowism. I know fully well that your bet, like my own, is on freedom's victory. To that end, we are all struggling.

Since I last saw you, I have had quite a hard time keeping above the waves. I am happy to say that I have been able to keep my work going despite many obstacles. I hope we shall meet again soon. I have a great deal to tell you, and I am sure you have much more to tell me.

With best regards to you always, I am

Fraternally yours,

RLS:b

107

India News

R. LAL SINGH, *Editor* ★ 553 South Western Avenue : Los Angeles, California : Telephone FEDeral 5084

February 18th, 1943

Mr. Langston Hughes
Good Shepherd Community Center
5120 South Parkway
Chicago, Illinois

Hi Langston!

You lousy good-for-nothing! Why don't you
write a fellow now and then even a line or two?
Don't you know I am interested in your welfare even-
though it is to extract a few lines from your worthy
pen now and then? I am sending you a copy of the
messages I used at the Indian Independence Day cel-
ebration at Victory House, January 26th. I think
you will realize that it is quite a cross-section
of great American opinion on the need for Indian free-
dom.

Tell me how your friends have enjoyed India
News and how are the Bontemps. Is it possible for
you to obtain subscriptions or small donations from
some of your very worthy friends. I need it badly,
boy, to help keep the wheels rolling and they need
to be rolled much harder and faster now than ever be-
fore.

Look at Gandhi's fast. The reasons for it
are quite obvious. We need that certain obstacle
that caused him to go on his twenty one day fast re-
moved. We need the four hundred millions of India
and the one hundred sixty millions in Africa mobil-
ized for the common cause of all mankind.

Don't forget now, I am looking out for a
line or two from you.

R. Lal Singh, Editor
India News

Member Indian National Congress

enc.
rls:mg

uopwa#9

RELEASED BY

INDIA NEWS

553 South Western Avenue
Los Angeles, California

INDIA INDEPENDENCE
DAY - JANUARY 26, 1943

QUOTATIONS:

The situation in India presents an outstanding example of the necessity of clear thinking and firm action on the part of the democratic and liberty-loving peoples of the world. It is a painful anomaly that in the midst of a great war for human freedom a great people numbering hundreds of millions should be held in subjection to an external power. This is equally true, whether the situation arises from the selfishness or stubbornness of either of the major parties concerned, or from the inability of different elements within either party to come to an agreement among themselves. No outside can assume to prescribe the correct solution, but the forward looking people of the world are waiting eagerly for the peoples of Great Britain and India to work out their own solution, and they should not be kept waiting long.
- Henry Pratt Fairchild

The day of subject people is past. India deserves a free government, just as soon as her people agree among themselves how it can be safely established.
- Irving T. Bush

All liberty-loving people will join in the call for a Free India now - today. The majority of us want our jam today - not yesterday or tomorrow.
- Will Geer

The Indian question is one of the most important facing the world today. There can be no sound peace and no future for the East or for the entire world until a settlement is reached. It seems to me to be the obligation of all concerned to make every effort for a settlement as rapidly as possible.
- Louis Bromfield

It is my belief that practically all intelligent Americans wish India to have her freedom.
- Wilfred Funk

I am deeply concerned about the liberty of all people.
- Bishop Vincent J. Ryan

Reopening negotiation with Indian leaders seems to me a necessity for giving all the colored and colonial people full confidence in the Allies. The Indian problem is certainly very difficult to solve. This difficulty is a reason for handling it as courageously and as soon as possible and not to postpone it till after the war. India needs freedom, as every nation in the world. At the same time every precaution must be taken in order to prevent the Axis powers to occupy India. Freedom for India must be a weapon for the Allies and not a weapon against them.
- Pierre Cot.

We are all heartily in accord with India's aspirations for freedom, and are eager to help work out some plan by which freedom of India can be achieved and assured. We are confident that it can be done, and are also assured by substantially strong groups in England of their sympathy with this approach to the question.
- Henry A. Atkinson

I believe the overwhelming sentiment among intelligent people the world round is that India must be free and independent. The only difference of opinion is as to when and how. Doing it now, would in my judgment be of the greatest service in shortening and winning the war. Men of good will on both sides can find a way.
- Shelby M. Harrison

RELEASED ON INDIA INDEPENDENCE DAY - JANUARY 26, 1943

by
INDIA NEWS

553 S. Western Ave.
Los Angeles, Calif.

Quotations, Page 2

No country can attain to its real powers under outside rule; no country has ever done so in the history of the world. The only world worth looking forward to is one in which there will be cooperation amongst all the historic entities. India can only cooperate as a free country. So we must all want India to be independent and self-governing.
- Padraic Colum

There is no justification for this horrible war, if it does not mean autonomy for India now.
- W. E. B. DuBois (N)

The cause of freedom for India is the cause of freedom for all mankind. This world cannot survive half slave and half free. When the war is done, there can be no occupied countries either in Asia or in Europe. India must be free for her own sake, since it is the right of all peoples to enjoy the freedom with which God endowed them. But India must also be free for the sake of all the rest of us, in this crisis of human destiny. Only as all of us are free, can any of us be free.
- John Haynes Holmes

The argument that people are unable to rule themselves makes no appeal to the true American.
- Upton Close

I have strong convictions concerning the importance to the cause of the United Nations of immediate action on the freedom of India. I can see no reason why the British Empire should not put through Parliament at an early date a declaration of Indian freedom, naming a date in the not distant future when such an act would go into effect. And I can see no reason why immediate steps should not be taken by the British to give the preponderance of control over the conduct of the war to the leaders of India. It would, of course, be unwise under the present circumstances for the British to retire immediately from India, and I understand that there is no desire on the part of Gandhi, Nehru and their associates, that this should be done. The important thing is that in any cooperative arrangement for the future, the people of India themselves should be the dominant controlling force.
- Channing H. Tobias (N)

It has become a war necessity for the United Nations to break the deadlock between the people of India and the British Government; there must be an immediate settlement of the status of India acceptable to the representatives of the Indian majority. This is no private issue between India and Britain, but is a life-and-death problem for the whole United Nations. When failure to settle this dispute will cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of American boys, the United States has not only the right but also the duty to intervene to demand a settlement of the India problem in the full spirit of the Atlantic Charter. That great document is not a mere decoration for holiday purposes and speeches, it is a guide to action. India's nationhood, established in principle in the pact of the United Nations, must be recognized in practice by the establishment of an Indian National Government as a part of the United Nations. The matter can no longer be postponed; it cannot be left to drift from bad to worse. President Roosevelt must take up the responsibilities of leadership of the United Nations on the question of India.
- Earl Browder

The President's Four Freedoms
Appeal to me.
I would like to see those Freedoms
Come to be.

You can't lock up Nehru,
Club Roland Hayes,
Then make fine speeches
About Freedom's way.

- Langston Hughes (M)

India News

February 26th, 1943

Mr. Langston Hughes
634 St. Nicholas Avenue
New York, N.Y.

Dear Langston:

Thanks for your short note and your poem. I
am hoping that I shall be able to use it in a subsequ-
ent issue of INDIA NEWS. The current issue being fully
taken up with our Independence Day celebration.

What are you doing in New York - anything ex-
citing? Any new books, pamphlets, etc.? I would like
to keep up with you but it is a hard job with you dash-
ing from Saratoga to Chicago to New York and God knows
where else. But it is nice of you to think of me occa-
sionally. I certainly appreciate it.

Paul Robeson bobbed into town this week. I
had no idea that he was due for a performance here at
U.C.L.A. I happened to see a small notation in the Los
Angeles Times. Have not been able to get in touch with
him. Hope I do, however, before he departs for other
parts unknown like yourself.

Best wishes to you old man. Don't forget if
there is a good (and all of yours are good) poem - what
I mean is anything on India or the colonial people, will
certainly be appreciated.

rls:mg
uopwa#9

P.S. INDIA NEWS is financially embarrassed. Is there a
chance of any of your friends sending me a small contribu-
tion. It would be appreciated greatly.

rls

107

ALL INDIA STUDENTS' FEDERATION
(Indian Section of the World Students' Association)

Bombay

10th August 1944

Dear Friend,

This is to introduce you to a leading member of the All-India Students' Federation, Mr. Aziz, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the Bombay Students' Union, Mr. Aziz has been a leading speaker and organizer of BSU for the last two years and was very largely responsible for building up membership of the UNION in his college in Bombay St. Xavier's College. We feel certain that he will be a very active member of progressive students' organizations in his new University and also that he would be able to put the case for India very effectively to American students in his own University and elsewhere.

We hope that you will take this opportunity to resume your contact with us in India. American youth and students' organizations in the United States will remember that the AISF sent a delegation to the World Youth Congress at Poughkeepsie in 1938. I do not know whether any of the leading members of the American student movement to-day remember much about that Congress after six years - but I was the secretary of the Indian delegation to that Congress.

Since that time, specially since the outbreak of the war in 1939 - we in India have lost contact with American students and youth. I do not think any of the prominent students I know are in the movement any more - nor do I know the names of the American youth and students' organization of today nor their policy. I knew the American Youth Congress and the American Students' Union - both of which, we know from hearsay, have been merged into wider patriotic youth and students' organizations.

We are hoping our friend Mr. Aziz will be able to take copies of our journal to you. In any case, he would give you a good account of our position and our activities today. We hope very sincerely that you will now be able to write to us regularly and exchange your journals with us.

As soon as we hear from Mr. Aziz and from you, we shall send you a short report on what we are trying to do here to see that India takes her rightful place in the war against Fascism. A short letter from you on what American students have done in the last two years - and are doing today after the release of Mahatma Gandhi and the opening of negotiation between him and Mr. Jinnah of the Muslim League for a joint demand for a National Government to fight the war - would be very welcome.

With best wishes,

ARUN BOSE
Joint Secretary
All-India Students' Federation

Flat No. 4
350 Lamington Road
Bombay 4

20 East 227th Street
New York 35, New York, U.S.A.

October 6, 1948

Mr. David Hye Shalom Arekre
c/o S. Koder, General Merchants
Cochin, South India

Dear Mr. Arekre:

I was very interested to receive your letter, but I am at a loss to know just what it is that I could send you that would be of interest to you. My lectures, such as the one you perhaps read about in Los Angeles, are not in printed form. I have, however, written a number of books, and I am enclosing a list for you. But not knowing whether you are interested in poetry, prose, or stories, I would not know which ones to send you, but I would be happy to send you one if you would indicate to me what your selection might be. Or perhaps, your leading book shop there could order some copies for you.

Certainly it is interesting to know that in your country you have some
of the same problems that we have here. Some day I hope that I can
come to Cochin, and that I will have the pleasure of meeting you.

Meanwhile, all my good wishes to you.

LH:HHS

Enclosure

July 25, 1950

Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani
6, Jantar Mantar Road
New Delhi, India

Dear Mrs. Kripalani:

This is to thank you for the copy of your magazine VIGIL which you
so kindly sent to Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes is at present out of the
city—as he has been most of the summer, working on various literary
projects, among these, a new book, another opera libretto and a new
book of poems. He left this morning for Ogunquit, Maine where his new
musical show, JUST AROUND THE CORNER, is being presented for two weeks
at the Ogunquit Playhouse prior to a possible Broadway production.

You might be interested to know also that his opera, THE BARRIER,
with score by Jan Meyerowitz, will open in September at the Mansfield
Theatre here in New York.

This seems indeed to be the busiest year of his career and he is constantly
on the go. Being out of town most of the time and having a great many
projects underway simultaneously gives him little chance to catch up with
his correspondence. However, he has asked me to thank you for the copy
of VIGIL with your most interesting article on his work. He wants
you to know that he read it with a great deal of interest.

He asks me to express his gratitude and to express his hope for continued
good wishes to you.

B.S. You might also be interested to know that a book of humorous sketches of Harlem life by Mr. Hughes was recently published by Simon and Schuster, New York City. It is called, SIMPLE SPEAKS HIS MIND.

NEGRO POETS' LIST
&
TRANSLATORS' LIST
sent, 7/16/53

July 16, 1953

Mr. T. K. Mahadevan,
UNITED ASIA,
120 Wodehouse Road,
Bombay 5, India.

Dear Mr. Mahadevan,

Thank you for letting me know that I shall receive 20 copies of the American Negro issue of UNITED ASIA. I am looking forward to their arrival with interest, and shall certainly use them to introduce the magazine to persons who will find it of value.

Meanwhile I am enclosing for you a list of the addresses of our Negro poets, and of the translators of Negro poetry in various parts of the world, who might like to know about this special issue of your magazine.

The brochures which came to me some months ago I sent out to a number of writers and teachers, but did not have enough to go very far.

Should there be any of my books you would like to have, please let me know and I will send them to you. My very latest one, "Simple Takes A Wife", I have already posted.

All my good wishes to you, and my gratitude for your interest in our Negro writers, I am

UNITED ASIA magazine
120 Wodehouse Road
Bombay 5 India

27 July 1953

Dear Langston Hughes

Thank you so much for
your letter of the sixteenth. I am
grateful for the list of poets you
have sent me. I shall be writing to
each of them, introducing the magazine.

I am looking forward with
the keenest anticipation to seeing your
*Simple Takes a Wife*, which has not yet
come.

It will be a good thing if we
can have a set of all your books here.
Apart from my own personal interest, they
will be useful to the Study Group we have
here. But of course you shouldn't send
them to me if there is likely to be the
least inconvenience for you on this account.

In collaboration with George
Padmore and (of course) Cedric Dover I am
contemplating a further symposium -- on
THE AFRICAN NEGRO. The idea is still in a
very rudimentary stage. I am still exploring.
But if you have any ideas about how this
symposium should be arranged, it will be a
delight to hear from you.

I hope (with some trepidation)
that the AMERICAN NEGRO issue is to your
liking. We are working against such severe
financial and other odds that our actual
performance too often falls far short of the
ideals with which we start.

Very best wishes.

UNITED ASIA magazine

24 April 1954

Dear Langston Hughes

Congratulations on your getting
the Anisfield-Wolf award Simple Takes a Wife.

You really ought to have got the
entire award to yourself -- Bartlett's book
is nowhere near your "second Simple" for
what I shall call an insightful close-up of
the racial complex.

I have re-read several pages of
Simple more than once with much profit, and I
must thank you for the copy you so kindly sent
me. It is a really delightful piece of writing:
I particularly envy the ease with which your
philosophical undertones become audible to the
reader.

I am at the moment greatly perturbed
over certain compulsive trends which I have
noticed in our downward rush to mass suicide.
Something must be done -- immediately -- to halt
this atomic madness. Probably a worldwide popular
appeal to the scientists to down tools might help.
What do you think?

Most of our so-called international
problems, if I may say so, have taken on a very
different colour after the blinding flash of the
H-bomb. Nothing really seems to matter now that
we are hell-bent on annihilating ourselves and all
that we have cherished over thousands of years.

How do you do?

Langston Hughes
20 E 127 Street
New York 35

March 13, 1955

Mr. T. K. Mahadevan,
UNITED ASIA,
12 Rampart Row,
Bombay 1, India.

Dear Mr. Mahadevan,

Thank you so very much for the handsome looking copies
of the current issue of UNITED ASIA which just arrived.
I am delighted to see my poem therein.

A friend of mine is leaving New York for a year in
India shortly, arriving in Bombay sometime in May.
I have given her your address and asked her to stop
by your office and convey to you my regards. She is
Miss Hope Spingarn, whose father was for many years
the President of the NAACP (National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People) and whose uncle,
Arthur Spingarn, is President now.

At the moment I am hard at work on an anthology of
short stories by non-white writers in English speaking
Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, Gold Coast, South Africa, etc.
I've sorted out some 200 stories and have selected 50
for the book—fiction of contemporary life—which I
think is fascinating. I hope it will be published by
next fall. Peter Abrahams, author of "TELL FREEDOM",
whose work you probably know, and several other very good
previously published writers are in it, but mostly
its new unpublished work by young Africans. It was lots
of fun compiling—such beautiful stamps, too, on the
envelopes the stories came in!

With best wishes to you, as ever,

Sincerely,

UNITED ASIA
12 Rampart Row
BOMBAY 1 INDIA

19 April 1955

Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York 35
N Y

Dear Mr Hughes:

Thank you so much for your letter of 13 March,
and for not taking me to task for using your poems
pretty often in United Asia. The fact is, I like
your writing immensely and whenever there was an
opportunity I thought I should use one of your
beautiful poems.

We have just published a new special number --
entitled "Africa in the Modern World" -- and I am
sending you 5 copies of it for you and your friends.
In this number again I have used some of your poems.
I hope you like the entire issue, and if you need
more copies please let me know. A few hundred
copies of this number were specially flown to Bandung
for the Asian-African Conference.

I have been receiving the copies of your books
you have been sending me regularly. They are
uniformly good and I treasure them very much. I
shall be looking forward to the anthology you are
working on. (I never knew you were such an incorri-
gible stamp collector too.)

I shall await Miss Hope Spingarn's visit next
month. I hope she will be spending a few days in
Bombay.

Do write again.

With regards.

TKM:GB

August 29, 1955

Dear Mr. Mahadevan:

It was very kind of you indeed to send me so many copies of
UNITED ASIA'S interesting issue on AFRICA and the MODERN WORLD.
It has some very interesting material in it indeed, and since
I am about to write a little book for children on Africa, I
am most happy to receive this edition of your magazine. And
of course I am very pleased that you included some of my poems
in it. I am delighted to have you use any of my poems at any
time.

I suppose Mrs. Spingarn has reached India by now, and perhaps
you have already met her.

I have been hard at work all summer trying to complete the
second volume of my autobiography which is now passed 500
pages - my biggest book to date. Meanwhile, I have gotten
off to press two other books: FAMOUS NEGRO MUSIC MAKERS, and
a beautiful book of Harlem photographs for which I did the
text, THE SWEET FLY PAPER OF LIFE. These will be published
in the fall.

Peter Abrahams, the famous South African author of color, will
arrive in New York in a few days and I am looking forward to
greeting him. Also John Akar of Sierre Leone, another good
African writer is coming soon.

I send you all my good wishes and hope to hear from you again
when you have time.

LH/g

united ASIA

INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE OF ASIAN AFFAIRS

PROPRIETORS: UNITED ASIA PUBLICATIONS PRIVATE LIMITED

TWELVE RAMPART ROW BOMBAY 1 : : PHONE 25-2158

12 May 1958

Mr Langston Hughes
20th East 127th Street
New York 35, N Y
U S A

Dear Mr Hughes,

As an old friend of United Asia we are sure
you will be glad to know that the magazine has now
completed nine years and has just brought out a
tenth-year anniversary. We hope you would have
received this number by now.

It is quite some time since United Asia has
received any contribution from you. In the coming
years we wish to take up for discussion some of the
vital issues facing the world such as the problems of
the resurgent Africa, the East-West tensions, the
problems of Asian and African democracies, etc. We
would like to have your article on these or any other
theme of your choice for our next number. United Asia
has also started a regular literary feature and your
contributions to this feature would be most welcome.
The article should preferably reach us by middle of
June and should comprise of about 3000 words.

Looking forward to an early response from you.

TENTH YEAR OF PUBLICATION

GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION

221 & 223 Rouse Avenue New Delhi 1

CPC/E-18/28

14 February 1966

Dear Mr Hughes

I am working on a book on the American Negro for the Gandhi Peace Foundation. You might well gasp: "Another book on that old theme!" but I hope, if things go well, to make it a different kind of book -- and the gods pardon me for my impudence.

In view of all that has been happening in recent months, we in India are suffering not only from an acute food shortage but, what is probably worse, a veritable book famine. This has put me in rather a fix about my projected task.

I wonder if you could perhaps help by sending me a few of your major writings free -- so that I may not have to knock against our very stringent foreign exchange regulations.

With every good wish

Mr Langston Hughes
c.o. Messrs Alfred A. Knopf
501 Madison Avenue
New York 22, N.Y.
U.S.A.

GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION

221 Rouse Avenue, New Delhi 1

24 December 1966

Dear Mr Hughes:

Perhaps you will remember my writing
to you earlier this year about a book on
NONVIOLENCE AND THE NEGRO REVOLUTION on which
I am working. You then very kindly sent me
some of your books.

I have now been able to secure a travel
grant to help me visit the United States and
complete my studies for the book. I hope to be
coming in April/May of the coming year for a
brief eight weeks.

Perhaps you will remember contributing
an article many years ago to a special Negro
number of the Bombay magazine, UNITED ASIA. At
that time I was Editor of that magazine and the
special number on the Negro -- probably the first
Indian attempt to focus attention on this area of
continuing world interest -- was got together by
me and my deceased friend Cedric Dover.

During my impending visit I should very
much like to meet you and a few other Negro writers --
the controversial Baldwin among them -- and I was
wondering if you would perhaps help in arranging such
a meeting.

In any case, I would greatly value your
advice on what I should try and probe during my brief
eight weeks and what I should leave severely alone!
I am in the midst of planning my itinerary and any
hints you may wish to pass on will help.

Wishing you a bright Christmas,

Mr Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York, N.Y.
U.S.A.

December 28, 1966

Dear Mr. Mahadevan:

Of course, I remember you, and that splendid Negro issue of UNITED ASIA is still on my bookshelf and I can see it now from my typewriter, among the numerous anthologies containing my work across the room from my writing table.....What a beautiful book Cedric Dover compiled on Negro Artists. His death was certainly a loss....In Dakar at the World Festival of Negro Arts last April I met a charming Indian woman from the Council for Cultural Relations, Mamaladevi Chattopadhyaya who gave me her lovely book on INDIAN HANDICRAFTS.

But to get to the gist of your recent note: Certainly, I would be delighted to see you in New York when you are here (if I am in the country, as there is some possibility I may go to Europe in the Spring). Certainly, I'd suggest you meet the leading Civil Rights leaders while in the U.S. James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Randolph, Stokely Carma cash live in New York. Of the writers, Ralph Ellison and myself, I believe, are the only older ones living in Harlem. But you should meet some of the younger of the Muslim, nationalist, or Malcolm X persuasion, too, who are in disagreement with the non-violent folks like Mrs. Paule Marshall, LeRoi Jones, etc., who are round about. If you have a State Department travelling grant, their officials usually can arrange such meetings. Baldwin is writing in Turkey, where he says he writes best, so may not be in New York when you come. But if he is, it should not be too difficult for you to meet him. I'll help, if I can. And look forward to seeing you myself.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU, and all good wishes,

Sincerely,

Gandhi Peace Foundation
221 Rouse Avenue New Delhi 1

14 January 1967

Dear Mr Hughes

I was happy to have your letter of the
twentieth December and especially to find the
bunch of poems you sent me. I am using them right-
away in the current issue of GANDHI MARG, the
Quarterly on peace, nonviolence and related issues
which I now edit. A copy of the journal will be
coming to you as soon as it is out of the press.

Yes, of course, I must meet the non-
nonviolent writers, especially LeHoi Jones, whose
writings are familiar to me.

I do hope your visit to Europe does not
come off this Spring - how selfish of me to say
this - so that we have a chance to meet in New York.

I am sorry I shall miss Baldwin, though
I shall write to him and tell him about my plans.

In your younger days you used to write
poems when you were feeling bad. Your forthcoming
book suggests that the Vietnamese situation keeps
you very unhappy - as indeed it does with most of
us. I particularly liked the first four lines of
your poem, "Peace".

T. K. Mahadevan

Mr Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York 35, N.Y.
U.S.A.

GANDHI
PEACE
FOUNDATION
गंधी शांति प्रतिष्ठान

221/223 ROUSE AVENUE NEW DELHI 1 TELEPHONE 273376

8 March 1967

I am greatly looking forward to meeting

you during my forthcoming visit to the United

States and hope that the enclosed brief

article will serve as some kind of a basis

for meaningful discussions between us.

T.K.Mahadevan

Mr Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York 35
U.S.A.

A SEARCH FOR MEANING

An Indian Approach to the Negro Revolution

By T.K.Mahadevan

What would be the thoughts of an Indian -- especially one belonging to the so-called "gandhian minority" -- on the eve of his first direct confrontation with the facts and fancies of the Negro revolution in America? Gandhi was fond of saying that he had nothing new to tell the world. We may put it down to the characteristic modesty of a great man. But the India of Gandhi, in this twentieth year of its independence, has reduced itself to such a palpable nonentity that only an incurable romanticist would expect it to give a lead, even in the relatively uncontroversial field of race relations.

These are harsh words -- but Indians have so long lived with a false halo that it has become a mental habit with them to put on a civilizing posture whenever they go abroad. I should like to cut my India down to size. In the India of today, Buddha and Asoka and Gandhi are but receding memories. Far from using our freedom to carve out a new path towards the great human goals of happiness within the nation and kinship without, all that we have done is progressively to fall into the common rut and to conjure up visions of our own brand of hegemony and our own little mini-Bomb. The recent "electoral revolution" in India will merely tend to accentuate our increasing commonness, whatever its happier consequences may be.

What can an Indian, coming from such an indistinguishable -- though once distinguished -- country have to say to the American Negro that would be startlingly new and "revolutionary"? Precious little.

T.K.Mahadevan edits GANDHI MARG, quarterly journal of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi. He will be in the United States in April and May to complete studies for a book on NONVIOLENCE AND THE NEGRO REVOLUTION. He has edited two other books: GANDHI: HIS RELEVANCE FOR OUR TIMES and CIVILIAN DEFENCE: AN INTRODUCTION, both published from Bombay, 1964 and 1967.

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And yet there are some few tentative, even hesitant, ideas which I
thought I might set forth with advantage -- not because they say anything
new but because, as I believe, they say old things with a new emphasis.
Gandhi did no more, and no less.

I believe that the problem of racial discrimination in the
United States cannot be solved in isolation but only as part of the
worldwide struggle for human rights and, particularly, for the assertion
of the dignity -- not equality -- of the human being. Equality is not
a measurable concept and is wholly devoid of meaning except in such
phrases as "equality of opportunity" or "equality before the law". The
dignity of the human being, on the other hand, is a principle of such
universal validity that it cannot be quibbled about. Moreover "dignity"
subsumes "equality" in a more quintessential sense, besides taking in
the whole spectrum of human rights in its stride.

I do not think the Negro has achieved anything merely by being
able to sit cheek by jowl with his white compatriot and drink the
proverbial cup of coffee. In oastewater-ridden India -- despite the many
trickles of progressive legislation since Independence, the description
is still apt -- the *bhangi* and the brahmin rub shoulders in the bus
and the cinema, but that is about all. There is no significance in how
parallel lines are placed: one above the other or side by side. So long
as they are parallel they will never meet.

But dignity is not the same thing as smugness. It would be
easy for the Negro to withdraw into a closed circle all his own and
assert his dignity. Perhaps the word "assert" is meaningless in such
a context. In ancient times the brahminic culture of India conceived
of the idea of *mleccha* (non-Indians as being impure and barbaric) and
sowed the seeds of the country's subsequent history of subjection. If
parallel lines are bad enough, closed circles are infinitely worse.

Unlike as with Gandhi, nonviolence is not a dogma with me.
I am willing to consider the philosophical proposition put forward by
Karl Jaspers that the Gandhian experience is not necessarily transferable.

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This observation may be especially pertinent to the realities of the Negro's place in American society, which is perhaps unique and without precedent. And yet, within the context of the total human situation, nonviolence appears to me to be an instrument of great potential effectiveness and one which ought not to be dismissed summarily.

I believe that in the present era of the thermonuclear missile, symbolizing as it does the obliteration of all man-made frontiers, it is unrealistic to look for answers to our major dilemmas except within the context of the total human situation. Problems today cannot be solved in isolation. By saying this, I do not mean to imply that a violent resolution of the race conflict in the United States will necessarily end in a world conflagration, especially in view of the resurgence of Africa. This kind of argument is commonly used nowadays and in very different contexts. For example, despite the experience of the Korean and Vietnamese wars and the new concept of controlled escalation, there are still people in high places who believe that the threat of nuclear annihilation acts as a deterrent to local wars -- which obviously it does not.

This idea that groups and nations -- and eventually the human race itself -- will eschew violence out of fear is being daily proved false. One of the puerile arguments against the Negro's present fascination for "black power" is that this could lead to a complete break with the white majority and an unequal confrontation. But I am unconvinced that the Negro -- no more than any other minority -- is going to take to nonviolence out of fear. Gandhi was never tired of saying that his nonviolence was not meant for cowards; and it was upon the Negroes that he put his highest hopes for the practice of nonviolence when, way back in the nineteen-thirties, some Negro leaders called on him at a particularly trying moment in the Indian struggle for independence. The emergence of Martin Luther King and the spectacular manner in which he won over vast segments of an unrepenting Negro population to the love-ethic of Jesus seemed to many Indians, even if for a while, the fruition of an old promise.

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their freedom with its help? I do not defend the Indian somersault
after independence; it is tragic and misguided and probably the chief
reason for the nation's rapid decline into nonentity. And yet, the
Indian case is not wholly inexplicable. But the Negro?

Perhaps impatience is one explanation -- the Negro's impatience
with the glacial rate of his progress, despite his years of patient
sacrifice. (It does not lie in anyone's mouth to ask, How many years?)
Indeed, the Negro's so-called progress has been mostly an illusion --
like Zeno's puzzle. Despite all the broken heads and battered egos,
the Negro has been going back, not forward. In such a situation of
despair and frustration, it is natural for the angry young Negro to look
for a scapegoat -- and what could be an easier target than the messianic
marchers singing hymns, as the cattle prods scald them, the dogs bite
them and the fire hoses throw them around like autumn leaves?

But more than impatience, as I have been trying to argue
throughout this paper, the Negro's quick disenchantment with nonviolence
comes from his misconception of what it is all about. When I look for
the causes of this misconception, two things seem to stand out boldly.
Firstly, the identification in the American mind of nonviolence with
pacifism; and secondly, the historical accident of the ecclesiastical
vanguard in the Negro nonviolent movement. Though the church has always
played a leading role in the self-emancipation of the Negro from the
stranglehold of his tragic past, there seems to me a constant danger of
such leadership giving the nascent Negro revolution -- and here I use
the word "revolution" unrepentantly -- a direction somewhat out of step
with its general tempo. The Negro's goal is essentially a political
one, just as Gandhi's was during the freedom movement in India, and
the means for its realisation will in the main have to be political.
Though Gandhi, with a shrewd eye on the Indian masses, gave his
technique of nonviolence, which he had tested in South Africa and
found reasonably adequate, all manner of religious colour, there was
no doubt in his mind, nor in the minds of his chief lieutenants, about
its political character. This is not to deny that, in its totality,

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the technique of nonviolence reaches out farther than its immediate
political goals. But what seems to me paramount at the present uneasy
stage of the Negro revolution is to give the right kind of emphasis
and to isolate the right priorities. It must be brought home to the
Negro leadership at all levels that the so-called love-ethic of Jesus,
who was himself deeply politically involved, contains within it a
political stratagem of such rare power that it made short shrift of the
seemingly invincible tyranny of the Caesars within decades. You do not
turn the other cheek to be pummelled and pushed about, but in order to
ridicule and destroy your opponent's power in the most economical and
civilized manner known to man.

Numerically a minority and historically in arrears -- and worse,
the victim of an ancient, though irrational, prejudice -- the American
Negro has no choice of weapons with which to fight his lone battle.
Look at it how you may, Gandhi's "sword of gold" is his only weapon.
And he must have patience (a nasty word -- I admit). For a revolution
is not like the trajectory of a bullet. There is a time to march and
a time to mark time -- and even a time to pull back, heaven help us!