legitimacy; Mrs Gandhi had been a compromise candidate, but it was soon
discovered that she was not inclined to let others control the adminis-
tration. In the end she split the party, and was willing to do more to have
her way than her father had ever been, without necessarily having her
father’s agendas.
PARADOXES OF ‘LEADERSHIP’
For historians, Nehru remains a much-admired enigma. The private
views of Nehru disappeared so completely from the public domain in
the post-independence years – and remain so out of reach for researchers
even now – that writers have tended to project the philosophical,
self-reflexive intellectual of the 1930s into the later years, with the
necessary qualification that his radicalism was tempered by the practical
responsibilities of office. But it is unclear how much of the radicalism
survived into the 1950s and 1960s. Nehru’s speeches were still inspiring,
and the general assumption of his good intentions given his early years
stood him in good stead as he posed as the voice of reason against socialist
and communist ‘extremism’ while pushing for socialism himself. At the
same time, he stood at the head of – and tolerated the presence of –
tendencies that he would certainly have called ‘reactionary’ in his earlier
avatar. If we assume that he exercised self-censorship out of party loyalty
- the party had not fully accepted socialism, as he might have put it –
we miss the question as to why he did not find himself a more congenial
party to head, which he certainly might have attempted to do. (It can
always be said of Nehru’s governments that they were largely coalitions,
and they were therefore unable to be as effective as governments that spoke
with one voice.) More unpalatable possibilities – that Nehru himself saw
his role as that of administering the anti-socialist vaccine of socialist
rhetoric, or to transpose a later joke about Deng Xiaoping’s China,
signalling a left turn and turning right – have been avoided by historians.
It is therefore only possible to raise questions that will continue to be
debated.
Paradoxes abound: Nehru, the eternal coalitionist, appears to have
been particularly adept at locking himself into coalitions with his
opponents rather than his allies. Given the confusions of the socialists after
they departed from the Congress, an alliance in that direction might have
been ruled out later on – but that was in the 1950s; the moment had come
CONCLUSION: DEATH, SUCCESSION, LEGACY 259