Volunteering into the Vacuum

For a decade after the British Raj left India, the rich, bustling city of Bombay was one of the bastions of Prime Minister Nehru's Congress Party. Last week its 131-man Municipal Corporation elected a new mayor, and chose a Communist: a colorless hack named S. S. Mirajkar.

Mirajkar's election was a sample of the way Communism is gaining in India--not by dynamic thrust, but merely by being around to pick up the pieces from the disintegrating Congress Party. Once the lean, eager arm of the independence movement, the Congress Party has become rich, careless and decadent, with all power concentrated in the hands of a small band of elderly wheelhorses.

Time to Retire? Even more damaging has been mounting evidence of Congress Party corruption, epitomized in the public mind by the insurance scandal that led to the ouster of ex-Finance Minister T. T. Krishnamachari (TIME, March 3). In Delhi, another longtime Congress Party stronghold. Congress candidates last month won only 31 out of 80 Municipal Corporation seats. Three weeks ago in Calcutta, Siddhartha Ray, a bright young Congress Party minister in the West Bengal state government, resigned office with the angry charge that "the people who control the West Bengal Congress today [are] an unscrupulous section of rich industrialists, traders and businessmen--the privileged class of modern India."

Last week, bringing up charges that the Congress Party is suffering from tired leadership, an Indian reporter told Nehru that there had been suggestions that he resign the premiership, at least temporarily. "I might retire my tenure when I feel like it," answered Nehru. "I am a man of moods." Then, gazing reflectively up at the ceiling, he added: "I do feel flat and stale, and I don't think it is right for a person to feel that way and have to deal with vital and important problems. My work needs freshening up ... but I think I may have some further years of effective service, because I am bodily fit. While I cannot judge my own mind, I don't think it is slipping."

"Seat by Seat." What makes Nehru's staleness and Congress Party decay more than just a passing concern is the fact that ten years of Nehrunian rule have produced no effective democratic opposition in India, inside the government or out. Taking advantage of this, India's Communists volunteered their way into the vacuum. Keenly recalling the national obloquy they earned by trying armed revolt in 1948, the Communists have set out to establish themselves as the chief "democratic alternative" to the Congress Party. Their professed aim is to climb to power peacefully, capturing India "seat by seat and state by state." Careful not to make direct attacks on popular Jawaharlal Nehru, the Communists portray him as the lone healthy voice in his own party, piously urge him to cleanse Congress Party ranks of anti-socialists "as Christ drove the money-changers from the temple."

So far, these tactics have paid off handsomely. In last year's general elections the Communists got 12 million votes (v. 4,700,000 in 1952), won seats in every state assembly, and startled the world by taking over as the legal government of the steamy little state of Kerala. They have their eyes on Andhra and West Bengal next.

This week the nation's top 700 Communists are gathering confidently in Amritsar in the Punjab to reorganize their party--primarily by scrapping the five-man "cell" in favor of "branches" of up to 200 members. Objective: to double party membership (from 250,000 to 500,000) within the next year.

At the moment, few believe that they will soon realize their long-term goal of capturing complete control of the world's largest democracy. But the Times of India somberly reported: "After 15 years of existence, the Communist Party has now emerged as a great political force in this country."

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