Then There Were None

Nothing fascinates an Indian politician like trying to guess who will succeed Pandit Nehru, now 71, and the only Premier the country ever had. The name most mentioned lately has been Morarji Desai, 64, who is India's able Finance Minister, leading prohibitionist and all-round ascetic (he eats no meat, fasts 36 hours a week, once gave up sex for 20 years). Last week Nehru clipped Desai's career back so far that the guessing game was wide open again.

Desai's mistake was to try to get elected deputy leader of Parliament, a post vacant since the death last March of Home Minister Govind Pant. Desai, though his manner is languid, has won a wide following among Congress Party moderates (he dismisses Marxism as "a bunch of misguided theories"), and as deputy leader he would have been clearly in line for the top job. But Defense Minister Krishna Menon rallied the leftists behind gregarious Railway Minister Jagjivan Ram, 53, the only Untouchable in the Cabinet and a longtime Nehru disciple.

After dithering for a month, Nehru decided last week to call off the contest. He demanded and got a resolution from the party leaving the appointment up to him. Then he revealed that he would create two deputy leaderships--and probably fill them with unambitious men. "I am in good sound health," Nehru reportedly told a party meeting. "Let's be decent about it. I do not want to think of the day when I am no more on the scene. The idea is embarrassing to me."

That settled the crisis, while raising the politicians' old complaint that Nehru is "a banyan tree under which nothing grows." It also made clear that he is not fond of any member of his Cabinet except Defense Minister Krishna Menon. One reason is personal: only Menon is Nehru's kind of intellectual, like Nehru British-educated and capable of endless speculative, theoretical sparring. The rest are relatively unsophisticated, and Nehru finds little in common with them. Above all, most do not really believe in Nehru's rather mystical brand of socialism. Desai, for instance, is openly pro-Western and warns against socialism's tendency to "redistribute poverty." Most Congress Party leaders despise Menon, would rapidly get rid of him if Nehru died. The guessing game was still on.

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