Nehru Dies Of Heart Attack

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30452, 28 May 1964, Page 1

Nehru Dies Of Heart Attack

.V. Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright )

NEW DELHI, May 27.

Pandit Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister, died at his home in New Delhi today after bein£ taken ill earlv this morning.

iv uijiio “Life is out. The light is out,” Mr C. Subramanian, the Minister for Steel, told Parliament at 2.20 p.m. today.

Members of Parliament wept and sobbed at the announcement. Mr Nehru died at 2 p.m. from a heart attack and shock. He was aged 74.

Seven physicians, most of them heart specialists, were at his bedside with his daughter, Mrs Indira Gandhi.

First reports of Mr Nehru’s sudden serious illness came when doctors were summoned to

his home this morning. Mr Nehru had just re- ; turned from a brief holiday at Dehra Dun, and was to have gone to the hill resort of Kalimpong early next month for a longer holiday. Mr Nehru was taken ill on January 6 while attending the Congress Party conference at Bhubaneswar, northeast India. Doctors ordered him to take a complete rest for four to six weeks. It was announced on January 29 that he had fully recovered, but there were reports that he might never be able to resume his normal working day of from 14 to 18 hours. Mr Khrushchev invited him to convalesce in the Soviet Union, but the invitation was not accepted. The day before he went to Dehra Dun, Mr Nehru—-who has been Prime Minister since India became independent in 1947—said he had “given some thought” to a suggestion that he should retire as Prime Minister and act as adviser.

When asked about a possible successor, he replied: “My lifetime is not ending so very soon.”

Mr Nehru was speaking at

a press conference—his first since his illness last January —attended by 200 Indian and foreign journalists. Those present said that only occasionally did he show a flash of his former vigour.

Mr Nehru’s funeral will take place tomorrow, the procession starting at 8 a.m. State mourning will last for 12 days. Mr Nehru will go down in history as the maker of modern India. Mahatma Gandhi was the spirit behind the mass movement which swept his country to independence, but it was to Nehru, the first Prime Minister, that the task of consolidating independence fell.

The only son of a wealthy family, he gave up a life of ease for the hardships of resistance and prison. He lived not only to see his ideal. become a reality, but also to mould India’s destiny after independence. After the 1947 partition, Mr Nehru faced the triple task of consolidating the newfound unity inside India, adjusting the delicate relations with neighbouring Pakistan, and building up India’s foreign policy. Millions of refugees were absorbed and re-settled and the 570 Indian princely states were peacefully merged into the Indian union. Abroad, he mapped out firmly a middle course of friendly neutrality. But relations with Pakistan remained strained, mainly because of the Kashmir dispute, but trade and cultural exchanges were established.