T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y May 22, 1965

conclusion that emerges is that it is not issues but the organisational compe­tence of a political party in mobilising a wide range of support that is the critical factor in electoral behaviour. In India, the conclusion is important for both the Congress and the Opposition.

Notes 1 Amroha: 19 May, 1963; Farrukha-

bad: 19 May 1963; Rajkot: 26 May '63.

2 The lead of the Opposition can­didates over the Congress: 50,454 in Amroha; 57,588 in Farrukhabad; 14,151 in Rajkot.

3 Of the 10 bye-elections held to the Lok Sabha since the third general elections upto July, 1963, the Congress won in 4 as against 8 in the general elections. Of 49 bye-elections to the Legislative Assemblies, the Congress won in 28 as against 26 in the general elections.

4 See the "Bye-Elections Committee Report", All-India Congress Com­mittee, New Delhi,

5 For a theoretical interpretation of the Congress dominance system, which was also used as a point of departure for the bye-election studies, see Rajni Kothari, The Party System, 'The Economic Weekly, June 3. 1961; and "The Congress 'System' in India,' ' Asian Survey, December 1964,

Considering the various factors that operated during the Amroha bye-election. Acharya Kripalani's victory hardly appears to have been a verdict for or against the policies or record of the Congress, For, not only did an issue like the Chinese aggression fail to evoke much interest among the majority of voters but even those policies and actions of the Congress Government that adversely affected the interests of the people failed to have a bear­ing on the way they finally voted.

Even communalism with all its psychological and emotional overtones played no more than an accentuating role in the elections inasmuch as it merely reinforced the existing opposition to the Congress. For the Congress it­self however, it did bring in more votes from the Muslims but this accretion of electoral support was not of material importance to the outcome of the election.

The outcome was decided, if anything, by the opposition the Congress had been facing over the years from the influential elements in the social structure whom it has failed to accommodate in the organisation, The vote against the Congress in the bye-election was, therefore, no more than another expression of the struggle against the incumbent leadership in the Congress that these influential elements have been waging at successive elections in the district.

The Congress continues to be the focal point of political power in the district and its reverse in Amroha underlines precisely this dominant position in district politics,

[The study of the Farrukhabad bye-election by Ramashray Roy will appear next week and that of the Rajkot bye-election by Rushikesh Maru the week after.]

T H E selection of the Congress can-didate and the struggle for posi­

tions wi th in the Congress party dominated the bye-election in Amroha, one of the two parliamentary consti­tuencies in the Moradabad District of Uttar Pradesh. The election was held in May 1963 following the death of the sitting Congress M P Maulana Hifzur Rehman. One of the first to announce his candidature for the elec­tion was Acharya J B Kripalani who defeated in the 1962 General Elections by V K Krishna Menon in the well-known North Bombay contest, WAS in search of a seat in Parliament; Though contesting the election as an indepen­dent, Acharya Kripalani had the sup­port of all the opposition parties ex­cept the Communist party. The Repub­lican party, which had earlier entered the contest, retired from it in favour of Acharya Kripalani after the last date for withdrawals was over, as d id

three of the five other Independents who had also filed their nominations from Amroha, The Congress party, however, took, a long time choosing its own nominee.

Finally on A p r i l 7, the Central Parli­amentary Board of the Congress pick­ed Ram Saran, a local leader, whose name had been recommended by both the DCC and the PCC as its candidate. But it changed its mind on the day the nominations were to close and re­placed him wi th Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim, a member of the Union Cabi­net and the Central Parliamentary Board. Lest delay or irregularity be committed in the f i l ing of the papers leading to their possible rejection, the responsibility for completing this for­mality was taken upon themselves by Krishna Menon and K D Malaviya both of whom personally went from Delhi to Moradabad for this purpose. The last

minute choice of such a senior leader and the keenness shown by Menon and his close ideological associate Malaviya, Union Minister for Mines and Fuel, who after Menon's departure from the Government had become a major tar­get of opposition attack, save a new significance to the Amroha bye-election and turned it into a prestige contest for the Congress.

Apparently the Congress chose A m ­roha for a major trial of strength be­cause Acharya Kripalani, one of the most prominent of its critics, had de­cided to contest the seat. It was pro­bably believed that his defeat, at a time when the opposition was subject­ing the Government to the most severe kind of criticism, would silence such criticism or at least make it less effec­tive. Conversely, the Congress victory against Acharya Kripalani would v i r ­tually amount to a popular vindication

THREE BYE-ELECTIONS-I

Congress Defeat in Amroha A Case Study in One Party Dominance

Bashir Ahmed

May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

of their stand and policies. At least, this was how Mrs Indira Gandhi posed the matter before the electors. Addres­sing a public meeting on the eve of elections in Moradabad, she said the Congress believes that Hafiz Mohamm­ed Ibrahim's success was necessary for India's political future, its domestic and foreign policies and for democracy, while Acharya Kripalani's victory would mean upsetting of everything for which the nation and Congress had stood and striven for so far.

The opposition also formulated the issue in similar terms. Two of its spokesmen issued a statement in which they argued that the "enthusiasm shown by Mr Krishna Menon and Mr K D Malaviya in sponsoring the candi­dature of Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim is proof that it is not really the Congress that is contesting the election but Mr Menon and his group . . . Our retreat during the Chinese invasion was the result of the policies of Mr Menon. Every vote for Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim w i l l , therefore, be a vote for Mr Krishna Menon's policies'. By approaching the Amroha election in this manner both the Congress and the Opposition, therefore, chose to fight it on the basis of the Government's re­cord and national policies.

Consistent w i t h such an approach towards the election, Acharya Kripa-ianfs impressive victory over Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim by a margin of 50,454 votes, in what was vir tual ly a straight tight (see Table I ) , came to be interpreted by the Opposition as an ex­pression of the peoples lack of con­fidence in Nehru's Government and led to the demand on their part that fresh elections be held throughout the coun­t ry . Even some of the newspapers saw in the Congress defeat in Amroha an expression of popular disapproval of the Government's policies and perform­ance, particularly of its "failures on the food and planning fronts and laxity in the maintenance of standards of public life . . . (Editorial, Hindustan Times, May 23, 1963; also see Editorial , Indian Express, Delhi, May 22, 1963.)

Was such an interpretation of the election warranted? Was the Amroha bye-election a verdict of the people on the policies, programme and perform­ance of the Congress Party? W i t h a view to answering these questions, our study in Amroha began w i t h an i n ­qui ry into the extent to which policy issues and the record of the party in power f igured in the vot ing decision of the adul t citizens in the Constituency.

For this purpose we selected some of the major planks of Congress policy and record that had constituted the main focus of attack f rom the Opposi­t ion both inside and outside Parliament immediately preceding the election, and had been brought before the electorate in Amroha during the course of the election campaign. We then interview­ed voters in towns and the rural areas to see how and to what extent policy issues and the record of the Govern­ment became part of the frame of re­ference wi th in which they made up their mind to vote the way they did-We present below the evidence we col­lected as also an analysis of the factors that influenced the outcome of the elections.

I I

Issues Affecting the People Considering the severity of criticism

that Nehru Government's failure to secure the country's frontiers against the Chinese had provoked from the Opposition and Menon's association wi th the policy leading to i t , we assum­ed that much of the vote against the Congress would reflect the peoples re­action in this regard, particularly since Menon had also chosen to identify him­self so closely wi th the Congress candi­date in Amroha. But we found that only the educated in the Constituency were agitated about the mil i tary de­bacle on our Nor th Eastern borders in 1962 while the event failed to figure as one of the important considerations in the voting decision of the other voters.

Similarly the Gold Control policy of the Government of India which had provoked one of the major controver­sies of the period hardly evoked much concern among the voters. In the rural areas the issues failed ' to have an i m ­pact on a majority of the voters for re­asons which were best summed up by a voter in Deeppur village when he said: ' 'How does it matter to us whether there is gold control or n o t In the first place we could never buy gold even when it was available in 'pure' form. But when in the past some of us could and did buy i t , we were al­ways cheated by the goldsmith. Now at least w i th 'impure gold in the mar­ket none of us w i l l be tempted to buy i t and w i l l be saved from being cheat­ed . ' In the urban areas again neither the reaction nor the reasons for it were very different. Deep resentment ever the Gold Control Policy was found only among the goldsmiths concentrat­ed in some of the towns but forming on the whole an infinitesimal part of the electorate in Amroha.

The rise in prices and the shortage of food and other commodities, how­ever, had a more widespread impact particularly since its consequences were felt directly by the people in their day to day existence. Most adversely affect-ed were the people in towns who form 21.5 per cent of the population in the Constituency, while for the 78.5 per cent of the population in rural areas the i l l effects were somewhat mitigated by their abili ty to produce part of what they required. The consumption

Table 1 : Amroha Parliamentary Constituency—Votes Polled by Candidates in 1963 Bye-Election

Source: Table compiled from the boothwise returns supplied by the District Election Office. Same source was used for a l l voting data appearing in the subsequent tables.

Identifies candidates who retired from the election. Of the two Independents who remained in the contest A l i Bahadur was new to the constituency having come recently from Delhi . Zabar Singh also is l i t t le known in the constituency his influence being confined primari ly to the Hassanpur N o r t h and South Constituencies,

848

THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY May 22, 1965

pattern of village Dhakia1 (See Tables 2-A and 2-B), which is more or less the pattern in other villages in this constituency, shows that 54.8 per cent of the food was produced by the households, where they had to buy the remaining 45.2 per cent of their total food requirement spending Rs 1202 for the purpose. In contrast to the quanti­ty of food they purchased from out­side, their purchases of non-food ar t i ­cles was only 40,60 per cent of their tota l requirements. Interestingly how­ever, the money spent on non-food items was only slightly more than half the amount they had spent on the purchase of food items. Thus the tab­les show that the villages were far from self-sufficient either in the matter of food or non-food articles. Their posi­t ion, though better than that of the urban population, did not really re­main unaffected by the rise in prices and the shortage of food and other commodities.

Factors Affecting an Election

Perhaps the greatest concern and agi­tat ion among the people was over mat­ters that were primarily administrative in nature. For instance there was wide­spread complaint against the manner in which the National Defence Fund was collected in the District . While no one ever questioned the need for such a contribution being collected from the people, they a l l objected to its being taken at several points and through several agencies. Likewise they resented the pressure and the force that was sometimes used in the process. In Amroha and part of the Hasanpur Tehsil there were additional complaints relating to the extortion of bribes by officers in charge of the land consolida­t ion proceedings that were under way in these areas during the period imme­diately before the election. More loca­lised and specific were the complaints in some of the villages we visited. In the Sambhal Assembly Constituency which forms part of the Amroha Par­liamentary Constituency, we found voters in Madala Fatehpur and Nagla villages exercised over the non-fulhl-ment of the promise made by leaders and officers alike to complete the work started in 1957 on the Sambhal-Amro-ha road that passes very close to their villages. Similar grievances were voiced in the other villages we visited in the Constituency, Very often these were mentioned along w i t h complaints about corrupt, unjust and high-handed be­haviour of government officials and politicians in the past. As a conse­quence of such a l inking of these two

kinds of complaints, the resentment among the people was fairly strong even when the specific and immediate complaints were in themselves negligi­ble.

Do these grievances among the people ever find an expression in their votes? D i d they find such an expres­sion in Amroha? The electoral re­cord of Madala Fatehpur and Magla, the villages referred to above, shows that at least in their case the vote d id not reflect such a relationship. Form­ing between the two of them the pol l ­ing booth No 35 in the Sambhal As­sembly Constituency, Madala Fatehpur and Nagla gave the Congress a major­i ty in both the 1962 election and the 1963 bye-elections to the Parliament, notwithstanding the grievances the v i l l ­agers had against the Government and the Congress.

Taking the Constituency as a whole, the position does not seem to be any different in this regard. An analysis of votes polled by the Congress and the Opposition at the Th i rd General Elec­tions and the 1963 bye-elections shows that in towns where the people were adversely affected by the rise in prices and shortage of food and other com­modities, Congress actually polled 15,067 votes more in 1963 than it had polled in 1962. In the rural areas where too the people d id not escape the ad­verse affects of increasing prices and shortages and had in addition a host of specific grievances against the gov­ernment Congress only lost: a negligible 802 votes from what it had polled in 1962. On the other hand, the Opposi­t ion, to which should have logically gone the advantages of rising prices, food shortages and al l the other griev­ances among the people, actually lost 9,763 votes in towns and 1,517 in the rura l areas. In terms of the overall position also, the Congress fared much better this time than it had done in 1962. For while the Congress added 14.265 votes to its 1962 figure, the Opposition actually dropped 11,280 votes from its previous t o t a l

The assumption, therefore, seems well warranted that the way people vote is determined by factors other than the policies and performance of the Gov­ernment. Addit ional support for such an assumption comes from Congress victory in a bye-election in Jaunpur, a parliamentary constituency in U P where elections were held at the same time as the bye-elections in Amroha. The Party's position in terms of pol i­cies and record here was no different

from what we had noticed it to be in Amroha. A Hindustan Times Corres­pondent visi t ing the rural areas in Jaunpur found, for instance, that the people were unhappy about the emer­gency surcharge on land revenue and other rural imports as they were about the rising prices and shortage of ker­osene and sugar. He also reported that the Jan Sangh which was opposing the Congress here in a straight fight was fully exploiting the situation. (Hindus­tan Times, May 4, 1963). In several respects in fact the situation here was much less favourable to the Congress than i t was in Amroha.

For one thing, the Congress was contesting here for a seat it had lost in 1962. For another, its candidate was a local leader while his r ival was no less a person than the General Secretary of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, which has its major base in U P. Organisationally also while twenty Central and State Ministers camped in Amroha for the election and ample funds were poured into the campaign there, in Jaunpur the campaign machi­nery lacked adequate resources. On the other hand, the Jan Sangh had an elaborate set up w i t h a fleet of cars,

Table 2 A : Consumption Pattern —Village Dhakia

Value of weekly consumption of food articles by Households in rupees

A l l Households Food

Home Purchased Produced

Cereals 476 1150 (29.3%) (70.7%)

Total food 1202 1455 (45.2%) (54.8%)

Table 2 B : Consumption Pattern —Village Dhakia

Value of weekly expenditure on non-food articles and total weekly expen­

diture in rupees

A l l Households

Home Purchased Produced

Non-Food Articles 696 1023

(40.00%) (60.00%) Total number of Households in Dhakia is 191.

Source: "Continuous Village Survey: Dhakia Village, U P", Agro-Economic Research Centre, Delhi University, The Sur­vey has not been published yet.

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May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

cycle squads, host of speakers and canvassers to conduct the campaign since Jaunpur was a prestige contest for it just as Amroha was for the Con­gress. But despite what were by all standards considerable odds against i t , the Congress won by a handsome margin of 8,000 votes, thus regaining the seat it had lost to the Jan Sangh in 1962.

What caused the Congress victory in Jaunpur? Our inquiry shows that the most important factor was the latter-day patching up of differences in the ranks of the influential Thakurs who control the D C C Considering the otherwise unfavourable situation for the Party, this development proved of critical importance to the successful outcome of the bye-election. For the Thakurs forming a numerically large group and possessing considerable economic power and high social status, have vir tual ly controlled the political life of the District through their in­fluence in the rural areas. Although they are not the only element of the district population represented in the DCC, agreements and disagreements among them have always proved to be crucial to the performance of the Party in the elections. The Congress defeat in the Third General Elections in Jaunpur had followed differences among the influential Thakurs in the Constituency. Likewise a rapproach-ment between them had enabled it to win nine of the ten positions of Block Pramukhs in the Jaunpur Parliament­ary area in the elections held just prior to the 1963 parliamentary con­test. Seen in this context, therefore, the Congress victory in Jaunpur ap­pears to have been less a function of popular policies or a satisfactory re­cord of the Congress Government, and more of organisational cohesion result­

ing from the accommodation of the most influential individuals in the dis­t r ic t and the resulting aggregation of the most vi tal elements of the electo­rate in the area wi th in the Party fold. A n d it is precisely in this respect that the Congress in Moradabad District, of which the Amroha Parliamentary Constituency forms a part,2 appears to have been particularly defecient.

I l l

The Support Base of the Congress in Moradabad District

The total population of Moradabad district according to the 3 961 Census is 19,73,530, 23,58 per cent of which lives in the 14 towns in the district, while the remaining 76.42 per cent is spread over the rural parts of the district.-1 Among the numerically im­portant communities1 l iving in the rural areas are the Scheduled Castes, the Chauhans, Jats, Ahirs and Kahars, while between 60 to 65 per cent of the large Muslim community and about the same proportion of Vaishyas and Brahmans live in towns. Besides these numerically large communities, there are the other agricultural castes of Thakurs, Bishnois and Tiyagis, which though small in number are important elements in the area because of the high degree of social and political articulation they possess.

Of all these elements it was the urban-middle class individuals belong­ing to the Vaishya, Brahmin and Mus­l i m communities who originally esta­blished and ran the Congress in Mora­dabad t i l l 1938, The organisation did, however, manage to gain, by the early thirties, the support of influential indi­viduals from among the Chauhans, a numerically large, r i tually high and

economically powerful caste, and from the less prosperous and small but high caste of Tiyagis. From the big and perhaps economically the most well-off caste of Jats in the district as from the equally r ich but small caste of the Thakur, no one of significance could ever be attracted into its ranks. This was probably because both the Jats and the Thakurs who held most of the "Zamindaris" in the area regard­ed causes espoused by the Congress in this period as opposed to their in ­terests. Rather than join the Congress, almost all the Jat and Thakur notables joined the Agriculturist Party that was formed in the thirties to repre­sent the interests of the Zamindars and the rich peasants in UP. Even after independence the relations bet­ween them and the Congress d id not change. On the contrary, they became, if anything, a l i t t le more hostile in their attitude towards the Congress, particularly since measures like the Zamindari Aboli t ion Act sponsored by it affected their interests adversely.

Although the Congress failed with the Jats and the Thakurs, it was able to attract a few leaders from among the Ahirs and from some of the Sche­duled Castes into its ranks. In fact, by 1938 the rural element in the Con­gress was so large that it was possible for Shiv Swarup Singh, a Chauhan, and Muni Dev, a Tiyagi, to become the President and General Secretary of the DCC, respectively. They remained in virtually complete control of the organisation t i l l 1949 when differences between them, arising mainly out of personal ambitions, allowed others like Ram Saran, Dau Dayal Khanna and Jagdish Prasad, who belonged to the group of urban-middle class indivi­duals that ran the Congress originally to stage a come back. By 1951 the

Table 3: Congress and Non-Congress Share of the Rural and Urban Votes Polled In Amroha Parliamentary Elections, 1962 and 1963

1962 General Election 1963 Bye-Election

The Nori-Congress votes for 1962 include votes polled by the candidates of the Socialist Party, the Jan Sangh, the PSP and four Independents. Non-Omgress votes for 1963 include the votes for the Republican Party nominee, who later withdrew from the contest and of six Independent candidates including Acharya Kripalani.

T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y May 22, 1965

leadership passed into their hands. Tha t year Ram Saran was elected Pre­sident of the DCC while Jagdish Prasad became its General Secretary. In the factional struggle that led to their success and in the steps they sub­sequently took to consolidate their position, a large number of influential rural leaders belonging to different castes were pushed out of important positions in the party and in some cases sent out of the organization itself. In a few instances individuals even left the Party on their own.

As a consequence of these develop­ments, the Congress in Moradabad once again reached very nearly the position from which it had originally started. Today almost all the important offices and positions in the DCC are held by Vaishyas while the representation of other communities in the organisation seems at best to have become merely nominal in character. Of the nine office-bearers, for instance, 5, including the President and the General Secre­tary, are Vaishya, while 2 are Chau­hans, 1 a Brahmin and 1 a Muslim. Again, in the 20-man Executive, there are 9 Vaishyas, 2 Chauhans and one each from among the Jar, Ah i r ,

Thakur, Tiyagi, Bishnoi, Brahmin, Jatav, Sunnar and Mus l im communi­ties. Similarly of the 73 others in the General Body of the DCC, besides those already mentioned, 70 are Vai­shyas, while seven of the fifteen PCC members f rom the Distr ict also belong to this caste.

This failure of the Party in Morada­bad to accommodate effectively the other communities is particularly pre­judicial to the interests of the Con­gress party, in view of the political influence some of these appear to wield in the rural areas. Some idea of the extent of this influence is provided by an analysis of the caste affiliations of the 19 Pramukhs and ?9 Representa­tives that each Block Samithi sent to the Zila Parishad in 1961.

As Table 4 shows, while only 3 of the 38 of the Pramukhs and Repre­sentatives from the Block Samithis were Vaishya, 23 of them came from the three economically powerful castes of Jats, Chauhans and Thakurs in the District, while 7 belonged to the less r ich but landowning Ahi r and Tiyagi Castes. By alienating over the years the sympathies of heading individuals

from some of the polit ically import-ant castes like the Chauhans, Ahi rs and Tiyagis, the present leadership of the DCC has, therefore, only augment­ed the opposition the party was al­ready facing from the Jats and the Thakurs. The consequences of this development for the Party have been most inopportune, as is clearly notice­able in the increasing losses the Con­gress has suffered at successive elec-lions in both the Assembly and Par­liamentary Constituencies in the Dis­t r ic t .

IV

Congress Position Till 1962 Moradabad district has two Parlia­

mentary and eleven Assembly Consti­tuencies. Moradabad Pailiamentary Constituency, known after the district itself, covers the six Assembly Cons­tituencies of Moradabad (City), Mora­dabad (Rural), Thakurdwara, Chan-dausi, Bhaijoi and Bellary, while the Amroha Parliamentary Constituency is made up of the remaining five Assem­bly Constituencies of Hasan pur Nor th , Hasanpur South, Amroha, Kanth and Sambhal. In the First General Flec­tions the Congress was able to cap-

Table 4 : Caste Affiliations of the Block Pramukhs and Representatives in the Moradabad Zilla Parishad

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May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

lure both the Parliamentary and all the eleven Assembly seats in the Dis­t r i c t At the Second General Elections it retained both the Parliamentary seats but lost four of the Assembly seats in the Moradabad Parliamentary Constituency and two in the Amroha Parliamentary Constituency. In the 1962 General Elections, however, it

852

lost the contest in the Moradabad Parliamentary Constituency where it also dropped another Assembly seat while its position remained unchanged in Amroha. Therefore by 1962 the Congress was left in the District w i th only one Assembly seat in the Mora­dabad Parliamentary Constituency and three Assembly seats and the Lok

Sabha seat in the Amroha Parliamen­tary area.

But even in Amroha, the Congress was not able to draw adequate sup­port from the 4,18,384 voters, 78.5 per cent of whom are in rural areas while the remaining 21.5 per cent are in the seven towns in the Constitu­ency. In the 1962 elections to the Par-

T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y May 22, 1965

liament, the Congress polled 63,975 or only 15.32 per cent of these votes. Between urban and rural parts of the constituency, its percentage share of votes polled was higher in the former than in the latter (see Table 5). In the urban areas the bulk of the Mus­lims, who constitute between 35 to 37 per cent of the electorate, are con­centrated. As Table 6 shows, Muslims constitute f rom 60 to 70 per cent of the population in the three large towns of Hassanpur, Amroha and Sambhal and the two small towns of Bachraon and Naugaon. In the two other small towns of Kanth and Dhanaura, they constitute half the population in the former and 35 per cent in the latter.

The larger share of the urban votes that the Congress got in the 1962 elections was, we suspect, due to the Musl im support for it in the towns. A n d it is also from the Muslims that a substantial part of the Congress support was probably drawn even in the rural part of the constituency.

Although it is not possible to esta­blish this fact satisfactorily due to the nature of data available, a booth-wise analysis of votes polled by the Con­gress candidate for the Assembly, Sri Sukhanlal, and the Congress candidate for Parliament, Maulana Hifzur Reh-man, in the Hassanpur South (Reserve) Assembly Constituency in 1962 pro­vides us w i th some empirical basis, for making such an assumption.

Hassanpur South is a completely rural constituency wi th a Hindu majo­r i ty and a fairly large Scheduled Caste population. Muslims spread al l over the constituency have a majority only at six of the seventysevon of the pol l­ing booths while at 39 others their min imum number is at least 100, An analysis of the poll at the 77 polling booths in the constituency reveals a close relationship between Congress votes and the number of Musl im voters (see Table 7). The Table shows that Congress vote increases, both in the case of Sukhanlal a H indu , and Maulana Hifzur Rehman, a Musl im, as the number of Musl im voters at the polling booths goes up, although the percentage of votes polled by the two is not always the same. There is a variation of approximately 4½ to 5½ per cent in the votes polled by them in the first two categories of polling booths, while in the three that follow, it ranges from 1 per cent to nearly 2½ per cent (see the Table) One of the main reasons for these variations could have been the inabil i ty of Maulana Hifzur Rehman to attract Hindu votes,

for we notice that the differences be­tween his votes and those polled by Shri Sukhanlal increase as the Musl im vote falls. Even so a substantial part of the Congress support in both the Assembly and the Parliamentary con­stituencies could only have come from the Muslims since the Congress share of the vote falls as the percentage of non-Muslim voters and of total voters in the constituency increases. Thus by 1962 the Congress support was not only confined to a rather restricted geo­graphical area but also to a narrow social base in the district.

The foregoing analysis of the Con­gress position prior to the 1963 bye-election should not, however, lead us to the conclusion that the Party is on its way out in the d i s t r i c t To do so, we believe, w i l l be to ignore one very important factor in the situation, name­ly the position and role of the Con­gress Party in local, state and national politics. Holding immense patronage and vast resources through its control of Government in the State and the country as a whole, the Congress has become the focus of al l polit ical acti­vities in the district. Those out of it wish to come into its fold, while those wi th in it but not in positions of leader­ship want to attain these positions. It is in this context, therefore, that the opposition to the Congress, both from outside and from wi th in its own ranks, should be viewed. That at any rate

is the position in Amroha and in Mor-adabad. Many of the locally influential individuals who have contested against the Congress candidates in Moradabad, sometimes as independents and some­times under the label of one or the other of the opposition parties, seem to have done so more out of a desire to pressurise the local leadership into taking them into the Congress fo ld than wi th the desire of ousting the Party out of power. A n d very often they seem to have succeeded, in the realisation of this aim. In 1962, for instance, Hai th Ram and Bishan Singh of the PSP and Kunwar Narendar-singh, a locally influential former zamindar, and a non-party man, were taken into the Congress. Their ad­mission, however, followed their suc­cess at the Th i rd General Elections against Congress candidates in the As­sembly Constituencies of Bellary, Bhai-joi and Chandausi, respectively. The D C C leaders were obviously compell­ed to bring them in since the election of these individuals had the effect of wiping out the Congress f rom the Moradabad Parliamentary area. This move of the Party, not only t i l ted, the balance in its favour but also as a corollary rendered the opposition's success a temporary achievement. In the long run, the overall effect of the Congress policy to absorb influential opponents when really pressed to the wall has been to prevent the crystalli­sation and institutionalisation of op-

853

May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

position in the district. Even the PSP (now SSP) which had been the most successful of the opposition parties in the area wi th two electoral victories in 1957 and three in 1962 to its credit for instance has failed to acquire a per­manent support base and establish a regular organisation in Moradabad,

There is a corollary to what is said

above.' Individuals from wi th in the Congress, particularly those belonging to the 'out-group in the DCC have also contributed to the rather impres­sive though ephemeral strength the Opposition has exhibited at the suc­cessive elections in the area. Chaud-hury Shiv Swarup Singh and M u n i Deo pushed out of positions of power

in the Congress, for instance, have supported in the past both independ­ents and opposition party candidates contesting against the nominees of their own party. Their main idea in doing so has apparently been to secure the defeat of as many Congress candidates as possible so that the dominant group in the district organisation is discredit-

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T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y May 22, 1965

ed and the Congress leaders in the State are forced to acknowledge their influence, placing the control of the DCC once more into their hands.

V

The Significance of the Bye-Election

AH of this provides the overall con­text against which the Amroha bye-election has to be seen. The bye-elec­tion provided Chaudhury Shiv Swamp and all the others in the district orga­nisation who were opposed to the pre­sent DCC leadership wi th an excellent opportunity to pursue the strategy they had been following in the past and possibly invite intervention this time from the highest quarters in their fav­our. The importance the Prime M i n i ­ster himself appeared to attach to the outcome of what: had become a prestige contest for the Congress seemed to in ­dicate the seriousness wi th which the Congress High Command could be ex­pected to view the defeat of its nominee on this occasion. Regarding this as a rare chance, what could be called the 'out-group in Moradabad Congress, d id all it could to secure the defeat of Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim. It was greatly helped in its efforts in this direction by the attitude the 'domin­ant-group' adopted towards the out­come of the elections. Piqued at the last minute replacement of its own man, Ram Saran, the 'dominant-group', which was entrusted wi th the task of organising the campaign, showed l i t t le interest in working for Hafiz Mohamm­ed Ibrahim. Both, the dominant-group's indifference and the out-group's work against their own Party's nominee, could not but have favoured Acharya Kripalani. Looked at in this back­ground, the vote against Congress in Amroha, therefore, appears not as an expression of opposition to the Party as such but a reflection of the struggle of different elements in the district to get access to positions of control in the Party.

Communalism as an Issue

It was perhaps such an awareness of internal struggle and of a generally weak support base of the Congress in the district which impelled the Con­gress High Command to choose Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim, a Muslim, rather than a senior Congress leader belong­ing to some other community when it decided to make Amroha into a prestige contest. But what the Congress leaders apparently did not take into considera­

t ion was the latent feeling, particularly in the articulate sections of the Hindu community that the Muslims have a disproportionately large representation from the District than their numbers warranted. This feeling was based on the fact that unlike in the past when a Hindu and a Musl im were returned from the two parliamentary constitu­encies in Moradabad District, both the successful candidates at the 1962 elec­tions were Muslims, although one was returned on Congress ticket and the other on that of the Republican Parly. Ram Saran's replacement by Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim, therefore, instant­ly produced resentment in certain sec­tions of the Hindu community against the Congress and made communalism into a major election issue in Amroha.

No party can in reality ignore the ethnic and caste composition of a con­stituency in making its choices at the

time of elections. In deciding on elec­tion strategy, however, great care is needed in the handling of prevailing sentiments and climate of opinion. By choosing in such a crude and trans­parent fashion a Musl im as its candi­date in an area where communalism was lying, as it were, near the surface, the Congress, wit t ingly or unwitt ingly, turned it into an active element in the constituency. If it was the expectation of the Congress that Acharya Kripalani wi l l ignore the resentment that its own action produced in the majority com­munity then it must have been dis­appointed. For Acharya Kripalani, as keen on winning the election as the Congress itself, not only took cogniz­ance of the sentiments of the majority community but also fully exploited them.

Throughout his campaign great stress was placed on the motives of the

*The' analysis of Hindu-Musl im votes in the table was done on the basis of the electoral rolls for the constituency. Booth-wise returns were taken from the District Election Office.

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May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

Congress leadership in replacing Saran by Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim. To the more sophisticated audiences in towns the change was represented as a kind of challenge to the Hindu community. It was argued that if 37 per cent of the Musl im voters in the Constituency can be expected to elect a Muslim candidate, then surely 63 per cent Hindus can also return one of their

own number to the Parliament! In the rural areas the matter was posed more directly though perhaps a little crudely by Acharya Kripalani's workers who had gone and settled down in the v i l l ­ages several days before the poll was held. The choice before them, the v i l l ­agers were told, was whether they w i l l vote for Choti or for iBoti ' ,5 A l l kinds of deep prejudices against the Muslims

were activated and references were made to real of imaginary instances in which Muslims supposed to have been with the Congress had in reality joined hands with other members of their com­munity and had by acting secretly as a group, brought about the defeat of Congress Hindu candidates in the past.

Such arguments and stories received greater credence among the people due

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T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y May 22, 1965

to the way Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim's campaign was conducted W i t h it were associated local Muslims who had al­ways opposed the Congress in the past. A man like Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan who had opposed the Congress candidate Jaydish Prasad in the Hassanpur North Assembly contest at the Th i rd General Election was now, for instance, playing an important role in organising support for Hafizji. Then there were the Musl im divines from the shrines of Ajmer and other religious places who vir tually turned the campaign into holy crusade by the kind of speeches they delivered. Wherever they spoke they referred to the past greatness of the Muslims, their present 'plight ' and the need to defend their religious, cultural and political rights which, the Muslims were informed, were in jeopardy due to the rise of Hindu communalism that Acharya Kripalani's campaign repre­sented.

How important in fact was the im-pact of this 'communalism on the dis­t r ibu t ion of the vote? In its total effect the communal atmosphere pro duced by the two sides appears to have only reinforced the Opposition to the Congress that had been growing over the years wi th the alienation of in­fluential leaders from the organisation, for the non-Congress vote in the Con­stituency did not either increase or de­crease substantially. Although the non-Congress vote did fall from 1,71,396 in 1962 to 1,60,116 in 1963 the loss of vote in terms of percentage was too small to signify any major alteration in

its s ize/ It is, therefore, arguable that even if the communal factor had not operated in the bye-election in the manner it d id , the vote against the Congress would have perhaps remain­ed the same. It is doubtful, though, if the same could be said of the support received by the Congress. For at this election the way the campaigns of both the candidates were conducted created in the minori ty community of Muslims which is peculiarly sensitive and self-conscious, a frame of mind in which Acharya Kripalani's election came to symbolise a threat to its v i ta l interests in the District . W i t h this kind of per­ception, the Muslim community which had remained divided due to sectional, personal and political differences in the past, closed its ranks, turned out in great numbers and polled heavily for Hafiz Mohammed Ibrahim, thus enabl­ing Congress to register an increase of 22 per cent over the votes it had polled at the 1962 General Elections. A l l the additional 14,265 votes the Congress received this time came, as Table 5 shows, entirely from the towns where Muslims are in a majority. In both Amroha and Sambhai its urban vote increased by 6,000 each. In Hassanpur Nor th it increased by a l i t t le over 2,300 while in Kanth it went up by 300 votes only. In terms of percentage, the Con­gress urban vote, not surprisingly, rose from 37.6 per cent in 1962 to 59 per cent in 1963 (see Table 3).

But even the 14,265 extra votes it polled were not enough to enable the Congress to win this time. For the

continuous decline in its vote at suc­cessive elections had made Amroha into a marginal constituency for the Con­gress. Its percentage share of the votes polled which was 47.60 in 1952 went down to 39.17 in 1957 and fell even further in 1962 to a mere 27 per cent. A l l through, its successes were possible due to the mult ipl ic i ty of candidates opposing i t . At the First General Elec­tion the 52.40 per cent non-Congress vote was, for instance, shared by the candidates of the Socialist, Jan Sangh and Kisan Mazdoor Praja Parties, in 1957 over 60 per cent of the votes r e l i ­ed were shared by the candidates of two opposition parties, namely, the Jan Sangh and the Praja Socialist and one Independent, while in 1962, 73 per cent of the votes polled were distributed among four candidates of the opposi­tion parties (S P, Jan Sangh, PSP, Re­publican) and four independents (see Table 8). The decision of all the opposi­t ion parties which had candidates in the previous election, to back Acharya Kripalani in the bye-election, therefore, proved decisive. Though two of the five independents who had entered the contest remained in the held while the others withdrew, they never really were in the picture because of the l imited influence they had in the area. Con­sequently, the election vir tual ly turned into a straight fight between the Con­gress and the opposition wi th the for­mer losing for the. first time in the Constituency,

In light of the foregoing analysis of long-term trends, it is not difficult to

* In Col 6 the votes in the top are those polled by the Socialist Party before in tranformed itself into the PSP. For 1957 the votes are PSP votes. In the split that occured after me Second General Liections Lets a dad his followers left the PSP and formed their own party called the Socialist Party. For 1962 General Flections, therefore, the first figure indicates the votes polled by the PSP (after the split) while the second indicates the votes polled by the new Socialist Party.

† In Col 7 the votes for 1952 were polled by the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party. Vote for the Third General Elections and by the Bye-election in this Col were polled by the Republican Party.

** There was one Independent candidate in 1957, four in 1962 and six in 1963. Of the 1,59,041 votes polled by the Independents in the bye-election, 1,28,694 were secured by Acharya Kripalani and the remaining 30,347 vote were shared by five other Inde­pendents.

857

Table 8 : Dis t r ibut ion of Votes in Four Parliamentary Elections in Amroha

May 22, 1965 T H E E C O N O M I C W E E K L Y

see why the Congress leadership was so nervous about the Amroha bye-elec­tion. To retrieve itself from such a difficult situation, however, the party had to fulfil three conditions:

(1) It should have won back into its camp those sections of leader­ship that it had alienated during the past few years;

(2) It should have widened its social base; and

(3) It should have widened its geo­graphical base, especially adding substantial rural support to the already available urban support.

It is now clear that the Congress failed to fulf i l any of these conditions, and thus lost the bye-election

However, there is no reason to be­lieve that the Constituency is lost to the Congress forever. So long as those opposing it remain primarily interest­ed in gaining positions of importance wi th in its organisation so as to be able to share the benefits of power and patronage that it alone seems to offer, any reverse for the Congress is likely to be temporary, and hence possible to arrest. The only thing that could stop the position from changing favour­ably for the Congress in the future would be the refusal of the incumbent leadership in the DCC to recognise the realities of the situation and let in the elements who were responsible for Congress defeat in Amroha. But past experience shows that the leadership may not adopt such an obdurate at­titude but instead accommodate wi th­in the Party its most influential rivals as it had done in the case of the Mora-dabad Parliamentary Constituency.

V I

Conclusions Considering all the factors that have

operated during the Amroha bye-elec­tion, Acharya Kripalani's victory ap­pears hardly to have been a verdict for or against the policies or record of the Congress. For not only did an issue like the Chinese aggression fail to evoke much interest among the ma­jori ty of voters but even these policies and actions of the Congress government that adversely affected the interests of the people failed to have a bearing on the way they finally voted. Even communalism wi th all its psychological and emotional overtones played no more than an accentuating role in the election in as much as it merely rein­forced the existing opposition to the

Congress. For the Congress itself, how­ever, it did bring in more votes from the Muslims but even this accretion of electoral support for it was not: of material importance to the outcome of election.

The outcome was determined if any­thing by the opposition the Congress has been facing over the years from the influential elements in the social structure that it has failed to accom­modate in the organisation. The vote against the Congress in the bye-elec­tions, therefore, was no more than an­other expression of the struggle against the incumbent leadership in the Con­gress, that these elements have been waging at successive elections in the district as a whole. The Congress continues to be the focal point of poli­tical power in the district and its re­verse in Amroha underlines precisely this dominant position of the Congress in district politics.

Notes 1 Village Dhakia forms part of p o l l ­

ing station No 41 in the Kanth Assembly Constituency which is one of the five Constituencies forming the Amroha Parliamentary Consruency,

2 In the following section we ciscuss the social basis of the Congress sup­port in Moradabad district. What is said there in respect of Moradabad

T H E Ministry o f Irrigation and Power has set up a Reviewing Com­

mittee of officials to examine the pro­gress of works on certain irrigation projects which are in an advanced stage of construction and to remove, as far as possible, the difficulties ex­perienced in their execution Irriga­t ion and multi-purpose, projects taken up during the First, Second and Th i rd Plans are expected to create an i ' r iga-t ion potential of 19.4 mil l ion acres by March 1966. The potential attained by March last year is about 16 million across. The remaining potential has to be achieved during the current year, the last year of the Thi rd Plan.

The average rate of creation of i r r i ­gation potential has so far been of the order of one mil l ion acres a year. The current year's target is three times the yearly average. The setting up of the Committee is one of the steps

applies equally to the Amroha Con­stituency,

3 Census of India, Paper No 1, 1962.

4 Community-wise break-up of the population is not available for 1962 except for the Scheduled Castes. According to the District Election Office the latest figure is 3.17,730. Some idea of the size of the other communities is available from the 1961 Census. The total population of the District in 1961 was 1, 28, 4,108, of these 7, 45, 669 were Hindus and 4, 78, 847 were Mus­lims. The numerically large Hindu Caste in the district were Chamar 1,73,907; Chauhan — 47.312; Brah­min — 39,751; Kahar — 33,887; A h i r — 33,235; Jat — 30,204 and Vaishya — 27,574.

The expression Choti refers to the tuft of hair worn by orthodox Hin ­dus at the back of their head. Bot i ' is a colloquial expression for

beef and refers here to the Mus­lims who are beef-eaters. The ex­pression boti ' also has an emotive, significance for the Hindus who revere the cow and have been suc­cessful in securing a ban on cow slaughter in some of the States, including U P.

6 The 11,280 votes dropped by Oppo­sition amount to only 6.58 per cent of its vote in 1962.

being taken by the Ministry of Irriga­tion and Power for close liaison wi th State Governments in achieving this target. The Committee w i l l review the progress of works in the following nine Stales; Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharash­tra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The Reviewing Committee is presid­ed over by the Chairman of the Cen­tral Water and Power Commission, M, R Chopra. The Members of the Committee are D B Anand and A R Venkataraman, both Members of the Central Water and Power Commission, and G R Iyer, Joint Secretary and K S S Murthy, Deputy Secretary, Minis try of Irrigation and Power. K V Krishnamurthy, a Director in the Central Water and Power Commission, is the Committee Member-Secretary.

Irrigation Target for 1965-66

858