All 10 exercise questions from Chapter 5 Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System of the NCERT textbook Politics in India Since Independence, printed exactly as they appear in the English edition, with a full answer to each one. The ‘Let Us Do It Together’ activity and the questions in the chapter’s margin notes are solved at the end. Try the answer yourself first, then compare.
In several chapters of this book the Hindi and English editions print different exercises, and the difference can move the correct answer to a different letter. That does not happen in this chapter. Both editions have 10 questions, Question 4 has the same three options in the same order, Question 6 has the same five, and the matching table of Question 2 is the same 4 + 4. This was checked question by question, not assumed.
Two small differences are worth knowing. Question 9 in English asks about the major issue (singular), while the Hindi edition asks which issues (plural), so the English answer below is built around one central issue and the course it took. And Question 10 prints a slightly longer passage in English than in Hindi. The full English passage is used below.
1 Which statements about the 1967 elections are correct
Q. Which of these statements about the 1967 elections is/are correct?
(a) Congress won the Lok Sabha elections but lost the Assembly elections in many states.
(b) Congress lost both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
(c) Congress lost majority in the Lok Sabha but formed a coalition government with the support of some other parties.
(d) Congress retained power at the Centre with an increased majority.
Answer: (a) Congress won the Lok Sabha elections but lost the Assembly elections in many states. Only this statement is correct.
Why: The chapter says the Congress did manage to get a majority in the Lok Sabha, but with its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952. In the States the picture was very different: it lost its majority in seven States, and in two more, defections prevented it from forming a government, so it lost power in nine States altogether. That is exactly what statement (a) describes.
Why the others are wrong: (b) is wrong because the Congress did not lose the Lok Sabha election. (c) is wrong because it had a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha and did not need a coalition. (d) is wrong because the majority was reduced, not increased: this was the Congress’s lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952.
2 Match the following
Q. Match the following:
| List I | List II |
|---|---|
| (a) Syndicate | i. An elected representative leaving the party on whose ticket s/he has been elected |
| (b) Defection | ii. A catchy phrase that attracts public attention |
| (c) Slogan | iii. parties with different ideological position coming together to oppose Congress and its policies |
| (d) Anti-Congressism | iv. A group of powerful and influential leaders within the Congress |
Answer: (a)-iv, (b)-i, (c)-ii, (d)-iii
Why: The book’s own definition of the Syndicate is a group of powerful and influential leaders from within the Congress who were in control of the party’s organisation, so it takes iv. Its definition of defection is that an elected representative leaves the party on whose symbol he or she was elected and joins another party, so it takes i. A slogan is the catchy phrase that attracts public attention, such as ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ or ‘Garibi Hatao’, so it takes ii. And anti-Congressism is the strategy by which parties entirely different and disparate in their programmes and ideology came together against the Congress, so it takes iii.
3 Whom would you identify with these slogans and phrases
Q. Whom would you identify with the following slogans/phrases?
(a) Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan (b) Indira Hatao! (c) Garibi Hatao!
Answer:
(a) ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’: Lal Bahadur Shastri. During his Prime Ministership the country faced two challenges at the same time, the 1965 war with Pakistan and the food crisis caused by failed monsoons and drought. The chapter says the slogan symbolised the country’s resolve to face both of them.
(b) ‘Indira Hatao!’: the parties of the opposition ‘Grand Alliance’ of 1971. It was made up of the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Praja Socialist Party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Swatantra Party and the Bharatiya Kranti Dal. Indira Gandhi herself said that the opposition alliance had only one common programme: Indira Hatao.
(c) ‘Garibi Hatao!’: Indira Gandhi. This was her positive programme, put forward in answer to ‘Indira Hatao’, and she used it to build a support base among the landless labourers, Dalits and Adivasis, minorities, women and the unemployed youth.
4 Which statement about the Grand Alliance of 1971 is correct
Q. Which of the following statement about the Grand Alliance of 1971 is correct? The Grand Alliance …..
(a) was formed by non-Communist, non-Congress parties.
(b) had a clear political and ideological programme.
(c) was formed by all non-Congress parties.
Answer: (a) was formed by non-Communist, non-Congress parties.
Why: The book’s own sentence is that all the major non-communist, non-Congress opposition parties formed an electoral alliance known as the Grand Alliance. Of the communist parties, the CPI was on the other side altogether, because the ruling party had an alliance with the Communist Party of India.
Why the others are wrong: (b) is wrong because the chapter says plainly that the Grand Alliance did not have a coherent political programme; it was the new Congress that had an issue, an agenda and a positive slogan. (c) is wrong because it was not formed by all non-Congress parties: the communist parties were outside it.
5 How should a political party resolve its internal differences
Q. How should a political party resolve its internal differences? Here are some suggestions. Think of each and list out their advantages and shortcomings.
(a) Follow the footsteps of the party president
(b) Listen to the majority group
(c) Secret ballot voting on every issue
(d) Consult the senior and experienced leaders of the party
Answer: This is an opinion question, but the answer is stronger when it is tied to this chapter’s own examples. The advantages and shortcomings of each method are set out below.
| Method | Advantages | Shortcomings |
|---|---|---|
| (a) Follow the footsteps of the party president | The decision is quick, the party speaks in one voice and does not look divided outside. | It is undemocratic and leaves no room for disagreement. In 1969 the party president S. Nijalingappa issued a whip asking all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for Sanjeeva Reddy. The difference was not resolved: the party split. |
| (b) Listen to the majority group | It is democratic, and the decision carries the weight of numbers behind it. | The minority opinion is permanently shut out, and a party that never accommodates its minority loses the very capacity to absorb differences that the old Congress system was known for. |
| (c) Secret ballot voting on every issue | Each member votes freely, without fear of the leadership. This is exactly how the 1966 contest between Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi was settled, and the chapter calls that peaceful transition a sign of the maturity of India’s democracy. | Using it on every issue would be slow and would turn the party into a permanent contest. Nobody can be held answerable for a decision no one has to own publicly. |
| (d) Consult the senior and experienced leaders of the party | The party gains from experience, and elders often know how a similar problem was settled before. | It can turn into control by a small group. The Syndicate was exactly such a group of senior leaders, and it expected the Prime Minister to follow its advice on ministers and on policy. |
A reasonable conclusion: No single method works alone. Consulting senior leaders and going by the majority view works for most issues, provided the minority is heard and a secret ballot is kept for the rare occasions when the party has to choose between leaders. What the chapter shows is that leaving the decision to one person’s word is what turns a difference into a split.
6 Reasons for the defeat of the Congress in 1967
Q. State which of these were reasons for the defeat of the Congress in 1967. Give reasons for your answer.
(a) The absence of a charismatic leader in the Congress party
(b) Split within the Congress party
(c) Increased mobilisation of regional, ethnic and communal groups
(d) Increasing unity among non-Congress parties
(e) Internal differences within the Congress party
Answer: (a), (c), (d) and (e) were reasons. (b) was not.
(a) Yes. The Congress was facing the electorate for the first time without Nehru. Two Prime Ministers had died in quick succession and the new Prime Minister was being seen as a political novice who had been in office for less than a year.
(b) No. The split in the Congress came in 1969, two years after this election. It was a consequence of the losses of 1967 and of the rivalry with the Syndicate, not a cause of them.
(c) Yes. This period saw the communist and socialist parties launching struggles for greater equality, the CPI(M-L) leading armed agrarian struggles and peasant agitations, some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots since Independence, and in Madras a massive anti-Hindi agitation by students that carried the DMK to power.
(d) Yes. Opposition parties realised that the division of their votes kept the Congress in power. Under the strategy Ram Manohar Lohia named ‘non-Congressism’, parties entirely different in programme and ideology formed anti-Congress fronts in some states and made electoral adjustments of seats in others.
(e) Yes. The book says the opposition felt that the internal factionalism within the Congress, together with Indira Gandhi’s inexperience, gave them an opportunity to topple it.
Worth adding: the economic background counted for a great deal too. Failed monsoons, drought, food shortage, a fall in industrial production and exports, the devaluation of the rupee and the price rise that followed had left people protesting across the country, and the government treated those protests as a law and order problem.
7 Factors behind the popularity of Indira Gandhi’s Government in the early 1970s
Q. What were the factors which led to the popularity of Indira Gandhi’s Government in the early 1970s?
Answer:
1. A deliberate pro-poor turn. After the split her government was in a minority and survived on the issue-based support of a few parties including the CPI and the DMK. In this phase it made conscious attempts to project its socialist credentials, campaigned vigorously for implementing the existing land reform laws and undertook further land ceiling legislation.
2. Big and popular decisions. She announced the nationalisation of fourteen leading private banks and the abolition of the privy purse, the special privileges given to former princes. When the Constitutional amendment failed in the Rajya Sabha and the ordinance was struck down by the Supreme Court, she carried the question to the electorate and got a lot of public support.
3. A positive slogan against a negative one. The Grand Alliance had no coherent political programme, and she said its only common one was ‘Indira Hatao’. Against it she set ‘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.
4. A new social base. Through garibi hatao she generated support among the disadvantaged, especially the landless labourers, Dalits and Adivasis, minorities, women and the unemployed youth. This was part of a strategy of building an independent nationwide political support base that did not depend on the old party bosses.
5. 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 in the first four general elections; Congress(R) alone won 352 seats with about 44 per cent. The Congress(O) won merely 16 seats and the Grand Alliance under 60, and with this she established her claim to lead the ‘real’ Congress.
6. Bangladesh. Soon after the 1971 elections came the political and military crisis in East Pakistan and the Indo-Pak war that led to the establishment of Bangladesh. These events added to her popularity, and even the opposition leaders admired her statesmanship. Her party then swept all the State Assembly elections held in 1972, and she was seen not only as the protector of the poor and the underprivileged but also as a strong nationalist leader.
8 The meaning of ‘syndicate’ and the role it played
Q. What does the term ‘syndicate’ mean in the context of the Congress party of the sixties? What role did the Syndicate play in the Congress party?
Answer:
What the term means. 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 the president of the Congress party, and it included powerful State leaders: S. K. Patil of Bombay city, S. Nijalingappa of Mysore, N. Sanjeeva Reddy of Andhra Pradesh and Atulya Ghosh of West Bengal.
Role 1: it made Prime Ministers. Both Lal Bahadur Shastri and later Indira Gandhi owed their position to the support received from the Syndicate. In 1966 it played a role in installing Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister by ensuring her election as the leader of the parliamentary party, in the belief that her administrative and political inexperience would keep her dependent on it.
Role 2: it had a decisive say in 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.
Role 3: it became the opposition inside the party. Gradually Indira Gandhi asserted her position, chose her trusted advisers from outside the party and slowly and carefully sidelined the Syndicate. The syndicate leaders formally approved her Ten Point Programme of May 1967 but had serious reservations about it. In 1969 the rivalry came into the open when the Syndicate nominated N. Sanjeeva Reddy for President against her wishes.
Role 4: and then it lost everything. After the split, the leaders of the Syndicate and those owing allegiance to them stayed with the Congress (O). Since it was Indira Gandhi’s Congress (R) that won the test of popularity, all these big and powerful men of Indian politics lost their power and prestige after 1971.
9 The major issue that led to the formal split of 1969
Q. Discuss the major issue which led to the formal split of the Congress Party in 1969.
Answer: The major issue was the presidential election of 1969, and the open contest over who the Congress candidate would be.
How the issue arose. The factional rivalry between the Syndicate and Indira Gandhi came into the open in 1969. Following President Zakir Hussain’s death, the post of President fell vacant. Despite Mrs Gandhi’s reservations, the syndicate managed to nominate her long time opponent and the then speaker of the Lok Sabha, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, as the official Congress candidate.
How she answered it. Indira Gandhi retaliated by encouraging the then Vice-President, V.V. Giri, to file his nomination as an independent candidate. Around the same time she announced several big and popular policy measures, the nationalisation of fourteen leading private banks and the abolition of the privy purse. On both of these serious differences emerged between her and Morarji Desai, the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, and he left the government.
The showdown. The Congress had seen differences of this kind before, but this time both sides wanted a showdown, and it took place during the presidential election. The Congress President S. Nijalingappa issued a whip asking all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for the official candidate. Supporters of Indira Gandhi requisitioned a special meeting of the AICC, which is why this faction came to be known as the ‘requisitionists’, but the meeting was refused. After silently supporting V.V. Giri, the Prime Minister openly called for a ‘conscience vote’, meaning that Congress MPs and MLAs should be free to vote the way they wanted.
The result, and the split. The election ended in the victory of V.V. Giri, the independent candidate, and the defeat of Sanjeeva Reddy, the official Congress candidate. The defeat of the official Congress candidate formalised the split in the party. The Congress President expelled the Prime Minister from the party, and she claimed that her group was the real Congress. By November 1969 the group led by the syndicate was called the Congress (Organisation) and the group led by Indira Gandhi the Congress (Requisitionists), also described 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.
10 Passage: Sudipta Kaviraj on the Congress under Indira Gandhi
Q. Read the passage and answer the questions below:
Q. (a) What according to the author is the difference between the strategies of Nehru and Indira Gandhi?
Answer: According to the author, the Congress that Nehru led was a federal, democratic and ideological formation. It carried many factions and many shades of opinion, its state units had real weight of their own, and its politics was argued out in terms of ideology.
Indira Gandhi turned it into a highly centralised and undemocratic party organisation. Power moved to the leader at the top, and political ideology was reduced to a mere electoral discourse, a use of various slogans that were not meant to be translated into government policies. The chapter’s own account agrees: the new Congress relied entirely on the popularity of the supreme leader and had a somewhat weak organisational structure.
Q. (b) Why does the author say that the Congress party ‘died’ in the seventies?
Answer: He does not mean that it stopped winning. He says the opposite: it was during its great electoral victories in the early 1970s, amidst the celebration, that the Congress party as a political organisation died.
What died was the organisation, not the vote. The party no longer had many factions, so it could not accommodate all kinds of opinions and interests, and it no longer had the capacity to absorb all the tensions and conflicts that the Congress system was known for. Its organisational structure was weak, and it survived on the popularity of one leader rather than on its own machinery. In that sense the body that used to do the party’s political work had ceased to exist even as its election results were at their best.
Q. (c) In what way, did the change in the Congress party affect other political parties also?
Answer:
1. The opposition lost its old opening. The Congress system had worked partly because the ruling party itself contained every shade of opinion, and opposition parties could bargain with its factions. Once the New Congress had few factions and depended on one leader, that route closed.
2. Opposition unity by itself stopped being enough. Non-Congressism had worked in 1967. In 1971 the Grand Alliance of the SSP, PSP, BJS, Swatantra Party and Bharatiya Kranti Dal united against her and still won fewer than 60 seats between them, because it had no programme beyond ‘Indira Hatao’, while she had ‘Garibi Hatao’. Opposition parties learned that they needed an agenda, not just an arrangement.
3. The Congress (O) was destroyed by it. The party of the stalwarts won merely 16 seats and less than one-fourth of the votes secured by Indira Gandhi’s party, and all these big and powerful men of Indian politics lost their power and prestige after 1971.
4. Personality-based, populist politics spread. The new, populist style of politics, built on slogans and on the appeal of a single leader, became the style other parties had to answer in as well.
5. Democratic space shrank for everyone. 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, even as popular unrest and mobilisation around development and economic deprivation kept growing. That is what led on to the political crisis of the next chapter.
Questions 1, 2, 3 and 4 are one-mark or two-mark recall questions in the paper. Questions 6, 7, 8 and 9 are the four-mark and six-mark questions, and the headings in bold above are the points a marker looks for. Question 5 and Question 10 are the ones that carry an opinion or a passage, so write them in your own words but keep every name, number and date exactly as the book gives it.
11 Let Us Do It Together
Task. Make a list of slogans coined by political parties. Do you see any similarities between advertisements and manifestoes, slogans and advertisements of political parties? Have a discussion on how price rise affects the political fortunes of the political parties.
1. A list of slogans. Start with the ones in this chapter: ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ (Lal Bahadur Shastri), ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Indira Gandhi’s positive programme in 1971) and ‘Indira Hatao’, which Indira Gandhi said was the only common programme of the opposition’s Grand Alliance. Then add slogans you hear from parties in your own State and in recent elections, with the party and the year for each.
2. Advertisements and party slogans. There are clear similarities. Both use a short, catchy line that is easy to remember, both try to create a good image in the mind rather than give details, and both promise the audience something it wants. A manifesto is closer to a detailed product description, while a slogan works like an advertisement’s tag line. The chapter’s own warning is worth using here: Sudipta Kaviraj argues that populist politics turned ideology into ‘a mere electoral discourse’, with slogans ‘not meant to be translated into government policies’, which is exactly the risk when a slogan becomes an advertisement.
3. Price rise and political fortunes. The chapter itself is the example. After the devaluation of the rupee in 1966 the economic situation triggered off price rise; people protested against the increase in prices of essential commodities, food scarcity and growing unemployment, bandhs and hartals were called frequently, and the government treated the protests as a law and order problem. This increased public bitterness, and in the elections of February 1967 the Congress got its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952 and lost power in nine States. Price rise hurts the ruling party most, because voters hold the government responsible, and it gives the opposition an issue on which to unite.
12 In-text Questions
The chapter also asks questions in its margin notes. They are answered below in the order in which they appear in the book, in the book’s own wording.
Q. When France or Canada have similar problems, no one talks about failure or disintegration. Why are we under this constant suspicion?
Answer. Because in the 1960s India was a newly independent, poor and very diverse country, and many outsiders doubted whether its democratic experiment would survive after Nehru. It was feared that, like so many other newly independent countries, India too would not be able to manage a democratic succession, and that a failure could lead to a political role for the army. Unresolved problems like poverty, inequality, and communal and regional divisions were expected to lead to the failure of democracy or even the disintegration of the country, which is why the 1960s were labelled the ‘dangerous decade’. Older, richer democracies like France or Canada were not judged this way. India answered the suspicion in practice: the ease with which the succession after Nehru took place proved all the critics wrong, and the peaceful transition after Shastri, despite intense competition for leadership, was seen as a sign of the maturity of India’s democracy. (This is a discussion question; give your own view with reasons.)
Q. It must have been difficult for her – one woman in a world dominated by men. Why don’t we have more women in positions like that?
Answer. Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966. The senior Congress leaders 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; within a year she had to lead the party in a Lok Sabha election, and she set out to gain control over the party and to demonstrate her leadership skills. Women are still few in such positions because politics has long been dominated by men: parties give fewer tickets to women, women carry most of the responsibility at home, and they face prejudice and a lack of support networks in public life. More women can reach such positions through wider education, more tickets and party posts for women, reservation of seats (as in panchayats and municipalities) and a change in social attitudes. (This is a discussion question; give your own view with reasons.)
Q. Is non-Congressism relevant today? Can it be applied against Left Front in today’s West Bengal?
Answer. The idea behind non-Congressism is general: parties opposed to a dominant party realised that the division of their votes kept that party in power, so they came together, even when their programmes and ideologies were different, to form fronts or share seats. Ram Manohar Lohia gave this strategy its name for the Congress of the 1960s. The same logic can be applied against any party that dominates a State for a long time, including the Left Front in West Bengal, where opposition parties would have to unite to defeat it. The chapter also shows the weakness of such fronts: the SVD governments formed after 1967 were ideologically incongruent coalitions and most of them did not survive for long. (This is a discussion question; give your own view with reasons.)
Q. What’s so unusual in hung assemblies and coalition governments? We see them all the time.
Answer. They are common today, but in 1967 they were new. From 1952 the Congress had won majorities almost everywhere, so a single-party government was the rule. In 1967 the Congress lost its majority in seven States and could not form a government in two more because of defections, and since no single party had a majority in many States, non-Congress parties came together to form joint legislative parties, the Samyukt Vidhayak Dal, and SVD governments. The chapter calls the results a ‘political earthquake’. That is why the chapter treats hung assemblies and coalitions as the start of a new trend, which later became normal in Indian politics.
Q. Almost four decades after giving the slogan of Garibi Hatao, we still have much poverty around! Was the slogan only an election gimmick?
Answer. Not only a gimmick, but not fully a programme either. The slogan came with real policies: Indira Gandhi focused on the 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 her government nationalised fourteen leading banks and abolished the privy purse. At the same time the chapter says plainly that garibi hatao was part of her political strategy of building an independent nationwide support base among the landless labourers, Dalits and Adivasis, minorities, women and the unemployed youth, and Sudipta Kaviraj argues that such slogans were ‘not meant to be translated into government policies’. The slogan was therefore both an electoral strategy and a policy direction whose results fell short of the promise. (This is a discussion question; give your own view with reasons.)
Q. That is like changing the top and legs of a table and still calling it the old table! What was common between the Old and the New Congress?
Answer. What stayed the same was the party’s name, its dominant position and its popularity: the new Congress occupied a similar position in terms of popularity as in the past and again won elections across the country, so the Congress system was restored in the sense of one-party dominance. Almost everything else changed. The new Congress relied entirely on the popularity of the supreme leader, had a somewhat weak organisational structure and did not have many factions, so it could not accommodate all kinds of opinions and interests, and it depended more on some social groups: the poor, the women, Dalits, Adivasis and the minorities. As the chapter puts it, Indira Gandhi restored the Congress system by changing the nature of the Congress system itself.