Epilogue

Summary

In August 1951, the person responsible for the food ministry as well as, often, providing food for thought, K. M. Munshi was a troubled man. Unburdening himself at some length to the prime minister, Munshi roamed far and wide: from the ‘oppressive’ India–Pakistan relation and our ‘timid’ people, because of the government's ‘weak policy’, to the unsympathetic international situation. His frustration's chief causes though were that cabinet colleagues were not entirely ‘in confidence’ of Nehru and that there was a need for effective publicity. Munshi was sorry that the information and broadcasting ministry lacked a ‘purposive education of self-righteous public opinion’, whether internally in Telangana, where forces were fighting communists ‘who pose as harmless politicians’, or externally. Munshi had visited three countries – England, America and then-Burma – in the last two years and found the external affairs ministry's publicity wanting. Munshi concluded his quasi-war cry with a characteristic passage: ‘Indians abroad [are] our best advertisers.… Modern publicity has become a thing of art and money, and we must stoop to conquer.…’

Mirroring the Prologue, this extended Epilogue attempts to delineate the path to the people's court and its accompanying electoral politicking, which in turn paved the way from ‘agitation’ to ‘construction’. Mohanlal Saksena, former central minister for refugee rehabilitation, and future parliamentarian, put his finger on the pulse of party politics at this time in a spirited exchange with Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, who had given a call to Congressmen to leave. Saksena, a legislator in UP since the 1920s, posited Kidwai's ‘exhortation’ with Nehru's ‘call to remain united’ and pointed out to Kidwai the problem in his position, which was that his ‘grouse’ was against party organisation, while having ‘full faith’ in the leadership of Nehru. Instead of leaving, if Kidwai stayed and helped the latter, it would have been politically sounder. For, as Saksena asked, were ‘the dissident Congressmen … morally superior’?

Before Tandon's election in 1950 and before the departure of the Congress Socialists in 1948, the CWC had as many members from the left as from the right, and Saksena could see Kripalani's Krishak Mazdoor Party becoming irrelevant in the electoral battle between those ‘who are out to dislodge [Nehru] … [those] who pay lip homage to him [and] those who, while swearing by him … forswear his advice’.