He speaks of 1957 as an year of momentous importance in the history of modern India. It was the year the second general election was held thus joining the league of democracies. He says it was in essence a referendum on the prime minister and his ruling party. It is also the time when his daughter emerged as a personality in her own right and started to 'represent the interests of women'.
He speaks of the challenge brewing in the south. DMK, a party which grew out of the Dravidian movement started by E.V.Ramaswami Naicker, stood for creation of a separate nation in south India, to be called Dravida Nadu.
The real challenge for congress however came from Kerala, where a resurgent Communist Party of India had emerged as a strong popular alternative to the ruling party.
Kerala was different in many ways from the other states. The Hindus were around sixty percent as against the national average of eighty. They were more educated at the same time the oppressiveness of its caste system was more severe.
Yet the combined efforts of the missionaries, the princes, the caste societies and the communists had seriously undermined traditional structures of authority. In a mere half-century, between 1900 and 1950, defiance had replaced deference as the idiom of social exchange in the Kerala countryside.
The communists were able to exploit the situation, their manifesto declared, ......Communist Party is capable not only of uniting the people for conducting agitation, but that it can take over and run the administration successfully.
The newly elected cheif minister E.M.S. Nambodiripad, the author says, remains a figure of considerable historical interest, because of both the size of his province and the distinctiveness of his politics.
'The communist ministers made an impression with their effciency, this a stark contrast with the sloth of their Congress counterparts.
While they worked within the framework of the constitution, 'the stated commitment to land reform did not become operative under any Congress regime but was closely approximated by the reforms of the Communist Party of India in Kerala'
Of the many steps taken 'the most controversial were the educational initiatives of the Kerala government. The opposition to the bill was led by the church. ' More opportunistic still was the local Congress Party. Defeated in the election, it saw in the resentment against the Education Bill a chance to regain power...... In its first phase, the Education Bill controversy was, like so much else in modern india, simply a clash between the modern and the traditional idioms of politics.'
Events culminate in the Communist Party government being dismissed by the centre (at the behest of Indira Gandhi) and re-election being held six months later. Congress with its allies wins the re-election. The author quotes Sarvepalli Gopal ...'tarnished Nehru's reputation for ethical behaviour in politics and, from a long-term view, weakened his position'.
Guha touches upon the creation of Swatantra Party, started by C.Rajagopalachari (Rajaji] with the purpose of opposing the 'personality cult, and centralisaion of state power, a curious amalgam of free-market liberals and agrarian leaders seeking an alternative to the congress.
Added to all the challenges to the government was also the self inflicted one called the 'Mundhra Scandal'. Apparently it finds a place in this chapter due to fact that T. T. Krishnamachari who was the finance minister and held responsible for the misdeeds of LIC was from south of India.
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