Opinion Prelude to a split

So tenuous,indeed phoney,was the 1967 Congress compromise under which Morarji Desai became deputy prime minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet,that it was in tatters in next to no time. In the inner councils of the government,he made it obvious that he had a better understanding of the country’s problems than the prime minister. His cohorts started attacking her more and more sharply at every forum. Though incensed,she kept her cool.

The Desai faction had good reason to feel emboldened. For,the “Syndicate” of Congress party bosses headed by Congress president K. Kamaraj that had kept him at bay not once but twice,had become his ally against Indira Gandhi,and was making no bones about the need to dislodge her from the office of prime minister. For her part,she was clear in her mind that she had to destroy the Syndicate-Desai combination before it destroyed her. But both sides were painfully aware that neither was in a position to take precipitate action for three major reasons.

First,the Congress majority in the Lok Sabha was so narrow that replacing recrimination by direct action could mean an abrupt end to Congress rule and fresh elections. Second,it was foolhardy to carry the party’s internal struggle to its logical conclusion without first overcoming external challenges from the relatively large number of states where comprehensive,if also cacophonic,coalitions of all non-Congress parties were in power. The third significant factor was that as an umbrella party — representing divergent interests and including a plethora of factions,from red-hot radical to extreme right — the Congress also had a long tradition of according to party unity a degree of sanctity that no group or individual could afford to be held responsible for dividing it. This was no bar,however,to endless high-decibel infighting.

The first issue that became the bone of contention between Indira Gandhi and her adversaries was the choice of the party’s nominee for the presidential election. Kamaraj and Desai demanded a second term for the outgoing president,S. Radhakrishnan. They argued that,given the state of the party,there might not be enough votes for her candidate,Zakir Husain,the highly respected vice president,as Radhakrishnan was before moving to Rashtrapati Bhavan. However,Indira Gandhi prevailed and Zakir sahib won easily,even though the combined opposition had,rather improperly,persuaded the then Chief Justice of India,K. Subba Rao,to resign a few months before his retirement to be their presidential candidate. Subba Rao had greatly angered Indira Gandhi by delivering a judgment that,by a four-to-three majority,divested Parliament of the right to amend the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution — a right that had never been questioned until then.

With the country’s president duly elected,the search for a new Congress president to succeedKamaraj also turned into a bitter row. Eventually,the choice fell on S. Nijalingappa,then chief minister of Karnataka. Though an original member of the Syndicate and a close friend of Kamaraj,he never had any personal animus for Indira Gandhi. To display his neutrality,he gave equal representation to the two sides in his working committee. More significantly,he also refused to go along with the proposition of Desai and Kamaraj that the time had come “to oust Indira”. As he confided to his diary,the “enforced resignation of the prime minister would break

the party and the whole country would be in chaos”.

Desai accepted this,but his fury was on the increase for other reasons. The most important of these was that Chandra Shekhar,then the first among the “Young Turks” — a powerful pressure group of radicals — and much later prime minister,even if briefly,had charged Desai’s son,Kantibhai,with corruption. The party had “authorised” Indira Gandhi to “reprimand” Chandra Shekhar,which she conveniently forgot to do.

Desai,S.K. Patil and some others protested also because Indira Gandhi had gone along with the Young Turks’ demand for abolishing the privy purses of princes,guaranteed to them by the Constitution “in perpetuity”. What they took strong objection to was the “shabby manoeuvre” of the Young Turks to “smuggle” abolition of privy purses into the 10-point Congress programme on which all factions had previously agreed. Late at night at the AICC meeting when attendance was thin and senior leaders had all left,the young radicals had called for a vote on privy purses and got their way by exactly 17 votes to four.

Sooner than anyone had expected,Nijalingappa fell in line with Kamaraj and Desai. Irked by Indira Gandhi’s failure or refusal to consult him even on party matters,he recorded in his diary: “She does not deserve to continue in office and has to be removed.” He lost no time to strike at her and chose the annual session of the Congress at Faridabad,a town close to Delhi,as the forum to do so. In his presidential address,he made a blistering attack on the prime minister’s economic policies,especially on the public sector for its “inefficiency and stark failure to make profits”. Delegates were stunned. Two of her staunch supporters,D.P. Mishra and Uma Shankar Dikshit,walked out “in disgust”. The Young Turks immediately tabled a motion to censure the Congress president. Nijalingappa ruled it out of order.

Indira Gandhi,in high dudgeon,rose to deliver a sharp and spirited reply to the Congress president’s “puerile criticism”. The “primary motive” of the public sector,she said,was not profit but “preservation and promotion of national self-reliance”. India’s political and economic interests were “paramount” and would always dictate her policies. All through her hard-hitting rejoinder she was lustily cheered.

What might have followed the unprecedented exchange between the Congress president and the prime minister would never be known. For immediately after Indira Gandhi’s fighting oration,the vast marquee under which the Faridabad Congress met caught fire. Hardly had it started when the stormy session ended literally in smoke.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator.