The day Nehru resigned

On the 119th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru it seems appropriate to recall a dramatic moment in his many-splendoured but also much criticised life.

On the 119th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru it seems appropriate to recall a dramatic moment in his many-splendoured but also much criticised life. The incident is now almost forgotten, but at the time it had created great sensation and greater worry, both in India and abroad.

During the spring of 1958 he had started complaining that he was feeling 8220;tired and stale8221; and wanted an escape from office, even if temporarily. Some thoughtful people did acknowledge that having borne for 12 years a burden that would dwarf the Himalayas, to say nothing of his valiant contribution to the freedom movement, the prime minister needed a break. But few took his longing for withdrawal from office seriously. After all he had threatened to quit so often. During the early years of Independence when he and his only near-equal, Vallabhbhai Patel, were constantly at loggerheads, both frequently wanted to resign but each insisted that he would go, while the other must stay. This was a remarkable reversal of Lucknow8217;s courtly culture of pehele aap. Just a day before he was assassinated, the Mahatma had brought about a rapprochement between the two quarrelling colleagues, and Mountbatten had enjoined them to comply with Gandhi8217;s last wish.

On a hot summer day in 1954, senior Congress MP Seth Govind Das moved a resolution in the Lok Sabha for a total ban on cow slaughter. When Nehru rejected it out of hand, Das had the temerity to say that a 8220;large majority of the party8221; was in favour of the resolution. Whereupon Nehru retorted, 8220;I would rather resign than accept this nonsensical demand8221;. However, on April 29, 1958 Nehru stunned the Congress Parliamentary Party by making his desire to resign formal. For the first and last time he read at a party meeting, a written statement. Its substance was that he had not taken his decision in a hurry, that he had already written to the President and was now approaching the party that had done him the honour of electing him its leader. He explained that a prime minister8217;s 8220;continuous and unceasing work 8230;much of it routine, left little time for quiet thinking. I feel now that I must have a period when I 8230; can think of myself as an individual citizen of India and not as prime minister8221;. For a brief moment there was deathly silence, and then loud shouts of 8220;No, no8221;. The only comparable event I can think of took place in Egypt nine years later when, after his country8217;s ignominious defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel, Gamal Abdul Nasser announced his resignation. Almost all Arab newspapers filled their front pages with just word 8220;NO8221; in the largest imaginable type.

Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru8217;s eventual successor, immediately called an emergency meeting of the Congress party. Its unanimous decision was that there was no question of Nehru resigning even for a day. At the party meeting one member drew the attention of his colleagues to a portion of the prime minister8217;s statement in which he had said that he wanted time to reflect on the ways to save the world from the hydrogen bomb. 8220;But8221;, lamented the Congress MP, 8220;he has had no hesitation to drop a hydrogen bomb on the Congress party8221;. Every day Congress MPs queued up at the prime minister8217;s office in Parliament House begging of him to stay. One MP said nothing but gave Nehru a piece of paper. On it, he had written: 8220;He who rides a tiger can never dismount8221;.

International reaction was no different from that within the country. According to one of Nehru8217;s biographers, M. J. Akbar, 8220;Washington and Moscow might agree on nothing else, but they agreed that there was no question of Nehru leaving the scene, Eisenhower, with whom Nehru got on very well, wrote immediately, on 1 May, saying it would be a misfortune. And when Congress pressure forced Nehru to stay on, Khrushchev wrote on May 8, 1958 to say how delighted he was8221;.

The only 8220;concession8221; Nehru extracted from his party was a longish holiday in the hill station of Manali where his doctors managed with great difficulty to dissuade the 68-year-old Prime Minister from going to the glaciers across the Rohtang Pass. Numerous accounts of Nehru8217;s stay at Manali underscore that it wasn8217;t much of a holiday. Work and visitors constantly intervened. One of the many visitors was Karl Gruber, foreign minister of Austria, still under four-power occupation 13 years after the end of World War II.nbsp; Guber needed advice on how to deal with the Soviet Union. Nehru advised him to 8220;try neutrality8221;. Austria would get nowhere by ganging with either side, nor would the Russians leave if they believed Austria would become pro-West.

Even so, the holiday in the hills did Nehru good. He returned to Delhi looking fresh and rested and uncomplainingly plunged into work. However the story of the resignation and its withdrawal does not end here. There was a hugely interesting sidelight to it that did not get known until 1992 when Sonia Gandhi published the correspondence between Nehru and his daughter in two volumes. nbsp;

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Although Indira Gandhi and her father lived under the same roof, on matters on which she felt strongly she chose to write to him. Thus, on May 1, 1958, when the rest of the world was beseeching Nehru not to resign, his daughter gave him the contrary advice. 8220;Darling Pappu8221;, she began her letter, 8220;I should not presume to advice you but 8230; having once suggested giving up the prime ministership and started a train of thought and discussion, is it wise to go back to status quo? Will it not have an adverse effect? So much is rotten in our politics that everyone sees things through his own avaricious eyes and is unable to understand nobility or greatness. There will therefore be a feeling that you had no intention of giving up the P.M.ship sic and were only bluffing8230;Let them try to manage by themselves, otherwise they would drag you down with their rottenness. If you are outside, it may at least reassure the general public that you are not responsible for all the wrongdoing8230;I have so much to say but there is no time8221;.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator