Congress crisis

The Indian National Congress was a unique political organisation in the history of newly independent nations. It not only nourished the Indian independence move ment, it has also been in power since independence, especially at the Centre, till yesterday. During this period it had thrown. up a galaxy of leaders of the first magni tude, the greatest of whom was the Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi. After the death of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhiji's chosen pol itical heir, dominated the Indian National Congress and was the First Prime Minister. of India for about seventeen years.
This Congress Party has now split into two groups, after a bitter internecine. warfare, led, on the one hand, by the Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Nehru's only child, and on the other by the Congress die-hards consist ing of Messrs. S. Nijalingappa, Morarji Desai, k. Kamaraj, and S. K. Patil.

Though the crisis has been in the making even a long time, it suddenly erupted into the open in the shape of a struggle for political supremacy between the Prime Minister and the Congress old guard at the historical session of the All-India Con gress Committee which began at Bangalore on July 10, 1969. As the party machine was under the control of the latter, the struggle was wrongly described as the struggle between the party and the Prime Minister.