Friday, Oct. 30, 1964
University Daily Kansan
Page 7
India Strikes Many Poses for Prof
By Glen Phillips
Howard Baumgartel visits with an Indian friend.
The people living in poverty is the most striking thing to an American in India according to Howard Baumgartel, professor of human relations and psychology, who has recently returned from a year-long trip to India.
Prof. Baumgartel added, though that his trip to India was a rich experience for him.
The tall, pipe-smoking professor spoke with the authority of a knowledge of and the ease of a love for the country where he worked a year with people from the Ford Foundation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology helping to establish graduate studies in industrial management.
FOR PROF. Baumgartel, this specific assignment to work in India was a chance to do what he had dreamed of. Working as a social psychologist, he said he had always been interested in people and their problems and the opportunity to help the people in an underdeveloped country was just what he wanted.
The specific project that Prof. Baumgartel was involved with was a school sponsored by the Indian government to train men on a graduate level for industrial management. The training program received some support from the Ford Foundation.
By helping train the people that will control the growing industry of India, the foundation has hopes of helping the Indians stay on the path of parliamentary democracy.
Prof. Baumgartel also noted that there were several problems to be faced and solved if the country is to pull itself from the poverty in which it now suffers.
"THE agricultural growth of India must be upgraded to match the industrial growth," he said. "India only produces about 95 per cent of the food it needs to maintain sustenance level. Demonstration farms have shown that this production can be increased 20 to 25 per cent."
"With the birth control and agricultural problems, all the profits of industry are immediately eaten up."
Prof. Baumgartel also said the Indians need "... a revolutionary movement to get rid of some of the burdens of the Hindu religion." He cited specifically the sacred cows of India that eat quite a lot of food but do nothing for anyone. If the nation is to progress, the religion "... must be revamped for practicality."
"There is also a need to widen the base of public education," Prof. Baumgartel noted. The majority of the nation is illiterate and povertystricken.
PROF. BAUMGARTEL feels that perhaps the most important overall question to be asked concerning India is "Should the U.S. help India with foreign aid, etc."?
He feels that the goal on this question should be "... to help India reduce poverty in a framework of parliamentary democracy in a mixed economy." Prof. Baumgartel went on to explain that the "mixed economy"
meant a mixture of both capitalism and socialism.
"One must realize that socialism is going to be an important part in the development of this country." "To take a narrow view of this economy." Prof. Baumgartel noted, "is self-defeating."
But Prof. Baumgartel's stay in India, and in Calcutta where he did most of his work, was not all work and no play. As a matter of fact, he added an international twist to the "American custom" of marrying the girl back home.
HIS LEAVE-OF-ABSENCE from the university began in June, 1963, and he left from the west coast for the "mysterious East." After several months in India though, his interest in the West revived. In November he asked the lady he was dating, Marguerite Kerfoot, art history instructor, to marry him.
She accepted, and both were obliged to wait out their half-semester engagement.
leave-of-absence from the University, Prof. Baumgartel's fiance was able to travel to India with her son by a previous marriage.
In February, with the necessary
Prof. Baumgartel was married, One of Prof. Baumgartel's sons by a former marriage joined them for an extended visit and the entire family lived in India for the completion of Prof. Baumgartel's work
The life in India for Prof. Baumgartel was much like the life he would live here, he explained. Dress, and many other facets of culture have been westernized to the extent that he was comfortable in the surroundings.
THE LEVEL OF LIVING was, he said, comparable to that of a successful college professor in India.
However, his travels to the interior of the country to conduct some workshops for industrial management gave him ample chance to contact some of the people who were not quite as wealthy as those he knew in Calcutta. Prof. Baumgartel said he enjoyed this contact.
Prof. Baumgartel's good feelings for the people of India is evidenced, materially at least, by the collection of Indian art and everyday wares he has at his home.
Prof. Baumgartel explained that the Indians were a metal-using people and that much of their cultural work was in metal. He backed up his statements with displays of brass water pots of various sizes, brass serving dishes, and brass plates used by even the lower classes.
ALSO INCLUDED in the Baumgartel collection are several native drums. "Drums and a singer are the backbone of Indian music," he explained. "All their music is built around these things."
Situated in various palces around the house are statuettes of Hindu deities in several poses. In one room there are two gongs to call Indian servants, if there are any around here. And all around there are many, many small items, generally metal-work, which are all reminders of Prof. Baumgartel's trip.
Musicians Chosen For Honor Recital
Five KU students will perform at the fall Honor Recital of the School of Fine Arts at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in Swarthout Recital Hall.
Each young musician was chosen for the Honor Recital by vote of the faculty for his or her outstanding performances at student recitals last spring.
The five are; Nicholas Fryman, pianist, Horton junior; Doris Peterson, soprano, Reading junior; Leann Hilmer, pianist, Hutchinson senior; William Lane, French horn, Winter Park, Fla., sophomore, and Robert Hilmer, pianist, Humboldt senior.
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Starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor
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Coming: November 6 - "GIGI"