: Ramachandra Guha: What India can learn from Rajaji’s warnings about one-party dominance in the 1950s #IndiaNEWS Back in 1957, when the Congress Party was as hegemonic in Indian politics as the Bharatiya

Ramachandra Guha: What India can learn from Rajaji’s warnings about one-party dominance in the 1950s #IndiaNEWS
Back in 1957, when the Congress Party was as hegemonic in Indian politics as the Bharatiya Janata Party is today, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari wrote a remarkable essay on the dangers of excessive dominance by one party to democracy. A veteran of the freedom struggle, once a close associate of Gandhi and Nehru, the holder of high political office at both Centre and state, “Rajaji�? was increasingly disenchanted with the direction the country was taking under the government led by his erstwhile comrades. He expressed this disenchantment in a magazine essay published in August 1957 to coincide with Independence Day.Rajaji’s article began: “The successful working of parliamentary democracy depends on two factors; first on a broad measure of agreement among all classes of citizens about the objectives of government; secondly, on the existence of a two-party system, in which each of the big political groups possesses effective and continuous leadership and is strong enough to take over the responsibilities of government when the majority of the country’s voters wish it.�? For if “one party remains always in power,�? wrote Rajaji, “and dissent is dissipated among unorganised individuals and relatively insignificant groups which do not and cannot coalesce, government will inevitably become totalitarian�?.At this stage, the...Read more

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