ABSTRACT
The ascendancy that Nehru had achieved in Indian politics by 1955 had a disturbing corollary. In a manner of speaking, people were now willing to let Nehru win; it was too difficult to oppose him, given both his international prestige and his domestic popularity. Moreover, the lack of a coherent counter-ideology to Nehru’s meant that it was easier to concede that vision as the legitimate one for India. This, in effect, was the consensus of the left and centre in Indian politics – and criticism, such as there was, could be largely confined to Nehru’s failure to deliver on Nehruvian promises. There also opened out a strong divergence between politics at the centre, in which Nehru’s leadership was largely unchallenged, and regional politics, where various divergent trends that pulled away from the centre became apparent: regional, linguistic, caste, community or a combination thereof. These trends were not allowed to become dominant: Nehru’s India was a federal system with a strong bias towards central authority; the strong centre was a prerequisite for the success of the central plank of Nehruvian policy: planned economic development.
