For one of my generation, the scene unfolded memories of two railway accidents that occurred in 1956 during the tenure of Lal Bahadur Shastri in the railway ministry. In September that year, a disaster occurred on Central Railways in Mahabubnagar, erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, resulting in the death of 112 people. And in November, on Southern Railways in Ariyalur, then Madras State, another accident that left more than 140 dead.

The Ariyalur accident occurred in the dim hours of predawn when it was raining torrentially. The Madras-Tuticorin Express was over the bridge of the Marudayar river when the first seven of the train’s 12 bogies jumped off the rails and plunged 15 feet down into a deep ditch, leaving some bogies standing perilously on the bridge and the remaining safe. Of the seven, four were third class compartments including one reserved for women. The first of these had 63 pilgrims from north India headed for Dhanushkodi.

Why did this happen? What and who was responsible?

These questions were to be asked but the immediate need was rescue. And it came then, too, with the speed of the Kural’s hand. Shastriji was at headquarters but OV Alagesan, the deputy minister for railways, was in Madras, about just 170 miles away. Hearing the news on the radio, he rushed to the site with senior officials of Southern Railways. By evening, under Alagesan’s watch, 104 bodies had been extricated and moved to a cement factory nearby for identification.

Communication systems then were not what they are now. No mobile phones but ordinary land-phones and the humming of sleepless telegraphy in extraordinary transmissions enabled Southern Railways to tell the world within hours, for instance, that the entire crew of three consisting of the driver, Mr M G Doraiswamy, and two firemen, Mr M Muniswami and Mr A Kothandapani, were killed on the spot but the chief guard and under guard were safe. Reading that communique now, I am humbled by the use of Mr before the names given. That title immediately invests the three with human dimensions — a family grieving, an office bereft, a rare learnt skill extinguished. Today, 67 years on, it is not unlikely that some of the seniors in the families of those three and of the scores of others killed are still with us and remember the trauma. And contemporary digital technology enables newspaper offices to preserve their old issues and educate us on the events of the time. As do that remarkable mint of archival gold often called the Hansard, namely, the records of Parliamentary debates.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had declined to accept Shastri’s resignation after the Mahabubnagar accident but very reluctantly accepted it when Shastri gave it after Ariyalur, in order to make the point that government should not be seen as status quoist when a tragedy like this occurs. Parliament was taken aback by the resignation’s acceptance, with many members from the Opposition urging Shastri to stay on. I have found the debate on this in the Lok Sabha on November 27 and 28, 1956, fascinating for what it says of the political culture of the time.

K M Vallatharas, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Praja Socialist Party (and the Krishak Mazdoor Praja Party) elected from the Cauvery basin area initiated the debate and said there could be no better substitute to Shastri, but demanded that local officials should be “at least placed under suspension”. Frank Anthony, the nominated member representing the Anglo-Indian community that had strong links with the railways , expressed “deep sadness” at the minister’s resignation and said it would be reducing accountability to an “absurdity” if the responsibility for rail accidents was to be traced back to the minister. Maharaja Karni Singh of Bikaner said Shastri was a “man of action” and “a giant in the matter of honesty and integrity”, and should take back his resignation in the interests of the railways and the nation. A K Gopalan , the fiery doyen of the Communist Party from Malabar, went beyond the subject of the minister’s resignation and said what was needed was “a shake-up, a real and good shake-up in the entire railway administration”. That was what is called perspective.

Shastri’s reply, as the former minister who would not take his resignation back, is a text that should be read and re-read by each and every employee in the railways , and every regular traveller on the railways, but also by others, especially those in public life, for the transparency of its truthfulness and the voltage of its ethics. He refused to blame those “lower down”, defended the Railway Board with passion, and placed everything in perspective in these words: “There are two very important elements in these accidents. One is the human factor. There are various regulations laid down and yet a driver might pass against a signal…The second factor is the fury of nature…”

Those two – the human factor and what may be called factors beyond human control – should not be cited to explain away lightly any accident of the kind that Mahabubnagar and Ariyalur witnessed in 1956, and we have just done in Balasore. Shastri referred to them to give the Lok Sabha some perspective but he took the responsibility on himself.

What does railway minister Shastri’s action show? And what do the reactions of MPs of that time show? This — that in the life of a nation when tragedies occur, one needs to react to them with the immediate reflexes described in the Kural, but also take, when the rescue stage is over, a view that includes that of a microscope and a telescope. And give no room in the reactions to politics — either of blame or of denial. Neither Shastri nor Alagesan nor the Railway Board nor any arm of the government flaunted the action taken to rescue the victims. They regarded what was done as duty, dutifully performed. Investigations were ordered but as earnest searches for causes, not witch-hunts for the culprit. No attempt was made by the government to minimise culpability. No attempt was made by the Opposition to become witnesses for the prosecution.

Uchharangrai Navalshankar Dhebar, Congress president at the time, said that Shastri’s resignation was “an act of self-effacement” and “would rank as a landmark in the annals of democracy”. But almost no one at that time demanded resignations.

To self-efface is not easy, to deface another not so difficult.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former administrator, is a student of modern Indian history The views expressed are personal