INDIA: Nehru’s Choice

Back in New Delhi from his visit to Red China, India’s unpredictable Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, much improved in health and spirits, and three pounds heavier, summoned 19 members of the Congress Party working committee to his broad-lawned, two-story home. For two hours he lectured them on his impressions in the land of Communist Mao. General theme: “Anything they can do, we can do better,” and “Democracy is better than dictatorship.”

Then Jawaharlal Nehru ended the suspense over his own future, which was what these practical politicians most wanted to hear. He would remain as Prime Minister for the time being, Nehru said, but he would not run in the January elections for the Congress Party presidency. His choice for his successor was a surprise: an austere, little-known lawyer named Uchhrangrai Navalshanker Dhebar, who happened to be in the room “by special invitation,” though not a member of the working committee. He was a far cry from the politicians around him.

Dhebar is a Gandhi disciple, from Gandhi’s own countryside, who subsists piously on maize bread and buttermilk. A thin man of 49, with a small mustache and glinting spectacles, he is chief minister of Saurashtra state (21,000 square miles, 4,000,000 population), which was put together in 1948 from lands formerly ruled by princes and maharajas. After a day’s stint in his bare lawyer’s office, Dhebar goes home to his bare, two-room dwelling, only one room of which has a carpet. Dhebar squats on the carpet and listens to the peasants, also squatting there, who have come to tell him their troubles. In this way, U. N. Dhebar has gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the poor people’s problems. Though an ascetic, Dhebar is also a fighter. He scraped up a police force that rid his region of dacoits, cruel bandits whose leader enjoyed cutting off his victims’ noses.

The Congress leaders ratified Nehru’s choice, which makes Dhebar’s election a certainty. But they were still a little apprehensive. They know that Nehru believes the party to be flabby, smug and out of contact with the masses—and that Nehru is counting on U. N. Dhebar, the austere militant, to rectify these conditions. The party leaders know that they themselves are flabby and smug, but they want to stay that way.

Jawaharlal Nehru was 65 last week; among his presents were two spotted deer (Chinese symbols of longevity), two red-crested cranes and 100 goldfish from Red China’s Chou Enlai.