of these had taken a battering as a result of his reluctance to translate his
misgivings into action. Nehru operated through a coalition of forces,
headed by himself due to his peculiar prestige, his intellect, his energy,
and the respect and cooperation even his enemies were forced to give him.
He had at best been a clumsy coalitionist, failing to recognise and work
with his natural allies, and finding himself bound up in a coalition of his
natural opponents: businessmen, right-wingers and corrupt bureaucrats
and colleagues. Now, his refusal to seek these natural allies had isolated
him more than ever before; it remained to be seen whether they could
reach out to him despite himself.
The question of succession to the prime ministership was also by this
time in everyone’s mind. In 1959, as Nehru had celebrated his seventieth
birthday, speculations about the future leadership of Congress began to
emerge from offstage whispers to open speculation in the press and in
political circles. There was an international dimension to this as well: for
the Eastern bloc, Nehru was as progressive a third world leader as could
be expected in Indian political conditions; for the Western bloc, he was
a necessary bulwark against communism. Such speculation was amplified
by the China conflict, which had simmered since 1959 – at the end of
which India was, in the phrase then emerging, ‘bi-aligned’, buying arms
from both the United States and the Soviet Union. Then, in the spring
of 1962, Nehru suffered his first major illness, and was thereafter obliged
to rest every afternoon and to reduce his work schedule from seventeen
hours a day to twelve. The China ‘War’ itself was a turning point: Nehru
appeared to be demoralised – he had swiftly turned from a sprightly 70-
year-old to a slow and tired 73-year-old, less sure of himself and altogether
more vulnerable. He appeared to have lost much of his authority, and talk
of finding successors to the prime minister was now everywhere.
Nehru still had a mandate to rule (it might well be said that an election
at the end of 1962 would have looked very different from that at the
beginning of 1962, but elections then might equally have endorsed
Nehru: electoral popularity and parliamentary authority were two separate
things). Nevertheless, opposition to him within the Congress was
mounting. Nehru’s Finance minister, Morarji Desai, was anti-Nehru and
very anti-socialist. Congress corruption was the subject of much discus-
sion. The Congress had proved to be a means of social mobility for new
groups – not altogether or always legally; it was widely talked about that
the Scheduled Caste leader, Jagjivan Ram, used the Railways Ministry to
HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63 251