Class 12 Political Science Book 2 Chapter 2 Era of One-Party Dominance Important Questions with Answers in English

Q. When was the Election Commission of India set up, and who became the first Chief Election Commissioner?

Answer: The Election Commission of India was set up in January 1950, and Sukumar Sen became the first Chief Election Commissioner.

Q. What is delimitation?

Answer: Delimitation is drawing the boundaries of the electoral constituencies.

Q. What are electoral rolls?

Answer: The electoral rolls are the list of all the citizens eligible to vote.

Q. How many seats did the Congress win in the first Lok Sabha, and out of how many?

Answer: The Congress won 364 of the 489 seats in the first Lok Sabha.

Q. Which party won the second largest number of Lok Sabha seats in the first general election, and how many did it win?

Answer: The Communist Party of India, with 16 seats. It thereby emerged as the largest opposition party.

Q. Who was invited to form the ministry in Kerala in 1957, and after which election?

Answer: E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the leader of the Communist legislature party, was invited by the governor after the assembly elections held in March 1957.

Q. Under which Article of the Constitution was the Kerala Communist government dismissed, and in which year?

Answer: Under Article 356 of the Constitution, in 1959.

Q. What are factions?

Answer: Factions are the groups inside a party. The chapter uses the word for the groups within the Congress that fought each other rather than leaving to become an opposition.

Q. In which year was the Bharatiya Jana Sangh formed, and who was its founder-President?

Answer: It was formed in 1951, with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee as its founder-President.

Q. What is meant by the ‘Congress system’?

Answer: It is the name given to the first decade of Indian electoral politics, in which political competition took place within the Congress and the Congress therefore acted both as the ruling party and as the opposition.

Q. Why did the Election Commission refuse nearly 40 lakh entries in the first draft of the electoral rolls, and what did it order?

Answer: When the first draft was published it was found that the names of nearly 40 lakh women had not been recorded: they were listed simply as “wife of …” or “daughter of …” instead of by their own names.
The Commission refused to accept these entries and ordered a revision if possible and deletion if necessary.

Q. Describe the method of voting used in the first general election.

Answer: A box for each candidate, carrying that candidate’s election symbol, was placed inside every polling booth. About 20 lakh steel boxes were used in all.
Each voter was given a blank ballot paper and had to drop it into the box of the candidate they wanted to vote for. This method was chosen because only 15 per cent of the voters were literate.

Q. Why did many observers doubt that India’s first general election would work? Give any two of the verdicts the chapter quotes.

Answer: Until then democracy had existed only in the prosperous countries, mainly in Europe and North America, where nearly everyone was literate, and many European countries had still not given voting rights to all women. India was attempting universal adult franchise while poor and largely illiterate.
Any two of these: an Indian editor called it “the biggest gamble in history”; Organiser, a magazine, wrote that Jawaharlal Nehru “would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India”; a British member of the Indian Civil Service claimed that “a future and more enlightened age will view with astonishment the absurd farce of recording the votes of millions of illiterate people”.

Q. Give any four pieces of evidence from the chapter that the first general election succeeded.

Answer: Any four of the following. Elections were competitive, with on an average more than four candidates for each seat. More than half the eligible voters turned out to vote on the day of elections. When the results were declared they were accepted as fair even by the losers. The Times of India held that the polls had “confounded all those sceptics who thought the introduction of adult franchise too risky an experiment in this country”. The Hindustan Times claimed that “there is universal agreement that the Indian people have conducted themselves admirably in the largest experiment in democratic elections in the history of the world”. Observers outside India were equally impressed.

Q. In 1952 the Congress won 74 per cent of the seats with 45 per cent of the votes. How does the chapter explain this?

Answer: Under the first-past-the-post system used in India, the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share of seats, and that is what worked in favour of the Congress.
If the votes of all the non-Congress candidates are added up they came to more than the Congress’s votes, but those votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates, so the Congress was still way ahead in each constituency and won.

Q. What was the dilemma the socialists faced in 1955, and how did they respond to it?

Answer: In 1955 the Congress declared its goal to be the socialist pattern of society. This made it difficult for the socialists to present themselves as an effective alternative to the Congress, because the Congress had taken up their own stated goal.
They responded in two different ways. Some, led by Rammanohar Lohia, increased their distance from and criticism of the Congress; others like Asoka Mehta advocated a limited cooperation with it.

Q. Why did the Communist Party of India split in 1964, and which two parties resulted?

Answer: The party went through a major split in 1964 following the ideological rift between the Soviet Union and China.
The pro-Soviet faction remained as the CPI, while the opponents formed the CPI(M). Both these parties continue to exist to this day.

Q. State any four features of the ideology and programme of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Answer: Any four of the following. It emphasised the idea of one country, one culture and one nation. It believed the country could become modern, progressive and strong on the basis of Indian culture and traditions. It called for a reunion of India and Pakistan in Akhand Bharat. It was in the forefront of the agitation to replace English with Hindi as the official language of India. It was opposed to the granting of concessions to religious and cultural minorities. It was a consistent advocate of India developing nuclear weapons, especially after China carried out its atomic tests in 1964.

Q. Explain any four reasons for the dominance of the Congress party in the first three general elections.

Answer: 1. The legacy of the freedom struggle. The Congress had inherited the legacy of the national movement and was seen as its inheritor. Many leaders who had been in the forefront of that struggle were now contesting elections as Congress candidates.
2. The only countrywide organisation. It was the only party then to have an organisation spread all over the country, with an organisational network down to the local level.
3. The ‘first off the blocks’ advantage. The Congress had already started its campaign by the time the other parties could even think of a strategy, and many of those parties were formed only around independence or after that.
4. Nehru’s leadership. In Jawaharlal Nehru the party had the most popular and charismatic leader in Indian politics; he led the campaign and toured through the country.
5. Its all-inclusive nature. As the Congress was till recently a national movement, its nature was all-inclusive, which let it hold together groups whose interests were often contradictory.

Q. How did the electoral system boost the extent of the Congress’s victory? Illustrate with the 1952 figures for the Congress and for the Socialist Party.

Answer: The system. India adopted the first-past-the-post method, in which the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share of seats. The chapter says the extent of the Congress’s victory was artificially boosted by this.
The Congress in 1952. It won three out of every four seats but did not get even half of the votes: 45 per cent of the total votes turned into 74 per cent of the seats.
The Socialist Party in 1952. The mirror image. It was the second largest party in terms of votes and secured more than 10 per cent of the votes all over the country, yet it could not even win three per cent of the seats.
Why. Adding up the votes of all the non-Congress candidates gives more than the Congress’s own votes, but those votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates, so the Congress was still way ahead of the opposition in seat after seat.

Q. Describe the rise and fall of the first Communist government in Kerala.

Answer: The election. As early as 1957 the Congress had the bitter taste of defeat in Kerala. In the assembly elections held in March 1957 the Communist Party won the largest number of seats in the Kerala legislature: 60 of the 126 seats, with the support of five independents.
The government. The governor invited E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the leader of the Communist legislature party, to form the ministry. For the first time in the world, a Communist party government had come to power through democratic elections. The CPI had come to power on the promise of carrying out radical and progressive policy measures.
The agitation. On losing power in the state, the Congress party began a ‘liberation struggle’ against the elected government. The Communists claimed that the agitation was led by vested interests and religious organisations.
The dismissal. In 1959 the Congress government at the Centre dismissed the Communist government in Kerala under Article 356 of the Constitution. This decision proved very controversial and was widely cited as one of the prominent instances of the misuse of constitutional emergency powers.

Q. Trace the story of the Socialist Party from its origins to its later splits.

Answer: Origins. The origins can be traced back to the mass movement stage of the Indian National Congress in the pre-independence era. The Congress Socialist Party was formed within the Congress in 1934 by a group of young leaders who wanted a more radical and egalitarian Congress.
The break. In 1948 the Congress amended its constitution to prevent its members from having a dual party membership. This forced the Socialists to form a separate Socialist Party in 1948.
Ideology and performance. The socialists believed in democratic socialism, which distinguished them from the Congress as well as from the Communists, and they criticised the Congress for favouring capitalists and landlords and for ignoring the workers and the peasants. Their electoral performance caused much disappointment to their supporters: the party had presence in most of the states of India but could achieve electoral success only in a few pockets.
Splits. The party went through many splits and reunions leading to the formation of many socialist parties, including the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party, the Praja Socialist Party and the Samyukta Socialist Party. Its leaders included Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Asoka Mehta, Acharya Narendra Dev, Rammanohar Lohia and S. M. Joshi. Many parties in contemporary India, like the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Janata Dal (Secular), trace their origins to the Socialist Party.

Q. Explain how the Congress became a social coalition and an ideological coalition.

Answer: As a social coalition. The Congress began in 1885 as a pressure group for the newly educated, professional and commercial classes, and was at first dominated by the English speaking, upper caste, upper middle-class and urban elite. With every civil disobedience movement it launched, its social base widened. It brought together peasants and industrialists, urban dwellers and villagers, workers and owners, and middle, lower and upper classes and castes. Its leadership also expanded beyond upper caste and upper class professionals to agriculture-based leaders with a rural orientation. By independence it had been transformed into a rainbow-like social coalition broadly representing India’s diversity in terms of classes and castes, religions and languages and various interests.
As an ideological coalition. Many of these groups merged their identity within the Congress; very often they did not, and continued to exist within it as groups and individuals holding different beliefs. In this sense the Congress was an ideological coalition as well. It accommodated the revolutionary and pacifist, conservative and radical, extremist and moderate, and the right, left and all shades of the centre. 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. Some of these, like the Congress Socialist Party, later separated from the Congress and became opposition parties.

Q. The opposition parties of the 1950s won only token representation. What role did they nevertheless play?

Answer: They kept the system democratic. All these opposition parties succeeded in gaining only a token representation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies during this period, yet their presence played a crucial role in maintaining the democratic character of the system.
They criticised. These parties offered a sustained and often principled criticism of the policies and practices of the Congress party. This kept the ruling party under check and often changed the balance of power within the Congress.
They kept an alternative alive. By keeping a democratic political alternative alive, they prevented the resentment with the system from turning anti-democratic.
They groomed leaders. These parties also groomed the leaders who were to play a crucial role in the shaping of the country. The roots of almost all the non-Congress parties of today can be traced to one or the other of the opposition parties of the 1950s.
They worked through the factions. Because they were far removed from the actual exercise of authority, they primarily attempted to influence the Congress’s factions and thereby influenced policy and decision making indirectly, from the “margins”.

Q. “The dominance of the Congress party in India was different from one-party dominance elsewhere in the world.” Explain, with the examples the chapter gives.

Answer: The general point. India is not the only country to have experienced the dominance of one party. Looking around the world we find many other examples of one-party dominance, but there is a crucial difference between these and the Indian experience: in the rest of the cases the dominance of one party was ensured by compromising democracy.
Dominance written into the constitution. In some countries like China, Cuba and Syria the constitution permits only a single party to rule the country.
Dominance enforced by other means. Some others like Myanmar, Belarus, Egypt and Eritrea are effectively one-party states due to legal and military measures.
Dominance until recently. Until a few years ago, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan were also effectively one-party dominant states.
What made India different. What distinguished the dominance of the Congress party in India from all these cases was that it happened under democratic conditions. Many parties contested elections in conditions of free and fair elections, and yet the Congress managed to win election after election.
The one genuine parallel. This was similar to the dominance the African National Congress has enjoyed in South Africa after the end of apartheid.

Q. Why was holding India’s first general election described as a mammoth exercise, and how did the country carry it off?

Answer: The two preparatory tasks. Holding an election required delimitation, or drawing the boundaries of the electoral constituencies, and preparing the electoral rolls, the list of all the citizens eligible to vote. Both these tasks took a lot of time.
The rolls had to be corrected. When the first draft of the rolls was published it was found that the names of nearly 40 lakh women were not recorded, because they had been listed simply as “wife of …” or “daughter of …”. The Election Commission refused to accept these entries and ordered a revision if possible and deletion if necessary.
The sheer scale. No election on this scale had ever been conducted in the world before. There were 17 crore eligible voters, who had to elect about 3,200 MLAs and 489 Members of Lok Sabha, and the Election Commission trained over 3 lakh officers and polling staff to conduct the elections.
Illiteracy forced a new method. Only 15 per cent of the eligible voters were literate, so the Commission had to think of a special method of voting: a box for each candidate carrying that candidate’s symbol was placed inside every polling booth, about 20 lakh steel boxes were used, and each voter dropped a blank ballot paper into the box of their chosen candidate.
It took far longer than planned. The elections had to be postponed twice and were finally held from October 1951 to February 1952, and it took six months for the campaigning, polling and counting to be completed.
It worked. Elections were competitive, with on an average more than four candidates for each seat; more than half the eligible voters turned out; and when the results were declared they were accepted as fair even by the losers.

Q. How did factions work inside the Congress, and why does the chapter call internal factionalism a strength rather than a weakness?

Answer: What factions are. The groups inside a party are called factions. Most of the state units of the Congress were made up of numerous factions, and those factions took different ideological positions.
Where they came from. The Congress had a coalition-like character, and a coalition accommodates all those who join it. Some factions were based on ideological considerations, but very often they were rooted in personal ambitions and rivalries.
The first strength of a coalition. A coalition has to avoid any extreme position and strike a balance on almost all issues, because compromise and inclusiveness are its hallmarks. This put the opposition in a difficulty: anything the opposition wanted to say would also find a place in the programme and ideology of the Congress.
The second strength. In a party that has the nature of a coalition there is a greater tolerance of internal differences, and the ambitions of various groups and leaders are accommodated. The Congress did both these things during the freedom struggle and continued doing them after Independence.
Why that made factionalism a strength. Even if a group was unhappy with the position of the party or with its share of power, it would remain inside the party and fight the other groups rather than leaving and becoming an ‘opposition’. Since there was room within the party for various factions to fight with each other, leaders representing different interests and ideologies remained within the Congress rather than going out and forming a new party.
The effect on the system. The factions made the Congress appear as a grand centrist party, and the system of factions functioned as a balancing mechanism within the ruling party, so political competition took place within the Congress itself.

Q. Trace the history of the Communist Party of India from the early 1920s to the split of 1964.

Answer: Origins. In the early 1920s communist groups emerged in different parts of India, taking inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and advocating socialism as the solution to problems affecting the country.
Inside the Congress. From 1935 the Communists worked mainly from within the fold of the Indian National Congress. A parting of ways took place in December 1941, when the Communists decided to support the British in their war against Nazi Germany.
Strength at independence. Unlike other non-Congress parties, the CPI had a well-oiled party machinery and dedicated cadre at the time of independence.
The question that divided it. Independence raised different voices in the party. The basic question that troubled it was the nature of Indian independence: was India really free or was freedom a sham? Soon after independence the party thought that the transfer of power in 1947 was not true independence, and encouraged violent uprisings in Telangana.
The rethink. The Communists failed to generate popular support for their position and were crushed by the armed forces. This forced them to rethink, and in 1951 the party abandoned the path of violent revolution and decided to participate in the approaching general elections.
Electoral base and leaders. In the first general election the CPI won 16 seats and emerged as the largest opposition party. Its support was more concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Kerala. A. K. Gopalan, S. A. Dange, E. M. S. Namboodiripad, P. C. Joshi, Ajay Ghosh and P. Sundarraya were among its notable leaders.
The split. The party went through a major split in 1964 following the ideological rift between the Soviet Union and China. The pro-Soviet faction remained as the CPI, while the opponents formed the CPI(M). Both these parties continue to exist to this day.

Q. “In the first decade of electoral competition the Congress acted both as the ruling party as well as the opposition.” Explain this statement.

Answer: The claim. This sentence is the chapter’s summing-up of why the period is called the ‘Congress system’.
The Congress governed everywhere. After the first general election the Congress ruled all over the country at the national and the state level, and in 1957 and 1962 it kept winning three-fourth of the Lok Sabha seats while no opposition party could win even one-tenth of its number.
The opposition was real but small. India had a larger number of diverse and vibrant opposition parties than many other multi-party democracies, but they succeeded in gaining only a token representation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, and were far removed from the actual exercise of authority.
So the opposition worked from outside the seats. The other parties primarily attempted to influence the Congress’s factions, and thereby indirectly influenced policy and decision making from the “margins”. They were not alternatives to the ruling party; instead they constantly pressurised and criticised, censured and influenced the Congress.
The real competition was internal. Most state units of the Congress were made up of numerous factions taking different ideological positions, which made the Congress appear as a grand centrist party. The system of factions functioned as a balancing mechanism within the ruling party, so political competition took place within the Congress.
Hence the statement. Because the government and its most effective critics were both inside the same party, the Congress played both roles at once, and that is why this period of Indian politics has been described as the ‘Congress system’.

Q. Assess India’s first general election as a landmark in the history of democracy.

Answer: What made it a test. The first general election was the first big test of democracy in a poor and illiterate country. Till then democracy had existed only in the prosperous countries, mainly in Europe and North America, where nearly everyone was literate, and by that time many countries in Europe had not even given voting rights to all women.
The doubts. India’s experiment with universal adult franchise appeared very bold and risky. An Indian editor called it “the biggest gamble in history”. Organiser, a magazine, wrote that Jawaharlal Nehru “would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India”. A British member of the Indian Civil Service claimed that “a future and more enlightened age will view with astonishment the absurd farce of recording the votes of millions of illiterate people”.
What actually happened. Elections were competitive, with on an average more than four candidates for each seat. The level of participation was encouraging: more than half the eligible voters turned out to vote on the day of elections. When the results were declared, these were accepted as fair even by the losers.
The verdicts afterwards. The Times of India held that the polls had “confounded all those sceptics who thought the introduction of adult franchise too risky an experiment in this country”. The Hindustan Times claimed that “there is universal agreement that the Indian people have conducted themselves admirably in the largest experiment in democratic elections in the history of the world”. Observers outside India were equally impressed.
Why it counts as a landmark. India’s general election of 1952 became a landmark in the history of democracy all over the world. It was no longer possible to argue that democratic elections could not be held in conditions of poverty or lack of education. It proved that democracy could be practised anywhere in the world.
The wider significance. It also settled the question India’s own leaders had faced. Many countries that gained freedom from colonialism took the other road, into nominal democracy with effective control by one leader, one party rule or direct army rule, and such regimes proved very difficult to dislodge once established.