CONCLUSION: DEATH,
SUCCESSION, LEGACY
The Nehruvian aura was beginning to fade by the end of 1962, and with
it the legitimacy that he had for so long lent to the Congress under
him: he appeared now as a mere man. In the spring of 1963, there
were three important Lok Sabha by-election defeats for Congress, in
Amroha, Farrukkabad and Rajkot. The victorious candidates were J.B.
Kripalani (standing as an independent), Ram Manohar Lohia (the leader
of the Socialist Party) and Minoo Masani (of the Swatantra Party) – all
three of them had been defeated in the 1962 general elections. Kripalani
immediately served notice of a no-confidence motion against the govern-
ment. This was of course defeated; but it was understood by many to be
a general attempt at censure of Nehru, rather than an attack on specific
policies. Nehru conducted his own, powerful defence: he stood by India’s
economic record under planning, defended the Panch Sheeland non-
alignment as correct (at a time when he had abandoned both), and he
welcomed the no-confidence motion as an opportunity to defend his
policies. But he recognised it as a personal attack. What had brought the
opposition together on the motion, he noted, was ‘a negative, not a
positive attitude, not only a dislike of our Government, but – I am sorry
to say – perhaps a personal attitude against me’.^1
As Nehru’s weaknesses and the Congress’s lack of legitimacy without
him became apparent, the urgency of moves to cleanse the Congress
of corruption clearly emerged: for it was the issue of corruption that had
been least satisfactorily dealt with. For this purpose, there emerged the