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A larger effort along these line was launched by our group in March 1952 from a new platform suggestively named Society for Defence of Freedom in Asia . ... It "placed anti-communism squarely on the map of political India"... A Tibet Committee was organised in August 1953 and a Tibet Day was observed in September that year when a demonstration and a meeting were organised in New Delhi...But the programme could not be carried further than that because Prime Minister Nehru sprang a surprise with his Panchshila surrender over Tibet in April 1954, and the Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai movement misled the whole country soon after... It was perhaps the most painful experience of our lives to see the Prime Minister of a democratic country openly patronising the Chinese lobby led by the Communist Party of India, and angrily denouncing tried and tested patriots of a long standing in India's freedom movement. The communist press in India and abroad came out against the SDFA since its very inception... The Russian and Chinese embassies started sending memoranda to our External Affairs Ministry protesting that their countries were being systematically "blackened" by the SDFA... H.D. Malaviya, editor of the official Congress fortnightly AICC Economic Review, had started heaping abuses on us under the pretext of reviewing some of our publications...Prem Bhatia of The Statesman, another spokesman for Soviet Russia, Red China and Krishna Menon in those days, had also displayed malice towards our work in the columns of that important daily. ..In August 1953, the SDFA organised a Tibet Committee which announced a Tibet Day to be observed in September. As many as 12 M.Ps including Professor N.G. Ranga were associated with the Committee. The Prime Minister came out against the Committee the day after it was formed. He called upon Congressmen not to associate with the Committee in any way...But since the SDFA could not be stopped from its own course of action, the Prime Minister used the floor of the Parliament to denounce the organisers of Tibet Day, and threatened them with Government action.... In February 1955, I received an invitation to attend the forthcoming Conference of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League in Formosa. I sent the entire correspondence - including a very warm letter written to me personally by President Chiang Kai-shek - to our External Affairs Ministry, saying that I would accept the invitation only under advice from them...Meanwhile, I had applied for a passport ...But when I approached the Bureau after more than two months to find out the status of my case, they told me confidentially that my case was receiving attention from the Prime Minister himself. (en) |
