Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party
The Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party ( KMPP , Hindi किसान मजदूर प्रजा पार्टी , "Party of the Peasant and Workers") was a political party in India that existed between 1951 and 1952. It was founded shortly before the parliamentary elections in 1951/1952 by former supporters of the Congress Party under the leadership of Jivatram Kripalani and, after the election, in which it had performed rather disappointingly, merged with the Socialist Party of India to form the Praja Socialist Party (People's Socialist Party).
Party history
Prehistory to the foundation
The KMPP was founded by people who broke with the Congress party in 1950 and 1951. Jivatram Kripalani was at its head . Kripalani came from a Hindu family from Sindh and was one of the early followers of Mohanda Gandhi . He had already joined him in 1917. From 1934 to 1946 he was Secretary General of the Congress and in November 1946 he was elected President. However, this position did not satisfy Kripalani. According to his ideas, he should have acted as a mediator between the people, the Congress Party organization and the interim government under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Interior Minister Vallabhbhai Patel , which was newly formed in 1947 after independence . However, the government saw itself as an institution independent of the party leadership. As party president, Kripalani had little influence on government affairs and, on the other hand, felt increasingly marginalized, especially in the party committees, especially by Patel's influence. Finally, at the urging of Gandhi, who had not lost sight of the differences between the government and the Congress party leadership, Kripalani announced his resignation from the office of party president in November 1947. Rajendra Prasad was elected as his successor in office .
In 1950, Kripalani ran again for the presidency of the Congress party at their party meeting in Nashik . His main contestant was Purushottam Das Tandon , who was supported by Patel. While Prime Minister Nehru represented the socialist-secular direction within the Congress party, Tandon and Patel belonged to the wing of the Congress party, which was more conservative and wanted to give greater weight to the Hindu majority culture in the new Indian republic. Nehru, whose dislike of Tandon's views was known, held back, to the disappointment of Kripalani, from taking part in the vote, possibly to avoid open conflict with Patel. One of the main supporters of Kripalani in the election was the Muslim Rafi Ahmad Kidwai from Uttar Pradesh . As a result, Tandon against Kripalani was elected as the new party president with 1306 to 1092 votes.
About two weeks after the internal election, Kripalani and Kidwai announced the formation of a “Democratic Front” within the Congress party, which included around 50 elected congressmen from different states. In a statement explaining the reasons, it said that the parliamentary group wanted to “fill the organization of the Congress Party with new energy” and “free it from the corrupting influence of power politics” and make it “more democratic and more useful to the cause”. The Congress-led governments have not yet met the people's minimum expectations and Congress itself is "threatened by irresponsible, authoritarian forces". The Congress Party tried in the following time to dissolve the formed faction again, but this did not succeed. On May 4, 1951, Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad urged the members of the "front" to disband it. The members of the same decided to dissolve it and to decide on details at a meeting a month later. Afterwards, brisk activities developed to stop the emerging split of the group from the congress party.
The announced conference of the Democratic Front took place on 16./17. May 1951 in Patna . It ended with the formation of a new party, the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party . Kripalani declared on May 17, 1951 after 30 years of membership his resignation from the Congress party. The three most prominent figures in the new party were Kripalani, T. Prakasam (in Madras ) and Prafulla Chandra Ghosh (in West Bengal ). Ahmad Kidwai, on the other hand, remained in the Congress party.
The 1951/52 elections
| State | KMPP MPs / MPs in total |
|---|---|
| Assam | 1/105 |
| Bihar | 1/330 |
| Bombay | 0/315 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 8/232 |
| Madras | 35/375 |
| Orissa | 0/140 |
| Punjab | 0/126 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 1/429 |
| West Bengal | 15/238 |
| Hyderabad | 0/175 |
| Madhya Bharat | 0/99 |
| Mysore | 8/99 |
| PEPSU | 1/60 |
| Rajasthan | 1/160 |
| Saurashtra | 0/60 |
| Travancore Cochin | 0/108 |
| Ajmer | 0/30 |
| Bhopal | 0/30 |
| Coorg | 8/28 |
| Delhi | 0/48 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 3/36 |
| Vindhya Pradesh | 3/60 |
| Together | 77/3279 |
Even before the first parliamentary elections in 1951/52 in the newly founded Republic of India, it was clear to the opposition parties that it would be difficult to prevail against the dominant Congress party. The election took place in 401 constituencies and there was a relative majority vote, ie the candidate with the most votes won the constituency. A large party like the Congress Party was greatly favored by this. In particular, the Socialist Party, as the largest opposition party, tried in the run-up to the election to make election agreements with the candidates from the other opposition parties so as not to split the opposition's votes too much. After several meetings between the socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan and Kripalani, the Socialist Party concluded an election campaign agreement with the KMPP. The election result was disappointing for both the Socialist Party and the KMPP. The Socialist Party received 10.6% of the vote nationwide and won 10 constituencies (2.1%, out of a total of 254 candidates). The KMPP received 5.8% of the votes and sent 9 members to parliament (2.0%, out of a total of 145 candidates). The Congress Party received 45% of the vote and won 364 seats (74%, out of 479 candidacies). The 9 MPs of the KMPP came from Madras (6), Mysore (1), Delhi (1) and Vindhya Pradesh (1). In the elections to the federal parliaments, too, the KMPP achieved results that were below expectations.
Association with the Socialist Party
On June 1, 1952, a few months after the election and after a few meetings between Kripalani, Narayan and Asoka Mehta , a joint declaration was announced in which the aim was to form a unified parliamentary party from the former Socialist Party and the KMPP. The joint program called for an egalitarian socialist order, the nationalization of key industries, a civil rights program and the principle of Swadeshi , ie economic self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency. A founding party congress with delegates from both parties took place on 26./27. September 1952 in Bombay . The new party was named Praja Socialist Party .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Myron Weiner: Party Politics in India. Chapter 4: The Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party Break from Congress. Princeton University Press 1957, LC Card 57-5483, pp. 65-97
- ↑ a b Weiner, Chapter 5: The Merger of the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party and the Socialist Party. Pp. 98-116
- ↑ In the original quote: "... to energize the organization and rid it of the corrupting influence of power politics and make it more democratic and serviceable." , Hindustan Times, November 3, 1950, quoted in Weiner, p. 72.
- ^ Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed on September 10, 2016 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence).