Socialist Party of India

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The Socialist Party of India ( SPI , English Socialist Party of India ) was a party in India from 1948 to 1952. It emerged in 1948 as a split from the socialist faction of the Indian National Congress . In the years of its existence it was the main opposition party to the Indian National Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru . After she had disappointed in the first all-India parliamentary election 1951-1952 , she united in 1952 together with the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) to the Praja Socialist Party ("People's Socialist Party"). Subsequent attempts to found a new one under the old name of the “Socialist Party” could not continue the old meaning of the party.

Party history

History up to the foundation

The SPI emerged from the Congress Socialist Party (CSP). In the Congress Socialist Party, founded in 1934, the supporters of the Indian National Congress gathered during the time of British India who represented "socialist" positions. The CSP supporters expressed different views on individual issues than the leadership of the Congress party. This mainly concerned the question of the extent to which the British colonial administration should work together. Here the CSP took a decidedly more confrontational course and tended to boycott all such tendencies and projects. The leadership of the Congress seemed to the socialists too indulgent and too keen on compromise, and they would have preferred a more active resistance to colonial rule. This was clearly shown in the Quit India movement in 1942, in which the socialists participated particularly actively. A second topic in which the ideas of the CSP and the leadership of the congress diverged were the concepts for the future design of the economic and social order in India. These latter divergences were more theoretical at the time of British colonial rule, but became increasingly important as Indian independence came more and more into view. After independence on August 15, 1947, the differences became so irreconcilable that the socialists from the Congress Party founded their own party, the Socialist Party of India, at their conference in Nasik from March 19 to 21, 1948.

Like its predecessor, the CSP, the newly founded party was ideologically not homogeneous. A distinction was made between three main trends:

  1. classic Marxist socialists - these included Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya Narendra Dev ,
  2. social democratic or “ Fabian ” socialists - this included MR “Minoo” Masani and Ashoka Mehta ,
  3. Socialists shaped by the Gandhi movement - Achyut Patwardhan , Ram Manohar Lohia .

Occasionally a fourth current that wanted to realize a specifically Indian socialism, what was called " Vedantine socialism" was added. A representative of this current was Sampurnanand .

The 1951/52 elections

SPI party leader Jayaprakash Narayan (right) with Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s

The Socialist Party tried to persuade dissidents from the Congress Party to convert. When in 1950 a large dissident group formed within the Congress Party under the name "Democratic Front" and under the leadership of Jivatram Kripalani , the socialist leaders tried to persuade these dissidents to convert to the Socialist Party. This failed, however, and a new party emerged from the “Democratic Front”, the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP, “Party of the Peasant and Working People”). The KMPP leader Kripalani commented critically on the Socialist Party: “… it has not succeeded in moving the people's world of thought […] The common man in India […] does not understand what the socialists actually stand for. The socialists are still, more or less, a party of intellectuals. […] Often their learned theses - full of technical expressions and formulations that are en vogue in the West - when translated into local languages ​​have little meaning for the masses who are not literate. [...] The Socialist Party cannot successfully form a strong opposition to the Congress in parliament and in the country on its own. "

The first all-Indian parliamentary elections 1951–1952 were disappointing for the socialists. Of their 255 candidates in the constituencies, only 12 won a seat in parliament. In the simultaneous elections to the state parliaments, the picture was no better (124 seats won out of 1,793 candidates and a total of 3,279 seats). The party had various electoral alliances with the Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF), the Jharkhand Party (in Bihar ), the Revolutionary Communist Party (in West Bengal ) and the Forward Bloc (subhashists) . However, these had not brought the hoped-for success. The KMPP also fell far short of its expectations in the elections. Both parties had clearly overestimated their chances of being elected.

Association with the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party

After the election defeat, the leaders of the Socialist Party and the KMPP agreed to form a joint party. The ideological differences between the two groups were small. A joint program was put on paper in which an egalitarian society with grassroots democracy at the village level, the nationalization of key industries, a self-sufficient economy and, in terms of foreign policy, a policy of non-alignment were called for. The formal decision to unite was taken at a meeting in Lucknow on August 25, 1952, and the unification convention was held in Bombay on September 26 and 27, 1952 . The new party was named Praja Socialist Party , ("People's Socialist Party").

Further development after 1952

The newly founded Praja Socialist Party (PSP) ran in the following elections, but could not gain much greater importance than the old Socialist Party. In the course of time, several factions split off as separate parties. In 1955, a parliamentary group led by Ram Manohar Lohia and the old name "Socialist Party" made itself independent. In 1964 the PSP and the Lohias Socialist Party merged to form the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP, "United Socialist Party"). However, the unit only lasted for a short time and in 1965 the PSP was rebuilt. The total share of votes of these socialist parties remained in the elections in 1952, 1957 and 1962 at 10-15%. The socialists thus did not form a political force that could endanger the dominant congress party. With the 1967 election, things seemed to change. The SSP and PSP won 18.9% and 11.9% of the vote, respectively, significantly more than ever before. An end to the permanent rule of the Congress Party seemed to be looming. In the subsequent election in 1971 , however , Indira Gandhi's Congress Party achieved a downright overwhelming election victory and the socialists were downright marginalized. On August 9, 1971, therefore, the remnants of the PSP (the majority had defected to Indira Gandhi's congress) and SSP united under the name of the 'Socialist Party'. This alliance was short-lived and in January 1973 the large majority of this party formed the new SSP. In 1974 this merged with 6 other parties to form Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD). The BLD went on again in 1977 in the newly founded Janata Party , which briefly led the government of India from 1977 to 1979, but then split up into various individual parties.

The development of the socialist parties in India 1948–1977

Attempt at resuscitation

After the Janata Party collapsed in the late 1970s, there were isolated attempts to found a socialist party again. Ultimately, these attempts were unsuccessful. At a conference in Hyderabad from 28-29 In May 2011, attended by around 600 delegates from 18 states , Indian socialists again founded a party called the Socialist Party (India) . When they were founded, they explicitly referred to the tradition of the old Socialist Party. Bhai Vaidya was elected the party's first general secretary and spokesman . However, this new party has so far not gained any major importance in elections.

Summary: Role of the socialists as the leading opposition party

A major reason why the socialists never succeeded in becoming a serious competitor to the Congress Party was certainly due to the fact that the Congress was under Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister 1947–1964) and his daughter Indira Gandhi (Prime Minister 1966–1977 and 1980 –1984) himself pursued a decidedly socialist program (state-regulated and controlled economy, regular five-year plans, foreign policy based on the Soviet Union, “socialist” rhetoric, etc.). Thus the socialists had difficulties to distinguish themselves between the congress on the one hand and the communists on the other. When the socialists performed surprisingly strong in the 1967 parliamentary elections , Prime Minister Indira Gandhi reacted with a political "shift to the left" (including nationalization of the banks, abolition of pension payments to the former ruling princes, social programs, etc.), which ultimately got the socialists off the sails took, but also contributed significantly to the split in the Congress Party in 1969. Another weak point of the socialists was that they allowed an extraordinary pluralism of opinions within the party and that party discipline was handled loosely. This resulted in the lack of a strong and clear leadership and the multiple split-offs from individual parliamentary groups. Thirdly, it was criticized that the socialists often exhausted themselves too much in theoretical discussions that were not relevant and / or incomprehensible to the broad masses of the population.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Myron Weiner: Party politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System . Princeton University Press, Princeton (New Jersey) 1957, The Socialist Break from Congress, pp. 42-64 (3rd edition 1965).
  2. ↑ a b Shaguffta: The Socialist movement in India with special reference to Samajwadi Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP from 1989 - Till Now. Ed .: Chaudhary Charan Singh University. Meerut 2004, 2: Socialist Movement of India - Various Phases (English, handle.net - Dissertation Political Science).
  3. ↑ Quoted in Weiner; In the original text: "... it has failed to capture the imagination of the people. […] The average man in India […] gets confused about what the socialists actually stand for. The Socialists are still, more or less, a party of intellectualls. [...] Often their learned theses, full of technical words and phrases en vogue in the West, when translated in provicial languages, have little meaning for the unlettered masses. [...] The Socialist Party as it present cannot by itself succeed in forming a strong opposition party to the Congress in the legislature and in the country. "
  4. ^ A b Myron Weiner: Party politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System . Princeton University Press, Princeton (New Jersey) 1957, The Merger of the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party and the Socialist Party, pp. 98-116 (3rd edition 1965).
  5. ^ Richard Leonard Park: Indian Election Results . In: Far Eastern Survey . tape 21 , no. 7 . Institute of Pacific Relations, University of California Press, May 7, 1952, pp. 61-70 , JSTOR : 3024481 (English).
  6. ^ Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed January 29, 2017 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence).
  7. ↑ Lewis P. Fickett, Jr .: The Major Socialist Parties of India in the 1967 Election . In: Asian Survey . tape 8 , no. 6 , June 1968, p. 489-498 , JSTOR : 2642162 (English).
  8. ^ Socialist or Praja Socialist? In: The Economic Weekly . December 4, 1954, p. 1344-1345 (English, epw.in [PDF]).
  9. ↑ Samyukta Socialist Party vs Election Commission Of India & Anr on September 30, 1966. Supreme Court of India, September 30, 1966, accessed February 5, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Lewis P. Fickett, Jr .: The Praja Socialist Party of India - 1952-1972: A Final Assessment . In: Asian Survey . tape 13 , no. 9 September 1973, p. 826-832 , JSTOR : 2642762 (English).
  11. ↑ HISTORY. Socialist Party of India, accessed January 28, 2017 .