Put Out No Flags

In the decade that has passed since the British Raj withdrew from India, non-Communist Asia's biggest and most populous nation has been ruled by one party and one man--the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru. Last week some 365 white-capped Congress Party M.P.s assembled in New Delhi's round, red sandstone Parliament building to listen to their leader. They expected both praise and advice. What they got sounded more like a funeral oration.

Snapped Nehru: "The Congress Party is weak and getting weaker." While his sweating partymen squirmed in their chairs, Nehru lashed out at party factionalism, internal squabbles, the ever-widening gap between the party and the people. "Our strong point," said Nehru, "is the past. Unless we get out of our present rut, the Congress Party is doomed."

Craze for Power. The day before, Vice President Radhakrishnan, onetime Oxford don, had been even blunter. "The craze for power and personal ambition [has created] a state of demoralization," he said. These and other signs of political stirring by long-ossified Congress members throughout the country were regarded by the staid Times of India as "an examination of the conscience." The Times thought sadly that the examination might have come too late. "Congress was once a good cause," the paper said. "Now it's degenerating into a bad habit."

What has happened? The fact is that though the Congress Party still holds an overwhelming majority (365 out of 499 seats in Parliament), it has been slipping badly in recent state and municipal elections; e.g., in Kerala, where the Communists recently scored their first major Indian victory (TIME, April 1), and in last week's municipal elections in Bombay, where the Congress Party was defeated for the first time in 19 years because apathetic party hacks failed to assess the genuineness of the popular drive for a separate, Marathi-speaking Bombay state. The candidate who piled up the largest number of votes in Bombay: Communist Leader S. A. Dange.

The strains outside are also visible inside the Congress-controlled Parliament itself. This week when Food Minister A. P. Jain tried to gloss over the nation's acute food shortage with bureaucratic doubletalk, he was hooted down by Congress Party M.P.s. When Finance Minister T. T. Krishnamachari announced sharp increases in taxes on railway fares, gasoline and vegetable oils, the Congress benches moaned, denounced their own new budget as a program designed to "soak the poor." Said one Congressman in Bombay: "It's getting fashionable to be anti-Congress."

Scratch for Pomp. Nehru and Vice President Radhakrishnan hope to hack away the middle-aged fat that, is debilitating the once lean and lithe party of Gandhi. Congress has grown complacent with victory, corrupt, nepotistic, aloof from the masses and rent with internal squabbles. Although Nehru bitterly condemns voting by caste, by linguistic factions or religious groups, many of his nominal followers openly espouse such causes in their campaigns.

The men who claim to be walking in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi drive big foreign cars, surround themselves with red-liveried lackeys, command private railroad cars, scratch like fishwives for the trappings of pomp and prestige. Nehru recently penned a sharp note to several state ministers warning them to get rid of their retainers and private railroad cars. "Even President Eisenhower," wrote the Pandit, "drives about the countryside without flags all over his car."

In all the concern over the future of the Congress Party, few Indians seemed willing to lay any of the blame where some of it belonged--at the door of Jawaharlal Nehru himself. While Nehru's vast popularity is what most holds the party together, he also tends to strangle and restrict it. By running both the party and the government like a Mogul court, Nehru has failed notably to foster any young talent. As a result, young Indians resent the party, charge that it offers little opportunity to intelligent newcomers. Of 13 chief ministers recently appointed in Congress-run states, five are over 65, three are over 70 and one is 75. Several Indian papers last week suggested that Nehru, like Burma's U Nu, should step down as Prime Minister to spend his time revitalizing the party, but it is not the kind of activity that appeals to Nehru. or that he is good at. Summed up one Indian: "The question is no longer: 'After Nehru, who?' It's: 'After Nehru, what?' "

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