5.1 The 1960s — A Turning Point in Indian Politics

The decade of the 1960s was a turning point in Indian political life. In Chapter 2 you read about the rise of what political scientists call the Congress system^? — the long phase in which the Indian National Congress dominated both the centre and the states almost without serious electoral challenge. From the early 1960s, however, this dominance began to crack. Political competition grew sharper. Opposition parties became less divided and more confident. The Congress, in turn, found it harder to hold together the wide variety of opinions and interests it had once accommodated. The party faced challenges from without — a more united opposition — and from within — a leadership that no longer agreed on direction.

This chapter, the third in the trio that began with Chapter 2, picks up the thread of Indian politics from where the earlier chapters left off, and follows four big questions:

• How did the political transition take place after Jawaharlal Nehru?
• How did opposition unity and the Congress split challenge Congress dominance?
• How did the new Congress led by Indira Gandhi overcome these challenges?
• How did new policies and ideologies facilitate the restoration of the Congress system?

5.2 The Challenge of Political Succession — May 1964

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru passed away in May 1964. He had been unwell for more than a year, and the question of succession had been the subject of much speculation in Delhi and abroad: after Nehru, who? But in a newly independent country like India there was a deeper anxiety — after Nehru, what? Would Indian democracy itself survive his departure? Many foreign observers genuinely doubted that it would.

The fear was that India would follow the path of so many other newly independent countries that had slid into authoritarian rule, military takeover or disintegration. Some analysts predicted a political role for the army; others wondered whether the Indian Union could remain a single country. Such doubts were sharpened by the multiple crises that the new leadership would have to manage. The 1960s were therefore labelled by some commentators as the 'dangerous decade', a period in which unresolved problems — poverty, inequality, communal and regional divisions — could derail the democratic project or even break the country apart.

5.2.1 From Nehru to Shastri — A Smooth First Succession

The first transition surprised the sceptics with its smoothness. As soon as Nehru passed away, K. Kamaraj, the then President of the Congress party, consulted senior leaders and Congress Members of Parliament. A clear consensus emerged in favour of Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was unanimously chosen as the Leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and thus became India's second Prime Minister.

Shastri was a non-controversial figure from Uttar Pradesh. He had served as a minister in Nehru's cabinet for several years, and Nehru had grown to depend on him in his last year. He was admired for his simplicity and his commitment to principles — most famously when he resigned as Railway Minister in 1956 after a major rail accident, accepting moral responsibility for it.

5.2.2 Shastri's Brief Prime Ministership — Two Crises at Once

Shastri's tenure as Prime Minister was short — barely nineteen months — but two enormous challenges defined it. The country was still recovering from the economic shock of the 1962 war with China. On top of that, monsoons failed, drought spread, and a serious food crisis hit the country. As if that were not enough, India also had to fight a war with Pakistan in 1965, which you read about in the previous chapter. Shastri's now-iconic slogan, "Jai Jawan Jai Kisan", captured the country's twin resolve to defend its borders and feed its people through this difficult phase.

Shastri's Prime Ministership ended abruptly on 11 January 1966. He had travelled to Tashkent, then in the USSR (and now the capital of Uzbekistan), to negotiate and sign an agreement with Muhammad Ayub Khan, the then President of Pakistan, that would end the 1965 war. The agreement — the Tashkent Declaration^? — was indeed signed. But shortly after the signing, on the very night of 10–11 January 1966, Shastri died suddenly of a heart attack in Tashkent. India lost its second Prime Minister within twenty months.

5.3 From Shastri to Indira Gandhi — A Contested Second Succession

Within twenty months, the Congress faced the challenge of political succession for the second time. This time the contest was sharp. Two heavyweight contenders emerged: Morarji Desai, who had earlier served as Chief Minister of Bombay state (covering the present Maharashtra and Gujarat) and as a Union Minister; and Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been President of the Congress in 1959 and Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting in Shastri's cabinet.

The senior leaders of the Congress backed Indira Gandhi, but the decision was not unanimous. The contest was decided 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. Despite the intensity of the rivalry, the transfer of power was peaceful — and observers around the world saw this as a sign of the maturing of Indian democracy. India had now managed two successions in less than two years without disorder, dictatorship or disintegration.

5.3.1 Why the Senior Leaders Chose Indira

The Congress senior leaders may have chosen Indira Gandhi for a very particular reason. She had been politically active for a long time but had served as a Cabinet minister only briefly. Her administrative and political inexperience would, it was assumed, force her to lean on the senior leaders for guidance — making her easier to control. The cartoonist R. K. Laxman captured the popular impression of the moment with his image of a young Indira being walked into power by the senior leaders. Some critics, in fact, dismissed her as a "Goongi Gudiya"^? — a "dumb doll" — who would do as the seniors instructed. As the rest of this chapter shows, that calculation turned out to be entirely wrong.

5.4 The Triple Crisis Facing Indira Gandhi (1966–67)

It took some time before the new Prime Minister could find her feet. While Indira Gandhi had been politically active for a long time, she had served as a minister under Lal Bahadur Shastri only for a short period. Within a year of becoming PM she had to lead the party in a Lok Sabha election — and around the same time the country's economic situation went from bad to worse. Faced with these difficulties, Indira Gandhi set out to gain control over the party and to demonstrate her leadership skills. She would have to do so under three converging crises.

5.4.1 The Devaluation Shock — From ₹5 to ₹7 a Dollar

The devaluation of the Indian rupee in June 1966 was a politically explosive move. Until devaluation, one US dollar was worth less than five rupees. After devaluation it cost more than seven rupees — a sharp drop of nearly a third in the rupee's external value. The decision was widely perceived as having been forced on India by the United States in exchange for emergency food and aid. It became a symbol of national humiliation. It also fed inflation: prices of essential commodities started rising. People began to protest against price rise, food scarcity, growing unemployment and the overall economic condition of the country. Bandhs (general strikes) and hartals (shutdown protests) were called frequently across the country.

To make matters worse, the Indira Gandhi government tended to treat these protests as a law-and-order problem rather than as expressions of genuine economic distress. This further hardened public anger and reinforced popular unrest. The political ground was beginning to shift under the Congress.

Communist and socialist parties took the lead in giving voice to this distress. They launched struggles for greater equality. As you will read in the next chapter, a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — the CPI(M-L) — broke away to lead armed agrarian struggles and organise peasant agitations. This period also witnessed some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots since Independence, deepening the sense of crisis.

5.5 Memorise These Names & Dates