India: Close to the Soil

Although he had already succeeded to the leadership of India, Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri could not be gin to govern until all that was mortal of Jawaharlal Nehru vanished in the wind, water and soil of India.

Leaving Delhi last week, a special train crawled slowly through a yellow haze of summer dust. In one coach, heaped with red roses, jasmine and white lotus blooms, stood a large silver-and-copper urn holding Nehru’s ashes.*Reaching Allahabad, Nehru’s home town, late that night, the urn was carried in procession through the predawn coolness to the riverbank and loaded aboard a white-painted amphibious “duck.” The boat moved out to a spot where the muddy brown current of the sacred Ganges is joined by the green water of the Jumna River. Airplanes circled overhead, and one dived down to shower rose petals. Small craft crowded close as Nehru’s tall, handsome grandsons, Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi, lifted the urn. Thousands waded into the river in a frenzy of mourning—one luckless woman ventured too far, was swept away and drowned.

As the boys emptied the wide-mouthed urn over the water, a single cannon boomed a farewell salute, the military band fell silent, and the vast crowd roared, “Nehru amar hail [Nehru is immortal].” The remainder of the ashes were scattered all over India, from the beautiful green Vale of Kashmir, which Nehru loved, to the cotton fields around Ahmadnagar Fort, where he had been imprisoned by the British. It was now clear that Nehru had known for months that he lived close to death. On a scratch pad on his desk, Nehru had neatly written the elegiac lines of Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Vigorous Turn. With Nehru gone, the gaze of India and the world turned to his successor. Flying back to New Delhi from Allahabad, Shastri was officially installed as Prime Minister and turned vigorously to the tasks before him. A conciliator by nature, he hoped to bring his principal rival, Morarji Desai, into his new Cabinet. Spare, ascetic ex-Finance Minister Desai demanded that he be given a post that would, in effect, make him deputy prime minister and No. 2 man in India. When Shastri countered with the offer of the No. 3 position in the Cabinet, just under that of veteran Home Minister Gulzari Lai Nanda, Desai bitterly refused because he felt “it is not consistent with my self-respect.”

Almost all posts in the somewhat lackluster Cabinet were filled by holdovers from Nehru’s day, including such familiar leaders as Defense Minister Y. B. Chavan and Railways Minister S. K. Patil. The most important newcomer is Nehru’s gifted daughter, Indira Gandhi, who became Minister of Information, may later be promoted to Foreign Minister. That post, as well as the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Shastri kept for himself for the time being.

The first Cabinet meeting centered on Shastri’s most pressing problem, India’s soaring food prices, which have risen 8.5% in the past year. Finance Minister T. T. Krishnamachari warned that the government may have to enter the food-distributing business, and Shastri is known to be considering the imposition of price controls.

Deep Offense. In his first nationwide broadcast, the new Prime Minister promised to overhaul the nation’s creaky, corrupt bureaucracy. While reaffirming Nehru’s policy of nonalignment, Shastri pointedly quoted only one foreign leader, Lyndon Johnson, who had said that the world’s best tribute to Nehru would be peace. Shastri held out a warm hand of friendship to neighboring Pakistan, regretting that the two countries have been so long at odds over Kashmir, and praised Pakistan’s recent peace proposals as showing “wisdom and understanding.” As for Red China, Shastri declared that Peking “has wronged us and deeply offended our government and people,” but he also expressed a vague hope for negotiation.

As Prime Minister, Shastri will continue to live in his small bungalow at 1 Motilal Nehru Place (a street named for Nehru’s father), although living quarters for his family and his many relatives will be expanded by taking over a bungalow next door. Nehru’s white-walled residence will probably become a museum. Shastri was garlanded by visitors on his wide lawn and posed for pictures with his grandson Kenny, riding on his shoulders. The child had been called Kennedy from birth in honor of the late U.S. President, but after the Dallas assassination the family decided it would be more decorous to give him the nickname of Kenny.

Despite all of India’s gigantic problems, Shastri seems to be off to a fair start. His opponents in the Congress Party, ranging from Morarji Desai on the right to Krishna Menon on the left, are likely to give him several months’ grace before they start rocking the boat. And after 17 years of Nehru’s aristocratic rule, the mass of the Indian people appear to regard Shastri as representing a return to the homey, close-to-the-soil leadership of Gandhi.

*This urn was filled with charred pieces identified as bone, while seven smaller urns contained all other ashes, those of Nehru’s body as well as the wooden funeral pyre.