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"The Syndicate." Such decisions rest with India's well-entrenched Congress Party, which under Mahatma Gandhi carried the country to independence, and has held power ever since. The Congress holds 370 of the 510 seats in Parliament, and despite an array of eight opposition parties ranging from the Communists to the free-enterprise Swatantra (Freedom) Party, stands in no danger of losing control. The Congress itself embraces a broad spectrum of political coloration, from the virtual Communism of former Defense Minis ter Krishna Menon through the proAmericanism of Railways Minister S. K. Patil to the Hindu mysticism of the party's reactionary wing. But basically it retains much of the socialist stamp given it by Nehru. A small circle of Congress politicians known as "the Syndicate" currently dominates the party, and it is to this group that Lai Bahadur Shastri must remain responsible. Key members of the Syndicate:
> Kumaraswami Kamaraj Nadar, 63, barrel-chested boss of Madras, who as president of the Congress Party dreamed up the consensus scheme as a means of installing Shastri after Nehru's death. But Kamaraj speaks only Tamil, and even if Shastri were to vanish, would be content to remain only a kingmaker and cash collector for the party. Last week Kamaraj was touring his home state, preceded by an elephant with bells on its toes, to celebrate his birthday. In lieu of gifts he collected $350,000 for the party coffers.
> S. K. Patil, 63, outspoken leader of the party's right wing and the man in control of wealthy Bombay, which supplies two-thirds of the party's finances. — Atulya Ghosh, 59, cigar-chomping boss of eastern India.
> Sanjiva Reddy, 52, a bespectacled, brush-browed anti-Communist who serves as Shastri's Minister of Steel and Mines and is one of the few Cabinet members with a dual political base. He has supporters in both Madras and Andhra Pradesh thanks to the fact that those two states were created in 1949.
Return to the Raj? The strength of the Syndicate was best demonstrated at the recent meeting of the Congress's All-India Committee in Bangalore (TIME, Aug. 6). There Shastri carefully coaxed his fellow Congressmen into reappointing Kamaraj as party president, thus perpetuating the chance for consensus in the 1967 elections. But the Congress—led by Gandhi strictly as a revolutionary movement—is perverting the purpose for which it was conceived. Gandhi had urged the party to dissolve itself after independence was gained.
India's elder statesman, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, 86, who quit the Congress to found the Swatantra Party, fears that one day the Congress and the government might merge into a one-party state. Local Congress leaders who have held power since 1947 own too much land and urban property to permit the reforms that are needed if India is to reach economic equity. The zamindars of West Bengal, for example, have become (through Congress Party consent) the equivalent of the English gentry of the raj.