All India Scheduled Castes Federation
All India Scheduled Castes Federation ( SCF , Hindi सर्वभारतीय तृणमूल कांग्रेस , "All-Indian Federation of Listed Castes") was a political party in India founded in 1942 by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and in 1957 in the newly formed Republican Party of India (Republican Party of India) rose.
Party history
The party founder Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar had made it his life's work early on to represent the interests of the lower castes and Dalits in British India . Ambedkar sought special rights for these social groups and claimed minority rights similar to those that Muslims had partially received. For example, he called for a separate electoral class for the Dalits, who should elect their political representatives separately to the people's assemblies, and suggested that the Dalits be relocated on a large scale to unused land so that they could form a local majority there and receive a kind of territorial autonomy accordingly. With these ideas he came into conflict several times with Gandhi , who always wanted the greatest possible unity of the Indian autonomy and independence movement and who rejected such “ communalist ” demands.
SCF was founded at the national meeting of representatives of the Scheduled Castes that took place in Nagpur from July 17-20 , 1942 . The immediate external reason for the establishment was the mission sent to India by the British government at the height of the World War in 1942 under Labor politician Richard Stafford Cripps ("Cripps Mission"), which had submitted proposals for the constitutional development of India. Cripps had promised full Dominion status for India after the end of the war. The demands of Ambedkar and the Dalit leaders were completely ignored in his proposals. The above-mentioned convention in Nagpur passed a resolution in which, on the one hand, the proposals of the Cripps mission were rejected. On the other hand, demands were formulated with regard to the improvement of the social position of the Dalits: a quota system should be introduced in future elections and when filling state posts in order to guarantee a minimum number of Dalit representatives in the elected parliament and when filling stately positions . Rao Bahadur N. Shivaraj from Madras was elected as SCF chairman and PN Rajbhoj ( Bombay ) as general secretary .
After the end of the war, elections to the provincial assemblies were held again in 1946. The SCF took an active part in this and put up a total of 51 candidates (by provinces: Madras 24, Bombay 5, Bengal 6, United Provinces 5, Central Provinces and Berar 11). However, only two of them were elected, SN Mandal in Bengal and RP Jadhav in Central Provinces and Berar. After the partition of India in 1947 and the independence of the two states India and Pakistan, Jawaharlal Nehru became Prime Minister of the Indian interim government. Nehru accepted SN Mandal as a minister in his cabinet. Ambedkar was elected to the National Assembly and Minister of Justice in the Nehru cabinet . Under his leadership, the Drafting Committee ("Drafting Committee") met, which drafted the constitution of the Republic of India , which came into force on January 26, 1950.
In the first general parliamentary election 1951–1952 after the constitution came into force, the SCF was recognized by the Indian Electoral Commission as a " national party " and representatives of the SCF ran for candidates in 34 of the 401 constituencies (Bombay 4, Madhya Pradesh 3, Madras 9, Punjab 2, Uttar Pradesh 8, Hyderabad 4, Rajasthan 1, Delhi 1, Himachal Pradesh 1, Vindhya Pradesh 1). Nationwide, the SCF received 2,521,695 votes (2.38%), but only two representatives were actually elected. In the subsequent elections to the parliaments of the states, the SCF put up 215 candidates, of which 12 were elected (5 Hyderabad, 2 Madras, 2 Mysore , 1 Bombay, 1 PEPSU , 1 Himachal Pradesh). Overall, the party was clearly disadvantaged by the prevailing majority voting system, as the Dalits nowhere even come close to making up the majority of the population. Ambedkar came to the insight that the party he had founded had to be placed on a broader social basis in order to effectively oppose the overwhelming Congress party, which had won a three-quarters majority of the parliamentary seats in the 1951-1952 election. He was unable to carry out his intention of founding a new party because he died in 1956 at the age of 65. His followers continued the idea and founded the Republican Party of India in 1957, in which the SCF was absorbed.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Christophe Jaffrelot: Dr. Ambedkar's Strategies Against Untouchables and the Caste System. Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, Working Paper Series, Number 04, 2009, PDF
- ↑ Christophe Jaffrelot: Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analyzing and Fighting Caste. C. Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd (July 2001), ISBN 1-85065-449-2 . P. 80ff
- ↑ a b c Rāmacandra Kshīrasāgara: Dalit Movements In India And Its Leaders. MD Publications, New Delhi 1994, ISBN 81-85880-43-3 . P. 76ff
- ^ Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed on September 15, 2016 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence).