World: The Return of the Rosebud

(6 of 9)

After her father's death, she sought something" to keep her mind off events, decided to study anthropology. But she was under pressure to do something quite different. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the incoming Prime Minister, wanted her to become his Foreign Minister. She protested that she wanted to remain out of the limelight. But Shastri insisted. After ten days she gave in on one condition: that she get a less important post.

Language Troubles. As Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Indira managed to make a few improvements. She doubled radio broadcasting time to 18 hours daily and opened the airways to opposition-party members and independent commentators who were free to say what they pleased. Indian listeners could hardly believe their ears, for until then, the radio and TV stations—which are state monopolies—had been used solely as government mouthpieces.

Indira retained her image as a doer in other fields. When riots broke out last year in southern India, against the establishment of Hindi as the country's official language, Indira flew to the center of the violence in Madras and calmed the Tamil-speaking mobs by promising that the matter would be reconsidered (Shastri later shelved the law).

Selection Process. Destiny may have ordained Indira for India's biggest post, but it took shrewd politicking by others to get her there. When news of Shastri's death flashed across India, Delhi buzzed with the names of possible successors. There was S. K. Patil, 65, the political boss of Bombay and favorite of India's big businessmen. One might consider Y. B. Chavan, 51, Shastri's Defense Minister, who had won good marks during last fall's war with Pakistan. There was also acting Prime Minister Gulzarilal Nanda, who had held that post once before during the interregnum after Nehru's death. And then there was former Finance Minister Morarji Desai, 69, the hard-necked, puritanical Hindu who had lost out in the succession fight after Nehru's death. Now he was determined not to lose a second time.

The choice rested with the top people of the Congress Party. Normally, that would mean the "syndicate," the handful of political bosses who have recently dominated the party, and who stage-managed Shastri's smooth ascension to power. This time the kingmakers were divided. The most prominent of them all, mustachioed Kumaraswami Kamaraj Nadar, 63, had angered the others by holding on to his post as party president for a second term. Without so much as a bow to him, the remaining syndicate members settled on Nanda as their candidate.