The Process of Change

All that remained of Lai Bahadur Shastri was a small pile of ashes on the bank of New Delhi's Jumna River. Even as the nation mourned the death of its gentle leader, the search began for a successor. At week's end, as India's leading politicians huddled in one meeting after another, it seemed likely that the choice would fall on a candidate with a magical legacy in Indian politics: Indira Gandhi, 48, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru.

The choice was being debated in a small bungalow on a dusty New Delhi road. There, draped in a white longhi, Kumaraswami Kamaraj Nadar, 63, the barrel-chested kingmaker of the Congress Party, received a stream of state leaders and other important politicians, testing the political breezes for signs of support for the various candidates.

Hardly Shy. At first, Kamaraj seemed to consider Y. B. Chavan, 51, Shastri's Defense Minister and former Chief Minister of Maharashtra state. But he gave up on him (too many political enemies), passed over Interim Prime Minister Gulzarilal Nanda (lackluster), and ruled himself out on the ground that he speaks neither Hindi nor English. Increasingly, Kamaraj found that the person with the fewest serious enemies, the widest reputation and the most attractive personality was Indira Gandhi. Nor was the lady shy. "I will do what Mr. Kamaraj wants me to," she told reporters. Her main competition came from former Finance Minister Morarji Desai, who threatened to make a fight of it. But if Kamaraj decided firmly in her favor, Mrs. Gandhi had little to fear.

In a way, it was only fitting. Regal, imperious, and acid-tongued, Indira is a true daughter of the Indian revolution. As a child, she watched her parents hauled off repeatedly to jail by India's British rulers, whiled away her loneliness by teaching her dolls to emulate Gandhi's principles of civil disobedience. "All my games were political," she recalls. Defying her father, she married an obscure Parsi lawyer named Feroze Gandhi (no kin to the Mahatma), later was jailed with him for 13 months on charges of subversion. After bearing two sons, she left her husband in 1947 and returned to her father's rambling mansion in New Delhi.

Though her post as Shastri's Information and Broadcasting Minister was her first Cabinet appointment, she had for years before been her father's closest confidante. She denies that she hews to any political philosophy, explains: "I don't believe in any ism." Yet she has usually been ready to defend Communist causes on the international level.

At home, however, she has been a tough antiCommunist.

"The Middle Way." Whoever succeeds Shastri inherits a nation that is the better for his leadership. He had a scant 19 months to cope with India's thorny problems; yet his patient, pragmatic approach helped to heal regional tensions and promote a more realistic sense of the nation's direction. When food riots broke out in 1964, Shastri wisely de-emphasized Nehru's overambitious industrialization schemes and gave top priority to increasing farm output. He halted the bloody language riots in the south by indefinitely shelving the law establishing Hindi as the sole official tongue. "We must seek the middle way," he declared. In fact, only in relations with Pakistan did Shastri take a hard line. When Ayub forced India's hand over Kashmir, the little Prime Minister responded with the might of his military.

It was his hard line with Pakistan that led him ultimately to the Russian city of Tashkent, where, at the invitation of Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, he met with Pakistan's President Ayub Khan for peace talks to settle the border war. At first the conference stalled on the very issue over which the two nations had warred: Kashmir. The impasse was finally broken by Kosygin, who persuaded the two men to skirt Kashmir and try to settle other problems. It was a considerable diplomatic triumph for Moscow and a major victory for Shastri. Without retreating on Kashmir, he negotiated an agreement with Ayub that called for 1) pulling back Indian and Pakistan armies to their prewar borders, 2) re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, and 3) holding more high-level meetings to discuss Indo-Pakistan misunderstandings. Shastri was ecstatic. "We shall fight as hard for peace," he vowed, "as we fought in war."

Sad Journey. The strain of the talks had told on Shastri. He looked weary and fatigued after signing the agreement. That night, going to bed at midnight, he hoped for a good sleep. But scarcely an hour later he staggered into the hallway of his villa, clutching his chest. Guards summoned his doctor, who immediately injected a stimulant. A team of Russian physicians rushed to his bedside, shot adrenalin directly into the heart. But nothing helped. At 61, Shastri was dead of a heart attack, his third in six years.

On the morning after his death, Premier Kosygin and President Ayub Khan shouldered Shastri's coffin and bore it to a blue-and-silver Soviet Aeroflot IL-18 airliner for the 3 1/2-hour flight to a mourning New Delhi and reunion with Shastri's grief-stricken family. As Indian generals carried the flag-covered body into his home at 10 Janpath (People's Way), Shastri's wife Lalita threw herself on her dead husband and kissed his face. "Shastriji, you have left me alone!" she wailed.

Resting on a bed of flowers, Shastri was placed in the portico of his residence for public view. All through the night, as thousands of Indians filed past in a final tribute, Lalita stayed by her husband, frequently reaching out to stroke his face, and sometimes, overcome by weariness, resting her head for a moment on his pillow. The next day Shastri's body was lifted onto a gun carriage for the final five-mile drive through the dusty city to the Jumna, a tributary of the sacred Ganges.

Only Ashes. At the river, a high pyre had been erected. As Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Soviet Premier Kosygin and scores of other foreign dignitaries watched, the priests sprinkled Shastri with rose petals and stacked sandalwood logs across his white-shrouded body. A torch of thin twigs was handed to Shastri's eldest son, 32-year-old Hari Krishnan. According to custom, he walked three times around his father's body, then put the flame to the pyre. Priests poured on ghee and incense. Within seconds, the flames erupted, illuminating the wisp of white under the logs. Soon all was ashes.

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