‘Kamaraj Plan’, named after a quiet, soft-spoken Congressman, the
Madras chief minister, K. Kamaraj Nadar, but attributed to Biju Patnaik
the Orissa chief minister, Kamaraj and Nehru himself, and originating
with Patnaik. As an attempt to stop the decline in Congress’s moral stan-
dards, it suggested – inevitably invoking Gandhi – that self-sacrificing
members had to renounce high office to concentrate on ‘grass-roots’
politics (a phrase that meant an attempt to reconnect with ordinary people
and in doing so acknowledged that those connections had been lost). Some
senior Congressmen in government would therefore resign their posts
and take up full-time organisational work to revitalise the party. A visibly
old and tired Nehru publicly accepted the Kamaraj Plan in August 1963
and asked permission to resign himself. This he was not allowed to do, as
his colleagues proclaimed his indispensability as head of government.
Nehru then suggested a committee be set up to implement the Plan, but
this was also turned down – he himself should be the judge of the moral
standards of the party and the main executor of the plan. Clearly, the
intention was to place powers in Nehru’s hands to use his own legitimacy- damaged but not broken by the China war – to re-legitimise
the Congress, as well as to remould the upper ranks of the party to his
liking.
THE LAST RECOVERY
The All-India Congress Committee endorsed the Kamaraj Plan on August- Many Union cabinet ministers and state chief ministers submitted
their resignations, and the Working Committee set up three committees
to deal with organisational matters, corruption charges and the collection
of party funds, respectively. The Kamaraj Plan was activated on August
24, after many days of behind-the-scenes lobbying and bargaining.
Its Gandhian rationale – that the Congress was not for people attracted
merely by office and the power it brought, but was for people who
respected the Congress’s tradition of service – disarmed the internal oppo-
sition, which could not afford to look as if it was acting in a self-interested
manner. But with Nehru not getting any younger (he was almost 74),
many Congressmen knew that these activities could affect the succession
to Congress leadership.
The list of those who were to take the temporary path of renunciation
contained six Cabinet ministers – including Morarji Desai (Finance),
254 CONCLUSION: DEATH, SUCCESSION, LEGACY