AN AILING NEHRU AND THE INDIAN LEADERSHIP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A004300090002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 3, 2006
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 24, 1964
• Content Type: REPORT

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24 January 1964
OCI No. 0315/64A
Copy No., 72
SPECIAL REPORT
AN AILING NEHRU AND THE INDIAN LEADERSHIP
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
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Illness has removed Jawaharlal Nehru from the
day-to-day control of the Indian Government which
he has exercised without respite for 17 years. His
present incapacitation--the result of a mild stroke
suffered while attending his Congress Party's bien-
nial convention in Bhubaneswar, capital of Orissa
State in eastern India--seems certain to alter the
established pattern of Indian leadership even if
the prime minister recovers. Before he was stricken,
in fact, his slow decline was evident and moves were
under way to shift responsibilities within the ruling
party primarily with an eye to distributing power
more widely.
The man most likely to be chosen as Nehru's
successor is Lal Bahadur Shastri, a trusted political
veteran who would carry on the main lines of Nehru's
policies. The transition period, however, could
itself stir political and communal tensions that
have been generally dormant for years.
Sources of Nehru's Power
As Gandhi's heir and next
to him the best known of India's
independence leaders, Nehru
arrived at the pinnacle of
governmental and party power in
1947 at the age of 58, in vig-
orous health, with 35 years of
experience in Indian politics,
and with most of the levers of
power already in his hands or
within his grasp. By the early
1950s, the death of some long-
time colleagues and the politi-
cal isolation of others had
eliminated all potential rivals.
Nehru's leadership of the Con-
gress Party's massive majority
in the lower house of Parliament
has provided his formal base of
power.
Nehru also has long held
the external affairs portfolio
and has personally handled
finance and defense for short
periods of time. He has di-
rectly supervised India's
small atomic energy program,
has been the guiding hand be-
hind India's five-year economic
development plans, and has been
the Congress Party's best vote-
getter. Although rarely holding
any organizational post within
the party other than that of
"permanent invitee" to its key
21-member working committee,
his will has been decisive in
all matters of consequence,
from programs to candidates.
Signs of Decline
After early 1962 Nehru's
physical vigor--and along with
it his political influence--had
appeared to be in gradual decline.
In part this resulted from a more
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ambitious electioneering program
at that time than a 73-year-old
should have undertaken as well
as from the accumulated weariness
of his burdens as India's "prime
mover." The death of a succes-
sion of strong, able lieutenants
had added to his load.
the Chinese rout of
Indian forces in the Himalayas
demonstrated the complete fail-
ure of Nehru's China policy and
called into question the effec-
tiveness of his government.
changed. While Nehru remained
the strongest figure in Indian
politics, his pronouncements and
policies no longer were accepted
without challenge. The executive
committee of even the Congress
parliamentary group, fresh from
its success in pressing for
Menon's ouster, operated with
a new independence of spirit and
seemed less intimidated by Nehru's
presence than before. For the
first time, Indian politicians,
both within his party and outside
it, seemed to be increasingly
willing to contemplate seriously
a period when Nehru would not
be around.
Despite this series of
blows, Nehru seemed ultimately
to draw some strength from the
challenge posed by the threat
of mutiny within his own party
and by the demands of managing
the national emergency. His
reluctant sacrifice of Defense
Minister Krishna Menon served
to deflect much of the criticism
of his government; a surge of
national indignation against the
Chinese helped with the rest.
By mid-1963, Nehru appeared
to have made a remarkable re-
covery, both politically and
physically, even though his
bursts of physical vigor seemed
more infrequent and short-lived.
He had even managed to avoid
the opprobrium attached to the
belt-tightening measures in his
first postemergency budget. It
fell instead on Morarji
Desai, then finance minister
and second-ranking man in the
cabinet.
There were, nonetheless,
suggestions that something had
Jockeying for position in-
creased slightly and intraparty
factionalism at the state level
grew steadily, often in what
appeared to be total disregard
of the prime minister's wishes.
Nehru seemed concerned, but his
powers of decision
and his
ability to en orce adherence to
his views in execution seemed
gradually to be waning.
The Kamaraj Plan
Nehru displayed flashes of
vigor in 1963, most strikingly
in the implementation of what
came to be known as the Kamaraj
Plan, a set of proposals for
revitalizing the Congress Party.
As conceived by Kamaraj, the
strong man of southern India and
then chief minister of Madras
State, the scheme called for
shifting a number of influential
ministers at both the national
and the state level to full-time
party work. This, it was felt,
would restore to the party some
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of the vigor and talent which
its years of power and the lure
of ministerial privilege had
diluted.
The plan was motivated in
large measure by Kamaraj's con-
cern for rural disaffection from
the Congress cause in his own
state, but it had national ap-
peal as well, in view of the
rising crescendo of ministerial-
organizational factionalism which
was diverting other state leaders
from their principal tasks. A
number of losses in prestige by-
elections strengthened the idea
that the Congress was losing
touch with the people. Growing
disgust and public cynicism
about Congress slogans and about
the prevalence of corruption lent
support to suggestions that some-
thing drastic had to be done to
rehabilitate the party's image.
Another aspect of this
scheme was unspecified but
nonetheless important; Nehru
seems to have sensed it. Kamaraj,
like several other regional strong
men, had for years been eclipsed
by Nehru's paramountcy. Nehru
could lead and the others had
no alternative but to follow.
For years there had been no need
for the give and take which, in
the absence of a man of Nehru's
overpowering stature, would have
been part of the relationship
among the political leaders of
a parliamentary democracy and
federal republic.
In part this had been the
result of Nehru's successful
efforts to establish a strong
central government--under his
control--and to transfer to
that government the powers of
decision which in the days prior
to independence had been the
province of the Congress move-
ment. Kamaraj's proposals would
have restored to the party some
of its lost power for use, not
so much under Nehru, but under
any successor government. The
mere fact that they were put
forward served notice that
strong regional leaders like
Kamaraj were determined to
force any successor to heed
others' views more than Nehru
had done.
Nehru turned the plan con-
siderably to his own advantage.
He used it not only to assign
several strong but troublesome
ministers into vaguely defined
party positions but also to
send others, both strong and
weak, into the wilderness. Some
party organs have undeniably
been strengthened by the accre-
tion of talented former ministers.
Some key leaders, like Kamaraj
who has become the new party
president, and Shastri, Nehru's
chief political troubleshooter
when he was home minister, have
enhanced their authority. Others,
like former Finance Minister
Desai--long regarded while he
was in the cabinet as Nehru's
most likely successor--have
lost strength.
The cabinet as a whole is
a more homogeneous group, drop-
ping in political stature rela-
tive to the prime minister but
in some aspects enhancing its
technical competence. The best
evidence of its fallen stature
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is that neither G. L. Nanda nor
T. T. Krishnamachari ("T.T.K.")
the ranking home and finance
ministers who are handling ad
interim Nehru's burdens in the
domestic and foreign fields
respectively, is considered a
contender for the prime minis-
ter's mantle.
The Immediate Future
Even if Nehru--reputedly
a very poor patient--subscribes
to the regimen his physicians
have apparently laid out for
him and gradually recovers, he
is unlikely ever to take back
all of the burdens he has shucked.
He can go along for some time
with the present ad hoc arrange-
ment involving Nanda and T.T.K.
If his convalescence is pro-
longed, he might be persuaded
to appoint a deputy prime minis-
ter, such as Shastri. He has
avoided this step in recent
years because of his reluctance
to give any appearance of nam-
ing an heir.
During Nehru's confinement,
however, there will be a pro-
longed moratorium on decision-
making within the Indian Govern-
ment on a broad range of matters
from fertilizers to fighters
to factionalism. Few if any
senior officials or politicians
will be willing to accept re-
sponsibility for any decision
of importance, partly because
they are unaccustomed to doing
so and partly because of the
uncertainties in the leadership
question.
Indira Gandhi
During his convalescence,
Nehru's main window to the out-
side world will be his daughter,
Indira Gandhi, who will strongly
influence the prime minister's
appointments calendar during
this period. Mrs. Gandhi is a
strong-willed widow who, at 46,
knows her way around the rough-
and-tumble of Indian politics,
and she undoubtedly will be
tempted by her present unique
position to play a role compa-
rable to that of of Mrs. Woodrow
Wilson during her husband's long
illness. However, she probably
does not seriously aspire to
succeed her father as prime minis-
ter.
She has nevertheless long
been promoted for the job by the
left wing of the Congress Party.
Krishna Menon and his noisy as-
sociates on the left have al-
ways counted their influence
with Nehru as the main factor
which has forced respect for
their views. In fostering a
dynasty, they see an opportunity
to weather Nehru's demise and
the shift by the Congress Party
somewhat to the right which is
expected to follow his departure.
Aside from her relationship
to Nehru, Indira Gandhi's con-
siderable skills and the desir-
ability of having a woman in the
cabinet make her a likely minis-
terial candidate in any successor
government. Barring her formal
designation by Nehru himself,
however, she does not appear
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 Indira Gandhi and Lai Bahadur Shastri at
Bhubaneswar on 8 January 1964.
President Radhakrishnan on the occasion
of his 75th birthday last September.
Nehru at the Congress Party con-
clave in Bhubaneswar on 6 January,
the day before he took i I I .
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to have the necessary support
throughout the party to step into
her father's shoes.
If Nehru's incapacitation is
prolonged,President Radhakrishnan
is likely to make himself heard.
From the start of his presidency
in 1962, Radhakrishnan has shown
himself to be more activist minded,
within the confines of his consti-
tutional position, than his only
predecessor in the post. He takes
his role seriously and would seek
to influence the choice of a suc-
cessor to Nehru, either temporary
or permanent, in any way he could.
Not the strong socialist that
Nehru is, the President would lean
somewhat toward the right, at least
toward a moderate such as Shastri,
and could be expected to oppose
any move by the left to have Indira
Gandhi move into the vacuum.
Even if Nehru should make a
relatively complete recovery,
Radhakrishnan might counsel him
to step down so as to precipitate
a decision on the succession now
rather than to leave it unsettled
any longer.
Lai Bahadur Shastri, now 59
years old, is generally conceded
to be the logical successor to
Nehru as prime minister. His re-
appointment to the cabinet--an-
nouced on 22 January--as minister-
without-portfolio will be widely
regarded as the first step in this
process. He will probably function
as the party's leader when Parlia-
ment reconvenes early next month.
A fully recovered cardiac pa-
tient, he has been one of Nehru's
most loyal lieutenants during the
past three years both as a cabinet
minister and as a party wheel horse.
He is generally well liked within
the party, has a reputation as a
conciliator, and has the parliamen-
tary experience necessary to the
job.
Shastri's disabilities are
few. Among these are his colorless-
ness and his frailness, his lack
of travel outside South Asia, and
his unproven capacity for decision;
in all of his life in politics, he
has been someone's number-two man,
never number one.
Either as a deputy prime min-
ister during Nehru's remaining
days or as prime minister in his
own right, Shastri's politics
would be cautious, pragmatic, and
moderate. Where they are known,
his views appear to hew closely
to the broad consensus which forms
the basis of the Congress Party's
democratic socialist philosophy.
He would lean heavily on the catch
phrase of nonalignment as a foreign
policy, the field in which he
would be at his weakest, and would
probably turn his attentions toward
internal matters more than Nehru
has done.
The portfolios Shastri has
held--home affairs, commerce and
industry, transport and commu-
nications, and railways--and the
organizational posts he has
occupied in the party strongly
suggest he would feel on surer
ground on domestic matters. He
would, moreover, have a good
background on internal security,
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having held posts at both the
national and state levels in
this field.
More of a practicing poli-
tician than Nehru has ever been,
Shastri would be amenable to
genuine consultation with the
party's regional bosses, at
least until such time as he felt
sufficiently sure of his posi-
tion to strike out on his own.
Party President Kamaraj is known
to prefer Shastri as Nehru's
successor and would probably
work well with him. Kamaraj
himself is not in the running
because of his southern origins
and his lack of fluency in either
of India's two official languages
of government at the center.
The party presidency would, in
any event, be a more important
post under Shastri than it has
been under Nehru.
One specific issue which
might give a Shastri government
more trouble at the outset than
any other would be India's per-
petually bad relations with
Pakistan and its domestic con-
comitant, Hindu-Muslim tensions.
Rightly or wrongly,Pakistan
has looked upon Nehru's role
at the time the Indian subconti-
nent was partitioned and in the
years since as a major impedi-
ment to the development of more
normal relations. All the lead-
ers on the Pakistani side at
that time are dead now, and a
new set of leaders on the In-
dian side might suggest the
possibility of some small amount
of progress to heal the old
wounds. However, while Shastri
has never been counted among
the "Pakistan-baiters" within
the Indian Government, he would, as
would almost any successor, be
acutely conscious of the strength of
anti-Pakistan feeling in India,
both on the Krishna Menon left
and on the Morarji Desai right,
and of the need to make it
clear at the outset that his
government would be appropri-
ately zealous in defending
India's interests against en-
croachments from Pakistan or
any other foreign country. Any
progress toward an Indo-Pakistani
rapprochement would therefore
be slow indeed.
On the domestic front,
India's leaders have just wit-
nessed their worst communal
rioting since 1950, growing out
of the theft of the Muslim hair
relic in Kashmir and exploding
on the streets of Calcutta (as
well as in neighboring East
Pakistan). Deep communal pas-
sions easily rise to the sur-
face when authority appears to
falter, and Calcutta officialdom
did falter in its initial fail-
ure to realize the enormity of
the problem there. At fault
also were organized Hindu ex-
tremistswho, under Nehru, have
never been allowed a voice in
the determination of national
policy and who were formally
removed from the Congress
Party nearly 50 years ago.
The conservative and illiterate
masses of India are, nonethe-
less, more attracted to some
of the emotion-charged preachment-
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of these extremists than they
are to the secularism of Nehru.
Fanatics could see the uncer-
tainty involved in the transi-
tion to a successor government
as a time to demonstrate their
appeal.
By the same token, India's
nearly 50 million Muslims have
always looked upon Nehru's
secularism as their best guaran-
tee that the usual social and
economic discrimination against
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Muslims by Hindus would at least
not be officially countenanced.
A new prime minister, and es-
pecially one who is more gen-
uinely Hindu than the agnostic
Nehru,might find his most taxing
and immediate task to be the
problem of establishing him-
self with India's various com-
munities so as to prevent com-
munal violence. Shastri, by
all accounts, is secular minded,
but his first crisis on assuming
power might well involve his
having to prove this.
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