India was debilitated, as a result.

But it was not disabled.

On May 23, Union home secretary V Viswanathan sought to meet the secretary to the President, Subimal Dutt. The two civil servants were seasoned officials, both from the Indian Civil Service. Viswanathan would become governor of three states, and Dutt, who had been Nehru’s foreign secretary (1955 to 1961), would become India’s first high commissioner to Bangladesh. One can imagine them conferring in the imposing hush of the secretary’s room in Rashtrapati Bhavan with controlled but real concern. Viswanathan told Dutt something the latter was not unaware of. But he was now hearing it from the most authentic and credentialled voice. The PM, Viswanathan said, was not well. This was information, but on a matter of the highest importance. But more, it came with the concomitant request that the President should give thought to what would need to be done “in case there was a vacancy in the office of the Prime Minister”.

Viswanathan and Dutt had not held the offices they had held in the past, nor the ones they occupied at that point, without learning what weathering means. Concerned they were. In fact, deeply worried. Panicky, they were not. They knew that the matter was urgent, grave. But they were taking time by the forelock. Nehru was ill, very likely dying. And as life lingered yet, something called contingency planning had to be done. No coyness was allowed there, no delay. Message conveyed by high Malayali to high Bengali, the matter was left for the holder of the tallest office in the land, the great Telugu master of Sanskrit, the Veda, the Itihasa, Bradley and Adi Sankara, the best-known commentator on the Gita, President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to respond to. Radhakrishnan had no precedents to go by, true. But he had the profundity of wisdom to turn to, the reflexes of his intelligence to actuate. No PM of India had died in office, no vacancy had so far occurred in the station.

Radhakrishnan had written in The Hindu View of Life (1927): “The cards in the game of life are given to us. We do not select them. They are traced to our past karma, but we can call as we please, lead what suit we will, and as we play, we gain or lose. And there is freedom.”

Now, Radhakrishnan had the freedom that came with his responsibility and the prerogatives that devolved on him with his discretion to lead his “suit”. The one difficulty he faced was the deep sorrow he was feeling over the condition of a man who was not just his PM but also a thought-partner, a valued friend with whom friendship was frank and conversation candid.

His son and biographer Sarvepalli Gopal was there with him, in Rashtrapati Bhavan, and Radhakrishnan and Gopal must have talked about the crisis and its imminent deepening. Gopal writes in his brilliant biography of his father that the President acted quietly and without either delay or fuss, decisively.

Since the Constitution did not contemplate a situation where India was without an elected PM, no vacuum, he figured, should be allowed. He decided that he would swear-in the second senior most member of the Cabinet, Gulzarilal Nanda, as PM, as soon as possible if Nehru died.

When the vacancy did arise, he told a dazed Nanda that he would swear him in as PM that afternoon, and he did. He also made it clear to Nanda that this was an interim arrangement, to end as soon as the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) elected its new leader. Radhakrishnan knew, as did all political observers, that Nehru’s most credible successor, and one Nehru seemed to have anointed in one way and another, was Lal Bahadur Shastri. But propriety demanded that the CLP take that call.

In the hand given to India by destiny, another stalwart — incidentally like the President, also from the south of the Vindhyas — bestirred himself. K Kamaraj, now Congress president, and Radhakrishnan enjoyed a close rapport. Strong as a granite hill, he conferred with Radhakrishnan and of course with Congress seniors, and saw to it that the stature enjoyed by Shastri was quickly converted into support without any wrangling. Election yes, squabbles no. And on June 9, through a veil of sighs, Shastri assumed office as India’s second PM, but with no hood of doom covering the change-over.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then in the Rajya Sabha, paid a condolence tribute in his unique Hindi that belongs to the annals of literature, not the Hansards of legislature. He said with Nehru gone “The sun has set; we will now have to find our way about with the aid of starlight”. An effulgent orb sun had indeed set but the night that followed gave us the starlight of duty to guide us through the dark.

Recalling these transactions, on the 59th anniversary of Nehru’s passing, we may tell ourselves that Viswanathan, Dutt, Radhakrishnan and Kamaraj did what their duties told them to do without any ego goading them, nor any motive other than doing one’s duty, and without being prevented by anyone else from doing so either.

Power was seen as trust, its transitions as the processes of a hand dealt to us to use with respect, not ambition.

Respect. That was the operative emotion. With trust as its turning key.

Fear there was, but only of one’s conscience.

Nehru was not a man of religion. But he was a man of conscience. S Gopal has given in the same book what is I believe the best description of Nehru’s “within”: “Nehru was… a reverent agnostic, without religious faith but with a religious feeling”.

All those men had and showed respect. Viswanathan and Dutt demonstrated respect for prudence where procedures did not exist, Radhakrishnan for sheer propriety where no precedent existed, Kamaraj for robust commonsense where no convention guided, and Shastri, with the humility of the good, respect for destiny.

Along with Vajpayee in his seat on the Opposition benches, all of them were egoless instruments of Bharat’s Bhagya Vidhata. In an unprecedented situation that they were this day in 1964, they set a precedent for rectitude in public life.

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