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University Daily Kansan Tuesday.March 13,1962
The Current Events Bill
The bill presently before the All Student Council (ASC) to create a Current Events Committee will be voted on tonight. It provides for a committee that would bring speakers and films on "vital issues of the day" to the campus in an effort to "encourage discussion of and formation of opinions" on such issues. There is also a provision for a Speakers Bureau of faculty members and students to provide speakers for campus living groups. The committee would work with other groups already having current events committees.
THE COMMITTEE would offer one service that no other organization is providing on a regular basis. This is the Speakers Bureau, which is unique in that it would send speakers to the individual campus living groups, thereby eliminating any difficulties students might encounter in going to some building on campus. The speaker could come at a time when most of the living group's members were present, such as the dinner hour.
Another advantage that the committee offers is that by working with the other groups on campus having current events committees, they would be able to tell the other groups when they were duplicating each other's efforts.
Possibly the greatest advantage of the committee is that it would be an official student organization with an annual budget. It would thus be able to finance films and speakers that other groups might have difficulty in obtaining for their current events programs.
IT SHOULD be noted that the bill is not a proposal to eliminate the current events programs of other groups or to bring them under the control of the ASC current events committee. It is really a supplementary service designed to meet needs and carry out projects that other groups either cannot or have not provided.
There is certainly no doubt that such a committee is needed. A poll of fraternity and sorority officers Sunday indicated that most of them were not familiar with the current events committee proposal presently before the ASC. This in itself is an indication of the need for an organization to provide the type of program the committee would develop.
Provided it functions as an active and informed body, the proposed ASC Current Events Committee would be a valuable addition to the campus.
—William H. Mullins
The Indian Elections
By Baldev Mitter
New Delhi India graduate student
The election fever in India has abated. The Congress Party of Mr. Nehru has gained an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha (House of the People) and also in most of the Vidhan Sabhas (state assemblies), Rajasthan and Madhay Pradesh being the exceptions. The opposition has done little better than the last two elections, grabbing a few more seats here and there; but the leaders who in reality formed the core of the opposition (however thin it was) have lest to the Congress Party. The opposition benches will be deprived of Prof. J. B. Kirplani, close associate of Ghandi and a veteran parliamentarian; Prof. N. G. Ranga, chairman of the Independent Party; Mr. Ashok Mehta, India's expert on agrarian economics, whose constructive criticism has won him even Mr. Nehru's approbation. Dr. Lohia, chairman of the Socialist Party, has already lost because of his unwise decision to fight against Mr. Nehru and the fate of Prof. Minoo Masani of the Independent Party is also not expected to meet auspicious stars.
ALTHOUGH Mr. Nehru's popularity is not at all an eye-sore to any Indian, the future of India's democracy poses a grave problem which is of immediate concern. Again, though the fact that the Congress Party continues in power through three successive terms is a phenomenon not unique to Indian democracy but is also known to Britain and the United States, the shrewdness, maturity and innate soundness of judgment of 70 percent of the illiterate suffrage is accepted with unease and good skepticism.
The clean victory of the Congress Party lies in its leadership and in the fact that the party has deeper and more historical roots. Further, it carries the strong stamp of Ghandi, who of course wanted it to be disbanded just after Independence.
GROWTH OF other political parties in India has been somewhat
erratic and it has even tended to conform to a set pattern. But lately other political parties have come into existence.
In the last two elections, the people who occupied the opposition field were largely the splinters of the Congress Party who have previously been voicing out their brand of "Indian non-violent socialism" (in Sanskrit, Savodraya) under the vast umbrella of Congress itself till they were forced by the strong right wing to leave the Congress in 1948—a year after independence. This led to the formation of the People's Socialist Party under the leadership of Prof. J. B. Kriplani, who has lost his seat to Mr. V. K. Krishna Menon in this election.
Although ideological differences are claimed, the People's Socialist Party (PSP) is in many ways hardly distinct from the Congress Party and it is often a matter of debate if it is more socialist than the socialist wing within the Congress Party itself.
The Sawantara Party (Independent Party), which is new, is frankly speaking a party of conservatives and dissidents from the Congress Party and hence carries little flavour of a distinct political party.
TWO PROMINENT parties which are in base and character distinct from the Congress Party and whose membership is not derived from the flotsam and jetsam of the Congress Party are the Communist Party and the Jan Sangh (People's Party). Both of these belong to two extremes but have one thing in common. Both by their mode of action and political thinking are in spirit anti-democratic. While the Communist Party goes for its mental food to Marxist dialecticism, the Jan Sangh uses communalism (Hindu's fanaticism) as its prop and is backward looking — it cries more of "culture than of "economics."
THUS IT would seem that the challenge to the Congress Party comes from the extreme left and the extreme right. Hence it is only
Policy Statement
PSP that can provide a healthy democratic opposition, its intellectuals being the followers of Ghandi. But the misfortune of PSP is that its backbone, Dr. J. P. Narayan, has abjured politics and has become a roving monk collecting land for the landless through love and persuasion. This graduate of Madison, Wisconsin, was called by Ghandi the younger brother of Mr. Nehru and father of "Indian non-violent socialism and basic democracy." In the absence of this distinct personality in PSP, it has no longer a rallying center for the forces of socialism. Maybe while licking its wounds after the election, the PSP might put its house in better order or may even try to reclaim its lost soul—Dr. Narayan.
It is helpful to readers to occasionally state Kansan policy on articles and letters to the editor. The general policy is that all letters are printed as long as they are not libelous or in bad taste.
The writer should attempt to hold his letter to 300 words or less, since there will be a delay of four or five days before it is printed if it is longer. Letters that are 300 words or less are usually printed within two days after they are received.
With a weak PSP, the situation might well occur when the country as such may have to choose between the Congress Party and the Communists or Jan Sangh or between democracy and totalitarianism.
THE TIME for such a choice, however, is not now. The seizing of power by the military chiefs is not now new to Asia, Pakistan and Burma are standing examples. Though the same may not happen in India now, it may happen after Mr. Nehru. A strong opposition can arrest this tendency forever, and again, I strongly maintain, that democracy without strong opposition is a "democratic dictatorship."
At this time, when the opposition needs to introspect and retrospect, Mr. Nebru, "prince of Indian hearts," should encourage the sapling of democracy to grow and flower in his own life-time, for he is one of those great men who sowed its seeds. And nothing should sadden a gardener more than seeing his sapling drying and withering away before his own eyes. Let "Mother India" be dedicated to democratic ideals forever.
If a writer wishes to submit an article in excess of 500 words, he will have to discuss it with a member of the editorial staff.
All letters must include the writer's name, classification and address. A writer's name will be withheld only if he gives sufficient reason to a member of the editorial staff.
Dailu Hansan UNIVERSITY
University of Kansas student newspaper
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unweekly 108, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Bill Mullins ... Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache .. Business Manager
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"—NN' WHY NOT A BIG HEAD? I CRAMMED ALL NITE FOR THIS TEST!"
Memories of Bataan
(Editor's note: The following article is on General Carlos Romulo, former Philippine ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. General Romulo will speak in Swarthout Recital Hall at 4 this afternoon on "The Crisis the Free World Faces.")
Twenty years ago, almost to the day, four battered motor torpedo boats roared away from a beach on Bataan. Left behind on Corregidor was Major Carlos Romulo, public relations officer for the United States Army Forces in the Far East.
Corregidor has become a memory. The bitterness of defeat has been washed away in the victory which followed. The black silence of Malinta Tunnel no longer echoes to the crunch of bombs bursting overhead but there are those who remember the voices of friends whose faces have faded in the distance.
A NATION WAS born in that defeat. In the darkness of despair, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, fighting in a cause in which they could win no victory, shoulder to shoulder with tens of thousands of Americans, held back the Japanese armies until hunger and fatigue had taken their final toll.
One voice carried the message of determination and courage to the Filipino soldiers and civilians. From the crowded dusty headquarters lateral of Malinta Tunnel resounded Romulo's message of courage and determination. And they fought to the last—Filipinos and Americans—taking a toll of the enemy which caused him to recoil in angry surprise.
THE FRIEND of his countrymen, the friend of America, and the friend of humanity—Carlos Romulo has carried his message of freedom and determination from the last, sorry airstrip on Bataan, to the beaches of victory on Leyte, to the General Assembly of the United Nations. His deep, warm, enduring humanity has bridged a generation when old enemies have become new friends.
We remember his bitter tears the night Corregidor surrendered. We remember his eagerness as the great invasion fleet neared the beaches of Leyte. We remember his sorrow as he watched American guns blast away the beautiful cathedrals of Intramuros and the white walls of the University of the Philippines. We remember his thoughtfulness to the family of an insignificant American soldier.
Romulo has said that he walked with heros. There are heros who can be proud that they walked with this man.
—One of the "Bataan Boys"
Criticism for the Kansan Editor:...
It seems somehow significant that the only effort expended by the UDK in publicizing the Model U.N. so far has been aimed in exactly the wrong direction. Editor Koch in his March 8 editorial has done nothing more than point an accusing finger at his own publication for seeking the petty sensation rather than the general benefit associated with this, and probably other, student activities.
IT IS UNDOUBTEDLY true that the accusations and refutations in question in the article make juicier reading, but this hardly seems adequate justification for making some of the more obvious detractors from the Model U.N. program
appear to be representative of the program as a whole.
It has come to my attention that the Steering Committee of the Model U.N. has had some difficulty securing space in the UDK for their press releases, even though it is clear that the more the students of the University know about the more responsible and educational aspects of the program, the more successful and meaningful the Model U.N. will become for the campus as a whole. To paraphrase Mr. Koch, the significance of the Model U.N. as a constructive student activity deserves a more clear-sighted editorial approach.
Mike Thomas Ft. Riley junior