Word: planking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Plank. Back in 1921 Brahmachari, like Nehru, came under the spell of Mahatma Gandhi, but Brahmachari became a sadhu, or holy man. He took vows of silence and celibacy, was jailed several times by the British (once along with Nehru), set up a camp on the banks of the River Ganges to study the Hindu epics, and wrote the first 60 volumes of a 180-volume biography of the Hindu god Krishna. One day last October he cried out: "He nath Narayan!" (meaning, "Oh, Lord God," the holy man's only departure from silence). An attendant brought...
Brahmachari had but one plank in his platform: uncompromising opposition to the Nehru-sponsored Hindu Code Bill, which sanctions inter-caste marriage, relaxes the prohibition against marriage between cousins seven times removed, and, for the first time, makes divorce possible -though still very difficult-for Hindu women. Wrote Brahmachari: "The Hindu Code Bill will ruin religion, confuse castes, undermine the authority of the Scriptures, damage Hindu culture, split every family, pit brothers against sisters, and profit only lawyers." Nehru, he said, is "a black Englishman [who] studied in the West . . . and is so stuffed with its ways that he wants...
Most surprising plank in the Tory platform was a promise to help pay for rearmament by taxing excess profits-a mighty radical proposal for Tories (but not as radical as the Socialist scheme to freeze all dividends). Churchill's Tories were plainly asking for a doctor's mandate: just trust...
Subsequently, dishing the Whigs (or as Disraeli put it: "Tory men and Whig measures") has been a basic plank in Tory platforms. Even Britain's Hesketh Pearson relishes nothing more than the tart flavor of a well-dished Whig-and Pearson denies that he is a Tory at all. In his time, he has written sympathetic biographies of such diverse spirits as Dickens, G.B.S., Oscar Wilde and Gilbert & Sullivan. But, Tory or no Tory, Biographer Pearson seems to see eye-to-eye with Dizzy on a great many matters of principle. He is strongly opposed, for one thing...
...family last year was Georgie himself, who was packed off to school in Canada. Musing on the value of his jungle training, Mrs. Keith concludes that he had learned one great and humble lesson: "All men are human." That, she implies, and not "Poppa knows best," is the only plank on the wave of the future that white men can ride in the Far East without getting swamped...