Emergence of Opposition Parties

One Party Dominance

After facing the first problem, the second problem before India was to establish Democracy. After attaining independence on 15th August 1947, India completed the process of Constitution-making. It took 2 years, 11 months, and 18 days to make the Indian Constitution. The Constitution of India was completed on 26th November 1949 and came into force on 26th January 1950. After the implementation of the Constitution, the biggest task was to establish democracy. The Election Commission of India was set up in January 1950. Sukumar Sen became the first Chief Election Commissioner. The country’s first general elections were expected sometime in 1950 itself....

Conducting the First General Election in India was no Less than a Challenge

The Election Commission discovered that it was not going to be easy to hold a free and fair election in a country of India’s size. Holding an election requires delimitation or drawing the boundaries of the electoral constituencies. It also required preparing the electoral rolls, or the list of all the citizens eligible to vote. Both these tasks took a lot of time. When the first draft of the rolls was published, it was discovered that the names of nearly 40 lakh women were not recorded in the list. They were simply listed as “wife of …” or “daughter of …”. The Election Commission refused to accept these entries and ordered a revision if possible and deletion if necessary. Preparing for the first general election was a mammoth exercise. Only 15 percent of these eligible voters were literate. Therefore the Election Commission had to think of some special method of voting. The Election Commission trained over 3 lakh officers and polling staff to conduct the elections. The first general election was also the first big test of democracy in a poor and illiterate country. India’s experiment with universal adult franchises appeared very bold and risky....

The First General Election in India

The elections had to be postponed twice and finally held from October 1951 to February 1952. But this election is referred to as the 1952 election since most parts of the country voted in January 1952. It took six months for the campaigning, polling, and counting to be completed. Elections were competitive – there were on average more than four candidates for each seat. The level of participation was encouraging — more than half the eligible voters turned out to vote on the day of elections. When the results were declared these were accepted as fair even by the losers. The Indian experiment had proved the critics wrong. India’s general election of 1952 became a landmark in the history of democracy all over the world. It was no longer possible to argue that democratic elections could not be held in conditions of poverty or lack of education. In the elections, Congress won 354 seats and emerged as the single largest party. The Communist Party of India won 16 seats and became the second-largest party. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of the country....

Opinions Related to the First General Election in India

Organiser, a magazine, wrote that Jawaharlal Nehru “would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India”. A British member of the Indian Civil Service claimed that “a future and more enlightened age will view with astonishment the absurd farce of recording the votes of millions of illiterate people”. The Times of India held that the polls have “confounded all those skeptics who thought the introduction of the adult franchise too risky an experiment in this country”. The Hindustan Times claimed that “there is universal agreement that the Indian people have conducted themselves admirably in the largest experiment in democratic elections in the history of the world”. Observers outside India were equally impressed....

Congress Dominance

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The General Election – Ugly Truth

The extent of the victory of the Congress was artificially boosted by our electoral system. The Congress won three out of every four seats but it did not get even half of the votes. In 1952, for example, the Congress obtained 45 percent of the total votes. But it managed to win 74 percent of the seats. The Socialist Party, the second-largest party in terms of votes, secured more than 10 percent of the votes all over the country. But it could not even win three percent of the seats. How did this happen? In this system of election, that has been adopted in our country, the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share. That is exactly what worked in favor of the Congress. If we add up the votes of all the non-Congress candidates it was more than the votes of the Congress. However, the non-Congress votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates. So the Congress was still way ahead of the opposition and managed to win....

Main Parties

Parties Formation Ideology Leaders Divisions Socialist Party The Congress Socialist Party (CSP) was formed within the Congress in 1934 by a group of young leaders who wanted a more radical and egalitarian Congress. In 1948, the Congress amended its constitution to prevent its members from having a dual party membership. This forced the Socialists to form a separate Socialist Party in 1948. Believed in Socialism Criticized Congress as a party of the rich and the capitalists. Founder – Archarya Narendra Dev Other main leaders – Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Asoka Mehta, Ram Manohar Lohia Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party The Praja Socialist Party Samyukta Socialist Party Communist Party Of India In the early 1920s communist groups emerged in different parts of India taking inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and advocating socialism as the solution to problems affecting the country. From 1935, the Communists worked mainly from within the fold of the Indian National Congress. A parting of ways took place in December 1941, when the Communists decided to support the British in their war against Nazi Germany. This Party was influenced by the Communist ideology. According to them, the freedom achieved in 1947 was not real freedom. In 1951, they contested the election, leaving the path of violence, and became the second-largest Party in India. A. K. Gopalan, S.A. Dange, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, P.C. Joshi, Ajay Ghosh, and P. Sundarraya were among the notable leaders of the CPI. The Party went through a major split in 1964 following the ideological rift between the Soviet Union and China. The pro-Soviet faction remained as the CPI, while the opponents formed the CPI(M). Both these parties continue to exist to this day Bharatiya Jana Sangh The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was formed in 1951 . The Bharatiya Janata Party traces its roots to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Its lineage can be traced back to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha before independence. It emphasized the idea of one country, one culture, and one nation and believed that the country could become modern, progressive, and strong based on Indian culture and traditions. Founder – Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Other main leaders -Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and d Balraj Madhok Nill...

Nature of Congress Dominance

India is not the only country to have experienced the dominance of one party. If we look around the world, we find many other examples of one-party dominance. But there is a crucial difference between these and the Indian experience. In the rest of the cases, the dominance of one party was ensured by compromising democracy. In some countries like China, Cuba, and Syria the constitution permits only a single party to rule the country. What distinguished the dominance of the Congress party in India from all these cases was it happened under democratic conditions. Many parties contested elections in conditions of free and fair elections and yet the Congress managed to win election after election. This was similar to the dominance the African National Congress enjoyed in South Africa after the end of apartheid. Many leaders who were at the forefront of that struggle were now contesting elections as Congress candidates. The Congress was already a very well-organised party and by the time the other parties could even think of a strategy, the Congress had already started its campaign. Many parties were formed only around independence or after that. Thus, the Congress had the ‘first off the blocks’ advantage....

Congress as a Social and Ideological Coalition

The Congress began as a party dominated by the English-speaking, upper caste, upper-middle-class, and urban elite. But with every civil disobedience movement it launched, its social base widened. It brought together diverse groups, whose interests were often contradictory. Peasants and industrialists, urban dwellers and villagers, workers and owners, middle, lower, and upper classes, and castes found space in the Congress. Gradually, its leadership also expanded beyond the upper caste and upper-class professionals to agriculture-based leaders with a rural orientation. By the time of independence, the Congress was transformed into a rainbow-like social coalition broadly representing India’s diversity in terms of classes and castes, religions and languages, and various interests. Congress was an ideological coalition as well. It accommodated the revolutionary and pacifist, conservative and radical, extremist and moderate, and the right, left, and all shades of the center. The Congress was a ‘platform’ for numerous groups, interests, and even political parties to take part in the national movement....

Tolerance and Management of Factions

This coalition-like character of the Congress gave it an unusual strength. Firstly, a coalition accommodates all those who join it. Therefore, it has to avoid any extreme position and strike a balance on almost all issues. Compromise and inclusiveness are the hallmarks of a coalition. Secondly, in a party that has the nature of a coalition, there is a greater tolerance of internal differences, and the ambitions of various groups and leaders are accommodated. That is why, even if a group was not happy with the party’s position or with its share of power, it would remain inside the party and fight the other groups rather than leaving the party and becoming an ‘opposition’. These groups inside the party are called factions. The coalitional nature of the Congress party tolerated and encouraged various factions. Some of these factions were based on ideological considerations but very often these factions were rooted in personal ambitions and rivalries. Instead of being a weakness, internal factionalism became a strength of the Congress. The system of factions functioned as a balancing mechanism within the ruling party. Political competition therefore took place within the Congress. In that sense, in the first decade of electoral competition, the Congress acted both as the ruling party as well as the opposition. That is why this period of Indian politics has been described as the ‘Congress system’....

Emergence of Opposition Parties

Even though, the opposition parties succeeded in gaining only a token representation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies during the 1850s. Yet their presence played a crucial role in maintaining the democratic character of the system. These parties offered a sustained and often principled criticism of the policies and practices of the Congress party. This kept the ruling party under check and often changed the balance of power within the Congress these parties prevented the resentment with the system from turning anti-democratic. These parties also groomed the leaders who were to play a crucial role in the shaping of our country....

Conclusion

Thus this first phase of democratic politics in our country was unique. The inclusive character of the national movement led by the Congress enabled it to attract different sections, groups, and interests making it a broad-based social and ideological coalition. As the ability of the Congress to accommodate all interests and all aspirants for political power steadily declined, other political parties started gaining greater significance. Thus, Congress’s dominance constitutes only one phase in the politics of the country....

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