5 reasons behind fall of socialists in India
“Socialist” leader Nitish Kumar - I am sure Nitish still calls himself a socialist - has taken oath as chief minister of Bihar for the fourth time after leaving his friend-turned-foe Lalu Yadav and joining hands with the BJP.
Right now, he is the only chief minister in the country who can claim his lineage to a socialist party which used to exist once upon a time in India. Now, where is that party and the so-called socialist clan - which never saw a rise and fall but only witnessed a fall since Independence?
Historian Ramchandra Guha during one of his interactions in the literature fest in Mumbai raised this question - where are the socialists? Why have they suddenly lost ground and vanished?
Well, in the history of the socialist party (or the socialists) there are at least five important reasons why they have come to a point in India where they are on the verge of being called extinct in the political spectrum, whereas the Jan Sangh (now BJP) not only survived but is now the most powerful political outlet ruling the country.
Losing nerve after 1952 election defeat
The socialist group in the Congress under the leadership of Jaiprakash Narayan and Asoke Mehta decided to contest the first Lok Sabha elections independent India was having under the banner of the “socialist party”. This group was working within the Congress under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru but had a distinct idea about how independent India should be - they were left-of-center but not communist. They were heroes of the Indian freedom struggle and thought they would get a sizable chunk of votes in the elections.
But they lost badly, coming third with 12 seats across India and another socialist group under the leadership of Acaharya Kriplani got nine seats which was still higher than the Jan Sangh’s, the RSS’s political outlet with only three seats.
These results caused Jaiprakash to lose interest in politics and he started finding it futile to compete with the Congress. Nehru openly invited socialists to be part of the Congress as he himself was a proclaimed socialist and rather than having right-wing “Congressies” in the cabinet, he wanted them to be on his side to run the country.
Socialist leaders like Mehta who eventually joined the Congress had already come up with the “compulsions of backward economy” to push for more cooperation with the party. JP‘s political sanyas left the socialist party in the lurch and the cadre lost hope in their leaders with this sudden disappearance from politics.
The first major split
Then the socialist party and Kriplani’s Krishak Mazdoor Praja party were merged to form a united front of socialist-leaning leaders and the new party formed was Praja Socialist Party (PSP). By that time Ram Manohar Lohia also emerged as a national leader in the party. But the party was split on the trivial issue of whether to be part of EMS Nambudripad’s (EMS) communist government. After the EMS government’s orders to fire on those agitating against the school bill, the government was facing severe criticism and the group led by Lohia was bound to come out of the government. So the party was split in the middle.
Divided and headstrong leaders caused a division in the cadre. This first split later became a kind of norm in the socialist movement, and later years witnessed multiple splits in the socialist movement (or the parties which claimed lineage to the socialist movement) and the socialists could never find any solution to this.
Death of stalwarts
Despite the split, Lohia remained the torch-bearer of the socialist movement. An ardent critic of Nehru, and father of anti-Congressism in India, he is the one who actually started the politics of “mahagathbandhan” by forming an alliance with the Jan Sangh and other parties to defeat the Congress in state elections.
But his early death in 1967 caused immense loss to the party. After Lohia no one could take his position in the socialist leadership. There were brilliant parliamentarians like Nath Pai, Madhu Dandavate or Madhu Limaye, there were great thinkers and Union leaders with the socialists but no one was a match to Lohia, who could build a cadre by bringing the backward section to the political forefront, or could give a political line which could make the party win elections.
After him, the socialist block either survived with politics of alliance or by shifting loyalty to the Congress. After the Emergency, many of the leaders went with Charan Singh and the socialists managed to survive on their personal political existence.
Losing base after Janata experiment
Post-Emergency elections were a major booster for them. When the socialist block of the Lok Dal and PSP decided to merge with the Jan Sangh to form Janata Party, they asked their cadres to forfeit contact with non-political socialist organisations or groups and work as the Janata Party.
Whereas the Jan Sangh managed to keep its cadre intact by keeping links with mother organisation RSS, which caused a major conflict within the Janata Party and eventually a split, interestingly, the right-wing Jan Sangh and the RSS got political acceptance from none other than JP.
But after the split, the Jan Sangh block within the Janata Party stated working as the Bharatiya Janata Party whereas the socialists got split into smaller factions. More than that, they also had to take the responsibility of the split which damaged their reputation permanently. Despite the Janata experiment’s bad taste, the socialists under a new name - Janata Dal - went with the BJP in 1989 just to defeat the Congress and could not form a stable government. They had to carry the stigma of not being able to run the government for full five years despite getting the chance.
Politics of caste
“Pichada pave sau main sath” (backwards should get 60 out of 100) was Lohia’s brilliance to bring the backward class out of Congress reach. This shaped the politics of Mandal in later years but also impacted the politics of UP and Bihar and gave birth to the leadership of Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mulayam Singh Yadav.
None of these leaders could think for the party beyond the borders of caste and state - which acted like the final nail in the coffin for the socialist block. These leaders couldn’t project themselves as national leaders and made little effort to grow beyond personal ambitions. They couldn’t generate a political line for the socialist cadre which could generate mass support and not just some caste-based combination, which can only get temporary election victories.
Once upon a time, the socialists had a strong base among the Indian middle class, working class and also thinking class. What they couldn’t generate was leadership which could keep this support intact.