Wednesday, March 11, 1964 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Nehru May Be Succeeded by Opposite Personality
NEW DELHI—(UPI)—Few Indian politicians are more unlike Jawaharlal Nehru than the man who is the front runner to succeed him as Prime Minister of India.
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Lal Bahadur Shastri was hand-picked as the ailing premier's unofficial deputy and heir because he has just those qualities which Nehru lacks.
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He prefers compromise to conflict, he hides from the limelight and he keeps his opinions to himself.
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THE 59-YEAR-OLD minister without portfolio was able to win the trust of Nehru and his party colleagues because he has never competed in the prime minister's own domain of personal magnetism, stirring oratory and the spinning of high-level policies.
Shastri is scarcely five feet tall. He has no showy trademarks such as Nehru's rosebud boutonniere.
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Nehru is well-traveled. Cambridge-educated and a skeptic about religion. Shastri has never been out of the Indian sub-continent and he is devoted to Hinduism.
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Nehru is the scion of a rich, aristocratic, Brahmin family. Shastri is the self-made son of a humble village schoolteacher.
Shastri was born in 1904, near the sacred city of Benares. His father died while he was a child.
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THE FAMILY CAME from the intermediate caste of professional men called Kayasthas. The family name was Srivastava, but names are flexible in India and Lal Bahadur (Jewel of Bravery) ceased using it years ago.
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The young Kayastha, like most of his ambitious caste fellows, set out to get the best education available. In those days, this meant a British education.
But in 1920 Mahatma Gandhi launched a campaign against cooperating with the British Government and its official schools. So Shastri gave up his western education at the age of 16 and joined a nationalistic Sanskrit college, which had no official standing.
This was the first of many occasions when the self-effacing little patriot sacrificed his own ambition
for the good of his nation or his party. This readiness for self-sacrifice is the quality most responsible for the respect he has won within Nehru's Congress Party.
The young nationalist distinguished himself at school in the study of Hindu philosophy and Sanskrit literature. He even received the highest scholarly rank of "Shastri." Although this is a title comparable to the academic degree of Bachelor of Arts, Shastri adopted it as his name.
Shastri devoted his life to nationalistic politics, shuttling back and forth between public office and British jails. Like Nehru, his first government job was on the municipal council of the north Indian city of Allahabad. In 1930 he went to jail for the first time and spent over two years behind bars for anti-British activity.
SHASTRÍ'S BIGGEST TALENT has always been in the field of party politics. He was such a good organization man that he was elected secretary general of the Congress Party machine in his home state, Uttar Pradesh, when he was only 30 years old.
Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India. It also is the state from which Nehru comes. By devoting 15 years to the state's politics, Shastri kept close to Nehru's side while proving that he could handle the internal rivalries of the party's biggest unit.
When India got ready for its first nationwide election, the Prime Minister plucked Shastri from the state capital and put him in charge of the national party's election campaign. The Congress won an overwhelming victory. Shastri was rewarded with a seat in the central government as Minister of Railwavs.
THE NEW RAILWAYS minister proved an efficient administrator for close to five years. Then a disastrous train crash brought a storm of criticism against the government-owned railways and Shastri resigned in atonement.
As often happened with Shastri's instances of self-sacrifice, his resignation strengthened his position
within the party. In this case, it left him free to manage the Congress campaign in the second general elections in 1957.
Shastri returned to the cabinet after the election victory. He held several portfolios. He traveled around the country healing frequent feuds between local party leaders.
NEHRU BEGAN TO lean even more on Shastri in 1962, when a Chinese invasion forced him to drop foreign policy advisor V. K. Krishna Menon.
When the 74-year-old Prime Minister was suddenly taken ill in January, Shastri was the obvious man to fill in for him. He had no political enemies and he held the respect of machine politicians whose elections he often had helped to win.
Even now that he is handling Nehru's routine work, Shastri refuses to talk about whether he may eventually succeed the prime minister.
"I AM HERE as long as the prime minister wants me," he told United Press International while strolling through his garden. "He could ask me to resign tomorrow."
Is he free to make government policy in Nehru's place?
"The prime minister makes policy. I am just carving it out."
Does he make decisions on his own?
"The decisions belong with the prime minister. But when he asks me to decide a matter, then I make the decision."
SHASTRI DOES HIS official decision-making at a desk next to Nehru's own office in the Ministry of External Affairs. But much of his real political work is handled in the shade of two banyan trees on the front lawn of his government villa.
There are no guards at Shastri's home and anybody with a grievance or petition can wander in through the 10-foot-high hedge which surrounds his garden.
Shastri receives visitors standing up. He strolls back and forth in the garden as he talks with them. His mobile conversations are supposed
Humor Returns to White House
By Alvin Spiyak
WASHINGTON —(UPI)— With the passage of time since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the pall at the White House has gradually been lifting and humor has been making its return.
This, unquestionably, is how Kennedy would have wanted it, as evidenced in the wry quips with which he inspired so much laughter among his associates and in his speeches and news conferences.
Now President Johnson, in his speeches is including prefatory gags and stories. A favorite, after he receives a glowing introduction, is his reclection of "the preacher in my county who went to his church on Sunday and found the congregation had presented him with a new automobile."
"HE GOT UP," Johnson recounts, "and had to respond to that great act of generosity on the spur of the moment. He started out something like this: 'I don't appreciate it, but I do deserve it.'"
The President has enjoyed laughing at himself in connection with his ardent drive to dim the lights at the executive mansion to cut the electricity bill.
Then he added that "the stories they write about the White House being in the dark are greatly exaggerated." He said there was "some truth" in reports that his two daughters studied their school lessons by kerosene lamps "but it is on the ranch and not in Washington."
"Unaccustomed as I am to bright lights, it is good to be able to see all of you again," he told the Women's National Press Club at its recent Eleanor Roosevelt Candlestick Award dinner here.
AT THE SAME dinner, Adlai E. Stevenson was back in his best humorous form. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations spent some time lauding Johnson, and then publicly told him:
"I see that even the Republican presidential candidates think that you have done well—except in two areas, domestic policy and foreign policy."
From the mouths of babes visiting the White House have come some reasons for adult laughter. One little boy, in the lobby of the office wing, saw a bigger than lifesize portrait of the heavily whiskered President Chester M. Arthur.
"Look. Mommy," he shouted,
"Captain Kangaroo!"
AND WHEN six-year-old Ronald and Donald Copper, of Coalcreek, Colo., poster twins for this year's National Easter Seal Campaign, were waiting to see Johnson, they told a questioner they were in the White House.
"Who lives in this house?" they were next asked.
"Bob Hope," they answered, impressed, perhaps, a bit more than anticipated at his chairmanship of the 1964 Easter Seal fund drive.
"The President," they replied.
"And who is the President?"
The unpredictable variety of
President Johnson's news conferences has inspired other quips. There have been news sessions at a coffee break, at a barbecue, in his office, in the White House Theater, in the State Department Conference Room, and back at the ornately chandeliered White House East Room.
Most have been untelevised, but two have been broadcast "live" and one was taped for delayed transmission.
One wag has suggested Johnson's next step may be to assemble newsmen in the White House garage, or a supply room. Then he will run through nine or ten minutes of minor announcements, go through another twenty minutes or so of questions and answers, grin, and finally tell reporters:
"I have just one closing comment. Smile, you're on Candid Camera."
to help him combine exercise with office work. But they also give him complete control over a conversation in a way that he could never have if a petitioner trapped him alone behind a desk.
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Shastri is an old fashioned Hindu patriarch who likes to have his whole family around him. This is one reason for his outdoor office hours. His nine-room villa is too crowded for business, with his wife, four sons, two daughters, his daughters' two husbands, a daughter-in-law and six grandchildren.
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Shastri can never replace Nehru in the role of the Heroic leader who holds the country together with the inspiration of instinct.
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But nobody else in India has this magic. Those who do approach Nehru's personality have rivals who would cut them down if they tried to fill the prime minister's shoes.
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This makes it almost certain that India's next government will be run by a collective of strong leaders, jealously watching each other. Such a collection will need a referee. Shastri is the kind of self-effacing middleman who seems best qualified for the job.
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