Realizing A Dream Called Democracy

Swaptik Chowdhury with Piyush Chaudhari

Democracy is the government of the people, for the people and by the people.

This famous quote by Abraham Lincoln can be intended as a precise abstract for the democratic form of governance.India was a former British colonyand is now world’s largest democracy with 834 million of its citizens registered as legitimate voters. This colossal electorate is derived from a net population of 1267 million people who hail from diverse demography, culture, linguistics and religious backdrop. The recent Indian general election of 2014 which saw the National Democratic Alliance coming to power, demonstrated the robustness of the democratic system in the India which saw 66.68% turnout in the election. Thus the tale of this transformation from a colony to a stable and growing democracy is worth narrating and can trace inception to the first election of modern India after Independence in 1952. This narrative is a testimony of the commitment of our leaders, citizens and most importantly our constitution in upholding the ideals of the democracy.

In the initial years of its rule, Indian National Congress faced numerous challenges from inside out. The provincial and district factions gained importance in the post-independence scenario as the national party gained disfavor among the masses. This can be partly attributed to the lack of unifying goal for the party and the growing animosity between the two senior most party leaders; Jawaharlal Nehru and SardarVallabhbhai Patel. They both had their agreements and disagreements such as they were both staunch patriots and had undisputed integritybut had their disagreement on various external as well as internal affairs.

For example, Nehru supported the increased control of the state over the economy whereas Patel was inclined towards the capitalist’s autonomy; Patel wanted to back the West in the cold war whereas Nehru wanted to adopt a neutral position and Patel was more adjusting towards Hindu extremism and was rigid towards Pakistan. The disparities became more prominent in 1949 when both the leaders confonted each other on the issue of appointing the first president of the independent republic of India.

Nehru supported the C Rajagopalachari aka ‘Rajaji’ whereas Patel backed Rajendra Prasad who had wide acceptance within the congress party. Finally party decided to elect and appoint Rajendra Prasad much to the embarrassment of the Nehru. Nehru and Patel also clashed on the issue of appointing the president of INC. Patel was backing an orthodox Hindu extremist, Purushottam Das Tondon, who eventually won. With the increasing Hindu extremism in the INC, many vivacious and enthusiast Nationalist leaders left its rank to form parties of their own.

In 1948 a faction of young congress leaders formed Socialist Party and in 1951 reveredGandhian follower JB Kriplani initiated KisanKajdoorPraja Party (KMPP) to represent the farmers, peasant, laborers and other working classes. They all were concerned with pro-Hindu policies of Tandon which led to his resignation and Nehru back at the helm of All India Congress Party before the first general election of Independent India in 1952. His impeccable secular reputation and democratic approach made him a leader who was un-paralleled as a vote-attracter.

India after independence directly opted for universal suffrage which chose to give voting rights to all adults irrespective of their caste, creed, religion, sex or sect unlike the West where voting rights were only reserved for the privileged classes during the initial days. Within 2 year of independence, an Election commission was set up and as its Chief Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen was appointed in March 1950. In the early weeks of April 1950, the Representation of People act was passed in parliament. SukumarSen belonged to the erstwhile Indian Civil Service and had served in various states under numerous posts. The Election Commission faced a behemoth task as electorate comprised of 176 million people out of which 85% were illiterate.

They each had to be identified, verified and registered. Then there was the question of the design of party symbols, ballot papers and boxes with locating sites for the polling stations. Honest polling officers were to be recruited and along with general elections, elections for state assemblies were to be also conducted. The polling date was scheduled to be on the initial months of 1952 with the outer districts covered later. The numbers associated with the first election of independent India is in itself a testimony of the spectrum of challenges Election Commission faced and the dedication of the officers.

These numbers are provided to explain the extent of Sen’s enterprise. The elections were to be conducted for 4500 seats in which 500 were for Parliament and rest were reserved for provincial elections. 2,24,000 polling booths were manufactured for the same which was provided with 2 million steel ballots. The electorate and the election process itself were spread over a vast extent of area with diverse terrain and varied cultures. In many cases special constructions projects such as bridges for hilly villages had to be undertaken due to the remoteness of the place and lack of transportation infrastructure in these places. For some small islands of Indian oceans, even the navy vessels were employed for polling in the booths. Sometime the election commission faced several peculiar social complications. One of the examples of such issue is the registration of women in northern India for polling purpose.

It was common for women of these areas to address themselves as X’s mother or Y’s wife and in there naivety, they registered themselves in similar fashion for the polling. The commission had hard time replacing them with the original names of the women but despite all the concentrated efforts, some 2.8 million odd names had to be struck off the list. Instead of party name, pictorial symbols drawn from the day to day life such as bullock cart, lotus, hut, elephant, leaf etc. were adopted to represent different parties. These were done to make the task of the mostly illiterate electorate easier. Also, individual ballot boxes for individual parties were provided so that a voter can simply drop the ballot paper in the box. Special indelible ink was developed by the scientists and was then applied on the finger of the voters to deter impersonation.

The reader may get an idea that the election process in India was developed by adopting specific electoral practices from different democracies but it is to be understood that they were to be applied in a completely different situation on an electorate which was new to democracy and election. Each of the practices adopted had to be customized and altered to acclimate to the Indian conditions and needs. Election commission also aired several documentaries and radio shows to educate the general public about elections and democracy, adult franchise, process of election, their duties as voters etc. which played an important role in overall turn out in the election. Overall, this election was an arena for experimentation in which officials as well as the general public were skeptic and reserved about the whole process and its application in the Indian scenario.

The west also saw the events unfold in the Indian subcontinent with bated breath as India took its first faltering yet confident step towards the establishment of a people’s government after centuries of enslavement.

The other players contesting in this first election were JB Kriplani’s KMPP and Jayaprakash Narayan’s Socialist Party. They both felt that the Congress had failed to adhere to the Gandhian policy which placed the benefits of poor and peasants before the comforts of landowners. Another party, Jana Sangh adopted a different strategy and strung the communal chords to unite the Hindus in a single vote bloc. They used imagery from Hindu epics such as Mahabharata and Quotes from Vedas to invoke the Hindu warriors against their enemies which included Pakistan, the Muslims, Congress party etc. who all were attacked rather viciously in the all the speeches of their leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Ambedkar also fought hard to resurrect the Scheduled Caste Federation which represented the lower casted and criticized Congress for not taking steps aimed at the upliftment of these backward classes.

Toward further Left was the Communist Party of India who wished to model the country’s policy based on the teachings of Marx and Lenin. The propaganda was done through large meetings, door to door approaching and ample usage of print media which all aimed to influence the general public with their respective agendas. Speeches were delivered and posters were pasted by all the parties and few had access to air waves such as Communist party of India who routed their party propaganda through Air Moscow (Tashkent) as Air India had banned airing the party manifestos and propaganda.

Also, there were some regional parties which were based on the religion, ethnicity or culture such as DravidaKazhagam of Chennai, Akali Party of Punjab and Jharkhand Party of Bihar. There policies mainly aimed at benefitting the ethnicity or the region they represented such as The Jharkhand Party wanted separate state for the tribal of the state. The leaders of all these parties had years of political experience and most of them had been active participants in the freedom struggle of India. Many leaders such as Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Jayaprakash Narayan were excellent orators who had capability to sway the opinion of the crowd towards their favor with their speeches.

This diversitywas portrayed as the robustness of India’s democratic process as world was skeptic about the aptness of democratic process in a countrywhere more than 80% of the electorate was illiterate. However, it was noticed that towards end it became a classic example of hypocrisy as political parties began promising various contradicting benefits to different people in desperate attempt to garner votes and this process continues today. All these parties had only one enemy and that was Jawaharlal Nehru and his ruling INC. Also the internal affairs of the country were not in great shape. The refugees were not yet settled, Kashmir issue still unresolved and there were no beneficial change observed in the status of poverty in the country.

To improve the party’s image Jawaharlal Nehru initiated several public campaignsin which he had to travelaround 25000 miles as a part of his campaigns. He kicked of his campaign from Ludhiana in September and later slowly covered all the major cities such as Delhi, Bombay, Kolkata, Bharatpur, Bilaspur etc. Wherever he went, he was enthusiastically received by the people who flocked in thousand to hear him. His speeches mainly focused on the preserving the secularist environment of the country and promised to ‘show no quarters’ to the communal forces who were disturbing the peace of the country. Overall, his excellent orator skills, his personal charisma and sentiment attached to the Gandhi’s successor played immensely to his benefit.

The first place to cast its vote was the tehsil of Chini in Himachal Pradesh on 25 October 1951 and rest of the country followed. The highest turnout of 80.5 % was registered in the constituency of Kottayam in Kerala and lowest of 18% in Shahdol in current Madhya Pradesh. It was a matter of great pride for a country exercising adult franchise for the first time that 60% of its registered voters used their right to cast votes. Aged people such as 110 year old from Madurai casting their votes were highlighted by the press to show the enthusiasm of the people towards the democratic process. Bombay also showed brisk polling in which workers from industrial areas were more interested in exercising their rights when compared to middle classes.

The commitment showed by the election official were specially commended as they went to great lengths to ensure the smooth conduct of the elections. In some places they constructed the whole booths so that people can cast votes. The polling ended in the last week of February, 1952 and the INC emerge victorious securing 364 seats out of 489 seats of parliament and 2247 seats out of 3280 in state assemblies. However many prominent leaders such as Morarji Desai and Jai Narayan Vyas failed to win a seat whereas a communist, Ravi Narayan Reddy gained largest majority even greater than Nehru. But the victory of Congress can be largely attributed to the personal demeanor of PanditJawahar Lal Nehru who sold a vivid picture of new India to the people where they can realize their aspirations.

This election was called as the greatest experiment in the democracy in history by Sukumar Sen and rightly so, as the electorate was chiefly illiterate, were voting for first time, had no idea how to vote and whom to vote. This experimentation had many critics who were appalled by the possibility of manipulation, misinformation and radicalism among the general public. Many found it absurd that votes of millions of illiterate and un-enlightened people were being registered to elect a government who was to run a country as diverse and as behemoth as India. However, the final outcome of the election set rest to these speculations as it was finally proven that literacy was not a test of intelligence.

A self-aware illiterate individual can cast a vote and select a government who will be directly responsible for his development and well-being. They chose modernism and disapproved reactionary and communalist politics. The 1952 election kick started the long journey of a country on the path of democracy which was not worried about the destination but enjoyed the journey and adopted itself to the changing time. Unlike many democracies which followed a decreasing trend and often ended in dictatorship or autocracy, democracy in India evolved and followed an increasing trend guaranteeing the growth and development of its citizen which is in the true spirit of nationalism as what is country without its people.