Political Science · Ch 12 — Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System
Challenge of Political Succession
Challenge of Political Succession
The Question After Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964, after more than a year of declining health. His death immediately raised the obvious question of who would take over — but for a country as young as India, a far more anxious question followed close behind: could the system itself survive him? Plenty of observers, at home and abroad, genuinely doubted it. The fear was that India would go the way of many other newly independent nations and fail to manage a peaceful, democratic handover of power, opening the door for the military to step in. There were also real doubts about whether whoever came next could handle the pile-up of unresolved problems — poverty, inequality, and communal and regional tension — that had earned the 1960s the label of the 'dangerous decade,' a period many feared could pull the country's democratic experiment apart.
What was really being tested here wasn't a person but a system — whether Indian democracy could hold together once its first, towering leader was gone.
Shastri Takes Over
Those fears turned out to be misplaced — the succession went remarkably smoothly. Congress president K. Kamaraj sounded out party leaders and MPs and found near-unanimous support for Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was duly chosen to lead the Congress in Parliament and stepped in as Prime Minister.
Shastri came from Uttar Pradesh, carried no real political baggage, and had spent years as a minister under Nehru, who leaned on him heavily in his final year. He had a reputation for personal modesty and principle — he had, years earlier, resigned as Railway Minister simply to take moral responsibility for a major train accident.
His time as Prime Minister (1964–1966) was short and difficult, dominated by two crises at once:
- An economy under strain — the country was still recovering from the 1962 war with China when failed monsoons brought drought and a serious food shortage.
- A war with Pakistan — fought in 1965.
His slogan for the moment, 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan' ('Hail the soldier, hail the farmer'), tried to rally the country to face both at once.
Shastri's tenure ended suddenly: he died in Tashkent (in the USSR at the time, now Uzbekistan's capital) on 11 January 1966, hours after signing a peace agreement there with Pakistan's President, Muhammad Ayub Khan.
A Second, Tougher Succession
Barely two years after the first succession crisis, the Congress faced a second one — and this time it was a genuine contest, not a quiet consensus. The two contenders were Morarji Desai, a former Chief Minister of undivided Bombay state (today's Maharashtra and Gujarat) who had also held senior central posts, and Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, a former Congress President and, most recently, Shastri's Minister for Information.
The party's senior leadership lined up behind Indira Gandhi, though not everyone agreed, and the matter went to a secret-ballot vote of Congress MPs. She won comfortably, taking more than two-thirds of the vote.
Commentators at the time read the smoothness of this transfer of power, despite the real contest behind it, as evidence of how far India's democracy had matured. The Guardian (London, 3 June 1964) went so far as to note that India had chosen its new Prime Minister "with more dispatch, and much more dignity" than Britain itself had managed in its own recent leadership drama following Harold Macmillan.
Finding Her Footing …
The figure is a reproduction of an editorial cartoon from The Guardian (London), dated 3 June 1964. It is a two-panel comparison. The left panel is labelled "Britain" and shows a chaotic, tangled mess of arrows and lines going in every direction, with a figure representing the new Prime Minister (Alec Douglas-Home, who succeeded Harold Macmillan) emerging from this confusion. The right panel is labelled "India" and shows a clean, straight, single arrow pointing directly from a figure of Jawaharlal Nehru to a figure of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The caption reads: "When France or Canada have similar problems, no one talks about failure or disintegration. Why are we under this constant suspicion?"
The cartoon makes a pointed argument about the double standards in Western commentary on Indian democracy. The left panel visually represents the messy, faction-ridden succession in Britain after Harold Macmillan's resignation in 1963 — a process that involved backroom deals, a leadership contest, and considerable political drama. The right panel, in stark contrast, shows India's succession after Nehru's death in May 1964 as smooth, orderly, and almost inevitable. The single, straight arrow from Nehru to Shastri symbolises the consensus-driven, dignified process by which the Congress party chose its leader — a process the textbook describes as "unanimous" and "with more dispatch, and much more dignity, than was the new Prime Minister of Britain." …
The figure is a reproduction of an editorial cartoon or illustration that originally appeared in The Guardian newspaper in London on 3 June 1964. It uses a visual comparison to make a pointed political observation about the speed and dignity of democratic succession in India versus Britain.
The image is divided into two panels or scenes, set side by side for contrast. On one side, representing Britain, the scene shows a chaotic, undignified scramble. You see a group of men — presumably Conservative Party figures — pushing and shoving each other in a disorderly rush. The caption or label associated with this side refers to the succession drama that followed the resignation of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in October 1963. That event involved a bitter internal party contest, backroom manoeuvring, and a controversial selection process that eventually produced Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister. The visual suggests a messy, unseemly fight for power.
On the other side, representing India, the scene is calm and orderly. It shows a single figure — likely Lal Bahadur Shastri — being seated or placed in a chair of authority with quiet, dignified ceremony. There is no pushing or conflict. The caption or label here refers to the succession after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in May 1964. The contrast is deliberate: the British process is depicted as a frantic, undignified brawl, while the Indian process is shown as a smooth, respectful transition. …