SHASTRI'S FIRST YEAR AS INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A004900040004-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 4
• Content Type: REPORT

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'092'7A00
28 May 1965
SHASTRI'S FIRST YEAR AS INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER
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A year after Nehru's fatal stroke, the style
of the Indian Government and the ruling Congress
Party has changed rather markedly. Most striking
is the transformation of the office of the prime
minister, which used to embody Nehru's imperious,
cosmopolitan personality but now reflects the
colorless, homespun, consensus-minded character
of his successor as leader of 470 million Indians,
Lal Bahadur Shastri. Despite moments when it
seemed that Shastri might be overwhelmed by the
demands and complexities of the office, his posi-
tion now is at least as strong and possibly a bit
stronger than when the party caucus assembled by
Congress Party president Kamara.j chose him to be
prime minister last June. Yet in the absence of
Nehru's commanding personality, the tempo of crises
growing out of India's perennial problems--popula.-
tion growth, unemployment, underdevelopment, and
disunity--ha.s seemed to quicken.
Nehru's Legacy
The smoothness of the trans-
fer of power during the past
year owes much to Nehru's legacy.
He left a strong and function-
ing central government dedicated
to popular suffrage, the rule of
law, civil supremacy, and the
British parliamentary format.
He also left a commitment
to a. secular and to a. socialist
pattern of society, a, system of
five-year development plans to-
gether with schemes for local
self-government and initia.tive
aimed at achieving these ends,
and a nonaligned foreign policy
intended to allow India. to ac-
complish its urgent domestic
labors without the distractions
which, he felt, formal ties
with one or the other of the
world power blocs would bring.
The Nehru legacy was not
unalloyed, however. Nehru had
done his basic economic and so-
cial thinking decades earlier,
and he seemed in his later years
to be increasingly incapable of
adjusting to new situations.
His dedication to industrializa-
tion slighted progress in the
agricultural field, and his
preoccupation with grandiose de-
velopment plans often clouded
his vision on more concrete mat-
ters of implementation. He was
notorious for avoiding diffi-
cult decisions but insisted
nonetheless on being at the
heart of the decision-making
process on all matters, large
or small.
He prized stability in dif-
ficult local situations like
the Punjab and Kashmir, while
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frequently closing his eyes to
the rank corruption and bully-
ing which made that stability
possible. At the same time,
he prevented the development
of strong leaders at the national
level out of exaggerated con-
cern for potential rivals. Most
damning of all, especially to
the group which has succeeded
him, he avoided use of the con-
sultative aspects of the politi-
cal processes he had himself
created, preferring to rule
through the unchallenged strength
of his personal prestige rather
than indulge in the give-and-
take of democratic politics.
Thus most of the difficul-
ties Shastri has faced were
Nehru's birds coming home to
roost after their warden had
left the job.
The biggest and most pro-
longed of these was the food-
price crisis. This was well
under way as Shastri assumed
the reins of power and became
progressively worse through
last summer and fall. Although
weather and a defense-oriented
increase in the supply of money
played a. big part, the main in-
gredient appears to have been
the Nehru government's failure
to come to grips with the basic
problems of.faltering agricul-
tural production during the two
years previous and prolonged
mismanagement both of economic
planning and food distribution.
Good harvests during the
last six months, coupled with
increased imports of foodgrains
and stopgap measures to improve
distribution, have brought con-
siderable relief on the food
front. Prices remain relatively
Shastri huddles (left to right) with Defense Minister Chavan, Home Minister Nanda,
and External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh during the recent Rann of Kutch crisis.
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high, however, and many of the
basic flaws growing out of the
Nehru legacy remain to be rem-
edied.
Another major crisis which
the Sha.stri government weathered
only with considerable diffi-
culty was the controversy over
the spread of the Hindi language.
The vagueness of Nehru's prom-
ises aimed at protecting regional
languages and the people who
speak them contributed mightily
to 3hastri's problem. The lan-
guage controversy hurt nearly
everyone in a position of power,
including both Shastri and Con-
gress Party president Kamaraj.
India's touchy relations
with Pakistan, most recently
brought to the edge of war over
the Rann of Kutch dispute, had
been aggravated by Nehru's im-
plac?ble hostility to Pakistan's
existence and his obduracy on
the question of a settlement of
the long-festering Kashmir prob-
lem. Relations with Pakistan
are now more bitter and more
volatile than at any time since
1947, and there are few indica-
tors of any improvement in the
near future.
In some areas where Nehru's
success was considerable, his
heirs have encountered new dif-
ficulties. No one in India to-
day enjoys the status Nehru ha.d;
Shastri's promises lack Nehru's
ring of authority and thus serve
less well to reassure the nation
during difficult times. This
is especially evident on the
emotion-charged issues which
will for many years threaten
the viability of the Indian
Union, i.e.,Hindu-Muslim rela-
tions, the north-south rivalry,
and questions of language.
Nehru's successors find them-
selves under great pressure to
produce deeds where Nehru was
often able to get by with words,
a point to which Kamaraj al-
luded even before Nehru's fu-
neral pyre had cooled.
Shastri's Style
What then is the style
that Shastri has brought to
Indian politics? It has been
characterized by many critics
and some sympathizers as weak,
devoid of leadership as that
word is commonly understood,
and hobbled by indecision. Its
main ingredients are a. plodding
slowness, a propensity to "mud-
dle through," a subtle reversal
of the 17-year trend to consoli-
date power at the center, an at-
tempt to find new forums for
achieving consensus, and often
an appearance of a lack of co-
ordination.
Shastri is sensitive to
these charges and occasionally
goes out of his way to cite
examples to the contrary. "I
do take may own decisions," he
told a recent interviewer.
"However, it is true that I
want to have as much consulta-
tion as possible with all shades
of opinion before coming to a
decision." If others' views
are "right," he continued, "I
don't hesitate to accept them."
This consultative practice takes
time, but time seems to count
for very little with the present
group of Indian leaders.
Compromise and accommoda-
tion, the development of a
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consensus, and a desire to
please everyone have long been
Sha.stri's forte, his hallmark,
and indeed the traditional obli-
gation of members of his small
subcaste. He has made very few
enemies in a 40-year career in
politics. Indeed, his diminu-
tive structure--reportedly the
subject of audience giggling
at Indian newsreels--comple-
ments his manner. He quipped
once at a ceremonial occasion,
"How can a small man like me
dare to make enemies?" The es-
sential simplicities about his
life and person remain untouched
by the office he holds.
The Kamaraj Caucus
Shastri leans heavily for
his support on the so-called
"syndicate" which party presi-
dent Kamaraj put together in
Nehru's final months and which
brought Shastri to power. This
ca.ucus--"syndicate" suggests a
more formal association than
a.etually exists--is composed of
several key figures within the
party's all-powerful working
committee.
In its essentials the cau-
cus represents an alliance be-
tween southern and eastern India,
with scattered but influential
support from other areas. It
is based on a bond between two
long-time party wheel horses,
Kamaraj, the undisputed party
strong man in the south for more
than 15 years, and Atulya Ghosh,
the tough member of Parliament
who bosses Calcutta, and dominates
the party in the east.
The group also includes
Sanjiva Reddy, the relatively
young strong man of the north-
south "border" state of Andhra
and a member of Shastri's cabi-
net, and, at somewhat greater
distance, both geographically
and politically, S. K. Patil,
blunt-talking boss of Bombay
city who is a top fund raiser
for the party and Shastri's
minister for railways, the na.-
tion's largest single employer.
Foremost among those out-
side the caucus who nonetheless
support both the group and Shas-
tri is his excellent defense
minister, Y. B. Chavan. He con-
trols Maharashtra State in west-
ern India and is a rival of
Patil. However, he has higher
ambitions of his own a.nd,at 51,
finds it prudent to play along.
The key to the success of
the caucus in staying together
and in working with Shastri is
the relationship between Shastri
and Kamaraj. They might have
engaged in continuous jockeying
and infighting. At the state
level, the existence of one
figure at the top of the minis-
terial ladder and another head-
ing up the party's organizational
apparatus has brought such a
result. In Shastri's home state,
such infighting between minis-
terial and organizational wings
has virtually immobilized the
conduct of state business for
more than two years.
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On the other hand, Kamaraj a. threat to the other; each
might have tried to run the coun-1 needs the other.
try through a weak Shastri in
the prime ministry. Shastri runs the government
under a system of collective
Neither development has cabinet responsibility, and
occurred. During the early weeks cabinet decisions are noticeably
of Shastri's ministry, the fre- more the result of free debate
quency with which their names and consensus within the group
were paired suggested a duumvi- than they ever were under Nehru.
rate. During Shastri's incapac- Matters of national security
itation following a heart attack are handled by an Emergency
only a month after assuming of- Committee of the cabinet, com-
fice, this was particularly posed of Sha.stri and his minis-
noticeable. Present evidence, ters for defense, finance, ex-
however, suggests that the two terna.l, and home affairs. The
men have each carved out their cabinet has been noticeably
own spheres, Kamaraj in the free of interference by the
party organization and Shastri party organization per se. Shas-
in the government and in Pa.rlia- tri has thus named new cabinet
ment, and that while there is ministers and reshuffled port-
some inevitable overlap and oc- folios without specific recourse
casional strain, there is no to Kamaraj or other members of
basic conflict. Neither poses the inner party caucus. The
Congress Party President Kamaroj with Shastri on the
occasion of the prime minister's 60th birthday last fall.
decision to repatriate some
500,000 Tamil-speaking Ma.drasis
from Ceylon was reportedly
taken at the cabinet level with-
out recourse to Kamara.j or his
home state of Madras, despite
their interest. 3o it was also
with regard to the government's
sweeping roundup of more than
1,000 pro-Peiping Communists,
who,six months later, remain
in jail.
Within the party, Kamaraj,
whose luster has dimmed only a
little, reigns supreme. He
rarely concerns himself with
the substance of policy, except
in terms of "keeping the party
close to the people" and thus
making possible the winning of
elections. His concerns are
mainly on organizational mat-
ters, touring the states, organ-
izing for elections, both pub-
lic and party, and resolving,
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or at least attempting to re-
solve the bitter intraparty
fights that are virtually endemic
to the Congress Party at the
state level.
A lifelong bachelor,
Kamaraj has made the party his
whole life. His approach--
shared with Atulya Ghosh--is
simple: the party counts for
all; fight within it for what
you believe but never against
it for any reason. He never
tolerated open dissidence in
his own party organization in
Madras, and he has shown little
patience with it since he be-
came national party president.
It was for this reason that he
refused to deal with dissident
Congress politicians prior to
the recent state elections in
Kerala.
The refusal probably cost
the Congress a chance to form
a government in the state and
put a few dents in Ka.maraj's
national prestige. The action
made his message unmistakably
clear, however, to potential
dissidents in other Indian states
with deeply divided cabinets.
The roles of Kamaraj and
Shastri tend to overlap in top-
level factional questions in the
states, especially when the is-
sues reverberate on the floor
of the Parliament. In the lead-
ership crisis which arose in
Punjab, Shastri and Kama-raj
worked closely to find a solu-
tion. The compromise reached
--the appointment of an inoffen-
sive but clean nonentity as
chief minister--appears to be
intended as no more than a hold-
ing action. So also in Orissa
State, where Shastri's Central
Bureau of Investigation proved
corruption charges against a
Congress Party chief minister.
Subsequently the agonizing re-
moval of the minister and the
problems of replacement were
matters on which Kamara.j, Shas-
tri, and a cabinet subcommit-
tee worked together for many
months, albeit with occasional
signs of lack of coordination.
Shastri as Parliamentary Leader
Shastri has made no basic
changes in the political composi-
tion of the cabinet which he
inherited from Nehru. He has
shuffled positions, and added
Patil, Reddy, and Nehru's daugh-
ter, Indira Gandhi. No substan-
tial cleavages on ideological
grounds have appeared.
Shastri appears to give
his ministers wide leeway in
managing the affairs of their
respective ministries and al-
lows them, to a greater degree
than Nehru did, to carry the
ball for their portfolios un-
assisted on the floor of Parlia-
ment.
Apart from Defense Minis-
ter Chavan, Shastri's key min-
isters are: Finance Minister
T. T. Krishnamachari, a. Ma.drasi
Brahman with excellent creden-
tials for his job but no politi-
cal base outside of Kamaraj's
pocket; Home Minister Nanda., a
left-leaning labor organizer
who has had considerable diffi-
culties with Parliament and
with the Kama.raj caucus and is
totally dependent on Shastri;
and Foreign Minister Swaran
Singh, a. long-time cabinet
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INDIAN CABINET May 1965
Prime Minister, and Minister
of Atomic Energy
Minister of Information and
Broadcasting
Security
Minister of Defense
Minister of Food and
Agriculture
Minister of Petroleum and
Chemicals
Minister of Communications
and Parliamentary Affairs
Minister of Industry and
Supply
Minister of Education
Minister of Labor and
Employment
Minister of Rehabilitation
*Member'of the Congress Working Committee
Indira Gandhi
(Nehru's daughter
Sardar Swaran Singh
S. K. Patii *
A. K. Sen
Nehru Appointee but in a new Portfolio
Nehru Appointee retaining previous Portfolio
Appointed by Shastri (S.K. Patil had been a me
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member new to foreign affairs,
a lawyer, and a Sikh who works
doggedly at his portfolio but
who has his eyes on the chief
ministership of Punjab State.
With the Parliament at
large, Shastri has had few real
difficulties. He has, of course,
a dependable 3-to-1 majority,
and those who oppose him within
his own party as well as the
other parties are fragmented.
While not a commanding figure,
his skills are considerable,
and he has emerged from his year
as leader of Parliament with
more pluses than minuses to his
credit. His toughness in deal-
ing with the Communists, his de-
fense of "deviation" from Nehru's
policies, and his handling of
the stormy debates on the sub-
ject of corruption in Orissa,
as well as during the height
of the recent border crisis with
Pakistan have been quite notable,
and not a little surprising to
many observers.
Nevertheless, Shastri has
tended occasionally to be embar-
rassed by ministerial freewheel-
ing. He also has allowed him-
self to be goaded into intemper-
ate replies to intemperate ques-
tions, such as in the parlia-
mentary discussion of cease-fire
terms in. the Rann of Kutch which
caused Pakistan to withdraw an
early bid for talks. He has
also lost touch occasionally
with currents among the member-
ship in Parliament. He thus
was not aware until relatively
late of a considerable build-up
in feeling and pressure among
his colleagues on the recent
language agitation in south
India and in the case of an
abortive signature campaign
against at least one of his
cabinet members. He has often
had a difficult time with the
executive committee of the Con-
gress parliamentary group, which
flexed its muscles for the first
time in 1962 when it contributed
heavily to Krishna. Menon's
ouster from the cabinet.
Shastri the Policy Maker
By and large, Shastri has
kept close to the main guide-
lines of policy laid down by
the Congress Party under Nehru.
He is far more pragmatic than
Nehru, the London School social-
ist. Shastri certainly finds
Congress policies as written
and as implemented a comfortable
frame of reference, and his
modifications are mainly matters
of emphasis; he is a tinkerer,
not an innovator.
He is common-man oriented,
quotes heavily from Gandhi, and
is infinitely more Indian than
Nehru. He has shown a strong
preference for quick-yield de-
velopment projects. He is mak-
ing a major effort to come to
grips with India's food problem
even at the sacrifice of the
pace of industrialization. He
seems intent on compiling a
record of his own on which to
seek a mandate in the general
elections due a year and a half
hence. He and Kamaraj can al-
ready take some measures of
satisfaction from the party's
by-election record since last
June. While experiencing some
difficulties among urban voters,
the Congress Party has added
two seats to its parliamentary
majority and eight seats to its
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majorities in the state assem-
blies, all from rural voters
upon whom the Congress has tra-
ditionally relied.
On foreign matters, Sha.s-
tri's policies are virtually
indistinguishable from Nehru's,
at least the post-1962, post -
Chinese invasion Nehru. Al-
though not sharing Nehru's pre-
occupation with foreign affairs,
he has sought quite successfully
to improve India's relations
with some of its neighbors--
Burma, Ceylon, Nepal, and Afghan-
istan.
He is aware that with Nehru's
death and with India's closer
association with the US, its
influence in Asian-African cir-
cles has progressively eroded.
Presumably he is concerned that
this leaves the field wide open
for Pakistan, the radical gov-
ernments, and the Chinese, and
might in time make India's
causes somewhat less attractive
to Moscow. He will be looking
for opportunities to recoup on
such occasions as the forthcom-
ing Afro-Asian conference in
Algiers.
Toward China, Shastri's pol-
icies have remained tough and un-
yielding, but not militarily
provocative. He has continued
programs to improve India's de-
fense posture vis-a-vis the Chi-
nese, and new efforts have been
made in both the bloc and in
the West to obtain additional
modern military equipment.
Relations with the United
States have been friendly, de-
spite the occasional emotional
outbursts of his foreign minis-
ter and Shastri's unhappiness
with some aspects of US policy
in Southeast Asia. New strains
have appeared, however. These
have resulted from Washington's
postponement of his proposed
visit to the United States, his
reaction in canceling out alto-
gether, and India's unhappiness
with Pakistan's use of American
military aid equipment in the
recent Rann of Kutch episode.
Moscow was quick to capital-
ize on these strains, during
Shastri's recent visit to the
Soviet Union. The visit had
long been billed as one in which
a. new Soviet aid commitment
would be made to India's next
five-year development plan. For
himself, Shastri was able to re-
coup his pride from the blow
suffered by postponement of the
Washington visit, while working
to ensure that Soviet support,
both economic and in the form
of military aid, would continue,
and perhaps even increase.
The Quality of Leadership
In a sense, India in the
post-Nehru period is undergoing
its second Indianization since
independence was achieved. The
first occurred when the British
sahibs left, turning over their
jobs to the brown sahibs they
had trained. A second so-called
Indianization refers not only
to the replacement of Nehru by
a thoroughly home-grown product
but also to the stepped-up re-
tirement of the old brown sahibs
in the Indian civil service and
in the Parliament and their re-
placement by the Indian-trained
element.
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Shastri's form of leader- have to be Indianized during
ship is not dynamic and will this generation while the cul-
certainly not produce dramatic tural bridges still exist and
breakthroughs in the many prob- before the generation which
lem areas he inherited. Lack- never had any contact with the
ing a large reservoir of pres- British raj comes to power.
tige to fall back on, moreover,
Shastri's position will retain
for some time to come a certain
element of fragility in the heat
of crisis. The style of his
leadership is still evolving.
It is the product of the man
and of the Indianizing context
in which he operates and of
which he is a part.
Inherited British forms
will continue to be modified or
abandoned. The decorum of In-
dia.n public life and of the
Parliament may decline a bit
more in Western eyes, and the
latent pent-up violence of In-
dian society may become a bit
more evident. But if the solid
accomplishments of the British
period in India, as consolidated
and redefined by Nehru, are to
leave any permanent imprint on
twentieth century India, they
Shastri, as the product
of British India, British jails,
Indian poverty, and the inde-
pendence movement, embodies
India's mood and the mood of
its ruling party in the immedi-
ate post-Nehru period. He is
doing a reasonably good job
of giving the country the type
of leadership it seems to want
and the only type of leader-
ship its ruling party would
permit at this time, only one
year after Nehru. The condi-
tion which led to his choice
last June--the absence of an
alternative candidate accept-
able to the party as a whole--
remains, and Sha.stri gives every
indication of intending to be
more than a mere caretaker prime
minister. (CONFIDENTIAL)
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