India: A Nehru Back in Politics

"Do not be captivated by her beauty," warned Socialist Dr. Ram Lohia. "Inside she is pure venom!" He further claimed that Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 64, retained her youthful good looks only because she had undergone plastic surgery in Europe.

Details about face lifting made little impression on the emaciated peasants of Phulpur, a district in northern India, 16 miles from Allahabad, which ever since 1952 had loyally returned the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Parliament. In last week's by-election, the empty seat was being contested by Madame Pandit, Nehru's younger sister, who had the full backing of the dominant Congress Party, and Socialist Lohia was on hand as a lifelong enemy of the Nehru family. In 1962, Lohia personally fought for the seat against Nehru and was soundly trounced. Last week he was backing a local Socialist named Saligram Jaiswal, who kept harping on Madame Pandit's means ("Poverty has entered the field against wealth") and promised lower food prices.

But, despite the district's poverty, many peasants do not want lower prices for the crops they sell to the cities. Besides, Madame Pandit fought a brilliant campaign. She curbed the arrogant Nehru temper, of which she has her full share, and conducted herself with a humility she had never displayed as India's aggressively "neutralist" ambassador to Washington and Moscow. On the hustings, she gestured toward her blue-rinsed grey hair, described herself as a daughter returning home in her old age, and asked plaintively: "If you fail to give me room, where can I go?" While the Socialists bustled about the countryside in a car preceded by a motorcyclist bearing a red flag, Madame Pandit toured the villages on foot and spent the last 25 days of the campaign living in a tent in the midst of the peasants.

Candidate Pandit won easily, 110,-548 to 52,528. It is expected she will soon join her niece and Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri.