Word: nehru
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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What makes Prime Minister Nehru a master of compromise is his distaste for simple defeat. But last week it looked as if Nehru would have to admit that his Congress Party scheme for revising India's state boundaries according to language blocs was a dead duck...
...rioting that began in Bombay (TIME, Jan. 30) spread right across India. Mobs squatted on railroad tracks to halt trains, crowded onto airfields to prevent planes from landing, blocked roads with trees, broke into jails and freed convicts, looted stores, ripped down telephone wires. Newspapers that had given Nehru steady support were charging the government with "moral bankruptcy." The prestige of the Congress Party had never been lower...
Risking New Delhi's current yellow jaundice epidemic (50,000 cases), ministers and party leaders hurried to the capital. Counseled Bombay Congress Party Boss S. K. Patil: shelve the entire states-reorganization scheme. Instead, Nehru, looking overstrained, his white hair curling from under his Gandhi cap, proposed an even bolder plan: merge existing states into vastly more populous units which would cut across linguistic lines...
While rioters paused to debate the new issue, Nehru watched an official parade celebrating the sixth anniversary of the Indian republic. Down Ruler's Way came lumbering elephants with blue foreheads and flowers painted on their hindquarters, bearded Sikhs in bright turbans, Madras Regiment soldiers behind their famed fifes and drums, felt-hatted Gurkhas. At Nehru's side was his good friend Lady Mountbatten, wife of the last British Viceroy. Afterwards Nehru told a group of young army trainees: "Redistribution of states is only, after all, for administrative convenience. There is no finality . . . a decision can be changed...
...resident for 30 years, and head of the India League, has long been India's No. 1 self-appointed lobbyist in the U.S. In New Delhi last week, on his way home after a two months' visit to India and India's leaders (including Nehru), Singh spoke up in the sorrowful tones of a mutual friend...