Politics in India since Independence unresolved problems like poverty, inequality, communal and regional divisions etc. could lead to a failure of the democratic project or even the disintegration of the country. From Nehru to Shastri The ease with which the succession after Nehru took place proved all the critics wrong. When Nehru passed away, K.
Kamraj, the president of the Congress party consulted party leaders and Congress members of Parliament and found that there was a consensus in favour of Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was unanimously chosen as the leader of the Congress parliamentary party and thus became the country’s next Prime Minister. Shastri was a non-controversial leader from Uttar Pradesh who had been a Minister in Nehru’s cabinet for many years. Nehru had come to depend a lot on him in his last year.
He was known for his simplicity and his commitment to principles. Earlier he had resigned from the position of Railway Minister accepting moral responsibility for a major railway accident. Shastri was the country’s Prime Minister from to . During Shastri’s brief Prime Ministership, the country faced two major challenges.
While India was still recovering from the economic implications of the war with China, failed monsoons, drought and serious food crisis presented a grave challenge. As discussed in the previous chapter, the country also faced a war with Pakistan in . Shastri’s famous slogan ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’, symbolised the country’s resolve to face both these challenges. Shastri’s Prime Ministership came to an abrupt end on January , when he suddenly expired in Tashkent, then in USSR and currently the capital of Uzbekistan.
He was there to discuss and sign an agreement with Muhammad Ayub Khan, the then President of Pakistan, to end the war. From Shastri to Indira Gandhi Thus the Congress faced the challenge of political succession for the second time in two years. This time there was an intense competition between Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi. Morarji Desai had earlier served as Chief Minister of Bombay state (today’s Maharashtra and Gujarat) and also as a Minister at the centre.
Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, had been Congress President in the past and had also been Union Minister for Information in the Shastri cabinet. This time the senior leaders in the party decided to back Indira Gandhi, but the decision was not unanimous. The contest was resolved through a secret ballot among Congress MPs. Indira Gandhi defeated Morarji Desai by securing the support of more than two-thirds of the party’s MPs.
A peaceful transition of power, despite intense competition for leadership, was seen as a sign of maturity of India’s democracy. …new Prime Minister of India, in spite of all forebodings, had been named with more dispatch, and much more dignity, than was the new Prime Minister of Britain. Editorial in The Guardian, London, June , comparing the political succession after Nehru with the succession drama after Harold Macmillan in Britain. Lal Bahadur Shastri ( - ): Prime Minister of India; participated in the freedom movement since ; minister in UP cabinet; General Secretary of Congress; Minister in Union Cabinet from to when he resigned taking responsibility for the railway accident and later from to ; coined the famous slogan ‘Jai Jawan-Jai Kisan’.