and greeted with anguished messages from Eisenhower and Khrushchev
that extolled his virtues and declared his indispensability for the stability
of the world. The best he could manage was a few weeks off in the
Himalayas, in touch with Delhi but temporarily away from it. Nehru
appears at this time to have entered another of his self-reflexive phases,
unfortunately not, this time, shared with the world. He was also now at
the head of a government populated increasingly by men of inferior rank
and ability: Maulana Azad died in 1958, making Nehru the last repre-
sentative of the giants of the nationalist movement left in government.
Krishna Menon, who joined the Cabinet in 1956 after various overseas
assignments, recalled that there was seldom a major debate in Cabinet
because of everyone’s great respect for Nehru; Nehru would tactfully
dictate Cabinet minutes to the Cabinet Secretary summarising ‘discus-
sions’. And on foreign policy issues in particular, other Cabinet members
‘would say something and then the Prime Minister would more or less
educate them’.^10
The disadvantage of what was effectively a personalised government
was that what might be seen as the smaller things were left to be handled
by the lesser mortals, whose conduct was not always above board. By the
late 1950s, the first public rumblings of dissatisfaction at governmental
corruption around him were beginning to emerge, and although they
did not affect Nehru himself, they were indicators that Nehru’s reputation
was not likely to be a permanent shield against his colleagues’ activities.
More dangerously, however, Nehru was unwilling to take seriously
charges of corruption levelled against those close to him, believing them
to be indirect attacks on him. When his personal secretary, M.O. Mathai,
was accused of corruption in February 1959, Nehru defended him in
public, although an informal enquiry revealed he could not account for
his disproportionate wealth and had almost certainly been paid by both
Indian businessmen and the CIA for information. Mathai’s resignation
was accepted. ‘It can safely be assumed,’ Nehru’s official biographer notes,
‘that from 1946 to 1959, the CIA had access to every paper passing
through Nehru’s secretariat.’^11
The CIA: these three letters crop up repeatedly in this period. Initially
dismissed by many as paranoia, fears of CIA intervention now look
increasingly as if they were severely understated. Prominent members
of Nehru’s inner circle were working with and for the CIA from at least
1955; among them Bhola Nath Mullik, who was director of the Indian
HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63 235