New P.M. Is Gandhi Disciple

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 11

New P.M. Is Gandhi Disciple

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW DELHI, Jan. 11. India’s new Prime Minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, is an intense intellectual and a disciple of Gandhi, the Associated Press reported.

He was Lal Bahadur Shastri’s major contender for India’s highest office when Jawaharlal Nehru died in 1964.

Mr Nanda, aged 67, was the Home Minister and No. 2 man in Mr Nehru’s Government, but his interest in astrology and palmistry, his vegetarian austerity and a long association with Leftist trade unions hurt his chances to succeed Mr Nehru. After Mr Nehru, he was sworn in as caretaker head of the Government, but stepped

aside a few weeks later for Mr Shastri.

In the next months, as various leaders of the ruling Congress Party manoeuvred to get Mr Shastri’s job, Mr Nanda supported the new Prime Minister vigorously. As Home Minister, Mr Nanda ordered police to gaol more than 1000 pro-Peking members of the Indian Communist Party. He also issued instructions to shoot to kill if intercommunal rioting between India’s Hindus and Moslems erupted. His tough decisions as Home Minister did not fit his physical appearance. A thin, exprofessor of economics, Mr Nanda wears thick spectacles and a black moustache. When he was named to head the caretaker government on Mr Nehru’s death, Mr Nanda said he had never expected to rise as high as the Indian Cabinet. Mr Nanda was not a seriious contender for the job of

Prime Minister after Mr Nehru’s death. A top official in the ruling Congress Party said at the time he had neither the political following nor the political know-how for the job. One of Mr Nanda’s close aides once described him as “basically an economist, a social worker and religious man.”

Mr Nanda founded the nation-wide organisation of Sadhus (Hindu holy men), though he is not one himself. His aim was to marshal the energies of thousands of Sadhus—many of them no more than itinerant beggars in priestly orange robes—and put them to work in active social service. He also founded a national group to combat corruption at every level, public and private. Mr Nanda said it was founded “not on a moral impulse only, but because it is good business ... we cannot afford corruption.”

Mr Nanda once described himself as a pragmatist and a Left-wing weekly quoted him as saying in 1963: “I am a Socialist but not a Marxist.” Mr Nanda said in another interview he was influenced by the Russian revolution which was new when he was going to college in Lahore, Agra and Allahabad. Mr Nanda, in his youth, also studied Hindu scriptures intensely. He was drawn into Mr Gandhi’s independence movement after he left college and, according to an aide, Gandhian socialism left a bigger mark on Mr Nanda than Marxism. Mr Nanda was married to a wealthy doctor’s daughter while still an undergraduate Mr Nanda prided himself on thrift and austerity and she never regained the standard of living to which she was accustomed.

He was imprisoned three times during the days of British rule.