Complete solutions to all five exercise questions printed at the end of NCERT Class 12
Political Science, Politics in India Since Independence, Chapter 2 Era of One-Party
Dominance. The questions are reproduced in the English edition’s own wording, numbering and
lettering, and each answer is written the way it should be written in the exam. The ‘Let Us Do It
Together’ activity and the questions asked inside the chapter (margin notes, the ‘Let’s re-search’ box
and the electoral map) are solved at the end.
Two things about this exercise that are worth knowing before you use it.
1. Question 5 has three parts in your book, not two. The English edition asks (a), (b)
and (c); the Hindi edition of the same chapter prints only the first two. The extra English part is
(c), on why the author calls Gandhi’s view romantic. If a Hindi-medium classmate’s notes stop at
two parts, that is why. All three are answered below.
2. The Swatantra Party is named in Questions 1 and 2 but is described nowhere in this
chapter. Its party box was removed when the book was rationalised and the exercise question was
left in. Both answers are still fully derivable from the exercise itself, and each is worked out
below rather than assumed. Nothing else in this chapter depends on the Swatantra Party.
1 Question 1
Q. Choose the correct option to fill in the blanks.
(a) The First General Elections in 1952 involved simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha
and ………………….
(The President of India / State Assemblies / Rajya Sabha / The Prime Minister)
Answer: State Assemblies.
Why. The chapter says the state elections were held with the Lok Sabha elections, and that
the Congress scored a big victory in those elections as well, winning a majority of seats in all the
states except Travancore-Cochin, Madras and Orissa.
Why not the others. The President of India and the Rajya Sabha are not elected directly by
the voters at a general election, and the Prime Minister is not elected at all in a separate poll:
the chapter says that Jawaharlal Nehru became Prime Minister after the first general
election, as the leader of the winning party.
(b) The party that won the second largest number of Lok Sabha seats in the first elections
was the ………………….
(Praja Socialist Party / Bharatiya Jana Sangh / Communist Party of India / Bharatiya Janata
Party)
Answer: Communist Party of India.
Why. The chapter gives the two figures next to each other: the Congress won 364 of the 489
seats, and the Communist Party of India, which came next in terms of seats, won 16 seats. The CPI
box adds that it thereby emerged as the largest opposition party.
Why not the others. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh secured only 3 Lok Sabha seats in 1952. The
Praja Socialist Party was one of the parties that came out of the Socialist Party’s later splits, so
it did not contest the first election under that name. The Bharatiya Janata Party did not exist in
1952 at all; the chapter says the BJP traces its roots to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was itself
formed only in 1951.
(c) One of the guiding principles of the ideology of the Swatantra Party was
………………….
(Working class interests / protection of Princely States / economy free from State control /
Autonomy of States within the Union)
Answer: economy free from State control.
Note before the reasoning. This chapter does not carry a Swatantra Party box, so the
answer has to be worked out from the option list itself rather than quoted from the text.
Why. Of the four options, only one is not already claimed by a party the chapter does
describe. Working class interests is the ground the chapter gives to the Communist Party of India,
which took inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution and advocated socialism, and to the socialists,
who criticised the Congress for ignoring the workers and the peasants. Protection of Princely States
is not the principle of any party in this chapter. Autonomy of States within the Union sits against
the Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s own emphasis on one country, one culture and one nation. What is left,
an economy free from State control, is the one guiding principle in the list that no party described
in this chapter holds, and it is the Swatantra Party’s.
Exam tip. Write the answers as (a) State Assemblies, (b) Communist Party of
India, (c) economy free from State control. One line each is enough for a fill-in-the-blank.
2 Question 2
Q. Match the following leaders listed in List A with the parties in List B.
List A: (a) S. A. Dange (b) Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (c) Minoo Masani
(d) Asoka Mehta
List B: i. Bharatiya Jana Sangh ii. Swatantra Party iii. Praja Socialist Party
iv. Communist Party of India
Answer: (a) – iv, (b) – i, (c) – ii, (d) – iii.
| Leader | Party | Where the chapter says so |
|---|---|---|
| S. A. Dange | Communist Party of India | The CPI box lists A. K. Gopalan, S. A. Dange, E. M. S. Namboodiripad, P. C. Joshi, Ajay Ghosh and P. Sundarraya among the notable leaders of the CPI. |
| Shyama Prasad Mukherjee | Bharatiya Jana Sangh | The Jana Sangh was formed in 1951 with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee as its founder-President. His own profile box repeats it: leader of Hindu Mahasabha, founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh. |
| Minoo Masani | Swatantra Party | Not described in this chapter. He is the only name in List A the chapter does not place, and the Swatantra Party is the only party in List B it does not describe, so the two pair by elimination once the other three are fixed. |
| Asoka Mehta | Praja Socialist Party | The Socialist Party box names Asoka Mehta as the socialist leader who advocated a limited cooperation with the Congress, and names the Praja Socialist Party among the parties formed out of the Socialist Party’s splits. |
Exam tip. Fix the three you can prove first, then let the fourth fall out. That
is a faster and safer method in a matching question than trying to recall all four at once.
3 Question 3
Q. Four statements regarding one-party dominance are given below. Mark each of them as
true or false.
(a) One-party dominance is rooted in the absence of strong alternative political parties.
Answer: True. The chapter says the extent of the Congress’s victory was boosted because
the non-Congress votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates, so no single
alternative could match it, and that the opposition parties gained only a token representation in
the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. It also says they were not alternatives to the ruling party.
(b) One-party dominance occurs because of weak public opinion.
Answer: False. The chapter’s account of India runs the other way. Elections were
competitive, with on an average more than four candidates for each seat; more than half the eligible
voters turned out; and the results were accepted as fair even by the losers. A public that turns out
in those numbers and whose verdict everyone accepts is not a public with weak opinions. The
opposition parties also offered a sustained and often principled criticism of the Congress, which
kept the ruling party under check.
(c) One-party dominance is linked to the nation’s colonial past.
Answer: True. The chapter roots the Congress’s success directly in the freedom struggle.
The Congress was seen as inheritor of the national movement; many leaders who had been in the
forefront of that struggle were now contesting as Congress candidates; the party already had an
organisational network down to the local level while many other parties were formed only around
independence or after it. That is the ‘first off the blocks’ advantage, and it comes
straight out of the colonial period.
(d) One-party dominance reflects the absence of democratic ideals in a country.
Answer: False. This is the distinction the chapter is most careful about. Elsewhere the
dominance of one party was ensured by compromising democracy: in China, Cuba and Syria the
constitution permits only a single party to rule, and Myanmar, Belarus, Egypt and Eritrea are
effectively one-party states due to legal and military measures. What distinguished the Congress’s
dominance in India was that it happened under democratic conditions, with many parties contesting
free and fair elections. So one-party dominance can occur with democratic ideals fully in place.
Exam tip. True, False, True, False. In a true-or-false question carrying more
than one mark, always add the one sentence of reasoning: the examiner is checking whether you know
the India-versus-elsewhere distinction, and that is where the marks sit.
4 Question 4
Q. Take a political map of India (with State outlines) and mark:
(a) two states where Congress was not in power at some point during 1952-67.
(b) two states where the Congress remained in power through this period.
How to answer this. This is a map activity, so the marking itself has to be done on your
own outline map. What the examiner is testing is whether you can name the right states and say why,
and that part is written out below. Use your school atlas or the outline map in your practice book;
do not copy an unofficial map from the internet.
(a) Two states where the Congress was not in power at some point.
- Kerala. The chapter’s own example. In the assembly elections of March 1957 the
Communist Party won 60 of the 126 seats and E. M. S. Namboodiripad formed the ministry, so the
Congress was out of power in the state until the government was dismissed in 1959. - Jammu and Kashmir. The chapter’s electoral map, ‘Congress Dominance 1952-1967’,
marks two exceptions to the states ruled by the Congress during 1952-1967: Kerala, for the
Democratic Left Front of 1957-1959, and Jammu & Kashmir, for the National Conference. These
are the two states to mark. - Be careful. Travancore-Cochin, Madras and Orissa are often written in here by
mistake: the chapter does say the Congress failed to win a majority of seats in those three in the
first state assembly elections, but the very next sentence says that finally even in these
states the Congress formed the government, so the Congress was never out of power there. They
answer a different question.
(b) Two states where the Congress remained in power through this period.
- Uttar Pradesh.
- Madhya Pradesh.
The chapter’s general statement covers both: after the first general election the Congress
“ruled all over the country at the national and the state level”, and in the second and
third general elections it kept the same position. The electoral map of 1952-1967 shades both of them as
Congress-ruled (Chapter 5 lists both among the states where the Congress lost power after the
1967 election, a later development), and the map’s only two exceptions are Kerala and
Jammu & Kashmir, so any other state on the map, such as Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, is
safe to mark here.
Exam tip. Where a question of this kind carries written marks, name the state
and attach the chapter’s fact to it in the same line. Kerala 1957 is the one every examiner is
looking for in part (a).
| Part | State to mark | Where it is on the map | Why (the chapter’s fact) |
|---|---|---|---|
| (a) | Kerala | South-west coast | Communist-led ministry of E.M.S. Namboodiripad, 1957-1959 |
| (a) | Jammu and Kashmir | Far north (a Union Territory on today’s map) | The chapter’s map shows the National Conference there |
| (b) | Uttar Pradesh | North, along the Ganga plain | Shown as Congress-ruled on the book’s 1952-1967 map |
| (b) | Madhya Pradesh | Centre of India | Shown as Congress-ruled on the book’s 1952-1967 map |
- Use an outline map of India with state boundaries (school atlas or the board’s outline map).
- Shade or hatch Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir in one pattern, and Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in a second pattern.
- Write each state’s name inside it and add a key: pattern 1 = “Congress not in power at some point, 1952-67”; pattern 2 = “Congress in power throughout”.
5 Question 5
Q. Read the following passage and answer the questions below:
Congress of other political groups and sought to make of it a cohesive and disciplined political
party. He …. sought to take the Congress away from its all-embracing character and turn it
into a close-knit party of disciplined cadres. Being a ‘realist’ he looked more for
discipline than for comprehension. While Gandhi took too romantic a view of “carrying on the
movement,” Patel’s idea of transforming the Congress into strictly political party with a
single ideology and tight discipline showed an equal lack of understanding of the eclectic role
that the Congress, as a government, was to be called upon to perform in the decades to
follow.”
— Rajni Kothari
(a) Why does the author think that Congress should not have been a cohesive and disciplined
party?
Answer. Because a cohesive and disciplined party with a single ideology could not have
done the job the Congress actually had to do. The author says Patel’s plan showed a lack of
understanding of the eclectic role that the Congress, as a government, was to be called upon
to perform in the decades to follow.
The chapter explains what that means. The Congress was a rainbow-like social coalition holding
together peasants and industrialists, urban dwellers and villagers, workers and owners, and middle,
lower and upper classes and castes, and it was an ideological coalition as well, accommodating the
revolutionary and pacifist, conservative and radical, extremist and moderate, and the right, left
and all shades of the centre. Purging it of other political groups would have thrown that breadth
away. It would also have destroyed the mechanism the chapter says gave the party its strength: a
coalition-like party tolerates factions, so an unhappy group stays inside and fights there instead
of leaving to form an opposition. A close-knit party of disciplined cadres would have split
instead.
(b) Give some examples of the eclectic role of the Congress party in the early years.
Answer. Any of these, from the chapter itself.
- It was a ‘platform’ for numerous groups, interests and even political
parties to take part in the national movement, and in pre-independence days many organisations
and parties with their own constitution and organisational structure were allowed to exist within
it. The Congress Socialist Party, formed inside the Congress in 1934, is the chapter’s own
example. - Its social base widened with every civil disobedience movement, and its leadership
expanded beyond upper caste and upper class professionals to agriculture-based leaders with a
rural orientation. - It tolerated factions taking different ideological positions in its own state units,
which made it appear as a grand centrist party. - It took the opposition’s ground. Anything the opposition wanted to say would also find
a place in the programme and ideology of the Congress. In 1955 it declared its goal to be the
socialist pattern of society, which is why the socialists found it hard to present themselves as
an effective alternative. - It worked with its opponents. The interim government included opposition leaders like
Dr. Ambedkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in the cabinet, and Nehru invited socialist leaders like
Jayaprakash Narayan to join his government.
(c) Why does the author say that Gandhi’s view about Congress’ future was romantic?
Answer. Because Gandhi wanted the Congress to go on being a movement after the movement’s
work was done. The author’s phrase is that Gandhi took too romantic a view of “carrying on the
movement”: it is an attractive idea, but it does not face the fact that the Congress was now a
government and had to run a state, take decisions and answer for them.
The author’s point is that Gandhi and Patel erred in opposite directions and to the same degree.
Patel wanted to strip the Congress of its all-embracing character; Gandhi wanted to keep it as a
movement and nothing else. The author says Patel’s idea showed “an equal lack of
understanding”, which tells you the criticism of Gandhi is the first of the pair. The chapter
itself describes what really happened between those two positions: the Congress became a mass
political party and went on to dominate the political system, while keeping enough of the movement’s
inclusiveness to hold its coalition together.
Exam tip. In a passage question, quote the passage’s own words back at it. Two
phrases carry the marks here: eclectic role in parts (a) and (b), and carrying on the
movement in part (c).
6 Let Us Do It Together
The chapter closes with an activity: make a chart of elections and governments in your State
since 1952, with columns for the year of election, the name of the winning party, the name of the
ruling party or parties, and the name of the Chief Minister or Ministers.
This is a project to do with your own state’s records, so there is no single answer to it and it
is not asked in the board paper. It is still worth doing once, because it makes the chapter’s main
claim visible: for the first three elections your chart will almost certainly read Congress in every
row, and the year it stops doing so is where the next chapters of this book begin.
7 In-text Questions
The chapter also asks questions inside the text: in its margin notes, in the ‘Let’s re-search’ box and under the electoral map. They are answered below in the order in which they appear in the book, in the book’s own wording.
Q. What’s so special about our being a democracy? Sooner or later every country has become a democracy, isn’t it?
Answer. What was special was the choice India made at the start and the conditions in which it made it. Faced with the challenge of nation-building, leaders in many other newly independent countries decided that their country could not afford democracy; they put national unity first, and so many of the countries that gained freedom from colonialism experienced non-democratic rule, as nominal democracy with effective control by one leader, as one party rule or as direct army rule. Such regimes always promised to restore democracy very soon, but once established they were very difficult to dislodge. India’s leaders took the more difficult path. The first general election of 1952 was also the first big test of democracy in a poor and illiterate country, at a time when democracy had existed only in prosperous countries where nearly everyone was literate and many countries in Europe had not given all women the vote. So it is not true that every country simply became a democracy in the end; India chose democracy from the beginning, under the hardest conditions.
Q. That was a good decision. But what about men who still refer to a woman as Mrs. somebody, as if she does not have a name of her own?
Answer. The decision the note praises is the Election Commission’s refusal to accept the entries of nearly 40 lakh women who had been listed only as “wife of …” or “daughter of …”, and its order to revise such entries if possible and delete them if necessary. The law and the Election Commission could insist that every woman voter be registered in her own name, but the habit of treating a woman only as someone’s wife or daughter is a social attitude, and it changes only slowly, through education, through women’s own participation in public life and through each of us using a woman’s own name. The Commission’s decision shows that democracy begins with recognising every citizen as an individual. (This is a discussion question; give your own view with reasons.)
Q. Ask the elders in your family and neighbourhood about their experience of participating in elections.
• Did anyone vote in the first or second general election? Who did they vote for and why?
• Is there someone who has used all the three methods of voting? Which one did they prefer?
• In which ways do they find the elections of those days different from the present ones?
How to answer. This is an interview task, so the answers will come from the people you ask. Before you ask, know the three methods the chapter’s box describes, so that you can recognise them in their stories. In the first general election, each polling booth had a box for each candidate with that candidate’s election symbol, and the voter dropped a blank ballot paper into the box of the candidate they wanted; about 20 lakh steel boxes were used. After the first two elections the ballot paper carried the names and symbols of all the candidates and the voter put a stamp on the name of the candidate they wanted; this worked for nearly forty years. Towards the end of the 1990s the Election Commission started using the EVM, and by 2004 the entire country had shifted to it.
What to record. For each person write down the year and place of the election they remember, the party they voted for and their reason, which of the three methods they used and which they preferred, and the differences they notice between elections then and now (for example, the number of candidates and parties, the method of voting, and how campaigns were run).
Q. Can you identify the places where the Congress had a strong presence? In which States, did the other parties perform reasonably well?
Answer. The map shows almost every State shaded as ruled by the Congress during 1952-1967, so the Congress had a strong presence across nearly the whole country, from Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Mysore, Andhra Pradesh, Madras and Assam. Its Lok Sabha seats in the three bar charts under the map are 364 of 489 in 1952, 371 of 494 in 1957 and 361 of 494 in 1962.
The other parties did reasonably well in a few places. Kerala is marked for the Democratic Left Front of 1957-1959, the first Communist government in the world to come to power through democratic elections, and Jammu and Kashmir is marked for the National Conference. The chapter adds that in the first assembly elections the Congress failed to win a majority of seats in Travancore-Cochin (part of today’s Kerala), Madras and Orissa, and that the Communist Party of India’s support was more concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Kerala.
Q. Earlier we had coalition in a party, now we have coalition of parties. Does it mean that we have had a coalition government since 1952?
Answer. No. From 1952 the Congress formed single-party governments; it was one party, though one that behaved like a coalition inside. It was a social and ideological coalition that brought together diverse groups and interests, from peasants and industrialists to the left, the right and all shades of the centre, and its factions acted as a balancing mechanism within the ruling party. A coalition government is different: it is formed when several separate parties share power because none of them has a majority on its own. So in the Congress system the coalition was within the party, whereas a coalition government is a coalition between parties. The idea is similar, accommodating many interests, but the form of government is not.