Bangalore Torpedo

Since the death of Jawaharlal Nehru more than a year ago, India's ruling Congress Party has been plagued by what Delhi euphemists call "fissiparous tendencies." Put more bluntly, many's the politician who lusts for Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri's job. Among the splittists: left-leaning ex-Defense Minister Krishna Menon; sloe-eyed Indira Gandhi (Nehru's daughter), Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (Nehru's sister), and former Finance Minister Morarji Desai, 69, who was Shastri's chief rival for the prime ministry. Last week at Bangalore, Desai made his play.

The occasion was the quarterly meeting of the All-India Congress Committee, a body roughly equivalent to the U.S. Democratic Party's National Committee, but far more powerful. Gathered in the Glass House, a graceful, open-air structure modeled after London's Crystal Palace, the Congress congeries was faced with choosing a successor to the party president. Under party rules, the president cannot succeed himself after his two-year term is up, but the current president, muscular, mustachioed Kumaraswami Kamaraj Nadar, 62, is a close political ally of Shastri. Looking ahead to the 1967 elections, Shastri wanted someone atop the party machinery to select pro-Shastri candidates for the next parliamentary slate. Shyly but firmly, Shastri let it be known that anyone who wanted to change the party rules and permit Kamaraj to succeed himself would not meet with his disfavor.

Such a move would, of course, torpedo Desai's chances over the next two years, and he promptly attacked it as "a negation of democracy." The impact of his charge was quickly dissipated: as Desai ended his speech before the hushed house, the chair ruthlessly adjourned for lunch. A few hours later, Kamaraj was reinstated as Congress president.

Shastri's victory over Desai came as no surprise to those who have watched the diminutive Prime Minister grow in skill and confidence after a shaky start. His trips to the Soviet Union, Canada and Britain have given him big headlines at home; he has weathered a major food crisis and worked out a truce with Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch. Last week, with Desai safely quenched for the moment, Shastri flew off for another foreign journey--this time to Yugoslavia for talks with Marshal Tito.

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