A grieving Indira Gandhi decided to join Lal Bahadur Shastri’s cabinet after her father Jawaharlal Nehru’s death when she realised he would otherwise invite her estranged aunt Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.
So says Janak Raj Jai, then a confidant of Gandhi who saw her snub Shastri initially when he urged her to join his government on their return after immersing Nehru’s ashes in Allahabad.
Writing in his book “Strokes on Law and Democracy in India” (Universal Law Publishing Co), Jai, now 82, says he overheard Shastri tell Gandhi that one person from the Nehru family must be in his government.
According to the 612-page book released Thursday, Shastri and Gandhi were then walking together at the New Delhi railway station, with the author within earshot.
In response to Shastri’s request, a visibly angry Gandhi responded that the prime minister was making this appeal when she was in grief.
“She virtually rebuked him… Shastri must have felt very embarrassed because she said all this in my presence.
“After having snubbed Shastri, Gandhi walked swiftly leaving behind Shastri.”
The prime minister then “spoke to himself: if Indira Gandhi does not join my ministry, I shall have to ask Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to join my cabinet”.
The author says he conveyed this to Gandhi within a short time because “in all fairness I thought that Indira Gandhi was the right person to join the cabinet”.
When Gandhi realised Pandit may become a minister, she immediately asked Jai to fix an appointment with Shastri.
She called on Shastri and told him that she would be “too glad to join his cabinet” but asked him to give her “a lighter portfolio”.
Gandhi thus became the information and broadcasting minister, before becoming the prime minister after Shastri’s death.