Revolt Against Nehru

Prime Minister Nehru last week faced a noisy rebellion within the ranks of his own Congress Party, the force that put him into power.

The Congress Party is a sprawling conglomeration of Indian factions whose great aim, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, was Indian independence. Once that aim was achieved, it found itself without a unifying purpose. It grew fat and lazy, today harbors many timeserving officeholders, not a few black-marketeers. Nehru, only a middling politician, lacks the skill to hold the crumbling structure together. He bothers little about the party machine, does not even know the names of provincial leaders.

Biggest split in the party came when Purushottamdas Tandon, an orthodox Hindu, managed to get himself elected Congress president last year. Tandon is a right-winger in resolute control of Congress' political machines. Nehru does not like him. In a moment of pique after his election, Nehru backed Jiwatram Bhagwandas Kripalani, a left-winger and disciple of Gandhi, to start an opposition movement against Tandon. The movement grew bigger and louder than Nehru had intended. Whereupon the Prime Minister did exactly what he does on international issues: he climbed on the fence, refused to back either Tandon or Kripalani.

That got Kripalani sore, and he turned on Nehru. Last week Kripalani, having seceded from the Congress Party, met with 1,000 delegates from all over India on the banks of the Ganges in Patna (capital of famine-stricken Bihar province); they formed a new party of their own, named it the People's Party.

Kripalani denounced the Congress Party for being corrupt, and Nehru's government for using police state measures ("Can there be greater shame than that my telephone is tapped?"). Kripalani professed his loyalty to Nehru personally. Cried he: "I have no greater friend than Jawaharlal Nehru. What is Congress today except the name of one man--Nehru? That name has been prostituted . . . His ministers are betraying him . . ."

Next month, Nehru and the Congress Party leaders will meet in Bangalore to see what they can do about the unprecedented challenge to their power.

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