Jagjivan Ram (Transport and Communications), Lal Bahadur Shastri
(Home) and S.K. Patil (Food and Agriculture) – and six chief ministers
- including Kamaraj himself (Madras), Biju Patnaik (Orissa) and Bakshi
Ghulam Mohammed (Jammu and Kashmir). Nehru hinted that he might
add to the list later, but he did not, leaving the possibility suspended
like a sword of Damocles. The ability to reorder and reorganise the
Congress’s upper ranks placed back in Nehru’s hands some of the initiative
to lead the Congress that he had lost over China. But the press, at least,
remained sceptical. The process of the Kamaraj Plan provoked some
amount of irreverent comment: those who resigned were referred to as the
‘Kamarajed men’, some of whom were later ‘deKamarajed’; the ‘politics
of Kamarajerie’ was much discussed. By this time so many in the higher
ranks of the Congress hated each other that it was fair to say they were held
together only by prospects of power, under the comforting canopy of
Nehru’s persona.
Observers could point out that some of these men were clearly tainted
by corruption charges, while others were on the list so as not to make the
singling out of the corrupt men too obvious. Among the ‘Kamarajed men’
were also those dropped to redress the balance of power in the Cabinet
following the departure of left-wing Congressmen such as Menon. There
were two genuine cases of resignation to follow up a ‘grass-roots’ agenda,
or who were not under suspicion of corruption or right-wing deviation:
Kamaraj himself and Lal Bahadur Shastri. The ‘Kamaraj Plan’ removed
main players in the bid for the succession from the centre of power and
manoeuvre – the Cabinet – at a crucial juncture. Shastri, S.K. Patil, the
food minister who had become notorious even among the Swatantra Party
members for periodically asking for American wheat, and Kamaraj himself
were later ‘de-Kamarajed’. As a rescue operation for the Congress, it was
not very successful; but the Kamaraj Plan clearly affected the succession.
On January 6, 1964, at the annual Congress session in Bhubaneshwar,
Nehru suffered a stroke that affected his left side. Considerably weakened,
he continued to work a reduced schedule; those close to him recognised
that he was near the end. Advisers and journalists pressed him to name
a successor. Nehru ploughed on with his work. Meeting his old friend
Sheikh Abdullah in April, just out of jail at Nehru’s request (facilitated
by the Kamaraj Plan that had removed the Kashmir chief minister), his
was a philosophical counterpoint to Abdullah’s bitterness. Nehru hoped
for reconciliation and spoke of his understanding for ‘an old friend and
CONCLUSION: DEATH, SUCCESSION, LEGACY 255