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Road to Noalchali. Across the northern frontier, in the Tajik Socialist Soviet Republic, loomed Mt. Stalin (24,590 ft.) and Mt. Lenin (23,386 ft.), mightiest peaks of the U.S.S.R. Gandhi's thoughts last week turned to the lowest part of India, the mushy flats of Noakhali at the mouth of the Ganges. That part of Bengal, where Moslems and Hindus are mixed, will become part of Pakistan.
Noakhali was the first place Gandhi visited last spring in his tour of India's riot areas. Barefoot, staff in hand, leaning on his grandniece Manu, he had padded through the water-soaked fields and the mixed Moslem-Hindu villages, preaching peace. Last week Gandhi planned a symbolic return. "My work is in Noakhali," he said. "Nobody will prevent me from going there." For Gandhi considered himself a citizen of both new Indian states. "I will go freely to all parts of India . . . without a passport." The question was, would other Indians be able to do the same?
*Length of biblical (and British) cubit: 18 inches. David's Goliath towered six cubits and a span (9 ft. 9 in.).
*Allan Octavian Hume, a British theosophist and retired civil servant, founded the Congress in 1885. He persuaded the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, that the best way to combat growing unrest in the villages was to let Indian leaders discuss political development.
†The great 1,2500,000-ton plant at Jamshedpur is owned by the Parsi Tata clan and manned mostly by Hindus.