Mr. CHOHAN. I came to know that I had to testify, and I instructed my people in Punjab and this was the figure given by their office. So they have those records.

In the press there is no means to get the proper count. This is their figure, sent by their office. They are sure about their own number of 40,000, and the rest is a guess. They do not know it, and it does not appear in any newspaper.

How many people are arrested every day, nobody knows. This is all guess. That is the confusion. If there is proper information, then one could guess. There is no information at all in any newspaper. You cannot get the information anywhere.

The House is the only place where you can get the proper information by asking the question, and even that now is denied. No figures can be given during the emergency, even to Members of Parliament. If they ask: "How many people have been arrested?"

They say: "Due to the common security, it cannot be given."

These are the figures communicated to me on the phone by their office.

Mr. DERWINSKI. You indicated in your statement that over a long period of time the Hindu Government has moved toward weakening, and even extreminating Sikhs. People have been arrested leaving their temples from worship.

To what degree has this increase of what might be called "religious persecution" accelerated since the governmental decree?

Mr. CHOHAN. Affected by these emergency measures have been two types of organizations. If you analyze the 26 organizations, they fall under two categories: One is the social-religious, and the others are the Marxist Party, but they are all opposed to the Communist Party of India.

The Communists have three parties. One is pro-Chinese; one is proSoviet; and the CPI is pro-Soviet and is in alliance with Mrs. Gandhi. They are in two state governments. They lean toward Mrs. Gandhi's government, and the others are more pro-Chinese. That is the fight between the two Communist parties.

Mrs. Gandhi has two types of parties. One is the social and the other, as I have mentioned before, is the Marxist.

Ananda Marga is an organization that is educational. They have 100 schools, and they have about dozens of hospitals. They are doing all this good type of work. Mrs. Gandhi thinks that maybe this organization is run by a nephew of Sebastian Travos. They are doing the best and most productive and creative work.

The second one is R.S.S.S. and R.S.S.S. has always stood for the advancement of spirituality and national sensitivity. They are the second type.

Then there are the Muslims.

Now, you cannot send $10 to aid any organization. There was legislation passed last month, and anybody here who wants to help any organization inside India, and you cannot send even $10 to an education school without the sanction of the state. You have to go through that.

If it is agreed, it will be used very discriminately. They will discriminate between this organization and that organization. The Methodists may be able to take it all right.

The other organizations, they will be banned. They have already been opposing the Christian organizations. Similarly, Ananda Marga has been banned. R.S.S.S. has been banned. Jamat-e-Islami-e-Hind has been banned, and it is a religious organization.

These are three religious organizations that have been banned. After this, they would not dare to ban us. That is our good fortune. But they go on touching us in a very subtle way all the time, especially now.

As I have mentioned, we have Holy places all over India. We were promised that we would be allowed to maintain the Holy shrines. We don't allow anybody to interfere in our affairs. We never have allowed. She has come out, and she has taken over the control of all the other places in other states, and even she is threatening to take over the shrines in Punjab. This is what has been happening all the time. It is with a view to supress the religious sentiment of the people.

Mr. DERWINSKI. That raises a point. Professor Nanda, you make a specific reference to compulsory sterilization in the Moslem neighborhood of New Delhi. Are you inferring that this was as much of a religious motivation as a population control motive behind this?

Mr. NANDA. I am sorry, I probably gave you the wrong impression. That is not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that the bureaucracy was totally insensitive.

Mr. Derwinski, the government feels it owes no accountability to anyone. I certainly go along with the sentiment expressed here that during the last year, the local organizations that are primarily cultural and social, and which have existed these 30 years of India's independence as very responsible organizations trying to keep abreast of events in terms of playing a constructive role in Indian society, that they have now been banned.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Dr. Mathews, we had two witnesses who, to a degree, analyzed the situation as you do. The recurring theme is this question of local autonomy in India and the fear of state government, by the national government that this would lead to separatism.

Over the years that you have studied India, would you say that the separatist movement in various parts of the country is posing a great threat to the central government, or has it diminished over the years?

Reverend MATHEWS. I think that there have been maintained such efforts. In my opinion it is a serious threat. I used the term "balkanization," which tendency has recurred in India's history. Usually, it is linguistic and regional in nature, and sometimes religious.

I think if I were an authority in India, I would be greatly concerned about this, and would do everything I could to try to hinder its progress. India's leaders have worked hard on this but have allowed some linguistic states. That was going pretty far, because the moment you define states as to language, you have taken the first step toward the "balkanization" of India.

It is the same with Bangladesh; that term was coined not with respect to East Pakistan. This was done for the Bengalis, and there are a number of Bengali-speaking people in India as well. Their vision of the future is a country for Bengali people.

With all due respect to Dr. Chohan, they are not lacking voices in Punjab. Punjabi-speaking people have at times advocated a separate Sikhistan, for example. This is a force which works against a centrist authority in India.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Would you correct me, then. You would not advocate one of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, namely "Self Determination of Peoples," to India.

Reverend MATHEWS. Not to the degree of linguistic states. I would not, because I think that it would be disastrous. Of course, I didn't like the idea of Pakistan being created. I think that this was a serious mistake, but that is another story, which is not immediately on the docket.

Mr. DERWINSKI. You don't think that it would be possible for some restructuring so that the various traditional religious and linguistic groups would have the maximum possible autonomy, and many of these excuses for oppression could be eliminated.

Reverend MATHEWS. Autonomy at the village level; there is a long tradition of relative autonomy in villages. I would not like to see India divided up religiously. I must say that I am very strongly for India being a secular state.

One of the problems with R.S.S.S. is that it would lead toward, I think, a Hindu state, and some of the other political-religious divisions might tend in that particular way, and I think that India does not need that.

I think that the founding fathers were very wise to proclaim India constitutionally as a secular state. I would be very slow in being enthusiastic about it being otherwise.

Some of the parties just mentioned have themselves opposed parliamentary democracy. They have opposed the idea of free elections. Now, it is true that as long as there is a parliamentary democracy, certain groups are not going to be in power. That is the name of the game.

It seems to me that they use tactics, clear to any internal or external objective observer, to keep the whole country sort of messed up all the time, and not allow stable, political, and social development.

The most common phrase that I have heard from people, who are knowledgeable about the emergency in India, is that it should have happened long ago. This is to say that they should have been about the business of moving ahead as a nation.

I do think that any permanent effort, or any long-term authoritative regime would be self-defeating, and I would not like that. But I do not think that India 1 year ago could have continued for more than 1 month without utter chaos. The details of the general strike, if it had been carried out, would have brought the whole country to a halt.

So very reluctantly, against my whole disposition, I conclude as I have in the paper. When it comes to doctrinaire liberalism-and I would regard myself as a liberal in that context-remaining intact, to the point that to save the liberal principle you bring about chaos, I don't have any difficulty reaching my judgment, which I have expressed in several different ways in my paper.

That is my clear understanding, and observers who have had long exposure to India, when I speak to them approve of this point of view. I am just struck that I have come out at such a point, but that is where I am.

Mr. NANDA. It is kind of ironic that the government in power had all the means at its command for the last 28 years to do exactly what

you are asking them to do. Why then did they have to proclaim the emergency? I have yet to see one persuasive rationale for the emergency.

The Congress government was completely in power, and it had been in power for 28 years in most of the States and in the center. I find absolutely no excuse for Mrs. Gandhi to have to undertake all these measures. What we are suggesting is that if the Congress government had to undertake the emergency rule, it follows that India is a country that ought not to have democracy because democracy is ill-suited for India, and the only way for India is to go to a totalitarian system. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Derwinski, I totally and unqualifiedly reject such a contention. I totally disagree with such a position. I think that in the Indian context, economic and social gains and civil and political rights are not mutually exclusive.

Reverend MATHEWS. I have something to say, although I must not say too much, on this very point, as to why didn't they do it 28 years, why didn't they go in the direction of the emergency? I admit that there has been corruption. I think that there would be corruption under almost any conceivable authority, and I will not restrict it to southern Asia.

I think that Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a doctrinaire liberal, could not bring himself emotionally to do some of the hard things that probably should have been done. For that reason, you will find many people who will say:

Wouldn't it have been a great idea to have had a man like Vallabhbhai Patel as prime minister? He was a Jim Farley type of man, if I may say so, who could make stout administrative decisions. There was an effort to keep a liberal democracy all these years. The opponents kept chiseling away and keeping the really positive programs from going forward.

Mr. DERWINSKI. One last question, and I will direct it to all three of you gentlemen. You again used the phrase, Dr. Mathews, parliamentary democracy.

With approximately 35 Members of the Parliament in jail, and we have been told that the speeches in Parliament are not longer reported, or any debates of opposition spokesmen are no longer reported.

With that being the case, can you, in fact, have a legitimately functioning Parliament?

Mr. NANDA. You will have to excuse me, but I have to catch a plane. With your permission, I will have to leave."

At the present time there is absolutely no chance that under the strict censorship and with all the curtailment of the civil and political rights we have been talking about, that the Parliament at the present time is more than a rubberstamp body. It is not a functioning Parliament.

Under the present scheme of things, and as I have mentioned previously under the blueprint presently under consideration, democracy would come to an end, and the emergency would probably be perpetuated and institutionalized.

I am very sorry to say it, but I see a bleak prospect for democracy in India in the near future. That is primarily why, again, I would suggest to this body that international pressure admittedly very

fragile, but still very effective, is of utmost importance. That is why I cannot thank you enough for holding these hearings and giving me an opportunity to present my views to you. Thank you very much.

Mr. FRASER. I understood that you had to leave at 4:15. If you wish, you may leave now.

Mr. CHOHAN. Actually, India was just put into this shape by the British. The British came and they conquered one state after another, and it was then British India, which is what we see on the map today. India never existed in the whole history, the thousands of years that we have been living. It is not a new civilization of 200 years. It is not a civilization of 400 years. The people could not be put under one religion, and they could not be put under one umbrella all the time. Nobody could do it.

The British conquered and we were the last to be conquered. We were conquered in 1850, and we were the last. We are completely different.

Mr. DERWINSKI. You are now speaking of the Sikhs.

Mr. CHOHAN. Punjab was conquered in 1850. We were a sovereign people, having our own State and our own government, and our own foreign relations. In those days, we were different, and we were having relations with different people.

The British conquered us and we were made part of India. The British were very strong and they were very judicious. They were giving opportunities to everybody, and people were happy.

The Constitution said that the states would be reorganized on the basis of the language. Then, the problem came. If we had not joined India in 1949, we could have had our own state like Pakistan. There was no fight at the time, and we never even had to move one finger. The British were ready to give us our own state, and Pakistan was there. Pakistan would have been there. India would have been there, and we would have been there, and we would all have been very happy.

At that time, Indian leaders came to us, Mahatma Gandhi came to us, and gave us his solemn promise in the name of God, "We give you the promise that you, in India, will not be discriminated against. Nothing will be done to deprive you of your social, and religious

culture.'

They now have gone back from all those promises. This has us fighting. Once you do injustice to somebody, we cannot lie down. We have never accepted that, and we shall never accept it.

Similarly, other people in the south, they have nothing to do with the rest of India. Even the language, there is not a single similarity that you can find between the various people. We can live very happily for economic reasons, or the common defense, just like here in America. You have 50 States, and each State has its own flag, and constitution. This is what we would want to have, and Mrs. Gandhi says no.

Also, we have no right to select our own government. It is imposed on us. Any government can be dissolved. The worst example is the one recently. Madras, the south state, they had a clear majority, 85 percent. Just with one line, the government of Madras was abolished. There was no reason.