Jawaharlal Nehru, who had led India since independence in 1947, died of a heart attack in New Delhi at age 74. His death ended nearly two decades of leadership that shaped India's parliamentary democracy, nonaligned foreign policy, and state-led industrial development, and it triggered a succession contest that eventually brought Lal Bahadur Shastri to power.
Nehru had governed India continuously since its independence and partition in August 1947, navigating the young nation through famine, war with Pakistan, border disputes with China, and the immense task of building democratic institutions across a vast, diverse, newly unified country. A Cambridge-educated barrister and disciple of Gandhi, he combined socialist economic planning with a fierce commitment to secularism and parliamentary democracy that many observers doubted could survive India's scale and diversity.
By 1964, Nehru's health had been declining for months following the humiliating 1962 border war with China, which some historians believe hastened his physical decline. He suffered a stroke in January and never fully recovered. On the morning of May 27, he complained of back pain, then suffered a ruptured aorta and died within hours, at his residence in New Delhi.
His death set off genuine uncertainty about India's democratic future, since he had dominated politics so thoroughly that no obvious successor existed. Yet in a vindication of the institutions he had built, a peaceful transition followed, with Lal Bahadur Shastri chosen as prime minister. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, would later rise to lead India herself, extending the family's political dynasty for decades. Crowds lining the streets for his cremation numbered well over a million.
Key people: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi