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Era of One-party Dominance
It is justified to say that the extent of the victory of the Congress was artificially boosted by our electoral system because, for example, in 1952 elections, the Congress obtained 45 per cent of the total votes. But it won74 percent of the seats. On the other hand, the Socialist Party secured more than 10 percent of the votes all over the country but it could not even win three percent of the seats. It was due to the system of election i.e., the first-past the post method. Under this system, a person who gets more votes than others gets elected. Thus, the Congress got more votes than others and it won more seats which were much more than its proportional share. The non-Congress votes were more than the Congress votes but their votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates. So the Congress was still way ahead of the opposition and managed to win.
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Four statements regarding one-party dominance are given below. Mark each of them as true or false:
“Patel, the organisational man of the Congress; wanted to purge the 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 he 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?
(b) Give some examples of the eclectic role of the Congress party in the early years.
(c) Why does the author say that Gandhi’s view about Congress future was romantic ?
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