5.6 The Fourth General Elections, 1967 — A Landmark

The year 1967 is widely considered a landmark in India's political and electoral history. In Chapter 2 you read how the Congress had been the dominant political force across the country from 1952 onwards, winning every Lok Sabha election and ruling almost every state. The fourth general elections in February 1967 changed that pattern decisively.

5.6.1 The Context — A Crisis-Hit Country Goes to Vote

In the years leading up to the fourth general elections, India had witnessed dramatic changes. Two Prime Ministers had died in quick succession (Nehru in May 1964, Shastri in January 1966). The new Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was widely viewed as a political novice and had been in office for less than a year. As Part 1 set out, the period was clouded by a grave economic crisis — successive monsoon failures, widespread drought, declining agricultural production, serious food shortages, depleted foreign exchange reserves, falling industrial output, sharply rising military expenditure and the diversion of resources from planning. The June 1966 devaluation of the rupee added a layer of national humiliation to ordinary household pain.

Public protest was widespread. People rallied against price rise, food scarcity, growing unemployment and the overall economic situation. Bandhs and hartals became a near-daily feature in many cities. The communist and socialist parties launched movements for greater equality. Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in several places — among the worst since Independence. The Congress went into the 1967 elections without Nehru — for the first time — and against a backdrop of mounting public bitterness.

5.6.2 Non-Congressism — The Strategy of Opposition Unity

Recognising that the division of their votes was what kept the Congress in power, opposition parties decided on a new electoral strategy. Parties that were entirely different and even contradictory in programme and ideology came together to form anti-Congress fronts in some states and entered into seat-sharing arrangements in others. They calculated that the inexperience of Indira Gandhi and the internal factional fights inside the Congress gave them an opportunity to dislodge it.

The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia coined the name for this strategy: 'Non-Congressism'^?. He also produced a theoretical defence of it. Congress rule, he argued, had become undemocratic and harmful to the interests of ordinary poor people. Therefore, the coming together of the non-Congress parties was necessary in order to reclaim democracy for the people. Ideological inconsistency, in this argument, was a price worth paying for the goal of dislodging the dominant party.

5.6.3 The Electoral Verdict — A "Political Earthquake"

It was in this context of heightened popular discontent and the polarisation of political forces that the fourth general elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies were held in February 1967. The Congress was facing the electorate for the first time without Nehru. The results jolted the Congress at both the national and state levels. Many contemporary political observers called the outcome a "political earthquake".

The Congress did manage to retain a majority in the Lok Sabha — but with its lowest tally of seats and lowest share of votes since 1952. Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi's cabinet were defeated in their constituencies. Among the political stalwarts who lost were K. Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu, S. K. Patil in Maharashtra, Atulya Ghosh in West Bengal, and K. B. Sahay in Bihar — every one of them a giant of the Congress organisation.

The drama, however, was sharper at the State level. The Congress lost majority in seven states. In two more, defections prevented it from forming a government. In total, the Congress lost power in nine states spread across the country: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras and Kerala. In Madras (now Tamil Nadu), the regional party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came to power with a clear majority of its own. The DMK had risen on the back of a massive student-led anti-Hindi agitation against the central government's plan to impose Hindi as the official language. This was the first time any non-Congress party had secured a majority on its own in any State. In the other eight states, coalition governments made up of various non-Congress parties were formed.

5.7 Coalitions — The Rise of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD)

The 1967 elections brought into Indian politics, for the first time at scale, the phenomenon of coalitions. Since no single non-Congress party had won a majority in most of the eight states, the parties came together to form joint legislative parties in the assemblies — known in Hindi as the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD)^?. The non-Congress governments formed by these coalitions came to be described as SVD governments.

In most cases, the partners were ideologically incongruent. The SVD government in Bihar, for example, included the two socialist parties — the SSP (Samyukta Socialist Party) and the PSP (Praja Socialist Party) — along with the CPI on the left and the Jana Sangh on the right. In Punjab the front was called the Popular United Front and combined the two rival Akali parties (the Sant group and the Master group) with both the communist parties (CPI and CPI-M), the SSP, the Republican Party and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Coalition politics had arrived in India — but it had also arrived as a politics of strange bedfellows.

5.8 Defection — "Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram"

Another defining feature of post-1967 politics was the role of defections in the making and unmaking of state governments. Defection^? means an elected representative leaves the party on whose symbol he or she was elected and joins another party. After the 1967 election, breakaway Congress legislators played an important role in installing non-Congress governments in three states — Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The constant realignments and shifting political loyalties of the period gave rise to one of independent India's most-quoted political phrases: 'Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram'.

5.9 The Split in the Congress — The Build-Up

The 1967 elections had retained Congress power at the centre but with a reduced majority and had stripped it of power in many states. More importantly, the results proved that the Congress could be defeated. Yet there was no obvious substitute waiting. Most non-Congress coalition governments did not survive long. They lost majority through defections; new combinations were stitched together; or President's Rule was imposed.

5.9.1 Indira vs. the 'Syndicate'

The most serious challenge to Indira Gandhi came not from the opposition but from within her own party. She had to deal with the Syndicate^? — a powerful group of senior Congress leaders who controlled the party organisation. The Syndicate had played the role of kingmaker in installing Indira Gandhi as PM by ensuring her election as the leader of the parliamentary party. Its members expected her to follow their advice. Gradually, however, Indira Gandhi began to assert her position both within the government and within the party. She chose her trusted group of advisers from outside the Syndicate. Slowly and carefully, she began to sideline the senior leaders.

5.9.2 The Ideological Turn — Indira Goes Left

Indira Gandhi adopted a bold strategy: she converted a simple power struggle into an ideological struggle. She launched a series of initiatives to give government policy a distinct Left orientation. She got the Congress Working Committee to adopt a Ten Point Programme in May 1967. The programme included: social control of banks; nationalisation of General Insurance; ceiling on urban property and income; public distribution of food grains; land reforms; and provision of house sites to the rural poor. While the Syndicate leaders formally approved the Ten Point Programme, they had serious reservations about its socialist drift.

5.10 The Presidential Election of 1969 — The Showdown

The factional rivalry between the Syndicate and Indira Gandhi finally broke into the open in 1969. Following the death of President Zakir Hussain, the office of President of India fell vacant that year. Despite Mrs Gandhi's reservations, the Syndicate managed to nominate her long-standing opponent and the then Speaker of the Lok Sabha, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, as the official Congress candidate.

Indira Gandhi retaliated. She quietly encouraged the then Vice-President, V. V. Giri, to file his nomination as an independent candidate. To win popular legitimacy for her position she announced two big and popular policy moves:

5.10.1 Morarji Desai Leaves the Government

The two big initiatives produced a clean break. Morarji Desai was the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister at the time. He could not stomach either bank nationalisation or the abolition of the privy purse — calling the latter a "breach of faith with the princes". Serious differences emerged between him and the Prime Minister, and Desai left the government. The stage was set for a showdown.

5.10.2 The 'Whip', the 'Conscience Vote' and V.V. Giri's Victory

The Congress had seen factional differences before. But this time both sides wanted a confrontation — and the confrontation took place in the presidential election. The then Congress President, S. Nijalingappa, issued a formal 'whip' directing all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for the official party candidate, Sanjeeva Reddy. Indira Gandhi's supporters, in response, requisitioned a special meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) — a request that was refused. (This is why her faction came to be called the 'requisitionists'.)

After silently backing V.V. Giri, the Prime Minister then publicly called for a 'conscience vote' — meaning that Congress MPs and MLAs should be free to vote as their conscience dictated rather than as the whip required. The election produced a stunning result: V.V. Giri, the independent candidate, won — and Sanjeeva Reddy, the official Congress candidate, lost. The Syndicate had been beaten on its own ground.

5.11 The Formal Split — Congress (R) and Congress (O)

The defeat of the official Congress candidate formalised the split in the party. The Congress President expelled the Prime Minister from the Congress; she retorted that her group was the real Congress. By November 1969, the two factions had crystallised:

The Congress group led by the Syndicate came to be called the Congress (Organisation) — or simply Congress (O) — and the group led by Indira Gandhi came to be called the Congress (Requisitionists) — or simply Congress (R). They were also referred to as the Old Congress and the New Congress. Indira Gandhi projected the split as an ideological divide — between socialists and conservatives, between the pro-poor and the pro-rich — even though, at heart, it was also a personal struggle for control of the Grand Old Party.