India After Independence: 1947-2000 (34 page)

Nehru in March 1949 that the proposed legislation outlawing strikes in the essential services was ‘an ugly example of growing Indian fascism.’
¹⁴

Nehru in turn felt that the Socialists ‘continue to show an amazing lack of responsibility and constructive bent of mind. They seem to be all frustrated and going mentally to pieces.’
¹⁵

Another effort by Nehru in 1951 to improve relations with the Socialists once again met with a rebuff. Believing that Nehru was shielding and supporting reactionary forces, Jayaprakash Narayan once again publicly denounced ‘Nehru’s naked, open fascism’ and declared that his government was ‘following faithfully in the footsteps of Hitler in their dealings with labour.’
¹⁶

After winning the general elections in 1952 Nehru made his most
serious effort to work together with the Socialists, hoping to build a broad political front to promote economic development and strengthen the left trend within the Congress. In 1957, he asked the Socialists to cooperate with the Congress; he also hoped to bring Jayaprakash into the Cabinet. In response, Jayaprakash wanted the Congress to adopt a radical programme framed by him before he and the Socialists joined it. His 14-point programme included specific constitutional amendments, administrative and land reforms and nationalization of banks, insurance and mines.

Nehru was in agreement with many of Jayaprakash’s fourteen points, but he refused to enter into a prior commitment. If he could have formulated and persuaded his party to accept and implement such a full-scale radical programme he would not have needed Socialist co-operation. This support was needed precisely so that he could do so after strengthening the left trend in the Congress. Implementation of a radical programme would be the result of the Socialists rejoining the Congress but not a condition to be met prior to their rejoining. Nehru was prepared to strengthen the radical forces inside the Congress and not split the party in order to accommodate the Socialists. He was convinced that the Congress and the government had to go step by step towards radical transformation, that he had to build a larger societal consensus for taking steps towards socialism, that specific steps and their timing were to be determined pragmatically, and that he needed Socialist support precisely to achieve all this. But Jayaprakash could also not resile from his position for he was afraid that that would lead to a split in his own party.

From now on, while the dominant section of the Socialists continued to be convinced that Nehru and the Congress were committed to conservative policies, Nehru became increasingly contemptuous of the Socialists and felt that he would have to implement his socialist agenda alone, with the help of the left wing of the Congress and without the aid of the Socialists. His personal relations with Jayaprakash also deteriorated as he felt that the latter ‘hates the Congress so much as to prefer the devil to it’.
¹⁷
With every passing year the relations between the Congress and Nehru and the Socialists went on becoming more acrimonious. In October 1956, Nehru wrote in a personal letter that Jayaprakash was saying and writing ‘things which have little to do with socialism and which have much to do with nonsense.’
¹⁸
He also felt that Jayaprakash was, in the words of S. Gopal, ‘willing to join forces with any group in order to defeat the Congress.’ More specifically he accused Jayaprakash of supporting the Swatantra party and encouraging the Hindu communalists. Jayaprakash in turn accused Nehru of ‘having deteriorated from a national leader to a partisan of the Congress.’
¹⁹

Clearly, this was also the beginning of the Socialist policy of anti-Congressim which went far beyond opposition to the Congress on the basis of a left or socialist critique. The other side of the medal was that this policy tended to weaken the Socialists themselves and lead to splits in their rank and with every split some Socialists joined the Congress.

With his failure in seeking the help of the Socialists to renovate the Congress and shake it out of its staleness, Nehru decided to act on his own, by radicalizing party policies, especially with regard to the limited steps taken so far for social equality and equity as also economic development. In 1953 itself he had adopted the policy of extending land reforms from the abolition of landlordism to the fixation of ceilings on land holdings. Then came the adoption of the socialist pattern of society as the objective of the Congress at its Avadi Session in January 1955. The Avadi Resolution declared:

Planning should take place with a view to the establishment of a socialistic pattern of society, where the principle means of production are under social ownarship or control, production is progressively speeded up and there is equitable distribution of the national wealth.
²⁰

The Second and Third Five Year Plans provided further commitment to the socialistic pattern of society. But Nehru defined this in quite a flexible manner, all the while putting strong emphasis on modernization of the economy and increased production. While placing the Second Five Year Plan before parliament, he stated: ‘I do not propose to define precisely what socialism means . . . because we wish to avoid rigid or doctrinaire thinking’. And then added: ‘But broadly speaking... we mean a society in which there is equality of opportunity and the possibility for everyone to live a good life . . . We have therefore, to lay great stress on equality, on the removal of disparities, and it has to be remembered always that socialism is not the spreading out of poverty. The essential thing is that there must be wealth and production.’
²¹
In the chapter on the ‘Objectives of Planned Development’ which he wrote for the Third Five Year Plan document, after reiterating the objective of planning in the same terms as the Avadi Resolution, he quoted from the Second Plan: ‘The socialist pattern of society is not to be regarded as some fixed or rigid pattern. It is not rooted in any doctrine or dogma. Each country has to develop according to its own genius and traditions. Economic and social policy has to be shaped from time to time in the light of historical circumstances.’
²²

An indirect result of the left turn taken by the Congress was the adverse impact on the political fortunes of the parties of the left and the right which tended to get marginalized. In particular, by stealing the thunder of the Socialists and the Communists, it also tended to promote dissensions and division among them.

The Congress moved further to the left, programmatically, when, at its Nagpur session in January 1959, it passed a resolution declaring that ‘the future agrarian pattern should be that of cooperative joint farming.’ Initially, service cooperatives were to be established which would ultimately be transformed into farming cooperatives on a purely voluntary basis. In
addition there was to be a ceiling on land-holdings and state trading in foodgrains. The Nagpur decisions faced opposition both within and outside the party and were quietly jettisoned. Land ceilings were circumvented by the state governments under the pressure of capitalist farmers and rich peasants supported by the middle peasants. The small experiments in cooperative farming were a failure, and state trading in foodgrains was soon found to be unworkable. Nehru was quite willing to learn and discard unworkable policies, and except for the land ceilings, other aspects of the Nagpur Resolution were soon abandoned. However, the commitment to socialism was once again vigorously asserted at the Bhubaneshwar session of the Congress in January 1964.

While refusing to let the Congress be divided sharply on a left-right basis, Nehru kept the Congress on a left-of-the-centre course. He consistently attacked the right-wing parties and individuals and treated the left parties with respect even while criticizing them and making clear his differences with them.

The stronger assertion of its commitment to socialism did not stop the rot in the Congress party. There was growing criticism of the party in the country as also disillusionment with it. Also internal divisions in the party were growing more serious. The old leaders had grown jaded while new suitable leaders were not coming forth. The party organization continued to weaken; the party had been in power too long. A large number of Congressmen were no longer satisfied with party work—they hungered for official positions, influence and patronage. Administrative corruption was beginning to go beyond tolerable limits. The Congress was drifting away from the people and losing ground to the opposition in the states. The growing weakness of the party was revealed by the loss in 1963 of three prestigious Lok Sabha by-elections in the party strongholds. People had begun to ask the questions: After Nehru, who? And after Nehru, what?

Nehru, aided by the Madras chief minister, K. Kamaraj, now made a last effort to infuse new life into the party and restore the balance between the party and the government. This was sought to be achieved through what came to be known as the Kamaraj Plan, produced in August 1963 at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee. The essence of the Plan was that a number of leading Congressmen who were in the government as Union cabinet ministers or as chief ministers in the states should voluntarily resign from their posts and take up party organizational work in order to revitalize the party. Nehru was to decide whose resignations were to be finally accepted. This would also enable Nehru to cleanse the party at the top.

The Kamaraj Plan received enthusiastic response from the party rank and file. Immediately nearly 300 resignations from ministerial posts, including those of all members of the Union cabinet and all chief
ministers, followed. On 24 August, Nehru announced the acceptance of the resignations of six senior cabinet ministers—Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, S.K. Patil, Jagjivan Ram, B. Gopala Reddy and K.L. Shrimali—and six chief ministers.

The Kamaraj Plan had, however, come too late. Nehru was already a sick person and suffered a stroke at Bhubaneshwar in January 1964 and did not have the energy to take the necessary follow-through action. The leaders relieved from government office were not assigned any party duties except for Kamaraj who became the party president in January 1964; they sulked or intrigued against political rivals in the states. The Plan also failed as a means of cleansing the party of the dross. The morale of the party continued to sink, and Congressmen were as obsessed with administrative power and patronage as before. An indirect effect of the Plan was to weaken Morarji Desai’s position in the party. Another outcome of it was that, while failing to restore the prestige and importance of party organizational work, it increased the power of the state party bosses in central politics till Indira Gandhi cut them down to size in 1969. When Nehru died in June 1964, the Congress was continuing to go downhill.

Of all the political parties that emerged immediately after independence the Socialist Party held the greatest promise. In Jayaprakash Narayan it had a leader next only to Jawaharlal Nehru in mass popularity. It had also several other brilliant leaders, for example Acharya Narendra Dev, Achyut Patwardhan, Asoka Mehta, Dr Rammanohar Lohia and S.M. Joshi. However, the first problem the Socialists faced—and this was a problem they continued to face to the end—was that of their relationship with Congress. The Socialist Party had been born in 1934 and had remained since then a part of Congress, though it had its own separate constitution, membership, discipline and ideology.

Believing that independence could not be achieved through negotiations, the Socialist Party had boycotted the negotiations with the Cabinet Mission and refused to participate in the Constituent Assembly or the interim government or to accept membership of the Congress Working Committee. It had stoutly rejected the Mountbatten Plan for the independence and Partition of the country. Immediately after independence it had given the slogan of India’s development into a socialist state and society. Most Socialists wanted Congress to make a definite programmatic and ideological commitment to socialism. They believed that by refusing to do so, it had become a right-wing bourgeois party. In early 1948 Congress framed a rule that its members could not belong to another party which had its own constitution and discipline. Since the Socialists were not willing to dissolve their own party, they decided in March 1948 to leave Congress and also declared that their objective was to establish a democratic socialist society.

Leaving Congress proved to be a historic mistake on the part of the Socialists. Congress still retained its all-embracing character and, therefore, tolerance for diverse views; it was imposing only organizational uniformity and not an ideological one. Hence, there was no question of the Socialists being asked to give up their ideology or policies. The position was similar to that prevailing in the European labour parties. Since there was no barrier in Congress to informal organization of different trends, the
Socialists could have continued to function in Congress as a loose group as the conservatives were doing, without forming a separate organization and breaking discipline.

The Socialists had assumed that with the achievement of independence, there no longer existed any common task to unite them with the non-Socialists in Congress. But, in fact, this was not so, as the material, social and political foundations of a socialist India still needed to be laid through economic development with equity, secular democracy and consolidation of national unity. And Congress was still the main organization that could fulfil this task. As Hariharnath Shastri, a member of the National Executive of the Socialist Party and a former president of the All India Trade Union Congress, put it when resigning from the party for its refusal to join the Congress-sponsored Indian National Trade Union Congress: ‘The unfinished task of national revolution demands the full-fledged allegiance of all sections of the people and every progressive group in the country, including the Socialists and the Congress.’
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Political skill and leadership to function in a party that was practically a front lay precisely in competing with other trends in it without breaking party discipline, so as to build a broad coalition for nation building and social change and, ultimately, socialism. True, the Socialists were a minority in Congress and were facing resistance and organizational discrimination at the party’s local level. Political wisdom, as also the art of politics lay in accepting this situation and then struggling to gradually change the balance of power between the right and the left within the Congress by pulling, inch by inch, the Centre towards the left. This is precisely what the right did throughout the period of Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s domination of the Congress. Instead of breaking away when Nehru committed Congress to a socialistic pattern of society, it continued inside Congress, representing an ideological and policy trend, though constantly feeling the pressure of losing out to the left. Neither the Socialists nor the Communists or the two together—an impossibility at the time—were capable of replacing Congress or bringing about socialism and social change on their own in opposition to Congress. Nehru’s political acumen and historical insight lay precisely in recognizing this. At the time of the Socialist split from Congress, a large number of Socialists stayed in the parent organization perceiving itself and Jawaharlal Nehru as the more effective instruments of social change. Acharya Narendra Dev, the most erudite, mature and levelheaded of the Socialist leaders, was also opposed to the decision of leaving Congress but he decided to abide by it.

The Socialists’ departure from Congress seriously weakened the left inside Congress and led to Nehru being hemmed in by conservative forces in, his party. It, thus, did incalculable harm to the left trend in Indian politics. On the other hand, it initiated the process of the self-destruction of the Socialist Party, leading to repeated splits within it.

The Socialists’ optimism regarding the popularity of their party was to be soon belied. The general elections of 1951-52 proved to be a near
disaster for the party. All its national leaders were defeated and it won only 12 seats in the Lok Sabha, though receiving 10.6 per cent of the popular vote. In the states, it won 124 of the 2,248 seats with nearly 58 per cent of its candidates losing their deposits; and its winning tally in its strongholds of U.P., Bihar and Bombay was 18 out of 390, 23 out of 240 and 9 out of 269 seats respectively.

In the meanwhile Congress dissidents led by J.B. Kripalani had formed in June 1951 the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP). Claiming to be Gandhian, and being in basic agreement with Congress programme and policies, the new party promised to implement that programme. Two of its leaders, P.C. Ghosh, and T. Prakasam, had been Congress chief ministers in their respective states, i.e., West Bengal and Madras, while Kripalani was the Congress president till 1950 and had just lost his bid to be re-elected. The reasons for their leaving Congress were personal rather than ideological.

The KMPP too entered the general elections with high hopes and was even more disappointed with the results than the Socialist Party. It won 9 seats in the Lok Sabha and polled 5.8 per cent of the votes; but won only 77 seats in the state legislative assemblies.

Subsequently, both the Socialist Party and KMPP, having grossly miscalculated their electoral strength and being afraid of marginalization by Congress and the Communists, decided to merge and thus consolidate the opposition forces. The leaders of the two parties felt that there were no ideological or programmatic differences between them. As Kripalani said: ‘We both want a classless and casteless society free from social, political and economic exploitation. The Socialists call it the Socialist society. We call it the Sarvodaya society.’
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The two parties merged in September 1952 to form Praja Socialist Party, with Kripalani as the chairman and Asoka Mehta as the general secretary, It became the largest among the opposition parties and held the promise of being an alternative to Congress. Its two constituents had received 17.4 per cent of the popular vote in the 1952 elections. Its party organization covered the entire country and it had a large number of well-known and popular leaders at both the national and state levels. But the party could not maintain its cohesion for long.

From the beginning it was racked by ideological and factional quarrels; and it regularly underwent splits. It also suffered from widespread indiscipline among its leaders and cadres. From the outset, it was troubled by major differences over its distinct role in Indian politics as an opposition party. The issues that tore the party apart from 1953 to 1964 concerned the attitude that it should adopt towards Congress as also the militant and extra-constitutional agitations, and the role it should play in nation-building activities. In June 1953, at the party’s Betal Conference, Asoka Mehta offered his thesis that in a backward country the important task was that of economic development and that, therefore, in a constructive spirit, the Opposition should cooperate with the ruling party in that task, though not uncritically. As the Congress and PSP shared a common belief
in nationalism, socialism and democracy, he said, PSP should look for areas of agreement with Congress and oppose it only when matters of principle were involved. Mehta warned that non-cooperation with Congress and all-out opposition to it would make PSP politically ineffective for a long time to come.

The party conference, however, rejected Mehta’s thesis in favour of Dr Rammanohar Lohia’s approach. Lohia stood for determined opposition to Congress and a position of equidistance from both Congress and the Communists. He also advocated the organization of militant mass opposition movements even if they were not within the legal, legislative and constitutional framework. Lohia and his followers were also not easily amenable to party discipline.

From the beginning, PSP suffered from ineffective and unstable leadership. Over a period of time, most of its leaders had ‘renounced, defected, or been expelled from the Party, each time leaving it a little weaker by taking with them their loyal supporters.’
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Lohia and his group left PSP at the end of 1955. Acharya Narendra Dev died in 1956. Jayaprakash Narayan withdrew from active politics in 1954 and announced that he would dedicate his life to Bhoodan and other constructive activities. After the general elections of 1957, he retired from politics, declared that party politics was not suitable to India and advocated, instead, ‘partyless democracy.’ In 1960, Kripalani left the party to play an independent role in politics. In 1963, Asoka Mehta agreed to become the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and, when expelled from the party, joined Congress in the summer of 1964, taking nearly one-third of PSP cadres with him. Many state level leaders also regularly defected to Congress—among them were T. Prakasam in Andhra, Pattom Thanu Pillai in Kerala, P.C. Ghosh in Bengal, Mahamaya Prasad Sinha in Bihar and Triloki Singh in U.P. Finally, in 1971, more than half of the party cadres joined Congress.

All this was reflected in the steady decline of PSP in the general elections. The party won 19 seats in the Lok Sabha with 10.4 per cent of the total votes in 1957; 12 seats with 6.8 per cent votes in 1962; and 13 seats with 3.1 per cent of the votes in 1967. The virtual demise of the party came in 1971 when it won only 2 seats with 1 per cent share of the votes. The remnants of the party joined the Socialist Party to form the Samyukta Socialist Party.

A reason for the failure of the Socialists was their inability to distinguish themselves from Congress, especially after the Avadi Resolution committing itself to a socialistic pattern of society. In fact, they could have played a meaningful role only as a part of Congress, with which they shared a commitment to nationalism, secularism, a polity based on parliamentary democracy and civil liberties, and social change. Outside Congress they were bound to be marginalized and splintered by a bigger party with a better and more influential leader in Nehru, having the same paradigm and therefore more or less the same appeal.

After leaving PSP, Dr Lohia formed the Socialist Party at the end of
1955. The hallmark of the new party was political militancy. It was unremittingly involved in agitations, civil disobedience movements, walk-outs from the state legislatures and disruptions of their proceedings. The party and its main leader, Lohia, were anti-Nehru in the extreme and also totally opposed to Congress. The two issues that they emphasized were firstly, the immediate abolition of English and its replacement by Hindi as the sole link language and secondly, reservation of over 60 per cent of jobs for the backward castes, the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and women. They accused the Nehru government of being dominated by and serving the cause of the upper castes. In many ways, they were the initiators of the casteist politics of the nineties in so far as they started making appeals to caste as the basic feature of the party’s ideology. Lohia, himself a brilliant intellectual, also encouraged a certain anti-intellectualism among his followers. Later, in 1967, Lohia and his followers were also to seek cooperation with the Swatantra party and Jan Sangh, on the one hand, and the Communists, on the other, in order to defeat Congress. They clearly articulated and initiated the politics of anti-Congressism. The Socialist party was also not free from dissidence, defections and splits, especially after the death of Dr Lohia in 1967. It merged with PSP in 1964 to break free in 1965 and then to merge with it again in 1971. But by then it too had been reduced to a rump. The Lohia Socialists won 8 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1957, 6 in 1962, 23 in 1967 and 3 in 1971 when it polled only 2.4 per cent of total votes.

Communist Party of India (CPI) was a part of Congress since 1936 but, unwilling to accept the Congress discipline, it left the party in 1945. From 1942 to 1945 it had a remarkable growth, even though it got isolated from the mainstream of the national movement and consequently suffered in terms of its hegemonic influence over the people. In 1947, CPI started out with certain advantages; it had several able leaders and thousands of devoted, disciplined and hardworking cadres who were active among the peasants, workers, students and the intelligentsia. But, as in the case of the Socialist Party, CPI was plagued by intense factionalism in the post-1947 years and was engulfed by internal crises every few years till it formally split in 1964. Factions in CPI were formed, however, largely around political and ideological differences. Put simply, CPI could not agree upon a stand on the question which P.C. Joshi, the party’s general secretary from 1935 to 1948, raised as early as 1950: ‘What is the political situation in India?’

CPI had gone through a great deal of inner turmoil and division during 1947. Initially, it recognized that India had become free and advised all progressive forces to rally round Nehru against the reactionary communal and pro-imperialist forces. Later, under Soviet guidance, it declared in December 1947 that India’s independence was fake
(yeh azadi
jhooti hai),
15 August was a day of national betrayal, Congress had gone over to imperialism and feudalism, Nehru had become a stooge of imperialism, the government was ruling in a fascist manner, and the Constitution that was being framed was a charter of slavery. The Communists had, therefore, to take up the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks, fight for freedom and democracy and initiate an armed struggle.