Nehru Moves Left

"Dear Comrade," wrote Jawaharlal Nehru to each member of his Cabinet. "On the eve of my visit to China, I venture to write to you to dispel doubts and rumors." In 1,300 loosely strung words, the leader of the world's second most populous nation proclaimed that he would not run for re-election as Congress Party president when his term expires next January and would not "function as Prime Minister for at least some time." Instead, said handsomely aging (64) Nehru, he wanted time to read and think while others showed how they could run India.

The letter created the stir that Nehru intended, and its purpose quickly showed through. Nehru was using the threat of resignation to beat down the moderates and right-wingers inside his Cabinet and fix India on a leftward course: more socialism at home, more flirting with Communism abroad. "Gandhi often renounced active membership in the Congress Party when he had difficulties," recalled the Free Press Journal of Bombay. "[Nehru] has been unable to conceal his impatience with India's slow progress toward the Socialist State," reported Calcutta's influential Amrita Bazar Patrika.

New Directions. Increasingly petulant of late, and bothered by sieges of insomnia, Nehru has been secretly quarreling with Cabinet and party colleagues. The strict cold war neutrality to which he pledged India has gradually been changing into a program to undermine such Western undertakings as the Manila pact and to persuade the nations of Asia into a chain of "nonaggression" pacts with Red China. These pacts would specifically exclude Western influence from Asia, entrust the security of non-Communist countries to promises from Communist China. Nehru has been insistent upon making Far-Left-Winger V. K. Krishna Menon (TIME, Oct. 18) his Foreign Minister. He has been praising Red China's "village Communism," even suggesting that India should consider adopting some Red Chinese economic ideas without also taking on harsher Communist habits, such as shooting landlords.

Nehru's colleagues (many of whom went to jail with him in the long struggle for independence) and the Indian constitution (which Nehru did much to frame) are standing in Nehru's way. Congress Party moderates prefer more neutrality than Nehru now seems to envisage; some Cabinet ministers even threaten to resign if Nehru elevates the unpopular Menon to the Foreign Ministry. The constitution has a "fundamental rights" clause, which guarantees private property from seizure without good compensation.

"Now Is the Time." Nehru now sees the anti-seizure clause as an obstacle to "social justice." Said he recently to a big crowd near Bombay: "The constitution is not as sacred as some think . . . These things chain us." To a conference of engineers assigned to river-valley projects he cried: "Now is the time to go as fast as if the devil is on our heels. To hell with the man who cannot keep pace."

As for the ministers and politicians who oppose him, none can stand for long against Jawaharlal Nehru. The chosen political instrument of Mahatma Gandhi and the great man's successor, he is still the village spellbinder, the favorite of India's masses. The Congress Party, riddled with corruption and disliked by Indians at large, has no one else of Nehru's stature (Indians sometimes refer to Congress politicos as "pygmies in high chairs") and cannot hope to cling to power without him. If the threat to resign does not in itself quiet the opposition, Nehru is safe in gambling that his actual retirement from the scene for a few months next year would have the politicians crying for him to come back, stronger than ever.

Comfortable in this knowledge, Prime Minister Nehru departed for Red Peking and waystops last week with a big smile (in spite of a bad case of the sniffles) and a firm promise that, on his return, he would be ready to get down to business about some changes in foreign policy and "the whole approach" to India's domestic problems.

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