World: INDIA: THE LADY v. THE SYNDICATE

ONE of her fellow Congress Party members has likened Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. Last week that description must have seemed terrifyingly apt to the party’s right-wing leaders, known collectively as the Syndicate. In a power struggle; that may yet tear the party asunder ‘and pose a grave threat to India’s fragile democracy, Mrs. Gandhi directly challenged the Syndicate and won a dramatic victory.

Convinced that classical socialism is the answer to India’s manifold economic problems, Indira over the past two years has grown increasingly impatient with the old guard’s conservative approach. Last month the quarrel flared into the open. Determined to trim Indira’s sails, the Syndicate selected Sanjiva Reddy, 56, speaker of the lower house of Parliament and a longtime foe of the Prime Minister’s, as the Congress Party’s official nominee for the presidency.* Mrs. Gandhi responded by ramming through the nationalization of 14 major Indian banks. At the same time, she forced the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Morarji Desai, a Syndicate stalwart.

Unready for Reddy. Despite her opposition, Reddy’s election seemed assured. She had, after all, publicly though petulantly accepted his nomination, and the Congress Party held a 53% majority in the electoral college, whose 861-695 votes are distributed on a popular basis and are cast by 4,137 M.P.s and members of the 17 state legislatures. Then strange things began happening. The Prime Minister’s forceful action against the banks won her a measure of popular acclaim, and she carefully cast herself as the people’s champion. Hundreds of cabbies, ricksha drivers and scavengers, most bearing flowers, began to stage rallies at her New Delhi bungalow, in what seemed to be spontaneous demonstrations of Mrs. Gandhi’s popularity. The meetings had actually been arranged by her backers to unnerve the opposition, but the point was made nonetheless.

Only five days before the presidential election, she made her move. Apparently convinced that the Syndicate was plotting to dump her after the election and form a right-wing coalition, she repudiated Reddy’s candidacy. Her personal choice, she indirectly advised her supporters, was Varahagiri Venkata Giri, 75, who had been acting President since Husain’s death. It was an unprecedented breach of party discipline, and there was angry talk among Syndicate members that she ought to be suspended from the party.

The Syndicate had even greater cause for anger last week, when the presidential votes were counted. In a stunning upset, Giri won a narrow victory over Reddy. Left-wing Communist electors backed Giri almost unanimously. About 40% of Congress Party parliamentarians defied the Syndicate to vote for him. Giri polled 420,077 votes to Reddy’s 405,427.

The Syndicate could yet avenge itself. When it meets this week, the Congress Party’s 21-member working committee could vote to discipline Indira or even expel her, but such action would be subject to later approval by the All India Congress Committee, a far larger forum of 700 delegates. The working committee is considered unlikely to take the drastic step of expulsion, primarily because it would tear the party apart —and perhaps leave Indira as a non-Congress Prime Minister with leftist support. The alternative possibility of bringing down her government with a vote of no-confidence was all but ruled out by her show of strength among the Congress M.P.s. In any case, Indira is not overextending herself to placate the right-wingers. After the election she made a point of saying: “If some vested interests, without understanding the government’s policy, oppose it, they invite their doom.”

One Punch. The chief irony of the power struggle was that it revolved around an office that is virtually powerless. As India’s President, Giri will spend the next five years fulfilling largely ceremonial functions. Giri himself is not considered much of a mover and shaker these days, though in his youth he was a leading revolutionary. While he was studying law in Dublin, in fact, the British deported, him for his enthusiastic involvement in the Irish revolution. But that was long ago, and during the recent campaign his foes hinted that he was becoming senile. “Those who say that I am old,” replied Giri, “let them have the benefit of my fist.”

For all the powerlessness of his office, however, Giri does have one mighty club: he can dissolve Parliament. Only three times since India won its independence in 1947 has this power been used, and then mainly as a routine prologue to scheduled elections. Should Indira run into serious political difficulty, however, such a dissolution would leave her as caretaker Prime Minister for six months, and thus allow plenty of time to prepare for the required elections.

Anything but Progress. Time, above all, is what Indira needs. For all her talk of socialism, she has offered few concrete plans, and her political victories of the past months have preserved her power at the price of further wrenching apart the Congress Party. Congress has ruled for 22 years, but the national elections of 1967 sharply reduced its once-overwhelming majority in Parliament. For millions of Indians, the stability ensured by Congress Party rule no longer outweighs the drift, indecisiveness, lack of discipline, and corruption that go with it. If the minority parties—right and left —continue to gain popularity, the national elections scheduled for 1972 may well bury the party permanently.

“What is really at stake,” writes TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin from New Delhi, “is the political stability that has allowed the 550 million people of the world’s largest working democracy to begin their slow emergence from centuries of poverty, ignorance and disease. If the Congress umbrella splinters, sending its diverse elements running in all directions for opportunistic alliances, India might well be plunged into political chaos.” By 1972, Indira must therefore prove that the Congress can indeed get India moving. If she fails, her recent political triumphs, for all their flashiness, will count as nothing.

*Vacant since the death of President Zakir Husain last May.