(a) JAPAN ADVANCES
My second trip around the world in 1957 had begun in Russia and ended in Thailand. I reversed the order in 1959, for I had heard from some of our Ambassadors that India’s stature had shrunk in Asian eyes. I met Nehru on 25th May, 1959, before setting out. He said he had decided to invite the Queen early in 1961 and that he wanted Eisenhower to visit India before that. This would enable him to perfect the arrangements for the Queen’s visit. Nehru said he had succeeded in getting the U.S. and Russia closer and to accept coexistence. He wanted those two powers to co-operate in providing economic aid to the Afro-Asian world.
China s shadow had begun to fall on her smaller neighbours and the U.S. and Russia were trying to establish their presence in Asia. Having established rapport with Hanoi and Jakarta through massive military aid, Moscow resented the American presence in South Vietnam and Thailand. Peking was flirting with Sukarno and plotting subversion in Burma, Thailand and Cambodia. The period of moral posturing was over, and as India could supply neither military hardware nor financial aid it had ceased to count. Indeed, Japan had overshadowed India as an Asian power, for she had built enough economic strength to make Australia a captive market and the non-Communist area from Korea to Burma her trading partner.
It was not surprising in the circumstances that Premier Kishi and other leaders in the political and business world whom I met in Japan showed lack of interest in Indian attitudes. In fact, the Japanese were beginning to come out of their shell and were talking of changes in their constitution to enable them to undertake the defence of their country. I found the Americans encouraging them in their effort to multiply and expand their para-military forces and develop military muscles in the name of self-defence. The Governor of the Bank of Tokyo told me, however, that the Japanese
352 The Nehru Era
were in no hurry to go in for their own defence set-up, for they needed further investment to catch up with the West in scientific and technological development. Already, they had outmatched the West in the manufacture of cameras, transistors, TV sets and watches and had made great headway in electronics.
The highlights of my stay in the U.S. were my meetings with President Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, George Kennan, Robert Anderson, Douglas Dillon, Sherman Cooper, Dean Rusk and Paul Hoffman. (The last two had visited my house in Delhi the same year and had sought my views on the desirability of financing International Press Institute by the Rockefeller Foundation.) In my talk with Treasury Secretary Anderson and his Under-Secretary Dillon, I raised three points. I said the U.S. should set aside one per cent of its gross national product for economic aid and get all the rich nations to follow suit. Secondly, they should form a pool and administer the fund on a regional basis through the U.N. so that integrated economic development could take place. Thirdly, they should try and join hands with Russia in drafting a joint programme to help the advance of the poor nations, whose population totalled 2,000 million.
Sherman Cooper and Kennedy had jointly sponsored a resolution in the Senate favouring massive economic aid to India, and as Kennedy was a candidate for the U.S. Presidency I was keen to meet him. Our country stood the best chance of getting friendly treatment from Washington if Kennedy occupied the White House. As the Senator entered his room in the Capitol, where I was awaiting him, I was struck by his youthful appearance. He welcomed me by saying, “Sherman has told me you are the James Reston of India.” He then made flattering references to Nehru and expressed deep interest in India as the country that had held free elections and had full-fledged democracy. He said his brother, Robert, and he had visited India in 1952 and met Nehru. The Prime Minister paid little attention to them, thinking they were just two young Americans. Nevertheless, he had since developed admiration for Nehru by reading his books and speeches. That this was not a casual statement is shown by the fact that Kennedy referred to Nehru in complimentary terms in his inaugural address as U.S. President.
I explained how Russia was building up its Asian republics and taking them into the modern age and how the West, with twenty times Russia’s economic strength, did not have either a philosophy or a plan to aid the underdeveloped nations. As I was arguing the case for economic uplift of the underdeveloped world, Kennedy kept nodding his head or said: “I stand for it.” He finally said that
The Shrunken Image 253
what I had said represented the challenge of the age and that he for one would meet it. I got a sense of fulfilment from this dialogue. I talked fast and crowded into the time I got with Kennedy as much as I could. I did not know then that he was a very fast reader and thinker. When I finished he said: “Will you join me and write my speeches?” ;
Since Hubert Humphrey had expressed the same wish after I had concluded my talk with him in 1957, I presumed this was only a courteous remark. I grasped its significance only when I met Edward Henley, President of a steel corporation, at a dinner given in Pittsburgh by my youngest daughter, Karuna Rani, and my sonm-law, Dr. Ram Tarneja, then Director of Graduate Studies in Business Administration in Duquesne University. Ghost writers, he explained, were very highly valued in the U.S. Kennedy had, therefore, meant what he said. Anyway, Kennedy fulfilled his promise, for he put through the Congress a five-year programme of economic aid to India when he became President.
I had a forty-minute interview with Eisenhower, who told me of the difficulties he was facing in the Congress. But he added that he would press again for the integrated economic development of the underdeveloped. The President asked me whether newspapers in India were as massive as those in the U.S. He said the Sunday edition of the New York Times was so heavy that he read only the editorial section. I told him our leading papers published eight to twelve pages on weekdays and sixteen on Sundays. He said that was sensible. I explained that this was because we were starved of newsprint. I asked him whether it was fair that in a year the New York Times consumed twice as much newsprint as the entire Indian Press. Since democracy was sustained by freedom of expression, I added, the low circulation of Indian dailies (five million copies and 200 million voters) was not good for democracy. He told his Press Secretary to look into the matter.
After a brief visit to Canada, where I met Premier Diefenbaker in Ottawa and R. M. Fowler, President of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, in Montreal, I pushed on to London armed with a message which Macmillan would be happy to receive. I met the Prime Minister on 20th July with the help of Mrs. Pandit, our High Commissioner, at Downing Street and opened our conversation by saying that Nehru had decided to invite the Queen at her convenience. I added that I had met Nehru before leaving Delhi and recalled my talk with Macmillan in 1957. Macmillan was very pleased at the news I brought and became informal. He told me he was confident India would set an example to other Asian and African
I.F.C.N.
Z
countries in working democratic institutions. He said his rise to the Prime Ministership proved that in a democracy even the poorest had a chance to aspire to the highest post. He took me to his apartment and showed me a picture on the mantelpiece of the cottage in Scotland where his grandfather had lived and from where he walked barefoot to earn his living.
I told Macmillan of the feeling in India that his personal friendliness was not reflected in Whitehall’s attitude to Indo-Pakistani affairs. He said Britain had got tied up with military pacts and cold war politics. Nehru and he were hoping to end the cold war between Moscow and Washington. This would have a beneficial effect on the Indian sub-continent (Earl of Home expressed similar hopes). I mentioned to him the grave handicap from which the Indian Press suffered for want of newsprint. He too promised to help. In fact, on returning home, I was pleasantly surprised to learn from Nehru that Macmillan had written to him about my talk offering help, but that the Government of India were unable to give higher priority to the product.
(b) INTEGRATED BID
I passed through some European capitals whose interest in India had shrunk because this country appeared to them more in the role of a client for aid than the leader of a new force in world affairs. The exception was West Germany, the only Western nation which shows deep respect for Indian culture. German Indologists study Sanskrit, whereas their British counterparts confine themselves to the Indo-Muslim period. This was impressed on me by Kurt Kiesinger in 1954 when he met a delegation of Indian Editors in Dusseldorf as the spokesman of Indo-German Friendship Society. (When I met him again in Delhi after he had become Federal Chancellor in the winter of 1968, he recalled our earlier meeting and said he was very interested in friendship with India.) My talk with Chancellor Adenauer and his Finance Minister gave me the feeling that they despaired of developing economic relations with India because of the many restrictions in this country, but they appreciated Nehru’s role in bringing the two Super Powers closer.
When I reached Moscow, I had a novel experience. Khrushchev held a Press Conference in a room where a couple of hundred newsmen were present. Anybody could shoot a question at him. I asked just one to show that India too figured. At that time, no Indian correspondent had been assigned to Moscow. In fact, this was the main grouse the Kremlin conveyed to our Embassy. I told our
Ambassador my paper would gladly assign a correspondent provided the Russians agreed to sell him a car at the export price and give him a house at the rent they charged Russian journalists. The authorities were sounded, but they did not agree to make these concessions.
Eisenhower, at a Press Conference, had stated that five basic points for discussion in his forthcoming talk with Khrushchev would include the following: “To suggest that together they explore ways and means to advance the living standards of the almost 2,000 million people of the newly developing or underdeveloped countries.”
I raised this issue with Mr. Khrushchev at the Press Conference he gave at the Kremlin following the announcement of his projected visit to the States. I reproduce the question and answer as issued by the Soviet Information Bureau, Moscow:
^ “Durga Das (Hindustan Times )—Is it planned that Mr. Khrushchev will discuss with President Eisenhower the question of aid to the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa ?
“N. S. Khrushchev—The programme of my meeting with the President of the United States has not been planned. And I cannot say now on what questions we shall exchange views. I think we shall exchange views on all questions that will arise during our meeting, including the question of aid to economically underdeveloped countries. This is a serious question and it deserves attention.”
Dillon writing to me on 1st October, 1959, appreciated my comments on the economic aid programmes of the U.S. and thanking me for quoting Khrushchev’s reply to my question, added: “We are also pleased by the support being voiced at the current World Bank meeting for our proposal for the creation of an International Development Association. Through the creation of such an institution we hope to introduce further flexibility, on a multilateral basis, in development loan assistance.”
However, Eisenhower failed to make Khrushchev discuss economic aid when they met at Camp David, presumably because the Russians were averse to meshing their aid programme with those of the U.S.
Writing to Sherman Cooper on 21st August, I stated: “I met Mr. Nehru on 19th August and gave him a review of the world situation as I had gathered in my conversations with leaders of various nations. I also reported to him my conversation with President Eisenhower. Mr. Nehru expressed a strong hope that President Eisenhower would visit India. I think the time has come for President
g 5 6 The Nehru Era
Eisenhower to have a heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Nehru on problems of Asia and Africa. The plan of integrated economic development which I mentioned to you at your house, and which I think is the key to the solution of our problems, can be discussed threadbare in India. A meeting of hearts between Mr. Nehru and American leaders has not taken place yet. I feel that with proper understanding Mr. Nehru can play a very big role in consolidating the situation in non-communist Asia and Africa.”
During my visit to New York, Franklin Lindsay, a leading management consultant, had given a lunch at his house where I met George Kennan and had a discussion with him on the Soviet Union.
I then promised to tell them of my assessment of Russia. Writing to Lindsay on i6th August, 1959, I said: “The Russians want an understanding with the U.S.A. so that they may divert their attention to the production of more consumer goods. They also want a larger output for distribution in the form of trade and aid to the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. This makes it all the more necessary for the West, especially the U.S.A., to have clearly defined objectives and pursue them relentlessly.”
A memorable aspect of my visit to Moscow was a brief meeting with Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago. Pasternak was very warm and friendly and was glad that I had managed to find his place. He autographed my diary and asked me to convey his thanks and greetings to his numerous friends in India who had written to him and to whom he was not able to send a reply. He feelingly said: “I can only meet them in my dreams.”
One of the objects of my global tour was to study the working of parliamentary institutions as I was Chairman of the Press Gallery Committee of Parliament. I was particularly interested in the rules regarding admission to the Press Gallery and to the lobby. On my return home, I wrote to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha telling him that I found the practice in London and Paris of special interest to India. Lobby tickets were issued in Britain to newspapers and news agencies and their editors sent in the names of persons who would hold such tickets.
Another question in which I was interested was the relation of a newspaper editor to his publisher. I had talks with the presidents of the Society of Newspaper Editors and of the Publishers Association in the U.S. and also with individual publishers and editors in the U.S., Britain and Japan. I gathered that in the U.S. about a third of the publishers took an active part in the production and in framing policy directives. Another third gave the editor freedom to pursue the policy he thought best but scrutinised closely what was published.
INF A is Born ^^y
Last came the category of editors who had the freedom to run the
paper as they willed so long as they produced the dividends the publisher wanted.
The Press in Britain was by and large aligned to political parties even though newspapers were not party-owned. Perhaps the most unorthodox opinion was expressed by Roy Thomson, now Lord Thomson of Fleet. He said he considered the newspaper business an instrument for making money and his instructions to his editors were that they must sell whatever would bring in larger earnings. Newspapermen in Japan told me that their tradition was to be antiGovernment in their editorial columns. They felt more papers were sold that way and made for healthy public life.
Chapter iy
INFA IS BORN
On 16th October, 1959, I took six months leave preparatory to retirement from the Hindustan Times. In a signed farewell editorial, I said I proposed to use my retirement from the paper to fill in some gaps in Indian journalism. These gaps were the absence of a syndicated news and feature service and of a reference book on Press and advertising media. As President of the All—India Newspapers Editors’ Conference, I had made a special study of the state of the Press during my tour of the various parts of the country. I had come to the conclusion that a large number of medium and small newspapers could not afford to buy quality editorial material in competition with the dozen giant metropolitan newspapers. Moreover, many papers often resorted to scandal mongering or turned to free material dished out by publicity officials or foreign missions to fill space.
During my world tour of 1959, I studied syndication in the U.S., Britain, Russia and Japan and countries in West Asia and SouthEast Asia. The fact that I was President of A.I.N.E.G. and Editorin-Chief of the Hindustan Times helped to make the trip rewarding both professionally and from the point of view of my plans for the future. Of particular interest was my talk with Walter Lippmann and the advice he offered to make syndicated columns a success in India.
Early in November 1959 I met Nehru to explain to him my plan for a news and feature syndicate. I was with him for forty-five minutes and ended my remarks with the request that he inaugurate India News and Feature Alliance (I.N.F.A.) on his birthday, 14th November, 1959. I added that the date was doubly auspicious as it was also the day of worship of Goddess Durga, after whom I had been named. Nehru looked up his diary and said he would be out of town on that date and that I should approach Pant or Morarji Desai to inaugurate the function.
I asked Nehru whether the scheme had appealed to him on merit. He smiled and said: “You want to test me?” Then he added after a moment’s thought: “Well, I understand it will help to cut across the proprietorial and editorial monopoly of the capitalist Press by supplying quality material to smaller newspapers. It will promote national integration and inter-state communication and it will help project India’s image abroad.” I felt swept off my feet with the way he had articulated in those few words all that I had laboriously tried to explain in forty-five minutes.
I then told Nehru that I had consulted two others, Pant and an old friend, K. C. Mahindra. Pant had blessed the venture with the proviso that I must arrange to produce the service in the regional languages as soon as possible as the best way of securing communication among the states. K.C., as we called him, had said that it would be a success if I could guarantee to live a year.
The inaugural message Nehru gave I.N.F.A. ran: “I am interested in your new journalistic project which will provide a new and specialised news service and syndicated columns. I send you my good wishes for it.”
Morarji Desai was the chief guest at the inauguration. For the first anniversary, attended by Pant, Nehru sent another message almost suggesting he remembered my fears and was happy to see the service had made good. This is what he wrote: “I am glad to learn that your India News and Feature Alliance has made good progress. I send you my good wishes for it.”
I consider two persons co-founders of the Syndicate. K.C. made it possible to give it a start by sparing some accommodation for it in his office in Parliament Street, the most central and exclusive business locality in New Delhi. Trevor Drieberg, whom I had brought into the Hindustan Times as Deputy News Editor, volunteered to join me, and his zeal and professional competence provided a sound base for the organisation we built up.
Luck helped in another way. My third son, Satya Jit, who was in the Indian Air Force, developed trouble in his spine which made the
Medical Board ground him. He had a passion for flying and not tor a desk job. So he resigned, and since I.N.F.A’s operations had grown to the point where it needed a wholetime business manager, his acceptance of my offer that he work with me was very welcome. ;
A week after he joined the organisation and had been given the power of attorney, I got a fairly severe heart attack while flying in a Dakota from Ahmedabad to Bombay in December i960. & That grounded me in Bombay for three months. Although I had survived the one year K.C. had prescribed, the organisation was kept going by Drieberg and Satya Jit. In fact, my illness provided a stern test for the organisation. Inder Jit joined I.N.F.A. as Editor in mid-1962, after ten years with the Times of India : earlier, he spent two years in Biitain on attachment with the Westminster Press Provincial Newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and The Times.
Over the years, it has grown in strength. Its succeeding anniversaries were presided over in turn by B. P. Sinha, Chief Justice of India, Lai Bahadur Shastri, when he was Home Minister, Lok Sabha Speaker Hukam Singh, and Zakir Husain at the time he was Vice-President. Prominent among those who blessed it at birth, and attended every anniversary were Morarji Desai and Mehr Chand Mahajan, former Chief Justice of India.
I am more than ever convinced that the healthy development of the Press in India depends on syndication, both on a national and regional scale, and I consider the trail-blazing success of I.N.F.A. the most rewarding achievement of my journalistic career.
Chapter 18
CHINA BETRAYS NEHRU
(a) N.E.F.A. DEBACLE
Twenty-first October, 1962 marked a turning-point in the Nehru era. That was the day China launched its wanton aggression against India. Not many days afterwards, our Armed Forces in N.E.F.A. were routed and India’s national pride suffered its worst humiliation since independence. What went wrong? How did our officers and jawans, who had earned fame in World Wars I and II as one of the finest fighting men, suddenly come a cropper? Who were the guilty men and did they get their deserts? These and other questions have been asked again and again and sought to be answered by
g6o The Nehru Era
Government leaders, retired generals, military experts and journalists. The story of the debacle has been told only partially. Not all the guilty men have been named.
Nehru decided to cultivate Peking after the revolution in 1949 not in a spirit of romanticism but because he realised India’s security demanded this, although Peking had branded his Government a “running dog of U.S. imperialism.” Peking responded eagerly: it wanted an influential friend who would provide a bridge to the non-Communist world.
Proof of this is an incident which took place when the Nepalese Prime Minister, Tanka Prasad Acharya, visited Peking. At a reception in his honour, he raised the slogan of Nepal-China friendship. Mao, who was present, quickly corrected him, saying it was Nepal-China-India friendship. Acharya’s mission, to cultivate Peking at the expense of Kathmandu’s ties with New Delhi, did not pay off.
Nehru also foresaw that China and Russia would clash one day, because these two countries had too many border disputes to avoid clashes and that their common Communist ideology was by itself no guarantee against differences.
India and China had drifted apart towards a point of no return by April i960 when Chou came to Delhi for further talks on the border question. Nehru was anxious to get China to accept the MacMahon Line as the northern boundary of N.E.F.A. and Chou was willing to do so. But in return, the Chinese Prime Minister asked for India’s acceptance of Chinese presence in Aksai Chin. Nehru was not interested in Aksai Chin (where, as he told Parliament later, “not a blade of grass grows”) and at one stage was quite agreeable to strike a deal. But premature leakage in the Press of what was going on between him and Chou and its description of the proposed announcement as a “sell-out” on Aksai Chin blocked the agreement. The Opposition in Parliament pounced on the report and extracted from an embarassed Nehru the undertaking that “not an inch of Indian territory” would be ceded or bartered away without the approval of the House.
Nehru still favoured the deal personally, as he indicated to Bhagwan Sahay who as India’s Ambassador in Nepal had had an exceptional opportunity for a long talk with Chou when the Chinese Prime Minister visited Kathmandu after Karachi, Kabul and Delhi in 1959. Why then did Nehru not accept Chou’s offer of April i960? Nehru replied to Sahay that Parliament and public opinion had been roused to such a pitch by the slanted Press reports that he could not persuade them to approve of the deal. Even his
Cabinet colleagues, Morarji Desai and others, had strongly opposed
The unprepaiedness for the sudden Chinese onslaught across the Himalayas was as much political as military, if not more. In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, Nehru and Menon clung overlong to the delusion that the Chinese would not attack. Menon invariably flaunted Chen Yi’s “assurance” to him in Geneva that China would “never resort to the use of force to settle the border dispute” as though it was a talisman that ruled out the need for armed vigilance. (M. J. Desai, the Foreign Secretary, told me he had received a similar assurance on behalf of China from Russia in 1 959 -) If Menon was guilty of hugging the illusion, so was Nehru, perhaps to a greater degree. (He openly ticked off General Thimmaya, Chief of Army Staff at a Governor’s Conference months earlier for even suggesting the possibility of an attack by China.) Many others in the Cabinet were not innocent. Either through ignorance or fear of going contrary to the Prime Minister, they endorsed his complacent attitude.
While the menace from Peking mushroomed, even at the highest level one encountered not positive action but only wishful thinking joined to a sense of helplessness. Man the entire frontier with China was the first frantic call; but the response was to throw up a thin line of defensive posts, inadequately manned, along the long border. In vain did experienced officers like Lieutenant-General S. P .P. Thorat plead for defence in depth. We had only to parade our resolve to oppose aggression and Peking would stay its hand, it was argued instead. A foray or two in Aksai Chin was believed to have effectively checked Chinese truculence, and it was contended that we had only to announce our intention to throw them out of Thag La for the Chinese to retreat. The absurdity of this reasoning was established when the enemy thrust deep into Indian territory and inflicted upon us a defeat whose psychological wounds have yet to heal fully.
The disarray in political thinking is just half the story of this disaster. Militarily, our unpreparedness was no less woeful. Here again, though Menon cannot absolve himself of a larger part of the guilt, there are others who must bear it as well. From the Army’s point of view, the order to hurl the Chinese back to the point where their attack originated and to clear the last inch of Indian territory of the aggressor was ill-judged, ill-timed and suicidal. It ran flatly counter to the exigencies of defensive strategy, for no experienced officer would have ordered the enemy to be opposed at heights to which our troops were not acclimatised. After a subsequent visit
to Se La, Sir Edmund Hillary said it required at least a week’s acclimatisation for soldiers to become operationally effective at such heights.
(b) HALF-TOLD STORY
According to one of the protagonists in the drama played out so disastrously for India, in July 1962, three months before the first large-scale Chinese attack, Morarji Desai agreed to give additional allowances to troops stationed at camps 10,000 feet above sea level. General P. N. Trhapar, the Army Chief of Staff, at the same time, approached Desai for Rs. 4,970 million, including Rs. 1,970 million in foreign exchange, for meeting deficiencies in equipment and the requirements of modernisation. Desai assured he would do everything to strengthen the defences but said that since such a large expenditure would have far-reaching economic repercussions, Cabinet sanction would be necessary. It was, therefore, for the Defence Minister to sponsor the proposal. When the matter was taken up with Nehru, the Prime Minister replied that China would not resort to force. He also said he had been told that the ordnance factories were helping meet the deficiencies in equipment.
Menon turned a deaf ear to repeated requests from Army Headquarters for action to meet the serious shortage of modern equipment. A.H.Q. said the Army was out-gunned and out-tanked by the Chinese. In June 1962, it addressed a seventh letter on the subject to Menon, enumerating the deficiencies listed in previous letters sent from October 1961 onward and warning him of the danger inherent in failing to take prompt action. Headquarters did not receive even an acknowledgement of the letter. When this matter of lack of equipment was raised in talks, Menon, once again, flaunted Chen Yi’s “assurance” to him. External Affairs supported Menon’s view.
At a meeting of the Defence Council in September 1962, a bare month before the Chinese struck, the Army Commander in Ladakh said: “If China attacks massively, we shall be annihilated.” The head of Eastern Command said at the same meeting: “If China decides to come down in a big way, we are in no position to hold it anywhere in N.E.F.A.” It was thus evident that the Army chiefs were against any action that the aggressive Chinese might seize on as an excuse for striking hard. They also pointed out that the Chinese had more than a brigade at Dho La, with a division not far behind. Apart from a decided edge over our men in arms, the Chinese had in all four divisions in proximity to N.E.F.A. and two facing
Ladakh. In contrast, India had altogether two divisions in N.E.F.A and Ladakh.
Lieutenant-General “Biji” Kaul was appointed Corps Commander in N.E.F.A. on 5th October after Menon agreed to split the existing corps in the north-eastern region in two—one to operate m N.E.F.A. and the other in Nagaland and along the East Pakistan border. A.H.Q,. had recommended another name for the region, and on its asking Menon to speed up a decision after three months of inaction, he replied: “You can’t push me. If a Minister likes, he can sit on a file for six months or as long as he wants.” Later, at an emergency meeting of Army chiefs and civilian officers of the Defence Ministry on 4th October, Menon said the Government “would like” Kaul to be appointed Commander of the new N.E.F.A. corps.
Kaul came to Delhi from N.E.F.A. on 1 ith October to report to a top-level meeting which the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister attended that the Chinese could not be evicted from Dho La as the men and equipment he had at his disposal were inadequate for the purpose. The two Ministers accepted Kaul’s assessment, although some weeks earlier they had rejected an identical statement of views by the Chief of Staff and the G.O.C. Eastern Command. The meeting decided to stay “Operation Eviction” until the following spring. The Chief of Staff issued formal orders to this effect on 12th October and called for details of the requirements of materials and other resources for this purpose.
On 13th October came Nehru’s statement in Madras on his way to Ceylon that the Army had been ordered “to throw out the Chinese.” A.H.Q. was dumbfounded. Thapar at once went to see Menon, and I am told, said: “This is contrary to the decision of two days ago which said we were not to attack or engage the Chinese.” Menon replied: “This is a political statement. It means action can be taken in ten days or a hundred days or a thousand days.” Eight days after Nehru’s statement, the Chinese attacked. Of course, they could not have done so in such force unless they had been preparing for quite some time. Nehru’s remarks were apparently only a contributory factor in provoking the Chinese. The main cause seems to have been the creation of a new command and the appointment of Kaul, who had direct access to the Defence Minister and the Prime Minister. The Chinese took this to mean that India was preparing to attack.
Kaul was in New Delhi, where his doctors had ordered him to go because he had strained his heart, and his successor, LieutenantGeneral Harbaksh Singh, was on his way to N.E.F.A. when the
364 The Nehru Era
Chinese attacked on 21st October. After the action had started, Thapar saw Menon, who said: “How could I know the Chinese would act like this?” A few days later, Kaul wanted the N.E.F.A. command back to show that he had not run away from his post. Thapar refused requests from Menon and him on the ground that corps commanders should not be changed so quickly. Thapar agreed, however, when Nehru intervened, saying: “Why don’t you send Kaul back? Why are you being adamant?” Kaul was posted back to N.E.F.A. towards the end of October.
The withdrawal of the poorly-equipped Indian forces was inevitable in the face of the massive Chinese attack. The “penny packet” border defences proved a broken reed in N.E.F.A. But the debacle was partly brought about by blunders, among them the premature withdrawal from Se La. (The mountain brigades fighting on the Ladakh front, however, acquitted themselves creditably.) Several military reputations also crumbled before the Chinese onslaught. Kaul, whose half-told “Untold Story” roused much controversy on its publication about five years after these events, was one of the casualties. Thapar conveyed his resignation orally to Nehru personally on his return from N.E.F.A. after the fall of Bomdi La. Nehru appreciated Thapar’s gesture but hoped it would not be necessary to accept the resignation. Later, on receiving news that the Chinese were racing towards foothills south of which lay the Brahmaputra Valley, Nehru sent for Thapar and asked for his resignation. This, he said, might prove helpful in the difficult situation facing the Government.
(c) MENON FALLS
The debacle could not be explained away as an accident. Behind it lay failures at the political and military levels. The country’s mood was reflected in Parliament, when members of all parties demanded somebody’s head. It had to be either Menon’s or Nehru’s. The people were willing to overlook Nehru’s part if he gave up Menon. The Prime Minister realised, however, that if the party and Parliament tasted blood they would not stop with Menon. They might even ask for his. In fact, two days before a crucial meeting of the Executive Committee of the Congress Parliamentary Party, Nehru told Chavan, who had come to Delhi to attend a meeting of the Chief Ministers: “You see, they want Menon’s blood. If I agree, tomorrow they will ask for my blood.”
But whichever way Nehru turned he found pressure on him to throw Menon out. What made him do this finally? Hare Krushna
Mahatab, Deputy Leader of the party, and Mahavir Tyagi claim that the fatal blow was struck by the Executive Committee, whose actions they had carefully planned and rehearsed. Nehru shouted at the Committee members at the meeting and threatened to dismiss them all, but the solid phalanx was not intimidated and the Committee made it clear that no one was bigger than the country. Menon must go or . . .
Satya Narayan Sinha, Chief Whip and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, told me that a private meeting he had with Nehru that night at the Prime Minister’s residence clinched the issue. He told Nehru point-blank that if he did not drop Menon his leadership was in danger. Lai Bahadur Shastri confided he too met Nehru privately and convinced him that unless he dropped Mbnon his own position would be endangered. Indira Gandhi, worried for her father’s sake, went to Vice-President Zakir Husain and asked him to tell Nehru that Menon’s dismissal alone would appease the Congress Party and the country.
Nehru himself is reported to have approached President Radhakrishnan with a suggestion that he might write to Nehru advising him to drop Menon. Radhakrishnan is said to have jocularly remarked that that would reverse the relations between President and Prime Minister. It was the duty of the Prime Minister to advise the President, and in any event it would be a bad example for the President to suggest a Minister’s dismissal. So, Nehru wrote to Radhakrishnan recommending acceptance of Menon’s resignation, which some said had been predated, and others that Menon had submitted voluntarily.
Could Menon have survived the disaster ? His failures as Defence Minister are not enough to explain the political calamity that overtook him. Had he been less brusque and truculent, he might not have been afflicted with so many enemies, both within the Congress and outside. Instead, confident of Nehru’s unfailing friendship and trust, he appeared to set out deliberately to antagonise his colleagues. In his relations with Nehru himself, he betrayed uncertainty; at one moment, he was proud and overbearing, sure of gaining his purpose; at the next, he would exhibit fear and servility. All that seemed to matter to him was that his public image as Nehru’s confidant should not be impaired.
Menon was obsessed with the fear of a military coup. When B. N. Jha was Cabinet Secretary, he received oral report from a Home Ministry intelligence official that General Thimayya and a group of officers were planning a coup. His informant mentioned the movement of some Army units in support of his claim. The official
said this information was based on reports from military sources. The official suggested to Jha that jeeps and other vehicles be requisitioned to keep a watch on troops movements and that Thimayya and other suspected officers be sent compulsorily on leave or retired.
Jha replied that it was not proper to take such action without concrete proof. But if proof was available, the suspects should be arrested immediately. He added that from his experience he judged that the shift of troops was probably a routine exercise. As the official refused to make a report in writing, Jha merely passed on the information to Pant. The Home Minister in turn conveyed it to Nehru, but Jha heard nothing more about it from higher quarters.
Menon had many solid virtues. Endowed with both intellect and imagination, he remodelled the whole structure of the Defence production wing, boosting the value of defence production to Rs. 500 million and setting the country on the road to self-sufficiency. But the trouble with Menon was that he was too ambitious and hoped to move higher on the strength of his achievements as Defence Minister. At the same time, he did not trust anyone implicitly, interfered with appointments and transfers. The price he had to pay for this was truly heavy. At the crucial moment China struck, discontent was rife in the higher echelons of the army.
Menon, it might be said, had found the cards well stacked in his favour, but he played them so recklessly that when it came to a showdown he had no trumps left. Nehru jettisoned Menon only when he discovered that all the forces inside the Cabinet and in the Congress Parliamentary Party were ranged against his favourite and he had no choice. But Nehru did this not without an agonising inner conflict. Menon was his blind spot and at least three times in his talks with me Nehru had praised him for his “colossal intellect.” The fact of the matter is that Nehru felt gnawings of conscience throughout this episode. He knew that the blame for the disaster was more his than that of his loyal friend.
(d) CHANGING IMAGE
My wife and I visited Japan in 1963 and toured the country extensively. I made contacts with governmental and business leaders and newspapermen, and of them perhaps the most fruitful was the talk with Prime Minister Ikeda. He had said on an earlier visit to Delhi that Japan and India had a common destiny, and I was keen on getting him to spell out his ideas on this subject. He recalled the
China Betrays Nehru 367
Anglo-Japanese military alliance at the turn of the century which was directed against Russia. It had been formed because Britain had at its disposal an efficient army in India. India’s manpower, besides British naval strength, provided the basis of the alliance’ Ikeda declared that the situation had altered only to the extent that China, instead of Russia, might be the power against which a balance would have to be established. Thus Tokyo and Delhi were the natural pegs of a system of security. He did not think Japanese trade with China would reach serious proportions.
But what aroused his concern was India’s failure to make good on the economic front. Japan’s economic regeneration had been undertaken step by step. Education was first made universal; agriculture was then modernised and good road, rail and telephone communications provided to link every village. Thereafter, light industries were created, then heavy industries and finally chemical industries. India had, however, tried to reverse the process. He said Japan believed that without economic strength India could not play an effective role in Asian and world affairs. The crusade against colonialism was over. He did not think Australia could win the confidence of the Asians without radically altering her White Australia policy and insular outlook.
My talks with Japanese bankers and industrialists showed that they considered China a growing danger, while merchants and traders and the student community considered her a natural market and an ally. India, the birthplace of Buddhism, was to them too distant, whereas their cultural and geographical affinity was with China.
My wife got a headline in the mass circulation Mainichi when she said in reply to a question that when she visited Japan in 1957 it was Japanese, and six years later it had become America. The Japanese took her remark as a compliment, for they have modelled their progress in science and technology as well as their way of life on that of the U.S.
The following year, I visited Britain for a month as a member of a delegation of editors. I used the occasion to pose a very awkward question. I said the time had come for Britain to choose between India and Pakistan; these two countries had taken up irreconcilable positions and were drifting towards an armed clash. By and large, the politicians supported Pakistan and the economists and businessmen India.
The most forthright answer came from Duncan Sandys, Minister for Commonwealth Relations. Nehru, he said, had led the movement for the liquidation of British influence and power in Africa. Why
did he poke his nose into their affairs ? What did he expect Britain to do ? How could the British be friends with India, which had shown nothing but hostility to them and had been the cause of their downfall? John Freeman, who was editing the New Statesman , put the case differently. The old India hands had sold the idea that the Hindu was a crafty bania and the Muslim a loyal friend. That generation was dying out, but the prejudice they had created would take time to solve.
Chapter ig
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
(a) AFTER NEHRU, WHO?
Nehru doted on his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, whom he affectionately called Nan. She mothered him, and was his friend and companion in the lonely years of his widowerhood. This relationship suffered, however, when M. O. Mathai came on the scene as his personal assistant after Nehru became Prime Minister. This aide had the knack of gauging Nehru’s feelings and wishes, and he strove to fulfil them. He thus gained his confidence and began gradually to influence Nehru’s thoughts and decisions without appearing to do so. One of his qualities which impressed Nehru greatly was his deftness in drafting letters and notes, and in looking after Nehru’s personal finances.
Gradually, the aide became the most powerful member of Nehru’s staff and was designated Special Assistant to the Prime Minister. As he was a bachelor, Nehru provided Mathai with a room in his large house so that he was available almost round the clock. This enabled the aide to acquire more power and dictate orders to the other members of the household. Indeed a stage was reached when he even interposed himself between Nehru and everybody else, including his daughter and sisters and even those in whom he placed his trust in the Government. In fact, barring Azad and one or two others none could think of walking directly into Nehru’s room without going through the aide’s.
Nehru was told over the years of instances of Mrs. Pandit’s
extravagance as India’s Ambassador in the Soviet Union and the United States and High Commissioner in Britain. Audit officials and diplomats^ who had served under her abroad retailed stories of her wasteful” expenditure of the taxpayers’ money and how his image was being tarnished by the sister. But as head of the Ministry ot External Affairs, he generally sanctioned her bills; on an occasion or two when audit raised objections, he even offered to pay from his pocket. Nevertheless, his feelings towards her did undergo a change to some extent.
Around 1956, the tide began to turn against the aide when Indira Gandhi decided to assert herself. She began to take control of the running of the Nehru menage and discuss matters directly with Nehru. When the aide resigned following allegations in Parliament that he had abused his connection with Nehru, Indira advised her father to accept his resignation. Nehru did so. The aide was cleared of the charge but the incident tarnished Nehru’s public image somewhat,^ for the Indian saying that “there is darkness beneath the lamp” was on everybody’s lips as they read detailed Press accounts of the proceedings in Parliament.
Nehru had his own plans for his daughter—plans which some of us clearly discerned. That was the time when people at home and abroad had started asking: “After Nehru, who?” All manner of guesses were being made. However, few realised then that Nehru was, in point of fact, building up Indu, as he affectionately called her, to carry forward the Nehru legend for the third successive generation. It was not without reason that he had welcomed her idea of retaining use of her maiden name after marriage to Feroz Gandhi and calling herself Indira Nehru-Gandhi.
In fact, I disclosed Nehru’s succession plan in my weekly Diary in the Hindustan Times as early as 18th June, 1957. I wrote: “It is wrong to suggest that Mr. Nehru is trying to build up Mr. Menon, or anyone else, as his successor. If Mr. Nehru is consciously building up anyone, he is building up his daughter.” That was shortly after Nehru had gone to London for the Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference and taken Menon along. Menon was then a member of the Cabinet and the fact that a Minister was accompanying the Prime Minister for the first time to the Conference had encouraged talk that Nehru was building up Menon for succession.
Before writing my column, I checked my impression with Azad the previous Sunday morning. To my welcome surprise, he had independently reached the same conclusion. That was enough for me and I put it down in cold print. Of course, I had good reasons for my surmise on the succession question. A few years earlier, when
370 The Nehru Era
Dhebar as Congress President made Indira Gandhi a member of the Congress Working Committee, I had begun to sense what was coming. I described the nomination as very significant and I said that this was so because she had been brought into the higher circles of the party from the top like her grandfather and her father.
Nehru did not relish my comment and sent for me. He said that Tandon as Congress President had made Patel’s daughter, Maniben, a member of the Working Committee but I had had nothing to say about it. I replied that Maniben had been an active Congress worker since 1920, when she commanded the women’s corps at the Ahmedabad session of the Congress. She had gone through the mill, whereas Indira had been given a place in the High Command without any experience of the organisation. Nehru said Indira had refused a ticket for Parliament. We, however, parted smiling as I said that the publicity she had received through my column would stand her in good stead for a public career.
Nehru was upset by the publication about the paragraph on succession. He again sent for me and inquired about my basis for writing it. I recalled the previous talk I had with him and said this impression was shared by those who were in very close contact with him. Nehru said my comment might hurt his daughter. But I again replied that this might, on the contrary, prove useful as a seed sown in the popular mind. I also pointed out that Nehru might find one day that I had unconsciously done his daughter a good turn. This made him relax. I did not tell him that the paragraph was based on the impression given me by Azad and Pant, his closest associates.
My Diary caused sharp reaction in other quarters also. Some of the aspirants were surprised, while others were angry. One was wild and went to the length of accusing me of having “lost” my head. “We are not dead yet,” he angrily thundered. But a year later, the situation had changed materially. Dhebar resigned from Congress Presidentship after the Nagpur Session and Indira succeeded him, to the great astonishment of all, after an intense drama behind the scenes. But, thereby, hangs another story, told to me by those present and confirmed by Pant, Kamaraj and other friends.
All the leaders present had agreed that S. Nijalingappa be appointed President. At various functions held in connection with the Session, Nijalingappa was thereafter the centre of attention, as the delegates vied with one another to felicitate him. A large crowd even collected at the station to give him a hearty send-off when he left for Bangalore. The same evening, Dhebar called an unscheduled
meeting of the Working Committee. When it met, Kamaraj asked what it was about. Dhebar replied that it was about the next President. Kamaraj said: “But the matter has been settled.”
1 hereupon, Shastn quietly suggested that Indira might be asked to become President.
Pant, unaware of the background moves, was surprised by Shastri’s proposal and said: “But Indiraji is not keeping good health. She must first . . .” Before he could complete the sentence, Nehru agitatedly interrupted to say: “There is nothing wrong with Indu’s health. She will feel better once she has work to keep herself busy.. That ended the argument and attention was next turned to the tricky question of communicating the decision to Nijalingappa. Nehru entrusted Pant with the job. Pant, in turn, asked Kamaraj to talk to Nijalingappa. Kamaraj suggested that in the circumstances it would be better if Nijalingappa, Sanjiva Reddy and he issued a joint statement proposing Mrs. Gandhi. He then flew to Madras where the three met and issued the statement.
Even before Indira Gandhi became Congress President, Nehru started building her up as a public personality. Whenever he invited a distinguished Indian or visitor from abroad to lunch or dine with him, he would tell Indira to invite such guests to an entertainment of her own. Thus, when Nehru had a formal luncheon for the Nelson Rockefellers and Eleanor Roosevelt, Indira played host to them at an informal coffee party. The aim of this policy was twofold: to give Indira the confidence she lacked in meeting outsiders and to establish her as a hostess in her own right.
Once she became a member of the Congress Working Committee, other members on the body began to utilise her as a channel of communication with her father, treating her as a means of conveying their ideas and wishes on particular matters to him. This function gave her a position of great importance in the eyes of others as well as in her own. When she became Congress President in 1959, Nehru planned her tours, and saw to it they proved rewarding. Later, under his patient and watchful guidance Indira grew into an important figure on the national scene, particularly after the Chinese attack, when he appointed her the Chairman of the Citizens’ Central Council.
Discerning readers saw in Nehru’s publication towards the end of 1958 of A Bunch of Letters a subconscious attempt to identify his family with the nation. These letters, written to Nehru or by him, are given in chronological order except for the opening letter “written on the birth of my daughter Indira (now Indira Gandhi)” by Sarojini Naidu from Madras on 17th December, 1917. It con
gratulated him on the birth of “my new niece” and ended with “a kiss to the new Soul of India.”
(b) THE KAMARAJ PLAN
The Kamaraj Plan cleared the line of succession for India by eliminating Morarji Desai, who after Pant’s death was “number two” in the Government. I, therefore, sought Kamaraj’s own explanation of the plan named after him. What Kamaraj told me confirmed the information gathered by me from other members of the Congress High Command. This is what he said: The D.M.K. had won only fifteen seats in the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1957, while it won fifty in 1962 and about twenty-seven per cent of the votes cast. This was a danger signal and Kamaraj decided to devote himself fully to countering the D.M.K. and strengthening the Congress organisation in Madras. He suggested to Nehru that he resign the Chief Ministership for this purpose. The Prime Minister asked Kamaraj to let him think over the matter. This was soon after the 1962 elections.
Then came the Chinese attack and the defeat of the Congress in three by-elections to Parliament which were won by Kripalani standing as an independent, the Samyukta Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia and the Swatantra spokesman Minoo Masani respectively. At the time, Biju Patnaik, Chief Minister of Orissa, met Kamaraj and said he would like to join the Central Cabinet and strengthen it. Others too should do the same, he said. Kamaraj told him it was more important to strengthen the party organisation by resigning office and working among the people. Patnaik fell in line with this view and expressed readiness to give up the chief ministership of Orissa. Nehru was in Kashmir and Patnaik went there and discussed the matter with him.
Nehru came to Hyderabad for a week and sent for Kamaraj and asked him for details of his proposal. Kamaraj replied that it was meant only for Madras, but Nehru said it should be applied to other states where the Congress was not strong. He gave the impression that he was worried by the by-election results and the effect on public opinion of the Chinese invasion and the controversy over Menon. Subramaniam was with Nehru and Sanjiva Reddy was also in Hyderabad. After consultations, it was agreed that attention should be paid to organisational work. Nehru suggested that Kamaraj raise the issue in the Working Committee, which was to meet shortly. He did not know what was in Nehru’s mind but did as he was bid.
Father and Daughter 373
There was general agreement on it in the Committee. Nehru said the principle should apply to leaders in the states as well as at the Centre. He christened it the Kamaraj Plan and had it endorsed by the A.I.C.C. It was decided that all Ministers at the Centre and the Chief Ministers should place their resignation in Nehru’s hands and he would decide who should work for the organisation. Kama1 aj s own idea was that it would be enough if as a symbol of the new resolve two Chief Ministers and one or two Central Ministers vacated office and took up organisational work. Until then, he did not suspect that Nehru had a deeper motive. But he realised this when Nehru said he had decided to relieve several Chief Ministers and top leaders, including Morarji Desai.
(c) nehru’s critics
There were only three effective spokesmen of the Opposition during the Nehru era. They were S. P. Mookerjee, Kripalani and Lohia. The first was a real leader because he spoke for the largest group which opposed Nehru’s policies. In oratory and debating skill, he excelled all others who have followed him. Kripalani was always the dissenter and a lone performer. He would have been more effective had he led an Opposition bloc. Lohia was the debunker. He ruthlessly attacked Nehru at every opportunity, repeatedly accusing him of spending Rs. 25,000 a day on himself as Prime Minister in maintaining a large retinue of assistants and bodyguards and a “luxurious” standard of living. He called Mrs. Gandhi a “dumb doll.”
Mookerjee used to tell me that the only way to create an alternative to the Congress was to demolish Nehru’s image. He died while in detention in Srinagar in 1953, an d a promising political career was thus cut short. Kripalani too believed the evils in the country emanated from the top and that Nehru was the pace-setter in abusing patronage and power. Lohia believed that the Nehru family’s identification with the nation was not only undemocratic but harmful and that Nehru’s acceptance of Anglo-Indian cultural values led to his opposing anything that would give the nation a sense of Indianness.
Lohia told me several times that the North, especially the U.P., had remained backward because the Prime Minister had always been chosen from this region. This made the holder of the office lean over backward to please the South in planning economic development and the allocation of important portfolios in the Cabinet. He reinforced this by saying that whereas the revenue from income tax had gone down in the U.P. in a period of ten years it had
374 77 ze Nehru Era
trebled in Madras. He wanted a South Indian Prime Minister so that the North might get its fair share of economic growth.
The Congress Government at the Centre has been unlucky so far as its Finance Ministers are concerned. None served his full term; most of them resigned, while Desai was purged under the Kamaraj Plan and brought back into Mrs. Gandhi’s second Cabinet. But every Finance Minister was a successful parliamentarian.
Chapter 20
ENTER THE SOOTHSAYER
The community of astrologers did not merely influence the hour when independence of India should dawn. It shadowed most men in top echelons—and continues to do so. In some cases, the “Royal Astrologers,” as they came to be called, became all powerful. I found Satya Narayan Sinha, for several years Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and now Minister for Information and Broadcasting a delightful storehouse of anecdotes in such matters. One who has a parliamentary record longer than most other active Indian politicians Sinha is a gay, debonair soul, with a passion for Hindi literature, a belief in esoteric lore like astrology. Of the Nehru anecdotes that Sinha recounted to me, many relate to his closing years.
Sinha told me how he himself came to acquire faith in astrology. A certain reader of horoscopes, derisively known as a patriwala, had forecast Patel’s death nine months before it happened. The Sardar himself was sceptical, and one night, during his accustomed telephone conversation with Sinha about parliamentary matters, chaffed him asking: “What does your patriwala say?” The seer, however, proved right to the exact day and we were all completely taken aback, said Sinha to me.
When T.T.K. seemed to be at the peak of his power in 1958, came another pundit to assert that he was riding for a fall. Sinha ridiculed him, saying: “You are talking through your turban.” But the undaunted man made a still more dire prophecy. “On the very day that Mr. Krishnamachari quits the Government, Maulana Azad will suffer a fall in his bathroom and die four days later.”
Enter the Soothsayer yj
When Azad met with an accident, B. C. Roy was summoned from Calcutta. His verdict was that there was no cause for anxiety. Sinha met Nehru in the lobby of Parliament and told him of the prediction. Nehru exploded angrily: “What rot are you talking? Bidhan (Dr. Roy) is certain that Azad is in no danger.” Four days later, the Education Minister passed away. Sinha recalled how shaken Nehru was after this.
Nehru s first seiious illness was in March 1962, when he returned to Delhi from Poona running a high temperature. His doctors thought this was merely the aftermath of an exhausting election campaign, but it turned out to be a grave ailment which confined him to bed for more than a month and compelled him to keep away from the meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party at which he was re-elected leader.
To Sinha s first suggestion that his horoscope be shown to a jyotishi (astrologer), Nehru turned a deaf ear. Gulzari Lai Nanda, the Planning Minister, prevailed upon him, however, to relent. There was an explosion when the man, well-known in Delhi, told Nehru he would be betrayed by his “best friend” and would have to face an attack from China that very year. Nehru flared up and shouted: This can never happen. You are talking bilge.” The jyotishi folded the horoscope, handed it back and retreated.
Not many weeks after the Chinese launched their aggression. Nehru was in a mood to listen to the astrologer. But the pundit’s words were hardly comforting. Nehru’s life span was over, he pronounced. Only puja (ritual worship) could prolong it. What followed was shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Fifty learned priests were engaged by his admirers to perform the prescribed rites at a temple in Kalkaji, a suburb of Delhi. At the end of the daily ceremonies, the Brahmin pundits repaired to the Prime Minister’s residence to place an auspicious tilak mark on his forehead.
The astrologer had predicted that Nehru would have a second and more serious illness in January 1964 and that he would not survive beyond May 27th. Sinha tried without success to dissuade Nehru from attending the Bhubaneshwar session of the Congress. Nehru left New Delhi on 4th January and became very ill two or three days later. He never recovered fully from the stroke he had at this time. At the A.I.C.C. session on 14th May, Sinha warned some of his Cabinet colleagues that the Prime Minister was likely to die in about ten days as a jyotishi from Bombay had predicted. Nehru passed away on 27th May.
A high official close to Nehru revealed to me later something that lent weight to Sinha’s story of Nehru’s gradual drift to queer
beliefs. For instance, he considered Ayurveda, the ancient Hindu system of therapy, unscientific, but he yielded in his last years to the ministrations of one of its noted practitioners.
It is a peculiar Oriental trait, this faith in soothsayers. Nehru the iconoclast fell prey to it in his last years. Ayub Khan the fallen dictator of Pakistan consulted crystal-gazers. Firoze Khan Noon, when he was Governor of East Pakistan told me that all that a Brahmin had forecast about his political career had come true. Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, a modern man and a leading lawyer of Bombay in the twenties and thirties and Sampurnanand who rose to Chief Minister of U.P. and later Governor of Rajasthan practised astrology as a hobby.
Chapter 21
NEFIRU, MAN AND PRIME MINISTER
(a) IN THE POLITICAL MIRROR
We live too close to the epoch straddled by Nehru’s charismatic personality to assess him as a man or as the undisputed leader of the world’s largest democracy. People still speak of him with a feeling not far short of idolatry; many still utter his name like a mantra. But few saw beyond the trappings of greatness and power to his frailties.
Radhakrishnan, who laid down the office of President in 1967, was closely associated with Nehru for seventeen years or more. His last homage to Nehru was a panegyric. Yet, to those very near him, Radhakrishnan once confided that Jawaharlal was a “poor judge of men” and often extended his confidence and protection to unworthy persons. He had in mind Pratap Singh Kairon and Dharma Teja. Kairon was the “strong man” and Chief Minister of Punjab who had to quit when a Commission of Inquiry pronounced him guilty of some of the numerous charges of corruption and maladministration levelled against him. Dr. Teja caught Nehru’s fancy as a “dynamic figure” and was able to wheedle out of the Government a loan of Rs. 200 million to finance a shipping company he floated. It was not long before the company was in difficulties and Teja and his wife fled the country to avoid arrest.
Morarji Desai, now Deputy Prime Minister under Indira Gandhi, might justifiably have had harsh things to say of Nehru, for after
eing reckoned heir apparent he was dropped from the Cabinet in a purge euphemistically labelled the “Kamaraj Plan.” But Desai spoke of Nehru’s failings without a trace of rancour. He would not agree that Nehru was a bad judge of men. When Nehru sketched the character of a man, he sized him up pretty shrewdly, Desai said.
He once gave me an analysis of Krishna Menon’s personality that no one else could improve upon,” he added. Nehru utilised the men
aiound him for his own purposes and they in return exploited him fully.
When Gopalaswamy Ayyangar died, Nehru inducted Pant, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, into the Central Government. Pant, incidentally, was loth to quit Lucknow and face the political hazards of Delhi. I undertook a self-imposed mission to Lucknow to persuade him to accept his new assignment. He listened to me patiently, and then, after a great deal of humming and hawing, explained: You see, here I hold Cabinet meetings in my drawingroom at any hour of the day or night of my choosing. In Delhi, though, I shall be subjected to a discipline. . . .” After much further argument, he blurted out: “I don’t like this move. It is a Rafian (an expression used to describe Rafi Kidwai’s political methods and followers) manoeuvre to get me out of U.P.”
In any event, Kidwai’s death ended the feud between the two and it did not take Pant long to ingratiate himself with Nehru. He had a capacious mind: he was a super Civil Servant in administrative affairs, and a suberb parliamentarian as well. In the Cabinet, he stood head and shoulders above his colleagues, and had he been younger he might well have stepped into Nehru’s shoes. Nehru became very fond of him. Pant, for his part, treated Nehru like a god and was happy to serve the master even to the point of compounding misdemeanours in the case of Nehru’s blind spots.
Nehru and Azad were intellectually and emotionally very close. Their friendship was based on two factors. First, they found themselves in agreement on most of the political issues that came before the Congress Working Committee. Secondly, Azad believed Nehru was an idealist with intellectual integrity, a progressive outlook and above all free from religious bigotry. At the same time, Azad was not unaware of Nehru’s weaknesses. He blamed him for giving Jinnah the opportunity to win the leadership of the Muslims.
But Azad revised his opinion of Nehru in the last two years of his life. Indeed, he went to the extent of expressing regret for being
unfair to Patel and asserting that he was sure that the country would have been better off if Patel had been Prime Minister. What motivated this change? Towards the end of his life, Azad realised that the best protection for the Muslims was the goodwill of the Hindus and a strong government. He told me he had come to the conclusion that Nehru’s policies had weakened the administration and that his economic theories had failed to improve the living conditions of the people, especially the Muslims.
“You know, my attitude towards him is one of complete adoration,” Mrs. Pandit once said of her brother Nehru. Nevertheless, her assessment of him was outspoken. “I used to think, as many others seem to do, that he was a bad judge of men. But I am sure now that he was not. Of course, some people did fail to measure up to the jobs assigned to them. But Nehru was tolerant to a fault: he was anxious to give everyone a fair deal, every reasonable chance to make good. I agree, though, that no leader should abdicate his authority completely. If my brother had asserted himself, Sheikh Abdullah would not have developed ideas of grandeur. Neither would Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed have strayed from the strait and narrow path had Bhai (brother) retained firm control in his own hands.”
Shastri, who succeeded Nehru as Prime Minister, was a man of few words. One day, when I told him that with his rapport with Nehru he should be able to speak to him frankly, he confessed: “I know Panditji is wrong. He is not practical. He has strong likes and dislikes. He has little contact with the people; he mistakes the worship in their eyes for a complete endorsement of his policies. He has never known what poverty or human suffering is. Yet his heart is in the right place. He wants to see people happy and prosperous.”
Shastri was critical of Nehru’s plans and projects. “They only serve to strengthen the bureaucracy. When you take too much on hand, you do too little. Look at me. I have my limitations, both educational and administrative. I do not go for grandiose schemes.” Shastri candidly admitted: “We have to submit to all he says and does. My loyalty to him therefore is unqualified. I keep my counsel to myself and carry out his wishes. I look for the greatest common denominator in all political and party disputes entrusted to my care by the leader. He has developed confidence in me, for he knows I am utterly loyal to him, and useful too.”
Kidwai first came into prominence as a whip of Motilal Nehru’s Swaraj Party in the Central Legislative Assembly. Next he made his
mark as Revenue and Home Minister in the Pant Cabinet in U.P. Later, drafted by Nehru to the Centre, as a counterweight to Sardar Patel, he held in succession the portfolios of Communications and Food, acquitting himself in both posts with remarkable success, and died in 1954. Had Kidwai outlived Nehru, he might have been a powerful contender for the succession. He was one of the few Muslim politicians who derived their strength from Hindu followers and financiers. All through his life, he yielded Nehru unquestioning friendship and loyalty: but his last spell of office at the Centre seems to have started a process of disenchantment with his leader.
“You know, I never go to Nehru to seek advice or guidance,” Kidwai, who was looked upon as the Patel of the Nehru camp, was in the habit of saying. “I take a decision and just present it to him as a fait accompli. Nehru’s mind is too complex to wrestle with the intricacies of a problem. Those who go to him for advice rarely get a lead—and that only serves to delay matters.”
On another occasion, Kidwai lamented Nehru’s “obsession” with foreign affairs. “Does he not realise that the economic strength of a nation is the sole basis of its influence? Nehru does not understand economics, and is led by the nose by ‘professors’ and ‘experts’ who pander to his whims and fancies.” Kidwai did not see eye to eye with Nehru on matters of high policy either. “I found a solution for Kashmir. I got him to agree to throw Sheikh Abdullah out. Unfortunately, however, there was no follow-up action. We should have absorbed Kashmir for good and all.” Most poignant of all that Kidwai had to say was: “I do not know where we are going. The country needs a man like Patel.”
At an international round table on Nehru’s role in the modern world held in New Delhi in 1966, Krishna Menon had this to say of his friend and patron:
“I think it is no reflection on Panditji to say that so long as Gandhiji lived, or perhaps till about a year afterwards, he reigned and he was India. There was no question of Panditji or anybody else deviating from that. Everybody came under that umbrella.”
According to Menon, Nehru was, in spite of all his internationalism, a nationalist because nationalism was a liberating force in India. Nehru’s approach to all issues was “inductive.” He solved each problem as it arose.
I met Chester Bowles on 22nd November, 1966, and asked him how he would sum up the Nehru era. He said, “Nehru held the country together because of his hold on the people and the supreme authority he wielded. But he had no idea of economics. He talked of Socialism, but did not know how to define it. He talked of social
380 The Nehru Era
justice, but I told him he could have this only when there was an increase in production. He did not grasp that. So you need a leader who understands economic issues and will invigorate your economy.”
According to what Walt Rostow told me in Washington “Nehru’s contributions to the development of post-independent India have been three. He converted the Congress Party, which had fought for independence, into a political party with a platform where compromises were reached. He made the Congress take the responsibility for running the Government. He directed the people’s attention to the domestic economy and the need for development. But his manner of doing it was not successful.”
(b) CIVILIAN VIEWS
M. N. Kaul, Secretary of the Lok Sabha throughout Nehru’s prime ministership and now a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, was an admirer and close observer of Nehru. Kaul told me that Nehru’s will, in which he had asked that his ashes be scattered all over India, was symbolic of his life. Throughout it, he had scattered ideas by the thousand. He was full of ideas, and it was for others to work on them. There was no aspect of human activity which he did not touch or provide for. In the last years of his life, he was left to carry the burden of statecraft alone and the politicians failed him.
How did the politicians fail Nehru? Kaul explained that Nehru used to stay on in Parliament for all important debates to set an example to his Ministers. He disposed of his daily work without delay. But the Ministers did not copy him in either of these things. Nehru did not pull his Ministers up when they deserved this treatment. In fact, he was very soft to them. Nehru could not master the administrative machine. He never rebuked any wrong doer. He never cut short procedure to take decisions. He bowed before challenges like the language issue and his troubles multiplied. He could never pick out an administrator who could put his ideas into effect.
A very able and experienced official of the Ministry of External Affairs gave me his frank assessment of India’s foreign policy under Nehru. He ended his narrative with this remark: “I have never spoken like this to anyone. I have shared my innermost thoughts with you.” I told him that many of his colleagues had said to me that they learned of our policy on any given subject from Nehru’s speeches in Parliament. The official observed: “There was no policy,
no direction. It was all drift and improvisation. This was partly the fault of Nehru and partly of the political and administrative machine. We got our freedom too cheaply and did not realise its value. We should have had ‘rectification,” purged people and adopted a firm and clear policy. We did nothing of the kind. . . . Each Secretary went to Nehru, talked to him, got his consent for what he wanted and went his way.”
A senior I.C.S. officer who worked closely with Nehru for 16 years said that nothing was so revealing of his outlook and philosophy as his fortnightly letters to the Chief Ministers. They were exceedingly well-written, but what was their theme ? He lectured to them on the evils of regionalism, communalism and linguism. Yet he failed to remove any of them. In fact, they became so aggravated that he had to call a national integration conference. His failure to accept the report of the States Reorganisation Commission caused the failure of his campaign for integration.
The second theme of his letters was emphasis on planning. Nehru repeatedly described big industrial plants and dams as modern temples and held them up as proof of India’s progress. He would give his impressions of his own tours of such work and also refer to what foreigners told him after they saw them. His letters never referred to such matters as exports, imports, balance of payments, food, prices and inflation. Giganticism seemed to act on him like a dose of opium, inuring him to the effects of economic laws. His eggheads fed his ego by preaching bigger and bigger plans.
Basically, Nehru was allergic to Americans, my informant said, and narrated an interesting incident. When Dulles visited Delhi in x 954 some people wished to hold a hostile demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy. Nehru came to know of this and sent for the Chief Commissioner, who told him that popular feeling against Dulles was strong and that a demonstration may prove a safety valve. Nehru said: “I know this fellow Dulles is conscientiously stupid. But I do not want any hostile demonstration.”
Two senior I.C.S. officers who worked as Nehru’s Principal Private Secretaries found Nehru accomplished in his public relations. Once the correspondent of an American newspaper asked for an interview. The Principal Private Secretary put up with his letter clippings of the man’s writings from Karachi which wholly supported Pakistan and criticised India violently. Nehru turned down the request, but a little later, as the Secretary was drafting a refusal, Nehru came into his room and said: “We are going to Kashmir tomorrow. Ask this man to join us on the flight.” Nehru
hardly devoted ten minutes to the correspondent in the plane, but that he should have had the privilege of flying with Nehru completely changed his attitude. After that, he wrote in glowing terms about Nehru and also wrote a life of Gandhi.
As Prime Minister, Nehru was methodical and punctual and ordered his life carefully. He took notes of conversations with important visitors and filed them for reference. He was extremely hostile to certain countries and was accordingly curt to their diplomatic representatives in New Delhi. He had no stomach for administrative details and niceties. He was satisfied with issuing broad directives and expected his subordinates to put them into practice. However, he went into details on particular problems of foreign affairs when they interested him.
In the early stages of his prime ministership, he was firm against corruption of any kind. He used to come down heavily on anybody, whether an official or a politician, if any charge of dishonesty or misdemeanour was brought to his notice against the person concerned. This was the pattern from 1947 to 1951, but he gradually began to acquire a tolerance for the malpractices of politicians. He thereupon substituted political expediency for principle in dealing with his ministerial colleagues. Unhesitatingly, he turned a blind eye to a demand by G. D. Deshmukh for the appointment of a highpower Tribunal to eradicate corruption when one of the cases listed by him related to the son of a close colleague.
It was not difficult for a Civil Servant to get Nehru to do what he wanted. There was the instance of an officer, whom Girija Shankar Bajpai, the Secretary-General to the Ministry of External Affairs, wanted appointed Ambassador in Europe. When the papers proposing the appointment were taken to Nehru, he hurled them to the floor saying he would never sign them. Next morning, his Private Secretary told him the man might make good in this post. Nehru, however, still refused to sign. A day or two later, the Private Secretary brought up the matter again and Nehru said: “Are you sure he will make good? All right, I shall sign the papers.” The man was not a success, but his sponsor was pleased that the appointment had been approved.
(c) SUPERB PERFORMER
Nehru was a superb performer and the people loved him. He always dramatised his role and was so sensitive to the reactions of his audience that he would change his act if even a few voices booed.
He could not stand dissent or disapproval. When some people waved black flags at him in Belgaum, demanding reorganisation of the states on a linguistic basis, he yielded without a fight. If he stuck tenaciously to his stand on Kashmir, it was because he knew that the whole nation stood behind him.
Nehru enjoyed the company of intellectuals and picked Krishna Menon s brains. Menon served as his Alsatian and Nehru threw him to the wolves when, following the debacle in N.E.F.A., he realised that his own leadership was in grave danger. He liquidated every politician, Morarji Desai in particular, who he felt might destroy the Nehru legend. He knew India was still feudal and needed to identify itself with a leader and a family. He used his Britishoriented education for intellectual flights based on Fabian Socialism; he used his social upbringing to play the gentleman, the nobleman and the humanist; he used his inborn talent as a Kashmiri Brahmin to outmanoeuvre his detractors and rivals. He excelled his contemporaries in statecraft.
Nehru was an aristocrat at heart. Fike royalty in the feudal days, he was not averse at times to the company of jesters, and there were those among the top circles of the Government who fulfilled this role. But he had little communication with ordinary Congressmen or with the people. In general, too, his contact with his Cabinet colleagues did not extend beyond official routine. Kidwai was the only member of his Cabinet who was free with him, but Nehru ceased to lean on Kidwai after Patel’s death.
One of Nehru’s far-seeing moves was to organise the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, which he opened on 4th November, 1954. He took counsel with Chief Minister Roy of Bengal soon after Hillary and Tenzing had conquered Everest in 1953 and put Tenzing in charge of the institute. The gratifying outcome of this move is that teams of Indians organised by the armed services have established a record in the frequency of conquest of Everest and that civilians, especially women, have scaled many difficult Himalayan peaks.
The entire equipment for mountain climbing is now manufactured in India by defence installations. The institute has proved its utility in helping organise national defence in the light of the lessons learnt in the war with China. The Secretary of the Defence Ministry, Harish Sarin, the president of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation was instrumental in employing climbers trained at it to instruct troops in scaling heights as a preparation for combat in mountainous regions. The feeling among the people, in the words of Sarin, is “that the Himalayas, which have protected us through the
384 The Nehru Era
ages must be protected by us now against the onslaught of any aggressor.”
Indeed, India has come a long way in mountaineering in the last ten years. Some eighty expeditions have been organised to peaks of 18,000 or 19,000 feet or more. There have been ten all-women Himalayan expeditions and about fifty mountaineering clubs and associations functioning.
Nehru had few personal friends. Prominent among these was Padmaja, the daughter of Sarojini Naidu and later Governor of West Bengal, who always brought him good cheer. She laughed and joked with him and affectionately called him a “bald-headed old man.” Her elder sister, Leelamani, told me more than once that Nehru would have married Padmaja after he lost his wife but for considerations of political expediency.
To Nehru, his image as a democrat and secular being was of the highest importance. Once M. C. Chagla, who was Education Minister in Nehru’s Cabinet, and Ali Yavar Jung, now Ambassador in the U.S., conveyed to me their concern and chagrin over the fact that whereas Nehru backed progressive Muslims among the Arabs he lent his ear to Conservative Muslims in India. They saw no reason, for instance, why there should not be a common civil code applicable to all citizens alike. When I asked Nehru why he seemed to have adopted double standards, he replied his friendship with Nasser and other progressive Arab leaders was designed to counterbalance the Conservative Muslim bloc, which stretched from Pakistan to Jordan and posed a threat to India’s security and its secularism. But he was hesitant to attempt reforms in the domestic sphere for fear that Muslim obscurantists would raise the cry “Islam in danger.”
Gandhi’s outlook on life was based on economics. Patel understood that money was a very powerful motivating force. He encouraged capital and bent it to his purpose. Gandhi created an organisational alternative before he started to destroy what existed. Patel mastered the organisation and used whatever instrument was available and reshaped it to suit the need of the hour. Nehru had no experience of organisation. He did not understand economics, nor did he bother to face facts. He wove fantasies round his ideals and believed that somehow his preachings would make the people do the things he wanted.
The Indian people made a hero of Nehru. For ten years, he made them feel as the chosen people whose leader was the moral leader of the world. Indeed, they began to think that India had come full circle to the Vedic age, in which all wisdom was the privilege of the
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seers of India. Much of the charisma had worn thin towards the closing years of his life. The Chinese attack rudely awakened the people to the harsh reality that they had been living in a world of make-believe. Nevertheless when Nehru passed away, he still enjoyed in the minds and hearts of the Indian people a place which few before him have had—and few ever will.
I.F.C.N.
2B
Book V