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Fruit of Humility. Yet despite the tumult and the tremors, India continues to function with a stability rare in Asia. Part of the reason stems from India's diminutive Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri, whose modest manner is the very antithesis of the hubris of Nehru. Tiny and turkey-necked, shy as a schoolboy in his rumpled dhoti and brown loafers, Shastri both matches the diminished stature of India and reflects its inchoate strength. By merely surviving for 14 months in a situation that many thought might end in anarchy, Shastri has shown that India has a chance. His weaknesses alone—concilia tory, hesitant, dilatory as they are—have been magical in their muddling. He was firm only in the Kutch incident, when he sent two divisions of Indian troops to within 300 yards of Pakistan's fortified positions, and that won him support at home. His trips abroad—to Cairo, Moscow, Ottawa, London and Belgrade—earned headlines at home for a man who was at least patrolling the old capitals if not storming them, as Nehru had done, to India's delight. Even when Lyndon Johnson scrubbed Shastri's June trip to Washington under the press of Viet Nam business, Shastri's cool unconcern paid off with Indian audiences, proving to their satisfaction that humility pays. Last week Shastri tackled a micro cosm of the problems that plague his nation. He wrapped up his four-day visit to Yugoslavia by attempting once again to re-establish India's image as a crisis mediator, signed a communique that neither damned the U.S. nor praised the Viet Cong. Back in New Delhi, he called in the bosses of India's 16 states and wrung from them approval for a long overdue food rationing plan. He also huddled with his Cabinet ministers, garnering their ideas for India's next Five-Year Plan. In his off hours, he courted Uganda's visiting Prime Minister Milton Apollo Obote, seeking to rekindle the Afro-Indian cooperation that Nehru had sparked. Through each meeting ran the thread of Shastri's approach: a concern with consensus that has marked his rule from the outset.
Kaleidoscope of Contrast. Shastri's India is less a nation than a notion, possessed of a fragile unity that barely transcends its geographical boundaries. Into a triangular wedge of the world only a third as big as the U.S., India packs 480 million people and more than 200 million cows. From the mirage-like ice peaks of the Himalayas, down the vast and sinuous Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers (which most Indians regard as holy), through the crammed chawls and boiling bustees of Bombay and Calcutta, to the humid tip of the subcontinent at Cape Comorin, India is a kaleidoscope of contrast (see color pages). Within its embattled boundaries it embraces six distinct ethnic groups, seven major religions, 845 languages and dialects, and two ancient and antagonistic cultures: the Indo-Aryan (primarily Hindi-speaking) in the north, the Dravidian (speaking mainly Telugu and Tamil) in the south. Its peoples range from sultry Sikhs in silken turbans to naked Nagas armed with crossbows; from country dwellers who are seared black by a cruel sun to pale and perfumed maharanees who ride to the beaches of Bombay in air-conditioned Rolls-Royces.