The sad and sudden death of YSR Reddy is not the first which will have a huge political impact. Indian politics has indeed been shaped by such accidents. If only anyone had guessed that Jinnah had only a year to live beyond August 1947, the negotiations for the independence of British India would have taken a different turn. Then the death of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948, tragic as it was, released the Congress from a person who would have given them a guilty conscience every day of their lives. It also gave the Congress a unifying symbol which they could offer to the young nation.

Sardar Patel’s death in December 1950 left Nehru as the sole Congress leader. He controlled the party and the government. He had no challengers and this was a mixed blessing. The top heavy development strategy and the gullible foreign policy regarding China would not have happened if he had any colleague who would have matched him in status. Then of course if anyone could have changed the direction of economic strategy, it was Lal Bahadur Shastri. He wanted the aam aadmi to benefit from planning fifty years before Congress rediscovered the idea. Yet he died before he could get into his stride. Had Shastri lived and been PM for two terms, there would never have been dynasty politics in India. Shastri was a strong leader when it came to the 1965 war with Pakistan and a truce-maker when the question of Hindi as a national language exploded. He was a change maker but he has been erased from the Congress annals completely. It is fitting that YSR’s body was kept for the public to pay their respects at Shastri stadium in Hyderabad.

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