Dominance and Dissent: Their inter‐relations in the Indian party system

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Abstract
With Lal Bahadur Shastri's sudden death in Tashkent in January of this year, India faced for the second time within eighteen months the problem of succession to leadership, The task may have been easier on the second occasion: for one thing, it was not a matter, as it had been in 1964, of finding a successor to a man revered for a full generation as a national leader; for another, there was to hand the experience of the first occasion. On the other hand, while Nehru's end had been for long foreseen and considered, and came as the culmination of a period of declining grip, that of La1 Bahadur occurred without warning. Moreover, for all the respect that Shastri had attracted, the atmosphere in which his replacement had to be sought was not that of the somewhat hushed apprehension in which he had been chosen. But while the second succession was thus accompanied by greater noise and bustle, and while the element of conflict and rivalry was now expressed in the taking of a vote to determine the issue, both operations went with every appearance of smoothness. India felt proud, and most of the world relieved, to find that there was a system that could take the strain. But what is that system ?

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