Thread by @shrikanth_krish

2019 is a big election year in India - the 17th general election in Independent India, and the largest that we have ever witnessed

This might be a good time to revisit the elections of the past

No better place to start than 1952

The first major election held in the Indian republic

A historic election when a largely illiterate nation (with less than 20% literacy) exercised the right to franchise extended universally to all adults by the newly promulgated Constitution

This wasn't ofcourse the first elections held in India. There had been several elections for both the central and provincial legislative bodies since the Montagu Chelmsford reforms of 1919

The first "general" elections for the central legislative body was in 1920. And there were several more in 1923, 1926, 1930, 1934 and 1945. As well as major provincial elections, notably in 1936-37 and 1946

But the franchise was limited to a very small minority of the population in those elections

So 1952 is the first election that engaged the Indian society at large

But though this was such a major event, the turnout was not too special - it was fairly low at 45.7%

Unsurprisingly Congress emerged as the clear winner with 364 seats and a vote share of 45%

So 55% of the voters did not vote for Congress even in this v first general election

Now let's take a look at some facts concerning this election.

There were as many as 53 parties in the fray in the election!

Yes...you read that right...53!

Of which 22 parties won at least 1 seat

While 53 may not seem like a high number, it is worth noting the fragmentation given that Congress was by far the most dominant party with over 45% of votes and 364 out of 489 seats

Now let's take a look at the 22 parties that won at least 1 seat. We see a poor correspondence between vote share and seats.

Eg : Socialist Party with 10.6% of votes won just 12 seats while CPI won 16 seats with just 3.3% of the votes. While PDF won 7 seats with 1.3% votes!

One of the first things that strike us is that Congress was a center-right formation, which faced its prime opposition from the Left and not the Right, back in 1952

The Right was still a very marginal presence back in '52. The Swatantra Party's formation was still 7 years away

If one were to broadly categorize the parties into ideological formations, I'd do it this way, with Congress being a category by itself

And here's how the vote shares and seats stack up among these four categories + others + independents

This is pretty striking. In the first general election, parties that could be categorized v easily as "Left wing" got 23% of the votes and 50 seats out of 489.

Some observations

Both the Left and the Right were heavily splintered in 1952. While the Left vote to this day remains splintered, the Right vote has both increased its share of the pie and also consolidated behind a single party - the BJP - the successor of Bharatiya Jan Sangh

So let's look at some of these parties more closely -

Left :

In terms of vote share the Socialist Party was by far the most important party. With over 10% of the national vote.

Jayaprakash Narayan was its tallest leader. And no doubt a major factor behind its popularity

CPI - interestingly was the second biggest party in the Lok Sabha in terms of seats. With 16 seats. But its vote share was less than 1/3rd of that of the Socialist Party

1957 was just 5 years away - the year CPI came to power in Kerala. But interestingly in 1952 they did well elsewhere. But not in Kerala

Among their 16 seats, 8 were in Madras state, 5 in West Bengal, 1 in Orissa and 2 in Tripura.

None in Travancore / Cochin!

In contrast the Socialist Party that won 12 seats and was the third largest party in terms of seats, had a more diverse presence across more states than CPI.

Their 12 seats were won across 8 separate states!

The Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party was another fairly major party accounting for nearly 6% of the votes. It was founded by Acharya Kripalani, a stalwart of the freedom struggle

6 of its 9 seats were won in Madras

Soon after the election the party merged with JP's socialist party

The People's Democratic Party was a breakaway of the Communist Party which won all its 7 seats in Hyderabad - very much a regional party.

Many of its leaders were involved in the Telangana rebellion of the late 40s against the feudal lords of the region

Now let's move to the Right

The precursor of the BJP - the Bharatiya Jan Sangh - had a vote share of 3% that year. Far lower than the vote shares of the left wing parties we just discussed

Interestingly 2 of its 3 seats were won in West Bengal! Not associated with BJP today

While the Jan Sangh was the most important party of the Hindu Right, there were others in the fray

Ram Rajya Parishad and Hindu Mahasabha between them won 7 seats b/w them - 4 more than Jan sangh. And with a combined vote share as high as that of BJS

While Hindu Mahasabha needs no introduction, Ram Rajya Parishad was a newly founded party in 1948

It was a v staunchly traditionalist party that led the agitation against the Hindu law reform of the 50s

The party was founded by Swami Karpatri of Dashanami sampradaya

Among the parties on the Right (outside of the Hindu Right), we had the Ganatantra Parishad

This was a party dominated by princes and landlords, but with a regional Orissa focus. All 6 of its seats were in Orissa.

Later it became part of Swatantra party in the 60s

The other "conservative" party was Krishkar Lok Party headed by NG Ranga.

Ranga would later collaborate with Rajaji to found the Swatantra party

Now let's move to the subaltern / caste oriented parties.

The Scheduled Caste federation was headed by none other than Baba Saheb Ambedkar.

Interestingly Ambedkar lost his election in 1952 against the Congress candidate

One may notice the absence of DMK in this list so far. That’s because the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam decided to boycott the elections with this protest -

(Contd..)

"In order to show our protest to the Indian constitution that was prepared according to the dictate of a single party [Congress Party] without understanding the views of the Dravidians … Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam would not field candidates in the 1952 election…”

Two parties - Tamil Nadu Toilers and Commonweal won 7 seats in Madras. These two were both Vanniyar parties focused on serving Vanniyar interests.

Their somewhat pretentious names are amusing, given their agendas which were no doubt parochial and narrow

Among separatist platforms that called for either a separate province or secession, we had 3 parties -

Jharkhand Party
Shiromoni Akali Dal
Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress Party

Jharkhand party - calling for a separate Jharkhand state (interesting that their demand got materialized only some 50 years later

Shiromoni Akali Dal - that was to later lead the Punjabi Suba movement for a separate Punjab state.

What existed in 1952 was a larger East Punjab province that included the present Hindi speaking Haryana, as well as PEPSU (a collection of erstwhile princely states in the Punjab region).

The Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress Party was the other separatist party seeking a separate Tamil State for the Tamil speaking regions of the Malayali majority Travancore-Cochin province

So that’s an overview of all the parties that opened their account back in 1952

Now a few other things to note about this election -

Until the 60s, the Lok Sabha elections had multi-seat constituencies. In 1952, 314 constituencies had 1 seat, 86 had 2 seats and 1 had 3 seats

These multi-seat constituencies existed for the purpose of reservations. With the same constituency electing 1 general and 1 SC / ST candidate. An example being Allahabad East which elected two candidates - both from Congress -

Jawaharlal Nehru
Masuriya Din (a Pasi SC candidate)

The Congress with 364 seats, not surprisingly swept most states. It was particularly dominant in the Hindi belt.

But there were some states where its performance was underwhelming

Particularly Madras - where it won just 35 of the 75 seats.
Also in Rajasthan where it won only 8 out of 19 seats

The party also struggled a bit in states like Orissa and Hyd where it was up against regional players - Ganatantra Parishad in Orissa and PDF in Hyderabad

A key takeaway from the election is that the Congress was far from being the only player in town back in 1952. What caused the Congress to win with a thumping majority was the fragmentation of the opposition, on both the Left and the Right

The other takeaway for us is the decline of the Left over the years, relative to where it started in 1952. The Left parties of all hues accounted for 23% of the vote in 1952.

In 2014, the share of the Left was barely 5%. A huge change.

The third takeaway is of course the opportunity lost by the Right back in the 50s-60s by not consolidating itself under a single banner.

Notice the fragmentation between Jan Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad even in this election.

And more importantly the failure of the Right to align with the more "secular" right wing forces like Swatantra Party in later years

As we look ahead, 1952 elections remind us that there are few things that we can take for granted in politics, and that many of the parties today may be altogether non existent a few decades from now (as in…not just rebaptized or rebranded, but altogether absent)