Freedom First

Summary

Freedom First No. 289 (December 1976), edited by M. R. Masani, opens with Piloo Mody’s tribute to the recently deceased civil servant and editor A. D. Gorwala, occasioned by the Oxford University Press essay collection Say Not the Struggle, and continues with the magazine’s regular front-of-book column ‘Between You & Me and The Lamp Post,’ which comments acidly on the postponement of Indian elections under the 44th Constitution Amendment Bill, the death of Mao Zedong and the succession struggle in China, the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Michael Foot’s remarks about Britain, the Gujarat High Court’s ruling against a judicial transfer, and admiring notice of Milton Friedman. The issue’s centerpiece is Leo Labedz’s essay ‘China, Russia and the U.S.A.,’ an analysis of Sino-Soviet-American relations based on his conversations with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Peking, arguing that Chinese foreign policy is trapped between anti-Soviet and anti-American frustrations and that a Sino-Soviet reconciliation is unlikely. Rounding out the issue in the rendered pages are a ‘World News’ digest of press clippings on Irish emergency law, Jo Grimond’s warnings about bureaucracy in Britain, and Cold War-era items (North Korean black-marketeering, Sakharov’s appeal for a Soviet defector, the Mafia succession after Carlo Gambino’s death); a review by Mehra Masani of Julian Hale’s book Radio Power on international broadcasting and propaganda; a letter from F. P. Antia renewing his earlier call for euthanasia legislation; and the closing quotations page ‘With Many Voices.’ The full 16-page issue was rendered and this summary covers it in its entirety.

Essays

Dum Spiro Spero (Where There is Life, There is Hope)

By Piloo Mody, M.P.

Piloo Mody’s front-page tribute ‘Dum Spiro Spero’ (Where There Is Life, There Is Hope) memorializes A. D. Gorwala, the retired Indian Civil Service officer, editor of the weekly Opinion, and moral critic of Indian public life, on the occasion of the essay collection Say Not the Struggle (Essays in Honour of A. D. Gorwala, Oxford University Press, 340 pages, Rs. 40). Mody recounts Gorwala’s resignation from the Imperial Civil Service and later the Commodities Prices Board out of conviction that government was insincere in its professed policies, his sixteen years running Opinion until the Emergency forced its closure, and a personal anecdote in which Gorwala declined Mody’s 1963 offer to run Opinion as a feature in his own weekly, citing his need to preserve editorial independence. The piece (continued on page 14) surveys the volume’s distinguished contributors — including H. M. Patel, Maurice Zinkin, Ram Deshmukh, N. V. Sovani, Edward Shils, D. D. Karve, John W. Chapman, S. H. Deshpande, B. Venkatappiah, Shankar Ranganathan, Zafar Futehally, A. J. Dastur, S. P. Aiyar, Gauri Deshpande, A. G. Noorani and R. E. Hawkins — and their essays on administration, education, rural development, civil disobedience and the standards of public service, concluding that the volume is ‘an excellent compilation in honour of an exemplary life.’

• Tribute to A. D. Gorwala on the publication of Say Not the Struggle, a festschrift of essays in his honour published by Oxford University Press.
• Gorwala resigned from the Commodities Prices Board and, earlier, the ICS out of conviction that government professed policies it did not sincerely pursue.
• Gorwala ran the weekly Opinion for sixteen years as a vehicle for exposing corruption and hypocrisy in public life until the Emergency government closed it down.
• Mody recounts a personal 1963 anecdote in which Gorwala refused to let Opinion run as a feature in Mody’s own weekly, prizing editorial independence over convenience.
• The festschrift’s contributors span retired civil servants, academics, journalists and administrators, covering topics from anatomy of corruption to language policy to the future of liberalism.

Between You & Me and The Lamp Post

The unsigned editorial column ‘Between You & Me and The Lamp Post’ opens by dissecting the Indian government’s postponement of general elections via the 44th Constitution Amendment Bill, arguing the maneuver reveals a government unsure it could win at the polls, and quoting Supreme Court-adjacent warnings from MPs Indrajit Gupta and P. G. Mavlankar about eroding public confidence in the system; the editor (identified as having had a hand in drafting the Constitution) argues the 44th Amendment is ultra vires and should be struck down by the Supreme Court following the precedent of the Kesavananda Bharati case. It moves on to an extended, mocking commentary on the succession crisis following Mao Zedong’s death, comparing the treatment of Madame Mao to Stalin’s treatment of Lenin’s widow Krupskaya, and to a report of Victor Zorza on a purported deathbed message from Mao to his wife; a note observing the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and recalling Jayaprakash Narayan’s 1956 leadership of the Indian Committee for Solidarity with Hungary against Nehru’s reported ten-day hesitation; an item mocking Michael Foot’s remarks on Britain and double standards about socialist tyranny; commentary on Boris Ponomarev’s hostile reception in Britain, including Margaret Thatcher’s rebuke of Prime Minister Callaghan over inviting him; a report on the Gujarat High Court’s Full Bench unanimously striking down the transfer of Mr. Justice Sheth to the Andhra High Court; and, finally, warm praise for Milton Friedman on his Nobel Prize in Economics, his advocacy of floating exchange rates, and his views on Britain’s economic troubles and punitive taxation.

• The 44th Constitution Amendment postponing general elections is characterized as a cynical maneuver by a government uncertain of winning, likely to be challenged as ultra vires before the Supreme Court under the Kesavananda Bharati precedent.
• A lengthy item on the succession struggle after Mao Zedong’s death draws parallels between the treatment of Madame Mao and Stalin’s treatment of Lenin’s widow Krupskaya, and doubts official Chinese claims about Mao’s relationship with his wife.
• The column marks the twentieth anniversary of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, crediting Jayaprakash Narayan’s leadership of solidarity meetings in Bombay while criticizing Nehru’s slow response.
• A note recounts an admission by a Gujarati newspaper writer of Mao’s mass killings of political opponents, framed as the exception proving the rule of Indian media silence on Chinese Communist atrocities.
• The Gujarat High Court’s Full Bench (Mehta, Desai, Desai JJ) unanimously struck down the transfer of Mr. Justice Sheth to the Andhra Pradesh High Court, ruling the constitutionally required consultation with the Chief Justice of India had not occurred in substance.
• The column praises Milton Friedman’s Nobel Prize, his advocacy for floating currencies, and his skepticism of Britain’s high taxation and government spending.

China, Russia and the U.S.A.

By Leo Labedz

Leo Labedz’s essay ‘China, Russia and the U.S.A.’ reports on his conversations with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo and Peking, conducted shortly before Mao Tse-tung’s death, about the ‘Pacific Doctrine’ and the broader triangular relationship among the three powers. Labedz recounts a debate with Deputy Foreign Minister Yu Chen over whether Henry Kissinger’s detente policy with Moscow parallels Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, and over China’s fear of Soviet conventional military superiority. He analyzes China’s ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ opening to the United States as a countervailing strategy against Soviet expansionism that has nonetheless left China frustrated by both superpowers — unable to secure American abandonment of Taiwan and increasingly alienated by Kissinger’s use of Peking as a stepping-stone to Moscow. Labedz argues, using the case of Angola, that Chinese, Soviet and American miscalculations there illustrate the dangers of an American foreign policy adrift, and closes by arguing that a Sino-Soviet reconciliation is neither likely nor would it benefit Peking, though continuing Sino-Soviet hostility itself sustains an uneasy dependence on the American connection.

• Based on conversations with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo and Peking, Labedz explores the ambiguous, unresolved content of China’s ‘Pacific Doctrine’ against Soviet hegemony in Asia.
• Deputy Foreign Minister Yu Chen rejected Labedz’s comparison of Kissinger’s detente with the Soviet Union to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, but Labedz argues the parallel nonetheless illuminates Chinese anxieties about Soviet conventional military superiority under the nuclear umbrella.
• China’s ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ opening to the US via Nixon’s visit succeeded in achieving rapprochement but failed to secure American abandonment of Taiwan, producing two kinds of Chinese frustration.
• The essay uses the Angola crisis — Soviet-backed Cuban intervention exploiting Chinese and Western miscalculation — as an illustration of the costs of an adrift, insufficiently resolute American foreign policy.
• Labedz concludes that a Sino-Soviet ‘reconciliation’ is neither realistic nor in Peking’s interest, and that China’s realistic options are a reluctant continuation of the selective American connection rather than a pro-Soviet pivot.
• The article was written before Mao Tse-tung’s death, based on a visit to Peking, and is explicitly framed by the editors as analysis of the pre-succession balance of power.

World News

Mehra Masani, formerly Deputy Director-General of All India Radio and Vice-Chairman of the International Broadcast Institute, reviews Julian Hale’s Radio Power (Paul Elek, London, 172 pages), a survey of international broadcasting and propaganda from the Nazi-era Saarland plebiscite campaign through the BBC’s wartime reputation for truthful reporting, Communist Russian and Chinese external broadcasting, Voice of America and the more flexible Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and a chapter on clandestine radio stations such as the Voice of Free Angola and the last Hungarian broadcast appeal before the 1956 uprising was crushed. Masani closes by endorsing Hale’s view that radio propaganda, however imperfect a tool, helps keep politics on the move and is a prerequisite for progress even as it risks spreading anarchy or provoking repression.

• Reviews Julian Hale’s Radio Power, a survey of the history and mechanics of international broadcasting and propaganda from the 1935 Saarland plebiscite through contemporary Cold War radio warfare.
• Contrasts the durable credibility the BBC built through wartime truth-telling with the short-lived effectiveness of Nazi propaganda once battlefield defeats exposed its falsity.
• Notes Communist broadcasting — Soviet and Chinese — is heavily ideological, defensive and poorly received even among domestic and Third World audiences, while Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty succeed by airing dissident voices like Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and Medvedev.
• Highlights the book’s chapter on clandestine radio propaganda (Voice of Free Angola, Voice of Free Zanzibar, Voice of Free Africa) and quotes the final, unheeded 1956 Hungarian radio appeal for help before the uprising was crushed.
• Masani endorses Hale’s conclusion that radio propaganda is a double-edged but necessary instrument for keeping politics in motion and enabling progress.

Review: Radio Power by Julian Hale

By Mehra Masani

A letter from F. P. Antia follows up his May 1976 article ‘Dying with Dignity’ by proposing specific legislative provisions for euthanasia in India: a physician’s right to certify an incurable illness in a patient over 65-70 and, with consent, to administer a life-ending drug without culpability; a next-of-kin’s right to do so if the patient is no longer conscious; and, modeled on the Euthanasia Educational Fund and the Euthanasia Society of USA, a person’s right to sign an advance directive refusing heroic measures, or to declare in writing before a magistrate an intent to end unbearable suffering without prosecution if the attempt fails. Freedom First’s editors note they endorse the plea, citing California’s newly signed right-to-die legislation (effective 1 January 1977) and a British Criminal Law Reforms Committee recommendation to make mercy killing a distinct, lightly punished offence.

• F. P. Antia proposes concrete legislative provisions permitting physician-administered or self-administered euthanasia for incurable patients over 65-70, with consent, without criminal culpability.
• Proposes a next-of-kin right to administer the life-ending drug if the patient is no longer conscious.
• Proposes advance directives against heroic life-sustaining measures and a right to a magistrate-witnessed declaration permitting assisted suicide for unbearable suffering.
• The editors’ earlier item notes California became the first US state to legislate a right to withdraw life-sustaining procedures (effective 1 January 1977) and that Britain’s Criminal Law Reforms Committee had recommended treating mercy killing as a distinct, lightly punished offence.

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