¹ The present article, together with the related one, ‘Dominance and Dissent’, Government and Opposition, 1, 1966, pp. 451–466CrossRefGoogle Scholar, derives from a paper, ‘The Congress Party: Dilemmas of Dominance’ read at the Berkeley South Asia Colloquium in May 1965. Revision has been helped by extensive comments on the latter which were kindly supplied by Dr Rajni Kothari, though I have not been able to undertake much of the further work that those comments suggested. I have also been able to see before their publication the chapters of Professor Weiner's, MyronParty-building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress (Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar The first detailed study of Congress politics in any one area was Brass, Paul R., Factional Politics in an Indian State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965).Google Scholar Other recent work in this field includes: Krishna, Gopal, ‘One Party Dominance—Development and Trends’, Perspectives, Supplement to the Indian Journal of Public Administration, 12, 1966, pp. 1–65;Google ScholarKochanek, S., ‘The Indian National Congress: the distribution of power between party and government’, Journal of Asian Studies, 25, 1966, pp. 681–697;CrossRefGoogle Scholar a paper due for publication by Graham, B. D. ‘The Succession of Factional Systems in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Party, 1937–1965’, prepared for a Wenner-Gren Foundation symposium,July 1966; several of the papers read at the University of Rajasthan Seminar on State Politics in December 1965;Google ScholarRoy, Ramashray, ‘A Study of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee’ (Ph.D. thesis, 1965, University of California, Berkeley)Google Scholar and ‘Intra-Party Conflict in the Bihar Congress’, Asian Survey, 6, 1966, pp. 706–715;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShrader, L., ‘Politics in Rajasthan: A Study of the Members of the Legislative Assembly and the Development of the State's Political System’, (Ph.D. thesis, 1965, University of California, Berkeley)Google Scholar. These writings underline the limited scope and relatively confined approach of this article; it has to be taken as an interim report on a particular aspect of a large subject now belatedly in course of examination. The material consulted relates mainly to the period up to 1964–65.

² This is not to say that actors know these rules in the same sense as an observer can know them. The latter discovers regularities which the participant ignores and he makes explicit rules which actors do not normally stop to formulate. At the same time it is most likely that many actors discern the rules from time to time—seeing them as constraints which frustrate, as tips which pay off. I owe some of the points of this paragraph to Graham, , op. cit.Google Scholar

³ Pressure group studies have sometimes had similar limitations. Exploration of the activities of particular groups has had the effect of making these activities seem more real and important than the activity of resolving the pressures and shaping the arena in which they are to fight; it has also implied that in style all politics is pressure politics.

⁴ See Rao, M. V. Ramana, Development of the Congress Constitution (AICC, Delhi 1958), pp. 68–92.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., pp. 99–155.

⁶ I.e. All-India Congress Committee.

⁷ Several examples may be given: (i) the fee for Primary Members was re-introduced and increased to one rupee (1951) and then dropped back to 4 annas (1952); (ii) the Primary Members were once again allowed to vote in the election of Congress ‘delegates’ (i.e. Pradesh and District Committees) provided only they had been Primary Members for two years (1951) and then this proviso was first deleted (1952) and later revised to one year's wait (1953); (iii) Credentials Committees at central as well as Pradesh levels were introduced to check voters in the party's elections (1951) were abolished in favour of Returning Officers (1952) and subsequently revived in the modified form of Scrutiny Committees at Pradesh and District levels only, though with general Working Committee supervision (1953). Such rapid shifts were bound to be confusing to the point of making parts of the constitution meaningless; many of the changes would take a year to implement—by which time they were out of date.

⁸ E.g. Nehru's address at Kalyani 22–23 January 1954 reported in Congress Bulletin, No. 2, February–March, 1954, pp. 50–54.

⁹ Quoted in Rao, Ramana, op. cit. p. 145.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Report of the General Secretaries, January 1954–January 1955, p. 147.

¹¹ The passage as given in the Report of the General Secretaries, January 1955–February1956, p. 6: ‘He warned Congressmen against the tendency to reduce the Congress to a “mere parliamentary party, its chief function being to lay down policies, run elections and lead the Government or the Opposition”. He said: “Power or no power, the Organization must continue to play its role outside the framework of administrative responsibility by identifying itself with the masses in a spirit of sacrifice and service”. “Elections are not the only concern of the Congress, not even the first” …’.

¹² Rao, Ramana (op. cit., p. 168)Google Scholar states that ‘the changes in the Constitution as amended at and up to the Indore session mark a new phase in the development of the Constitution’. It is difficult to see this, but it may be indicative of a mood of confidence regarding organizational reform.

¹³ I.e. District Congress Committee and Pradesh Congress Committee respectively.

¹⁴ Report of the General Secretaries, January 1958–December 1958, p. 24.

¹⁵ Congress Bulletin, February–March 1958, pp. 131–141.

¹⁶ Report of the General Secretaries, January 1959–December 1959, pp. 1–2.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 7, 70. The 1960 Report expressed the point neatly: ‘The main organizational elections were over by the end of 1959. 1960 was, therefore, a year for active work’ (p. 1). A nice light is thrown on the party membership by its fluctuations in relation to party elections. As the Report for 1960 puts it: ‘Election year [in the party] is the time when there is a big drive for membership. As the last [1959] organizational elections were held on the basis of membership lists of 1958, the membership of the year 1959 was not as high as that of 1958’ (p. 33). The obviously incomplete figures given show for 1957 [−58] 4,509,614 Primary and 68,015 Active Members (Report for 1958, p. 51) and for 1959 [−60] 2,555,534 Primary and 57,706 Active Members. That the ‘big drive’ bears some relation to intensity of inner party conflict is suggested by the U.P. figures which shoot up from 161,501 to 643,274. Tamilnad moved modestly from a fascinatingly low figure of 10,200 to 16,000, leaving it a little behind Himachal Pradesh!

¹⁸ Hanumanthaiya had moved a resolution at the AICC in May 1959 proposing the drafting of a new constitution for the party, one that would be in ‘tune with the times and the requirements of a socialist pattern of society’. The motion was withdrawn on Nehru's asking Hanumanthaiya to formulate some suggestions. He did so in a memorandum submitted to the Congress President, Report on Congress Constitution (AICC, 1960). The second also appeared in 1960 as Report of the Committee of the Congress Party in Parliament (AICC, 1960). The third appeared as articles in the press, notably ‘Reorganization of the Congres’, The Hindu, 28 May 1960. I rely mainly on the account of these documents contained in ‘Problems of Congress Organization’ by Surindar Suti in Indian Affairs Record, 6, 1960, pp. 117–132Google Scholar. It also gives the conclusions arrived at on these schemes by the Reorganization (Dhebar) Committee which was appointed to consider them, as well as the decisions of the Working Committee.

¹⁹ The AICC Economic Review reflects this. Among the articles of some interest on this subject during this period are those by Sadiq Ali (12, 4, 15 June 1960, pp. 3–6), P. R. Chakraverti (12, 3, 1 June 1960, pp. 13–20, and 12, 15–16, 6 January 1961, pp. 23–24), A. C. Guha (12, 15–16, 6 January 1961, p. 25) and, above all, A. P. Jain (11, 22, 15 March 1960, pp. 5–8). Dhebar of course had contributed earlier (9, 23, 1 April 1958, pp. 3–7; 10, 7, 1 August 1958, pp. 3–6; 10, 8–9, 15 August 1958, pp. 7–8).

²⁰ Report of the General Secretaries, January 1961–December 1961, p. 10.

²¹ See Congress Bulletin, Nos. 7–8, July–August 1963.

²² The Congress Bulletin perhaps overdid the ‘party’ angle when it gave its account of the meeting of the Working Committee on 23 August 1963: Nehru apologized that his list of men to resign was not yet ready, whereupon he was ‘asked to present it the next day’.

²³ For example, Nehru explained that Congress could be neither like the British parties which enjoy only a ‘minor role’ as electoral organizations nor like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union where ‘party is government’ (Congress Bulletin, No. 7, July 1956, pp. 368–9).

²⁴ Writing in The Statesman (Overseas Weekly, 8 February 1964), Inder Malhotra used the phrase ‘bifocal power’. ‘For the first time since independence, effective power and not merely confidence or courtesy, is being shared between the head of the Government and the head of the Congress. The era of a unifocal centre of power in New Delhi is coming to an end, that of bifocal power is just beginning. Mr Kamaraj's personality and the Prime Minister's illness have perhaps combined to accelerate the trend, but it would have come about even otherwise … [This is] a healthy beginning [to the] stable and balanced relation between the Government and the Party [which will soon be more needed than ever].’

²⁵ The question may be relevant to political systems other than India's. There are big differences between Congress and any other party but dominant-party regimes may have sufficient common features to permit Indian experience to have bearing elsewhere.

²⁶ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 7–8, July-August 1963, p. 37.

²⁷ Ibid., Nos. 4, 5, and 6, April, May, and June 1962, p. 99.

²⁸ It is true that the more rebellious members of the rank and file are not to be identified in any simple way with the occupants of the ‘organizational wing’. Many are indeed M.P.s and M.L.A.s—perhaps frustrated backbenchers. This, however, may be less important than the fact that they tend in inner-party debate to take lines which favour the militant, activist model of party. This seems, for instance, to be the case with men like S. N. Mishra and Mahavir Tyagi.

²⁹ The victory is admittedly less impressive than it seems: Nehru, more sensitive to the pressures than some of his colleagues, had voted for the proposal at the first meeting.

³⁰ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 12, 1 and 2, December 1963, January-February 1964, pp. 50–51.

³¹ Press reports do not always endorse this view but it impresses itself on the reader of the summary of the proceedings. Perhaps the reporters compare the meetings with some expectations which they cherish rather than with previous meetings.

³² AICC Economic Review, 25 May 1964, editorial. The comment went on to say that a notable feature of the meeting was the ‘grim determination of the rank and file in Congress to translate resolutions into concrete reality’ and the demonstration that ‘the Party has preserved the capacity to… issue directions to the Government’. At least the aspiration is significant.

³³ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 12—1 and 2, December 1963, January-February 1964, pp. 27–28. The Block does not exactly replace the Mandal, for it is open to PCCs to organize Mandal or even Village Committees below the Block level. Block Congress Committees are hereinafter referred to as BCCs.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 159. If certain amendments had been accepted by Patil who was in charge of the changes (see pp. 41–44), there would have been an even closer interweaving of Congressmen on local bodies with Congress Committees; a proposal to make all Congress members of Panchayati Raj institutions ex officio members of BCCs was turned down.

³⁵ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 12—1 and 2, December 1963, January-February 1964, pp. 27–28, 38. Patil said that bogus membership was on the increase, that this form of corruption ‘becomes an unmanageable affair’ and that it was one of the reasons why ‘half of India was not represented by its new members on the Subjects Committee’.

³⁶ It must be emphasized that this nowhere appears to have been the intention. Patil indeed argued that people did not voluntarily become Primary Members in order to have voting rights but because they had ‘regard for the Congress’; genuine membership would therefore continue. It remains true, however, that the only tangible point of becoming a Primary Member would then be as a necessary step towards becoming an Active Member.

³⁷ It was an obviously very reluctant Patil who put the revised version before the AICC (Congress Bulletin, Nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6, March–June 1964, pp. 224–233). Critics continued to say that what had been done was no remedy (e.g. Chakraverti, P. R.writing in AICC Economic Review, 16, 3, 10 July 1964, pp. 7–10).Google Scholar

³⁸ E.g. the amendments proposed by Patel, B. J. and Gautam, Mohanlal (Congress Bulletin, Nos. 12—1 and 2, December 1963, January–February 1964, pp. 81, 88).Google Scholar

³⁹ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 32, 1 and 2, December 1963, January-February 1964, pp. 104–5. He was quoted in the press (Hindu Weekly Review, 20 January 1964, and Statesman Overseas Weekly, 25 January 1964) as saying that the Parliamentary Board would thenceforward ‘be responsible for the implementation of the party programme’ and that it would act as ‘watchdog on government’.

⁴⁰ Some of the speeches from the floor at the Subjects Committee and the Session were of course even more vigorously expressed. C. M. Stephen, for instance, said that ‘if the Government could not fulfil this demand [for socialism] then it was the responsibility of the organization to compel it to do so. If the Government still failed, then we would have to change the personnel and bring people into the Government who would achieve that objective.’ (Ibid. pp. 117–118). It is impossible not to feel that if Nehru had been well enough to attend at Bhubaneshwar, there might have been less defensiveness on the part of the leaders and less aggression from the floor. It is also worth noting a certain ironical coincidence at this 1964 Congress session: the same occasion that sees the party asserting its position as controller of government also witnessed the insertion for the first time of the phrase ‘based on parliamentary democracy’ in the party's constitution. The present writer has not been able to discover the background to this change; did someone feel that ‘Socialist State’ had to be ‘balanced’ by ‘Parliamentary Democracy’? Was the recirafting of the Congress objectives done by Nehru? If so, it may well have been one of the last important political acts before the illness from which he never fully recovered, and one then recalls that in Gandhi's case too his last memorandum was on the constitution of Congress.

⁴¹ A summary is given in AICC Eeonomi Review, 10 June 1964.

⁴² It must also be confessed that in any case the investigation at these points is at present incomplete. One of the more useful subjects of enquiry might be the degree of professionalization of the party worker. The connexion between a body of professional party workers and activist militancy may not be as close as familiarity with communist parties might lead one to suppose, but that there is some positive relation seems likely.

⁴³ Congress Bulletin, Nos. 7, 8, 9, and 10, July-October 1962, p. 245.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ A distinction between breaches of party indiscipline and lapses from proper ministerial standards can be attempted but it is not easily maintained in practice in the set-up of a dominant party. It may be objected that the disciplinary actions are often simply the consequences of group conflicts in the party, but to this it is sufficient to reply that this is beside the present point: how the business is presented can itself be an important indicator and can even become an important influence.

⁴⁵ How important such words are may very reasonably be asked. In Kamaraj's case at least they were to a certain degree matched by (admittedly not causes of) actions: in Kerala he was a good deal keener, it appears, to woo the poor Ezhavas than to win back the more prosperous and lukewarm-to-socialism Christians and Nairs of the ‘rebel Congress’.

⁴⁶ Thus contrasted of course with Nehru, but not so markedly different from the rest of the old guard. The latter did not always have to reach peaks of power in their states before they emerged on top at the centre, but they often did have strong bases of support in their own regions.

⁴⁷ To contain these two alone would, it must be admitted, be a most difficult task. I should stress that I am doing no more than pointing out one possible development. I should also emphasize that the terms in which I have here been speaking of Congress do not entail any refusal to see Congress politics in terms of the conflict of persons and groups. Nor is it my view that a decline of interest in political power is to be expected, or that politicians will have changes of heart. I have been discussing certain institutional tendencies which constitute one factor influencing the rules within which the search for influence and power will continue.

⁴⁸ This article was written long before the elections but this sentence would have been valid irrespective of the election results. These, however, do now seem to point to the likelihood of fresh and fundamental appraisal by the party of its character and organization. Indeed, this—rather then the end of the dominant party system—could be one of the more lasting consequences of the shock administered to Congress.