Giant, sprawling Calcutta, where a hundred thousand homeless refugees sleep on the streets every night, is the most explosive city in India. Murderous riots can be touched off by anything from a trifling rise in streetcar fares to the throat-cutting religious strife that killed thousands in 1946. Calcutta rioters have even perfected their own secret weapon: electric-light bulbs filled with nitric acid.
Last week India's Communists chose inflammable Calcutta to show their defiance of Nehru's government for its act in ousting the Reds from power in the state of Kerala (TIME, Aug. 10). They had plenty of tinder at hand: the soaring...
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