India: After Nehru

The man chosen last week to command one-seventh of the world's people has a turkey neck, a smudgy mustache, and an expression of ineffable meekness. It is a little misleading, insists Lal Bahadur Shastri, the new Prime Minister of India. "I am not as simple as I look."

Nothing is simple in India, including Shastri's unanimous election. He was the clear choice of the country's three kingmakers, 1) Congress Party President Kamaraj Nadar, who controls four south Indian states, 2) Atulya Ghosh, boss of eastern India, and 3) Bombay's S. K. Patil, who personally directs some 100 of the 537 Congress Party M.P.s. All three closed ranks behind Shastri as the man most capable of bringing "unity" to the nation. And all three opposed the only other candidate, conservative, autocratic Morarji Desai, the former Finance Minister, who was supported by rightists, leftists and untouchables. On tree-shaded Delhi lawns and in air-conditioned bungalows, the kingmakers argued that a man like Desai might start quarrels at home and be too intransigent abroad. For India's sake they begged that the new Prime Minister be elected unanimously.

Once he was sure of a majority, Patil went to Desai's bungalow, sat beside him on the floor and asked him to with draw from the race. Desai finally agreed, conceding, "It would hurt some to have an election contest. It is better that I am hurt than others."

Typically, Shastri had stayed aloof from all the politicking. Next morning, he rose early, had a modest breakfast with his family. He was the last to reach Parliament, where the other Congress Party members were already gathered beneath the high dome of the central hall. In a soft, reedy voice, tiny (5 ft., 112 lbs.) Shastri promised to carry on Nehru's work. Then he drove to the Jumna River to pray at the site where Nehru had been cremated.

Into the Ganges. Though Nehru's will had specifically requested no religious ceremonies after his death (Nehru was an avowed agnostic), his daughter Indira Gandhi had ordered the funeral performed with full Hindu religious customs and traditions. Nehru also had asked that a handful of his ashes be thrown into the holy Ganges River at Allahabad, his birthplace, not for religious reasons but because "the Ganges especially is the river of India, beloved of her people . . . running into the present and flowing on to the great ocean of the future." The remainder of his ashes, according to Nehru's wish, will be scattered from an airplane "so that they might mingle with the dust and soil of India and become an indistinguishable part of India."

When Nehru suffered his first stroke, he called on Shastri to take over as deputy prime minister. The new leader insists he was not especially marked for succession, and during Nehru's illness told newsmen, "If the Prime Minister has something in his mind, he has not informed me of it." What, then, focused attention on Shastri? His personal honesty, for one thing, and his deftness at conciliation for another. A secret government poll revealed that Lai Bahadur, next to Nehru, was the best-liked, best-known figure in India.