After Nehru: the succession question (1964-66)

Detail

1. The two questions: "After Nehru, who?" and "After Nehru, what?"

• Political succession means one leader handing power to the next. In a democracy this should happen peacefully, by rules, and without the army.
• "After Nehru, who?" asked who would become the next Prime Minister.
• "After Nehru, what?" was the harder question. It asked whether India would stay democratic, united and secular once its founding leader was gone.
• The fear: many newly independent countries could not manage democratic succession. In several of them the army took power. Outside observers expected the same in India.
• The "dangerous decade": observers gave the 1960s this name. Their reason was that India still had serious unsolved problems:
• poverty and inequality;
• communal (religious) divisions;

• regional and linguistic divisions.

• NCERT's question: a student in the chapter asks why people doubt India's democracy when nobody asks the same about France or Canada. The point is that new, poor democracies are judged more harshly than old, rich ones.

• How the Constitution handles a change of PM:
• The President appoints the PM (Article 75(1)).
• By convention the President appoints the person who leads the majority in the Lok Sabha.
• So the real choice was made inside the Congress Parliamentary Party (all Congress MPs together), and the President then formally appointed its leader.

2. Prelude: the Kamaraj Plan (August 1963)

• Kamaraj Plan: a proposal by K. Kamaraj, then Chief Minister of Madras. Senior Congress leaders would give up government posts and work to rebuild the party at the grassroots, and younger workers would take their places.
• Kamaraj led by example and left his own post as Chief Minister [4].
• Who resigned:
• six Union ministers, including Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram and S.K. Patil;

• six chief ministers, including Kamaraj himself.

• The result:

• Senior leaders now held party posts instead of ministries.
• This made the party bosses (leaders who controlled the organisation) stronger.

• These bosses later formed the Syndicate, an informal group of powerful Congress organisation leaders (see §5 of the parent note).

• Kamaraj was largely responsible for making Shastri PM in 1964 and Indira Gandhi PM in 1966 [4].

3. Nehru to Shastri (May–June 1964)

• 27 May 1964: Nehru died in office.
• Acting PM: Gulzarilal Nanda became interim (acting) PM [3].

• Nanda served two short terms as acting PM, each about 14 days: 27 May–9 June 1964 and 11–24 January 1966 [3].

• How Shastri was chosen:

• K. Kamaraj, then Congress president, spoke to senior leaders and Congress MPs.
• He found a consensus (general agreement without a contest).
• Lal Bahadur Shastri was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party unanimously (no one voted against him).

• Shastri was sworn in as India's second PM in June 1964 [5].

• Shastri: profile

• A non-controversial leader from Uttar Pradesh.
• He had been a Union minister for many years.

• As Railway Minister he resigned and took moral responsibility for a railway accident, though the accident was caused by a technical failure [7].

  • His resignation is still seen as the "gold standard" of honesty in public life [7].

• The Guardian (3 June 1964): the British paper praised how calmly and with how much dignity India changed its leader. It compared this with the bitter fight over succession in Britain after Macmillan.

4. Shastri's term (1964-66): crisis years

• Economic strain:
• The economy was still hurt by the 1962 war with China.
• The monsoons failed and drought followed.

• This caused a serious food crisis.

• 1965 war with Pakistan: a full war on the western front.

• "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" ("Hail the soldier, hail the farmer"):
• Shastri's slogan joined the country's two needs: defence and food.

• It rallied people behind the soldiers at the border and the farmers in the fields.

• Link to the economy: India depended on PL-480 food imports from the USA. This dependence led to the new agricultural strategy (the start of the Green Revolution). See economy notes.

• Tashkent Declaration (10 January 1966):
• Signed by PM Shastri and Pakistan's President Mohammad Ayub Khan. It formally ended the 1965 war [2].
• Mediator: Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin, at Tashkent in the USSR [2].
• Main terms [2]:
  • Both sides would settle disputes peacefully, without force, as the UN Charter requires.
  • All armed personnel would go back to their positions from before 5 August 1965, by 25 February 1966.
  • Neither side would interfere in the other's affairs, and both would discourage hostile propaganda.
  • Diplomatic missions would be restored, and trade, communication and cultural ties would be considered.

• (Details: india-external-relations.)

• 11 January 1966: Shastri died at Tashkent, one day after signing the Declaration. Nanda became acting PM a second time [3].

5. Shastri to Indira Gandhi (January 1966)

• An open contest this time. Unlike in 1964, there was no consensus.

	Indira Gandhi	Morarji Desai
Background	Nehru's daughter; Congress president in 1959; Information and Broadcasting Minister under Shastri	Former Chief Minister of Bombay; senior Union minister (including Finance)
Support	Most senior leaders and the party bosses, though not all of them	Right wing of the party
Result	Won with more than two-thirds of the votes (NCERT: 355-169)	Lost; stayed her main rival inside the party [6]

• How the choice was made:
• Congress MPs voted by secret ballot (each MP votes privately, so nobody knows who voted for whom).
• Indira Gandhi won.

• She was sworn in on 24 January 1966.

• Britannica describes her selection as a compromise between the party's right and left wings [6].

• Why it mattered:
• Power changed hands peacefully, even after a tough contest.

• People read this as a sign of democratic maturity.

• The Syndicate's calculation:

• The bosses thought a new and inexperienced PM would have to rely on them for advice and support.

• Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia mocked her as a "goongi gudiya" ("dumb doll").

• What came next:

• Within a year she had to lead Congress into the 1967 general election, while the economy was getting worse.
• Desai and the right wing kept challenging her [6].
• In 1969 the Syndicate, led by Kamaraj and Desai, expelled her. The old guard then formed Congress (Organisation) [6]. (See the parent note on the 1969 split.)

Prelims Hooks

• Kamaraj Plan: proposed in August 1963 by K. Kamaraj, then Chief Minister of Madras. Six Union ministers and six chief ministers resigned.
• Ministers who resigned under the Kamaraj Plan included Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram and S.K. Patil.
• Gulzarilal Nanda was acting PM twice: 27 May–9 June 1964 and 11–24 January 1966.
• In 1964 Shastri was elected unanimously, by consensus. In 1966 Indira Gandhi was elected by a secret-ballot contest against Morarji Desai (NCERT: 355-169).
• Tashkent Declaration: signed on 10 January 1966 by Shastri and Ayub Khan, with Kosygin (USSR) as mediator. Troops were to go back to their positions from before 5 August 1965.
• Trap: Shastri died on 11 January 1966, not on 10 January, which is the day the Declaration was signed.
• "Goongi gudiya" was Ram Manohar Lohia's jibe at Indira Gandhi. "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" was Shastri's slogan.
• The "dangerous decade" was the name observers gave the 1960s, because they feared India's democracy might fail after Nehru.
• The Guardian (3 June 1964) compared India's smooth succession with Britain's after Macmillan.

Mains Points

• Testing democracy: India had two changes of PM within 20 months (1964 and 1966), one by consensus and one by secret-ballot contest. Both were peaceful and followed party and constitutional rules. Together they disproved the "dangerous decade" fear and showed that India's institutions did not depend on one person. This is useful for GS-I questions on how democracy took root after 1947.
• Party versus government: the Kamaraj Plan strengthened the party organisation, and the Syndicate became the kingmaker. This set up the clash between the organisation and the PM that ended in the 1969 split. It is a good case study of power inside a party, and of whether Congress should be seen as a dominant party or as a coalition of groups.
• Moral responsibility: Shastri's resignation as Railway Minister is a standard example of a minister answering personally for failure in their department, one part of ministerial accountability. It contrasts with later practice, where ministers rarely resign. Useful in GS-IV and GS-II answers.
• Crisis leadership: in 1965-66 war and food shortage came at the same time. "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan" linked national security with food security. The dependence on PL-480 imports also pushed India towards the Green Revolution and food self-reliance.