The Congress Slips in Indian Politics
Plastrik, Stanley
INDIA IS CELEBRATING this year the 100th anniversary of its modern "saint," Mahatma Gandhi. Saints, as George Orwell once pointed out, are difficult people. We like to believe that the...
...From this central fact three points follow: (1) Political definitions of parties have temporarily lost their significance...
...Examination of the popular vote tempers the victory of the Communists considerably...
...One is reminded of Kautsky's chapter "The Struggle for the Image of Jesus" (in his Foundations of Christianity), where he writes about the period after the death of the Messiah...
...But as Jesus thus came to be regarded more and more as a model for the entire sect, the more did each of the numerous contending groups, of which the sect had consisted from the start, attempt to assign to this personality precisely those ideas to which each group was most attached, in order then to be able to invoke this person as an authority...
...Hundreds of thousands of Calcutta residents poured out into the streets under CP-Left leadership to celebrate the victory...
...became more and more the image of a superhuman COMMENTS AND OPINIONS personality, the incarnation of all the ideals developed by the sect, but it also necessarily became more and more full of contradictions, the various traits of the image no longer being compatible with each other...
...A rough but basic democracy prevails...
...This fact underscores the 203 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS sense of breakup many observers stress in examining Indian affairs...
...a crown of legends began to form about this character, into which pious spirits would weave whatever they wished their model to have spoken or done...
...Like all peoples, Indians suffer from a strong reluctance to "give up" the past...
...The Communist party (Left)—Marxistas contrasted with the Communist party (Right)—the Communist party of India (CPI) —is on the move...
...At the same time, no other all-India party is yet emerging to replace Congress...
...Among younger Indians there is a growing movement to reexamine "the Gandhi story" in the hope of finding a relevant image of the man...
...Once again the Indian voters, who have grown more discriminate and independent with each new electoral experience, have upset most calculations of political analysts, most of whom foresaw a narrow Congress victory in the key elections in West Bengal...
...This is the background against which interim, midterm elections were held during February in four states (Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and the Punjab...
...In the Punjab, there were 470 candidates for 104 seats...
...But they do want "bread" (economic growth) and a lessening of the strains of poverty...
...In this delicate situation there is the possibility of total alienation of the Bengali people from the rest of India...
...Insurrectionary ele COMMENTS AND OPINIONS ments in considerable number are on the scene...
...uneasy coalitions made up of the strangest of bedfellows then fell apart so that New Delhi was forced to take over the temporary administration of a number of states...
...Congress took part in the elections as a coalition of contending factions and interest groups...
...For the moment, and conceivably for the next few years, leaders of the national parties must face the fact that regional issues (language, borders, economic development, etc...
...The voters, in their stumbling way, are looking for an alternative government: either a new largely regional party, or a broad front of many parties...
...This included 6 million new voters who had come of age...
...Howe, who until the last moment had repudiated him...
...Other consequences of the election: • As a vote-getter, Indira Gandhi proved a failure, she is not an effective national leader...
...Thus the image of Jesus...
...I suspect this will be discovered not so much in his ideas as in his example—his courage, his conquest of fear, his integrity...
...I was very happy to note that people like Senators McCarthy and Kennedy and McGovem, and Arthur Schlesinger and John Kenneth Galbraith, who are also critical of some aspects of Hubert Humphrey's position, have unhesitatingly consented to sponsor the luncheon which will honor him...
...or a charismatic political figure...
...In a series of states (West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, etc...
...We cannot concur in the choice of Hubert Humphrey because he has recently been notable as a major spokesman defending what we regard as the indefensible, reactionary Vietnam War...
...In his essay "In Search of Gandhi" (in the Summer 1968 issue of Daedalus), Erik Erikson aptly comments: Every item of the great man's life becomes or is reported like a parable...
...The first test of this need to readjust will be faced in West Bengal which, like Kerela, is now effectively in the Award for Humphrey THE following DISSENT editors who are also members of the Board of the League for Industrial Democracy—Emanuel Geltman, Irving Howe, and Stanley Plastrik—wish to make this statement: For its Spring 1969 Conference the LID has chosen to give its annual award to Hubert Humphrey...
...Therefore there is reason to believe that the Left militants will proceed with extreme caution...
...This man, whose strategy was to elicit our latent capacity for militant and disciplined nonviolence, inadvertently produced a crop of bureaucrats whose very presence in many an Indian village will touch off violence among the villagers...
...There can be no doubt that all democratic parties, including Congress, have suffered a disaster...
...It also remains the party of caste associations and religious (Muslim) minorities, a loosely-defined, nonideological grouping...
...But parliamentary democracy demands that the verdict of the Bengal electorate be taken at face value, which means that for now the policy of the democratic forces can only be one of live-and-letlive...
...A substantial majority of these votes, approximately 60 percent, went against the Congress party which, while still the biggest vote-getter, continued to suffer a general decline...
...in the new state government the Communists have the Home Ministry (control of the police), and CP party leader Jyoti Basu, now Deputy Prime Minister, is a more dynamic and forceful leader than the actual Prime Minister...
...Congress remains the party of the middle, of the commercial peasantry in the countryside and the small middleclass businessman in the city...
...we intend to continue participating in its activities...
...but it does not follow that India is "falling apart...
...Then there are those whose lives have become part of a leader's and who have had to incorporate him in their self-image...
...Yet Congress lost 72 seats, while the UF gained 95 seats...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS hands of the "Left Communists...
...Against great odds and with admirable courage, he fought the conservatism, racism, and reaction represented by the Republican and Wallace candidacies, and he even brought to his side those dissenters, including Mr...
...Their programs in both areas are stridently anticapitalist and antilandlord, with emphasis on the latter, and it remains to be seen whether the expected Left militancy will hamper the process of production in industry and agriculture...
...That is why the wearing of the Gandhi cap and homespun cotton cloth are today associated in most parts of India with corrupt politics, the unwillingness to yield power to others, dishonesty and violence...
...THE STARTLING ELECTION RESULTS in West Bengal demand further comment...
...These people are ready to plunge the subcontinent into chaos...
...Our main job today is to reunite the democratic Left, not to splinter it or disdainfully exclude those who eminently belong within it...
...Before analyzing its results, one ought to underscore the fact that democratic elections still help bring about social and political change in India...
...Nevertheless, the prospect in West Bengal at this moment is a dismal one...
...but we must express our dissent in regard to this award...
...will assume much greater importance than do national issues...
...Left Communists now command two of the most significant states in India: West Bengal and Kerela...
...The failure of the Congress party in Bengal, where it had ruled for years—with inefficiency, corruption, and insufferable arrogance— resurrected Bengali Communism in a new, quasi-insurrectionary and totalitarian form...
...Results in other state elections reinforce the view that India is changing fast into a multiideological and experimental nation...
...2) India will not and cannot follow a Western pattern of political development: India is going her own way, unclear though that may be...
...In a word, in the example of his life...
...It will be recalled that as a result of the 1967 general election the Congress party lost control of approximately half the state governments of India, precipitating an apparent disintegration of the parliamentary process...
...The many failures and disappointments of India's two decades of independence have only rein forced the myths one might normally have ex pected to see destroyed in this post-Gandhian period...
...The last bit of serious advice offered by Gan dhi to the Congress party on the eve of in dependence in 1947 was the suggestion that the party disband so that new movements could form within the new India...
...It was there that Congress took its worst drubbing in Indian electoral history...
...What accounts for the sweep by the UF is the fact that in many districts the Congress vote was split up by a multiplicity of parties, so that the OF carried many elections by margins of a few hundred votes...
...The Bengali electorate yearned for change, repudiated Congress, and turned to others...
...I, for one, have almost never met anybody of whatever level of erudition or information, in India or elsewhere, who was not willing and eager to convey to me the whole measure of the Mahatma as based on one sublime or scandalous bit of hearsay...
...Indians still are secular, democratically oriented, and tolerant...
...Calcutta, the most revolutionary city in India, is now firmly in the hands of the Left-Communists...
...no one party could have won a majority, and Congress least of all...
...In all, over 100 million voters-40 percent of the total national electorate—were called upon to vote...
...India's fifth general election since its independence is scheduled for 1972...
...Whatever the shortcomings, it compares favorably with neighboring Pakistan and its "guided demo cracy," a euphemism for military rule...
...We like to believe that the Mahatma would have looked with disdain upon the idolatrous ceremonies now taking place throughout India...
...Bear in mind that after the Chinese attack on India in October 1962 the already split Communist movement had virtually disintegrated...
...Beaten now by the Left coalition, which was headed by the (Left) Communist party of India that is the party's Marxist, Maoist Left wing, Congress was reduced in West Bengal to a second-rate opposition party...
...IN THIS CENTENNIAL YEAR a significant election has just taken place...
...there was no great landslide of actual votes...
...The Bengalis are a sophisticated and political people, and they must be allowed to act according to their own political decisions...
...above all, it fears provocative actions by the central (Congress party) government, which might lead to a military occupation of West Bengal by the army...
...The Communist leadership knows all this...
...In the 1968 elections Hubert Humphrey rallied the overwhelming majority of those who are the foundation of social progress and a democratic Left in the United States—the labor movement and the Negro people...
...Socialist, social democratic, and (liberal) "third-force" movements suffered severe setbacks and must reexamine their positions or expect to vanish...
...Congress received 5.5 million votes or about 41 percent of the total, approximately the same percentage as in the 1967 elections...
...They are known as Naxalites, after an insurrectionary peasant movement that was active in Naxalbari some years back and had been led by a Left-Maoist Communist minority group...
...all parties, including Congress, are in the fire...
...A Statement by Bayard Rustin I AM deeply disappointed with Irving Howe's unfortunate and ill-conceived attack on the League for Industrial Democracy for its decision to give its annual award to Hubert H. Humphrey...
...the Congress party dropped down to 55 seats...
...Seven all-India parties and 42 regional parties took part in the elections, in addition to the usual independents...
...in Uttar Pradesh, 2,870 candidates for 425 seats...
...The people were voting for state legislative bodies, not for members of the national parliament...
...If Gandhi's life ended in defeat (the tragic partition of India), the struggle for possession of his "image" in the country he created is a still more depressing spectacle...
...Parties and movements based primarily on communalist views (Jan Sangh, Muslim League) received no encouragement from this election...
...INDIA IS CELEBRATING this year the 100th anniversary of its modern "saint," Mahatma Gandhi...
...in West Bengal, 1,019 individuals contested 280 seats, and in Bihar, which is the most politically confused of all Indian states, 2,141 candidates contended for 318 seats...
...those who cannot commit themselves to this trend must disavow it with destructive fervor...
...In Bengal 13.5 million people voted...
...It would require a computer to sort out the many electoral groupings, blocs, alliances, and combinations that made their appearance...
...West Bengal is a poor state with enormous economic problems, beginning with a great food shortage...
...The United Front swamped its opponents: 210 seats (of which the CP-Left bagged 80 and the pro-Russian CP-Right obtained 30) went to the United Front...
...Anything less would have been a manifestation of unworthy vindictiveness...
...but as a national movement, its day seems to be over...
...We believe the LID serves valuable purposes as an educational society of the democratic Left, and especially as an agency maintaining relations between trade unionists and intellectuals...
...To this we need merely add: the party that claims the Gandhian heritage, India's ruling Congress party, no longer pretends to be carry ing out its fundamental doctrines: nonvio lence, popular mass rule, decentralization, etc...
...Congress retained, and still retains, a shaky control of the country at the center...
...the United Front ticket received about 44 percent...
...Twenty-two years later the leaders of Congress, not a few of whom grew up under Gandhi's leadership, devote themselves exclusively to a desperate— and losing—effort to retain the monopoly of political power they have exercised over the years...
...Saints, as George Orwell once pointed out, are difficult people...
...3) In this new situation, improvised patterns of accommodation will be worked out by political organizations...
...The differential popular vote of the two major parties (more accurately, the Left bloc and Congress) moved barely 2 percent in two years...
Vol. 16 • May 1969 • No. 3
