Class 12 Political Science Book 2 Chapter 5 Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System Important Questions with Answers in English

Q. Nehru’s death raised the usual question ‘after Nehru, who?’. What was the more serious question it raised in a newly independent country like India?

Answer: ‘After Nehru, what?’ That is, whether India’s democratic experiment would survive at all, or whether the country would fail to manage a democratic succession.

Q. Why were the 1960s labelled the ‘dangerous decade’?

Answer: Because unresolved problems like poverty, inequality, communal and regional divisions could lead to a failure of the democratic project or even the disintegration of the country.

Q. Which slogan did Lal Bahadur Shastri coin, and what did it symbolise?

Answer: ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’. It symbolised the country’s resolve to face both the challenges of his time: the war with Pakistan in 1965 and the food crisis caused by failed monsoons and drought.

Q. What is meant by ‘defection’?

Answer: Defection means an elected representative leaves the party on whose symbol he or she was elected and joins another party.

Q. What was the ‘Kamaraj plan’?

Answer: It was K. Kamaraj’s proposal in 1963 that all senior Congressmen should resign from office to make way for younger party workers.

Q. What were the SVD governments?

Answer: They were the governments formed after the 1967 elections by joint legislative parties of various non-Congress parties. The joint legislative party was called Samyukt Vidhayak Dal in Hindi, and the governments it supported came to be described as SVD governments.

Q. What was the privy purse?

Answer: It was the grant in heredity or government allowance given to the families of the former rulers after the dissolution of princely rule, measured on the basis of the extent, revenue and potential of the merging state.

Q. What was the ‘Grand Alliance’ of 1971, and which parties formed it?

Answer: It was the electoral alliance of all the major non-communist, non-Congress opposition parties: the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the Swatantra Party (SWA) and the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD).

Q. How did the succession after Nehru take place, and why did the manner of it prove the critics wrong?

Answer: K. Kamraj, the president of the Congress party, consulted party leaders and Congress members of Parliament and found a consensus in favour of Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was then unanimously chosen leader of the Congress parliamentary party and became Prime Minister.
It proved the critics wrong because outsiders had feared that India, like other newly independent countries, would not manage a democratic succession and that this could open the way to a political role for the army. The ease of the transfer showed the fear was misplaced.

Q. What two major challenges did the country face during Shastri’s brief Prime Ministership?

Answer: First, the economy: India was still recovering from the economic implications of the war with China when failed monsoons, drought and a serious food crisis presented a grave challenge.
Second, war: the country faced a war with Pakistan in 1965. His slogan ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ symbolised the resolve to face both.

Q. Why did the senior Congress leaders decide to back Indira Gandhi in 1966?

Answer: They may have supported her in the belief that her administrative and political inexperience would compel her to be dependent on them for support and guidance. She had been politically active for very long but had served as a minister under Shastri only for a short period.
The calculation failed. Faced with a Lok Sabha election within a year and a deteriorating economy, she set out to gain control over the party and to demonstrate her leadership skills.

Q. What was the effect of the devaluation of the rupee, and how did people react to the economic situation?

Answer: Earlier one US dollar could be purchased for less than Rs. 5; after devaluation it cost more than Rs. 7. The economic situation triggered off a price rise.
People started protesting against the increase in prices of essential commodities, food scarcity, growing unemployment and the overall economic condition. Bandhs and hartals were called frequently across the country, and the government’s treating these as a law and order problem increased public bitterness further.

Q. What is ‘non-Congressism’, and what theoretical argument did Ram Manohar Lohia give in its defence?

Answer: Non-Congressism was the strategy, named by Lohia, of parties entirely different and disparate in their programmes and ideology getting together to form anti-Congress fronts in some states and making electoral adjustments of seats in others, because they realised that the division of their votes kept the Congress in power.
His argument in its defence was that Congress rule was undemocratic and opposed to the interests of ordinary poor people, and therefore the coming together of the non-Congress parties was necessary for reclaiming democracy for the people.

Q. Why is the story of ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ remembered, and what did the practice it describes eventually lead to?

Answer: The expression came from Gaya Lal, an MLA in Haryana, who in 1967 changed his party thrice in a fortnight, from Congress to United Front, back to Congress and then within nine hours to United Front again. When he declared he would quit the United Front for the Congress, the Congress leader Rao Birendra Singh brought him to the Chandigarh press and declared that Gaya Ram was now Aya Ram.
The phrase came to describe the practice of frequent floor-crossing by legislators in general. Later, the Constitution was amended to prevent defections.

Q. What was the ‘conscience vote’ of 1969, and what did it achieve?

Answer: The Congress President S. Nijalingappa had issued a whip asking all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote in favour of Sanjeeva Reddy, the official candidate. After silently supporting V.V. Giri, Indira Gandhi openly called for a conscience vote, which meant the MPs and MLAs from the Congress should be free to vote the way they wanted.
It achieved the victory of V.V. Giri, the independent candidate, and the defeat of the official Congress candidate, and that defeat formalised the split in the party.

Q. How did Indira Gandhi describe the split of 1969, and what names did the two groups get?

Answer: She projected the split as an ideological divide between socialists and conservatives, between the pro-poor and the pro-rich.
By November 1969 the group led by the syndicate came to be referred to as the Congress (Organisation) and the group led by Indira Gandhi as the Congress (Requisitionists). The two were also described as the Old Congress and the New Congress.

Q. Describe the context in which the fourth general elections were held.

Answer: Political uncertainty. Two Prime Ministers had died in quick succession, and the new Prime Minister, seen as a political novice, had been in office for less than a year.
Economic crisis. Successive failure of monsoons, widespread drought, decline in agricultural production, serious food shortage, depletion of foreign exchange reserves, a drop in industrial production and exports, a sharp rise in military expenditure and the diversion of resources from planning and economic development.
Devaluation and price rise. One of the first decisions of the new government was to devaluate the rupee, and the dollar went from under Rs. 5 to over Rs. 7. Prices rose, and bandhs and hartals were called frequently.
Unrest and polarisation. The government treated the protests as a law and order problem, which increased public bitterness. Communist and socialist parties launched struggles for greater equality, the CPI(M-L) led armed agrarian struggles, and the period saw some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots since Independence. Opposition parties organised these protests and came together as anti-Congress fronts.

Q. Why were the 1967 election results described as a ‘political earthquake’?

Answer: At the Centre. The Congress did get a majority in the Lok Sabha, but with its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952. Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet were defeated, and stalwarts like Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu, S.K. Patil in Maharashtra, Atulya Ghosh in West Bengal and K. B. Sahay in Bihar lost their own constituencies.
In the States. The Congress lost its majority in seven States, and in two more, defections prevented it from forming a government. These nine States were spread right across the country: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras and Kerala.
A first. In Madras State the DMK won a clear majority, the first time any non-Congress party had secured a majority of its own in any State. In the other eight, coalition governments of non-Congress parties were formed.
The meaning of it. A popular saying was that one could take a train from Delhi to Howrah without passing through a single Congress ruled State. The results proved that the Congress could be defeated at the elections.

Q. What were the SVD governments, and how ideologically incongruent were they? Give two examples. Did they last?

Answer: What they were. Since no single party had a majority in these States, various non-Congress parties came together to form joint legislative parties, called Samyukt Vidhayak Dal in Hindi, that supported non-Congress governments.
Bihar. Its SVD included the two socialist parties, the SSP and the PSP, along with the CPI on the left and the Jana Sangh on the right.
Punjab. There it was called the ‘Popular United Front’ and comprised the two rival Akali parties of the time, 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.
Their fate. In most cases the coalition partners were ideologically incongruent. Most of these governments did not survive for long: they lost their majority, and either new combinations were formed or President’s rule had to be imposed.

Q. What does the term ‘syndicate’ mean in the context of the Congress party of the sixties, and what role did the Syndicate play in the party?

Answer: Who they were. Syndicate was the informal name given to a group of powerful and influential Congress leaders who were in control of the party’s organisation. It was led by K. Kamraj, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and then president of the Congress party, and included S. K. Patil of Bombay city, S. Nijalingappa of Mysore, N. Sanjeeva Reddy of Andhra Pradesh and Atulya Ghosh of West Bengal.
Making Prime Ministers. Both Lal Bahadur Shastri and later Indira Gandhi owed their position to the support received from the Syndicate, which had ensured Indira Gandhi’s election as leader of the parliamentary party.
Running the government. The group had a decisive say in Indira Gandhi’s first Council of Ministers and also in policy formulation and implementation, and these leaders expected her to follow their advice.
The end of them. Indira Gandhi chose her trusted advisers from outside the party and slowly sidelined the Syndicate. After the split its leaders stayed with the Congress (O), and since it was the Congress (R) that won the test of popularity, all these big and powerful men lost their power and prestige after 1971.

Q. What was the Ten Point Programme of May 1967, and why did Indira Gandhi bring it?

Answer: Why she brought it. She faced two challenges at once: she had to build her independence from the Syndicate, and she had to regain the ground the Congress had lost in the 1967 elections. She adopted a very bold strategy and converted a simple power struggle into an ideological struggle, launching a series of initiatives to give government policy a Left orientation.
What it contained. She got the Congress Working Committee to adopt the Ten Point Programme in May 1967. It 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.
How the Syndicate took it. While the syndicate leaders formally approved this Left-wing programme, they had serious reservations about the same. The disagreement it exposed was one step on the road to the open rivalry of 1969.

Q. Trace the story of the abolition of the privy purse.

Answer: The promise. The integration of the Princely States was preceded by an assurance that after the dissolution of princely rule the then rulers’ families would keep certain private property and be given a grant in heredity or government allowance, measured on the basis of the extent, revenue and potential of the merging state. This grant was called the privy purse, and at the time of accession there was little criticism of it because integration and consolidation were the primary aim.
The objection. Hereditary privileges were not consonant with the principles of equality and social and economic justice laid down in the Constitution, and Nehru had expressed his dissatisfaction over the matter time and again.
The fight. Following the 1967 elections Indira Gandhi supported the demand for abolition, and announced it in 1969 along with the nationalisation of fourteen banks. Morarji Desai called the move morally wrong and a ‘breach of faith with the princes’, and left the government. The Constitutional amendment of 1970 was not passed in the Rajya Sabha, and the ordinance that followed was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The resolution. Indira Gandhi made this a major election issue in 1971 and got a lot of public support. Following the massive victory, the Constitution was amended to remove the legal obstacles for abolition of the privy purse.

Q. Why did the electoral contest of 1971 appear to be loaded against Congress(R), and how did it actually turn out?

Answer: Why it looked hopeless. The new Congress was just one faction of an already weak party. Everyone believed that the real organisational strength of the Congress was under the command of Congress(O). To make matters worse, all the major non-communist, non-Congress opposition parties came together as the Grand Alliance, while the split had already reduced her government to a minority, dependent on the issue-based support of parties like the CPI and the DMK.
What she had that they lacked. An issue, an agenda and a positive slogan. The Grand Alliance had no coherent political programme, and its only common one was ‘Indira Hatao’. Against it she set ‘Garibi Hatao’, with a programme of growth of the public sector, ceilings on rural land holdings and urban property, removal of disparities in income and opportunity, and abolition of princely privileges.
The outcome. The Congress(R)-CPI alliance won 375 seats and 48.4 per cent of the votes, more than the Congress had ever won in the first four general elections. Congress(R) alone won 352 seats with about 44 per cent. Congress(O) won merely 16 seats, and the Grand Alliance’s combined tally was less than 60.

Q. In what ways was the new Congress of the 1970s different from the old Congress?

Answer: Not a revival. What Indira Gandhi had done was not a revival of the old Congress party. In many ways she had re-invented it: the party occupied a similar position in terms of popularity as in the past, but it was a different kind of a party.
Leader, not organisation. It relied entirely on the popularity of the supreme leader and had a somewhat weak organisational structure.
No factions, and therefore less room. It did not have many factions, so it could not accommodate all kinds of opinions and interests, which was exactly what the old Congress system had been known for.
A narrower social base. While it won elections, it depended more on some social groups: the poor, the women, Dalits, Adivasis and the minorities.
The cost. Despite being more popular, it lacked the capacity to absorb all tensions and conflicts, and as it consolidated its position the spaces for democratic expression of people’s aspirations actually shrank.

Q. The Congress faced the challenge of political succession twice in two years. Describe both, and explain what each showed about Indian democracy.

Answer: The fear. When Nehru died in May 1964 the usual question ‘after Nehru, who?’ was joined by a more serious one, ‘after Nehru, what?’. Many outsiders doubted whether India’s democratic experiment would survive, feared that India like other newly independent countries would fail to manage a democratic succession, and warned that such a failure could lead to a political role for the army. The 1960s were already being called the ‘dangerous decade’.
The first succession, 1964. K. Kamraj, the Congress president, consulted party leaders and Congress MPs and found a consensus in favour of Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was unanimously chosen leader of the parliamentary party. Shastri was a non-controversial leader from Uttar Pradesh, a minister in Nehru’s cabinet for many years, known for his simplicity and his commitment to principles, who had earlier resigned as Railway Minister accepting moral responsibility for a major railway accident.
The second succession, 1966. Shastri’s Prime Ministership ended abruptly on 11 January 1966 when he expired at Tashkent, where he had gone to sign an agreement with President Muhammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan to end the 1965 war. This time there was intense competition between Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi. The senior leaders backed Indira Gandhi but not unanimously, so the contest was resolved through a secret ballot among Congress MPs, in which she defeated Morarji Desai with the support of more than two-thirds of the party’s MPs.
What it showed. The ease of the first succession proved all the critics wrong, and an editorial in The Guardian noted that India’s new Prime Minister had been named with more dispatch and much more dignity than Britain’s. The second, a peaceful transition of power despite intense competition for leadership, was seen as a sign of the maturity of India’s democracy.

Q. Explain the rise of non-Congressism and the results of the 1967 elections at the national and State levels.

Answer: Why the opposition united. The economic crisis, the price rise, the bandhs and hartals and the government’s treatment of protest as a law and order problem left the opposition in the forefront of public agitation. Parties opposed to the Congress realised that the division of their votes was what kept the Congress in power, so parties entirely different and disparate in their programmes and ideology formed anti-Congress fronts in some states and made electoral adjustments of seats in others. They felt that Indira Gandhi’s inexperience and the internal factionalism within the Congress gave them their opportunity.
Lohia’s argument. The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia named this strategy ‘non-Congressism’ and defended it theoretically: Congress rule was undemocratic and opposed to the interests of ordinary poor people, so the coming together of the non-Congress parties was necessary for reclaiming democracy for the people.
The national result. The fourth general elections were held in February 1967, with the Congress facing the electorate for the first time without Nehru. The results jolted the Congress at both levels, and observers called them a ‘political earthquake’. The Congress did get a Lok Sabha majority, but with its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952, and half the ministers in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet were defeated, including stalwarts like Kamaraj, S.K. Patil, Atulya Ghosh and K. B. Sahay.
The State result. The Congress lost its majority in seven States and defections stopped it forming a government in two more, so it lost power in nine States: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras and Kerala. In Madras the DMK won a clear majority, the first time any non-Congress party had done so in any State; in the other eight, non-Congress coalitions took office.
What followed. The elections brought in the phenomenon of coalitions, the SVD governments, and the era of defections captured by ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’. Most of those coalition governments did not last, but the results had proved that the Congress could be defeated.

Q. Describe the conflict between Indira Gandhi and the Syndicate, and discuss the major issue which led to the formal split of the Congress Party in 1969.

Answer: The real challenge. The real challenge to Indira Gandhi came not from the opposition but from within her own party: the Syndicate, the group of powerful and influential leaders who controlled the party organisation and had ensured her election as leader of the parliamentary party. They expected her to follow their advice.
Her strategy. She had two things to do at once: build her independence from the Syndicate, and regain the ground lost in 1967. She adopted a very bold strategy and converted a simple power struggle into an ideological struggle, choosing her advisers from outside the party, sidelining the Syndicate slowly and carefully, and getting the Congress Working Committee to adopt the Ten Point Programme in May 1967. The syndicate leaders formally approved it but had serious reservations about it.
The major issue: the presidential election of 1969. The rivalry came into the open when President Zakir Hussain died and the post fell vacant. Despite Mrs Gandhi’s reservations the syndicate managed to nominate her long time opponent and then Speaker of the Lok Sabha, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, as the official Congress candidate. Indira Gandhi retaliated by encouraging the then Vice-President, V.V. Giri, to file his nomination as an independent candidate, and announced several big and popular measures, the nationalisation of fourteen leading private banks and the abolition of the privy purse. On both these issues serious differences emerged between the Prime Minister and Morarji Desai, then Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, and he left the government.
The showdown. Congress had seen differences before, but this time both sides wanted a showdown, and it took place during the presidential election. Congress President S. Nijalingappa issued a whip asking all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for Sanjeeva Reddy. Indira Gandhi’s supporters requisitioned a special meeting of the AICC, which was refused, and that is why her faction came to be known as the ‘requisitionists’. After silently supporting V.V. Giri, she openly called for a ‘conscience vote’, leaving Congress MPs and MLAs free to vote as they wanted.
The split. The election resulted in the victory of V.V. Giri and the defeat of Sanjeeva Reddy, and the defeat of the official Congress candidate formalised the split. The Congress President expelled the Prime Minister from the party in his letter of 11 November 1969; she claimed that her group was the real Congress. By November 1969 the syndicate’s group was the Congress (Organisation) and hers the Congress (Requisitionists), also called the Old and New Congress. She projected the split as an ideological divide between socialists and conservatives, between the pro-poor and the pro-rich.

Q. What were the factors which led to the popularity of Indira Gandhi’s Government in the early 1970s?

Answer: A pro-poor image built deliberately. After the split her minority government made conscious attempts to project its socialist credentials. She vigorously campaigned for implementing the existing land reform laws and undertook further land ceiling legislation.
Big, popular decisions. The nationalisation of fourteen leading private banks and the abolition of the privy purse were both big and popular measures, and when the Supreme Court struck down the privy purse ordinance she carried the issue to the electorate and got a lot of public support.
A positive slogan against a negative one. The Grand Alliance had no coherent political programme and, as she pointed out, only one common one: ‘Indira Hatao’. She put forward ‘Garibi Hatao’, with growth of the public sector, ceilings on rural land holdings and urban property, removal of disparities in income and opportunity, and abolition of princely privileges.
A new social base. Through garibi hatao she generated support among the disadvantaged, especially landless labourers, Dalits and Adivasis, minorities, women and the unemployed youth. This was part of a political strategy of building an independent nationwide political support base.
The scale of the 1971 victory. The Congress(R)-CPI alliance won 375 seats and 48.4 per cent of the votes, more than the Congress had ever won before; Congress(O) won merely 16 seats and the Grand Alliance under 60. This established her claim to be the ‘real’ Congress.
Bangladesh. Soon after the 1971 elections came the political and military crisis in East Pakistan and the Indo-Pak war leading to the establishment of Bangladesh. These events added to her popularity, even the opposition leaders admired her statesmanship, and her party swept all the State Assembly elections of 1972. She was seen not only as the protector of the poor and the underprivileged but also as a strong nationalist leader.

Q. Analyse the 1971 Lok Sabha election: why it was called, the contest, the slogans and the outcome.

Answer: Why it was called. The split had reduced the Indira Gandhi government to a minority, surviving on the issue-based support of a few other parties including the Communist Party of India and the DMK. To end her dependence on other parties, strengthen her party’s position in Parliament and seek a popular mandate for her programmes, the government recommended the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in December 1970. This was another surprising and bold move, and the fifth general election was held in February 1971.
The contest on paper. It appeared loaded against Congress(R). The new Congress was one faction of an already weak party, and everyone believed the real organisational strength lay with Congress(O). All the major non-communist, non-Congress opposition parties formed the Grand Alliance: the SSP, the PSP, the BJS, the Swatantra Party and the Bharatiya Kranti Dal. The ruling party’s only alliance was with the CPI.
The slogans. Yet the new Congress had something its big opponents lacked: an issue, an agenda and a positive slogan. The Grand Alliance had no coherent political programme, and Indira Gandhi said its only common programme was ‘Indira Hatao’. Against it she offered ‘Garibi Hatao’, focusing on growth of the public sector, ceilings on rural land holdings and urban property, removal of disparities in income and opportunity, and abolition of princely privileges, and used it to build support among the landless labourers, Dalits and Adivasis, minorities, women and unemployed youth.
The outcome. The Congress(R)-CPI alliance won 375 seats and secured 48.4 per cent of the votes, more seats and votes than the Congress had ever won in the first four general elections. Congress(R) alone won 352 seats with about 44 per cent. Congress(O), the party with so many stalwarts, got less than one-fourth of the votes secured by Indira Gandhi’s party and won merely 16 seats, and the Grand Alliance’s combined tally was less than 60. The Grand Alliance of the opposition proved a grand failure.
What followed. With this the Congress led by Indira Gandhi established its claim to being the ‘real’ Congress and restored its dominant position. The Bangladesh crisis and war followed, and her party swept all the State Assembly elections of 1972, so that within a span of four years she had warded off the challenge both to her leadership and to the dominant position of her party.

Q. ‘Indira Gandhi restored the Congress system by changing the nature of the Congress system itself.’ Explain this statement.

Answer: The restoration was real. With two successive election victories, one at the Centre in 1971 and one at the State level in 1972, the dominance of the Congress was restored. The Congress was now in power in almost all the States and was popular across different social sections. Within a span of four years Indira Gandhi had warded off the challenge to her leadership and to the dominant position of her party.
But it was a different party. What she had done was not a revival of the old Congress party. In many ways she had re-invented it. The party occupied a similar position in terms of popularity as in the past, but it was a different kind of a party.
Leader instead of organisation. The new Congress relied entirely on the popularity of the supreme leader and had a somewhat weak organisational structure, where the old Congress system had rested on a strong organisation and on state-level leaders who could make and unmake leaders at the centre.
Fewer factions, therefore less accommodation. This Congress did not have many factions, and so it could not accommodate all kinds of opinions and interests. Absorbing every kind of difference had been the defining strength of the old Congress system.
A narrower base. While it won elections, it depended more on some social groups: the poor, the women, Dalits, Adivasis and the minorities, rather than on the broad coalition of the past.
The cost of the change. Despite being more popular, the new Congress did not have the capacity to absorb all tensions and conflicts that the Congress system was known for. As the Congress consolidated its position and Indira Gandhi assumed a position of unprecedented political authority, the spaces for democratic expression of people’s aspirations actually shrank, while popular unrest and mobilisation around issues of development and economic deprivation continued to grow. That is why the restoration led on to a political crisis that threatened the very existence of constitutional democracy.