Page 129 - Demo

A grave scandal known as the Mundhra Deal surfaced in Calcutta in 1958. Dr. Lohia entrusted the job of raising this issue in Parliament to Mr. Raju. Mr. Sanjeev Reddy was the minister concerned with the scandal. He too hailed from Andhra and was a good friend of Mr Raju. Mr. Reddy got scent of our plan of raising the scandal issue in Parliament. He asked Mr. Raju about it and Mr. Raju, a plain hearted man told him everything. After getting the details of our strategy, he (Mr. Sanjeev Reddy) reported the same to Pandit Nehru. The latter immediately gauged the gravity of the embarrassment to which the Congress would be put if the PSP raised the issue in Parliament. He invited Mr. Raju to his residence and asked him to tell him what he (Mr.Raju) wanted to raise in Parliament. The pure hearted Mr Raju told Nehru everything. Then Nehru called his son-in-law Feroz Gandhi, explained the matter to him and asked him to raise the issue in the house. Feroz also worked as opposition (to the Congress) when the situation warranted. We were shocked beyond description. Dr. Lohia pointed out Mr. Raju's grave mistake to him, and he replied, %u201dWho should we trust if not the Prime Minister of the country?%u201dThe Congress Party was able to maintain national political stability since independence by virtue of its dominant position and, at least for the moment, appeared likely to continue to do so for some time. Pushing for a strong unitary centre, both Patel and Nehru came down hard on opposition parties in the different states, inducing some of their members to join the Congress, jailing those who were intransigent. The Congress Party was simultaneously successful over the years in the gradual co-optation and absorption of both the leadership and membership of the socialist parties of India. The PSP was the primary victim of this co-option process, and suffered more defections than any other Indian political party. One observation concerning the PSP was that it was a party of urban intellectuals that had no base in the rural countryside where the great bulk of India's population resided. The PSP was a party of 119