The Swatantra Party was an Indian classical liberal political party that existed from 1959 to 1974. It was founded by C. Rajagopalachari in reaction to what he felt was the

Jawaharlal Nehru Jawaharlal Nehru (14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a pr ...

-dominated

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party, or simply the Congress, is a political parties in India, political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first mo ...

's increasingly

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

and statist outlook. The party had a number of distinguished leaders, most of them old Congressmen, like C. Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani, N. G. Ranga, Darshan Singh Pheruman, Udham Singh Nagoke and K. M. Munshi. The provocation for the formation of the party was the left turn that the Congress took at Avadi and the Nagpur Resolutions. Swatantra stood for a market-based economy and the dismantling of the " Licence Raj" although it opposed ''

laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( , from , ) is a type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies or regulations). As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' ...

'' policies. Swatantra was not a religion-based party, unlike the

Hindu nationalism Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of political thought, based on the native social and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" is a simplistic translation of . It is better descri ...

of the

Bharatiya Jana Sangh The Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh ( BJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh) was a Hindutva political party active in India. It was established on 21 October 1951 in Delhi by three founding members: Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Balraj Madhok and Deendayal ...

. In 1960, Rajagopalachari and his colleagues drafted a 21-point manifesto detailing why Swatantra had to be formed even though they had been Congressmen and associates of Nehru during the struggle for independence. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was highly critical of Swatantra and dubbed it as belonging to "the middle ages of lords, castles and zamindars".

History

File:Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari.jpg, C. Rajagopalachari founded the Swatantra Party. He had been the last Governor-General of India and one of the first recipients of India's highest civilian award, the

Bharat Ratna The Bharat Ratna (; ) is the highest Indian honours system, civilian award of the Republic of India. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of "exceptional service/performance of the highest order", without distin ...

. File:NG Ranga 2001 stamp of India.jpg, N. G. Ranga was the founder member of the Swatantra Party and its president for several years. File:Maharani-gayatri-devi.jpg, Gayatri Devi, the Maharani of

Jaipur Jaipur (; , ) is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and the List of cities and towns in Rajasthan, largest city of the north-western States and union territories of India, Indian state of Rajasthan. , the city had ...

and princess of Cooch Behar, was a successful politician in the Swatantra Party. File:bezawada ramachandra reddy.jpg, Bezawada Ramachandra Reddy was the founder member of the Swatantra Party.

In Parliament

N. G. Ranga rebuked the Nehru government for being ill-prepared in defence on 8 November 1962 in a speech during parliamentary debate. Minoo Masani, the party MP from Rajkot, voiced his opposition to the bank nationalisation bill by Indira Gandhi's government on 25 July 1969.

Electoral history

In the 1962 general election, the first after its formation, Swatantra received 7.89 percent of the total votes and won 18 seats in the third Lok Sabha (1962–67). It emerged as the main opposition to the dominant Congress in four states: Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Orissa. By the next general election in 1967, Swatantra had become a significant force in some parts of India; it won 8.7 percent of the votes and became the single-largest opposition party in the fourth Lok Sabha (1967–71) with 44 seats. In

1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses (Solar eclipse of February 25, 1971, February 25, Solar eclipse of July 22, 1971, July 22 and Solar eclipse of August 20, 1971, August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 1971 lunar eclip ...

, Swatantra joined a "Grand Alliance" of parties from across the political spectrum that aimed to defeat Prime Minister

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and stateswoman who served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 un ...

. The party secured eight seats by winning 3% of the votes. The next year, in 1972, its founder, Rajagopalachari, died, and Swatantra declined rapidly. By 1974, it had dissolved, with many of its members joining the Charan Singh-led

Bharatiya Lok Dal Bharatiya Lok Dal () was a political party in India. The BLD or simply BL was formed at the end of 1974 through the fusion of seven parties opposed to the rule of Indira Gandhi, including the Swatantra Party, the Samyukta Socialist Party, the ...

State legislative assembly elections

Odisha

Rajasthan

Ideology

Fundamental principles

First and foremost, the Swatantra Party committed to social justice and equality of opportunity of all people "without distinction of religion, caste, occupation, or political affiliation". The party felt that progress, welfare and happiness of the people could be achieved by giving maximum freedom to individuals with the state minimising intervention. The state should replace its intervention with fostering the Indian tradition of helping other people directly. In particular, the party believed that the state should adhere to the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the

Constitution of India The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India, legal document of India, and the longest written national constitution in the world. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures ...

and, in particular, should compensate individuals if their property had to be acquired for public purposes. It also believed in giving citizens full freedom to educate their children as they wanted. It recognised the need for increasing food production and sought to do so by giving peasants full land rights and incentives for increasing production in agriculture. In industry, it sought to reduce state presence only to the minimum necessary to supplement private enterprise and in national services like the

Indian Railways Indian Railways is a state-owned enterprise that is organised as a departmental undertaking of the Ministry of Railways (India), Ministry of Railways of the Government of India and operates India's national railway system. , it manages the fou ...

. It sought to do away with controls on trade and commerce. However, it committed against unreasonable profits, prices and dividends. It believed in placing equal emphasis on the development of capital goods industries, consumer goods industries and rural and small industries. In the fields of taxation and state expenditure, it believed in thrift and called for taxation to suffice for carrying on of administration and social and economic activities taken upon by the state but should not depress capital formation and private investment. The government should also desist from running abnormally large deficits or taking foreign loans that are beyond the capacity of the country to repay. In particular, it resisted unnecessary expansion of the bureaucracy. While standing for minimising state intervention in the economy, the Swatantra Party committed to securing a fair deal for labour, correlating wages to increased productivity and workers' right to

collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and labour rights, rights for ...

. It also gave their members full freedom to question and criticise any point not included in the fundamental principles of that party.

Others

Party's fundamental principles had not covered several issues like foreign policy, national language, state reorganisation and religious and social reform. The party was generally opposed to communism and in 1969, urged the Indian government to ban the three major communist parties in India at that time, the CPI, CPI(M) and the Naxalites, because of their open or tacit support for armed struggles, which the Swatantra Party viewed as a major security threat to the nation. In foreign affairs, it opposed non-alignment and a close relationship with the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and advocated an intimate connection with the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

Decline and legacy

In 1969, the Congress party split, leading to consolidation of right-leaning votes under Congress (O). This proved detrimental to the electoral prospects of the Swatantra party. By 1971, the Swatantra party had disintegrated due to infighting and changed political scenarios. The party made some tactical mistakes like joining the Grand Alliance against Indira Gandhi's Congress in 1971 instead of fighting on an issue-based common programme. This resulted in the decimation of the party in the elections of that year. After the death of Rajaji in 1972, personality clashes took a further toll. All this occurred while Indira Gandhi pressurised the royalty to support her. This resulted in Swatantra losing the backing of princes. Another potential benefactor, the business community couldn't advocate for the party since they were too reliant on state patronage. Moreover, big business houses like Birla benefitted from the protectionist aspects of the Nehruvian state and didn't see Swatantra policies as being advantageous.
Finally the party was dissolved on 4 August 1974 by party president Piloo Mody who merged it with Charan Singh's Bharatiya Kranti Dal. The few independent state units except for Maharashtra later merged with

Janata Party The Janata Party (JP, ) is an unrecognised political party in India. Navneet Chaturvedi is the current president of the party since November 2021, replacing Jaiprakash Bandhu. The JP was established as an amalgam of Indian political partie ...

in 1977.

Notes

References

Sources

* Bipan Chandra et al. ''India Since Independence''. Penguin India. 2008 011 digital edition * Mariadas Ruthnaswamy. "Swatantra Party and its leaders". '' Swarajya''. 30 July 1960. * Mariadas Ruthnaswamy. "Is Swatantra inspiring enough?". ''Swarajya''. 22 October 1960. * H. R. Pasricha. ''The Swatantra Party – Victory in Defeat''. Rajaji Foundation. 2002. * Howard L. Erdman. "India's Swatantra Party". ''Public Affairs'', vol. 36, iss. 4, pp. 394–410. Winter 1963–64. * Howard L. Erdman. ''The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservatism''.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

. 1967
Digitized
by the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

in 2013. * Madhavankutty Pillai.
Last Man Standing
. ''Open''. 5 April 2014. * Rajmohan Gandhi. ''Rajaji: A Life''. Penguin India. 1997. * Ramachandra Guha. '' India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy''.

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

. 2008. * Rasam Vasanti. ''Swatantra Party: a political biography''. Dattson Publishers, Nagpur. 1997. * Rasam Vasanti. "Role of Swantantra Party as an Opposition Party (National Level)". ''Readings on Parliamentary Opposition''.