 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company, maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Larry Lasser from the CBS television news staff and Krishna Balraman, foreign correspondent for the Indian newspaper The Hindu. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable Chester Bowles, former ambassador to India. Mr. Bowles, you've had a lot of experience as an American businessman and in government service before you became ambassador to India. Could you tell us just how important do you think India is to the United States as a friendly power? Well, let's put it this way. India is the second-biggest country in the world as far as population is concerned. China disappeared behind the Iron Curtain just four or five years ago. This was a complete disaster for the whole free world. If India should follow in the wake of China, as far as I can see, all of Asia would go. The Middle East would be threatened, and the whole balance of power would shift very dangerously towards Moscow. I'd like to add this. The point is not whether India is friendly to us. The question is whether India can succeed as a democracy in building an independent country. A country that's prepared to defend itself against any aggressor, not because it suits our purposes, or not because she's doing it for us, but because she has confidence in her own future and wants to defend what she believes in. Ambassador, how do you see Nehru's historical role in the world? Isn't he indispensable to the democratic world? Well, a lot of Americans become very angry with Mr. Nehru, and he's very complex. They become very frustrated. They don't understand some of the things that he says. He scolds us, he moralizes, and we become very irritated. But I think it goes back to the first question to Mr. Leceras. If Nehru succeeds in building a free India, Nehru will have performed a tremendous service to democracy, because if India can prove that democracy will work, and 360 million people, very poor, all kinds of problems, then freedom and democracy will have had a tremendous shot in the arm all over the world. Well, Mr. Bowles, may I ask you this question? Is this a one-man government? What would happen if Mr. Nehru were to pass from the sea? Well, I wouldn't want to see that happen right now, even though we do get somewhat disturbed sometimes, and some of the things he says. The difficulty in India, I think, is it's basically an old man's government. The Indian Congress Party had worked, of course, for 30 odd years to try to become free from Britain, to throw off British power. The people who run India today, the most part, the top leaders, are in their 60s and 70s. Nehru and them have been to prison together for a great many years. They served in British prisons. There are five possible successes to Nehru that are sometimes talked about and discussed. Their average age is 70 years old. Now, Mr. Nehru is 64. I feel that if he has six or eight or ten more years to try to pull this very complex country together, hold it together and give the people a better life, then I think successes will follow and democracy will be entrenched and very solid. On the other hand, if anything should happen to him tomorrow, I think it would be a disaster. I saw in the Indian press this week a condensation of an article you wrote in Harper's Magazine about communism in India. Communism is well under control there, isn't it? I've been away a long time from the country. At communism in India, first of all, about five percent of the people voted communist at the last election. That was in 1951 or 1952. I don't know whether there are any more communists today or any less communists. There is no way of telling. The difficulty lies, I think, in whether or not, again getting back to this question, can the country succeed? The communists are betting, of course, that it can't succeed. They're trying to tear down democracy in every possible way. They're throwing every obstacle in the way of the programs of economic development and health and all the rest. Now, one of the difficulties, I think, lies in the young people. Young people of India made them are frustrated. They're not trained to become doctors or school teachers or engineers or agricultural experts. They graduate with all kinds of degrees, but they're not really prepared to go out in this big job of building India. So they get frustrated. And the communists come along and offer them all kinds of inducements to join the Communist Party. And some do, not a majority, but some. One thing I learned in Asia is revolutions are not led by hungry people. And they're usually led by frustrated middle-class people who've never had a hungry day in their life. They take advantage of the poverty, of course. Mr. Bowles, I think we all agree that India has not been too pro-communist, but don't you think she's been rather lenient towards the Chinese communists and giving us a lot of free advice? Oh, absolutely. You're quite right on that. But India has handled her own Communist Party very sternly. When I got to India in 1951, I was told that India had more communists in prison than any country except the Soviet Union. Of course, all the people in prison in the Soviet Union are communists, or supposedly so. And India's been very tough in putting down Communist revolts. But I think India is rather too hopeful that Communist China may turn out to be something different. She feels that Russia and China eventually will fall in a disagreement and fight, and there'll be a general falling out. She doesn't think that Mao Tse-tung, the Prime Minister of China, will be a Tito. They simply feel that maybe the Chinese will become independent of Russia to a degree. And that's what they're betting on. During your years as an Ambassador, Mr. Bowles, did you feel or were you conscious of any competition between Communist China and Mr. Nehru's India? Well, the competition is in the economic field. You see, Communist China is saying to Asia, democracy can't work. If you want to make progress, you've got to go through this bloody Communist ringer. You've got to follow this ruthless way of communism. And they're urging all of Asia to follow the Chinese way. Now the Indians are trying to build a democracy, and they say that we're determined to keep the freedom of our people. We're also determined to give them more bread, steel mills, a modern country. In that sense, there's a competition between two different methods of progress. It's hard to call communism progress, but what I mean is they're trying to build an industrial state through communism. India is trying to build it through democracy. In that sense, there's a competition between the two. You have traveled widely all over South Asia. Don't you think Nehru's views largely reflect opinion in that region? Well, they affect the opinion of a great many people in the Middle East, Indonesia, Burma, all through many sections of Asia. To a large extent, you hear the same views in Japan. Of course, you'd find many people disagreeing in South Korea and, of course, in Nationalist China, Formosa. There you'd find violent disagreement. There are really three Asias. There's Communist China, 500 million people. There's the Asia of Mao Zedong, of Chiang Kai-shek and Sigmund Rhee. And there's this other neutralist, independent, uncommitted Asia. But that uncommitted Asia, and Nehru does, for a large extent, speak for them. There are about 600 or 700 million people. They may be decisive. Mr. Bowles, an ambassador, is sort of a super reporter. Now, when you were in India, did you come across any great Indian problems that you thought you could give some recommendations to the Indian government about? Well, one thing I felt very strongly about was land reform. You know, in America, we all take the right to own some property for granted. A small farm, a little business, your own home, all those things mean a great deal to us. Well, the Indians are no different. And where you have land owned by thousands and thousands of acres, owned by one man, with the people working the land paying a tremendous rent, raising food out of the hot sun and giving 50, 60% of it to landlord, you have a ready-made area for the communists to move in and take over. I think it's very important that India puts through these reforms so that her people really feel that they're making progress and that they own their own little farms and that they're not just working as serfs for some great landlord. That's one thing I felt very strongly about. Ambassador, what do you think of this new American plan to build up the Pakistan army? Won't it upset stability in Asia? Well, I don't know. I wish that India and Pakistan could get together. I think it's tragic that they're not together. And I think that the whole world, the United States, and all the free world should do everything possible to encourage the two nations to get together. Now, if they were friends, and they should be friends, they're the same people. If they were friends, they could do a great deal to help fill this vacuum of the Middle East. There's a dangerous vacuum there. There's great confusion there. There's a danger the Russians may someday move into that vacuum because aggressors always move into vacuums if they can. There's another dangerous vacuum in Southeast Asia. The whole Thailand-Burma-Indochina situation, which is having its difficulties. Now, if only Pakistan and India could work together to help these neighbors and theirs to bolster themselves up, then they would make a very great contribution. Now, I think any policy that tends to divide India and Pakistan and make them quarrel more heatedly than they have in the past is wrong and mistaken. Mr. Bowles has a final question. May I ask you, is there any advice you could give us Americans on how to better our understanding of the Indians? Well, you might almost say Indian Asia. I think what my advice would be this. That we go back and remember our own early future as a country. When we were very young, we were very independent. We were very sensitive. We would throw out the British and we'd become free. We didn't want any foreigners telling us what to do. And when they did try to tell us what to do, we scolded them back in no uncertain terms. We were isolationists. We were neutrals. We were behind these great oceans. We didn't want to have any part of foreign wars. All of this applies to India. She too is trying to build her own country. She's trying to make democracy work. And I think there's a great similarity between our own experience and that of India as a very young nation trying to find her way. Thank you very much, Mr. Bowles. It's a great pleasure to have you here tonight. Good to be here. The opinions you've heard our speakers express tonight have been entirely their own. The editorial board for this edition of the launch in Chronoscope was Larry Lasser and Krishna Baloraman. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable Chester Bowles, former ambassador to India. A priceless attribute of every long gene watch is pride of possession. It brings to his owner the satisfaction of knowing that he owns the watch of highest prestige among the finest watches of the world. Yes, a long gene watch brings its owner more than the delight of a beautiful possession, more than the unsurpassed timekeeping of a remarkable watch. For that long gene watch of yours is the one and only world's most honored watch. Only long gene among the world's finest watches has won ten World's Fair Grand Prizes, twenty-eight gold medals, highest honors from government observatories, and a position of preference in sports, aviation, and in science. For an anniversary, a birthday, for any important gift occasion, no other name on a watch means so much as long gene. 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