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Title Pages

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

Title Pages
(p.i) Forging Power

(p.iii) Forging Power

(p.iv)

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Title Pages

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ISBN 13: 978-0-19-567676-1

ISBN 10: 0-19-567676-9

Typeset in AGaramond 10.5/12 at Le Studio Graphique, Gurgaon 122

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Published by Manzar Khan, Oxford University Press
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Page 2 of 2
Dedication

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

Dedication
(p.ii)

To
My teachers and well-wishers
Professors Ramaranjan Mukherjee, Mohit Bhattacharya,
A.D. Pant, Rebati Raman Mukherjee, Tom Nossiter,
W.H. Morris Jones, Bhikhu Parekh, Ronald Terchek,
Bob Frykenberg, Paul Greenough, and Dr Gordon Johnson
for their contribution to my creativity

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Page 1 of 1
Tables

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

(p.vi) Tables

1.1 Lok Sabha Elections, 1989–2004: Poll Results for Six National
Elections 45
2.1 Representation of the Various Constituents in the Charan Singh
Ministry and their Ratio in the SVD 73
2.2 Elections in Kerala, 1982–2001 83
4.1 Electoral Performances of the Third Front in 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998,
and 1999 149
5.1 Fact Sheet for the NDA 182
6.1 UPA and NDA Composition 214
6.2 Distribution of Seats and Votes in the 2004 Elections 214
6.3 Distribution of Seats and Votes in the 2004 Elections 219
6.4 Distribution of Seats and Votes in the 2004 Elections 220
6.5 Distributions of Seats and Votes in the 2004 Elections 221

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Page 1 of 1
Acknowledgements

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

(p.vii) Acknowledgements

This book would not have been written without the support and continuous
prodding of Sugato Hazra who, despite being busy with various professional
commitments, was very helpful. I owe a great deal to Ashok and Minu and
Professor V.S. Parmar, my friends in a non-Social Science department, for having
sustained my creativity with innovative distractions as and when required. I
fondly remember Bhuwan, Rajinder, and Prakash, who undertook both physical
and intellectual labour in collecting data for this book. I am thankful to Professor
D. Gopal of Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, who was always
helpful during the preparation of the manuscript. My gratitude goes to my
research student, Nimisha of Indian Institute of Public Administration who
procured relevant books for me. My colleague, Professor Subrata Mukherjee
supported my search for a theory of coalition government in India since I
undertook this project. Without Dipakda's sincere support in my fight against
injustice, it would not have been possible for me to concentrate on my academic
venture. This book is also the outcome of a dialogue with my colleagues and
critics in the Indian academia who ruled out the possibility of a full-length
academic monograph on the subject. It is my hope that the volume captures the
nature and quality of India's coalition politics for both an academic and a
student audience.

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Page 1 of 1
Introduction

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

Introduction
Bidyut Chakrabarty

Politics in India has been going through a dramatic metamorphosis. Her

democracy is now acquiring a mass character and a new vibrancy—with the
active participation of hitherto marginalized and underprivileged groups in the
political processes. As a polity, India has thus emerged as a creative experiment
of combining ‘democratic responsiveness to cultural differences with a federal
conciliation of regional community, identity and autonomy claims and a
nationally concerted promotion of regional capability’.1 Simultaneously, the
earlier party system is changing rapidly, as are political equations, and a new
era of coalition politics has begun.2 In the conduct of politics, as the Rudolphs
emphasize, ‘a dominant party system and majority governments have given way
to a multi-party system and coalition governments’.3 Clearly, the terms of
political dominance have changed, both at the regional and national level, which
is different from ‘centralized power-broking and cooption, and towards a more
complex mechanism of negotiation, alliance and coalition-building’.4

What seems crucial in this process is not ‘ideological purity’ but ‘the exigency of
the situation’, where the former seems to be a liability rather than an asset.
Parties with clearly defined ideologies now appear to be inclined to form
coalitions with the object of challenging, if not resisting, a ‘worse political foe’.
Significant in this configuration, is the formidable presence of regional parties
that hold, on occasion, the key to the very survival of the coalition.5

The 1977 Lok Sabha elections proved to be a decisive turning point, when the
Congress government at the Centre yielded power to the Janata Party-led non-
Congress government, thus initiating an era of coalition, and minority,

Page 1 of 18
Introduction

governments in New Delhi. The 1977 revolution by consent was preceded by

indications of the gradual decline of the Congress system of one-party
domination. This new coalition of parties was unique; it drew its political
viability primarily from opposition to the Congress though all its (p.2) leading
members—Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, and Jagjivan Ram—were former
Congressmen. It was therefore suggested that future electoral battles at the
Centre revolved around Congressmen and their former colleagues.

Constituted by parties with a strong regional base, this experiment was not only
the conceptualization of a viable coalition for the first time, but also provided an
ideological forum seeking to articulate a distinct political profile, seemingly
different from both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Arguably
unique, the government—led by Morarji Desai—was also an ideological
continuity of a trend to Indian politics, manifesting itself in the formation of a
non-Congress political platform.

II
India's democratic experience is unique, especially in the context of South Asia,
where forces challenging democratic forms of government have generally
triumphed. The continuity of India as a democratic state is remarkable.6 There
have been no military bids for power, and even the authoritarian regime that
sought to gag the democratic processes in the wake of the 1975–7 ‘state of
Emergency’, was ended by popular verdict. Later, in 1980, the ruling party that
was brought into power zealously following Indira Gandhi's electoral debacle,
was ejected thorough a peaceful election. Democracy, therefore, is not merely a
guarantee of adult suffrage: It has also contributed to a process of ‘redefining’
India's political system.

Although the written Indian Constitution is most certainly a major influence in

this scenario, its essence lies in the implied political model outlining the practice
of democracy in the aftermath of colonial rule. As a result, the political system
designed by the 1950 Constitution has undergone radical metamorphoses, with
unique features corresponding to neither the European nor the American
traditions of liberal democracy. The Indian model is therefore a creative
representation of the values of modern liberal democracy, and the adaptation of
the political institutions appear to have upheld that spirit.

The democratic experience of the last five decades confirms that ‘the model’ that
has emerged in India is neither ‘derivative’ nor absolutely ‘indigenous’, but
dialectically constructed under peculiar historical circumstances. Whether it is
‘creolization’ or ‘vernacularization’ of democracy is debatable. There is,
however, no doubt that the Indian experiment is not only a creative articulation
of the idea of democracy itself, but it is also innovative in terms of political
institutions—sustaining its spirit and fervour, (p.3) and giving it distinctive

Page 2 of 18
Introduction

localized characteristics within the larger universal paradigm of liberal

democracy.

There is a related point to be made here. Indian democracy is also peculiar in its
form and manifestation—because parliamentary elections were earlier centred
on a simple, often single, message that could appeal to a broad section of the
electorate, irrespective of caste, class, and creed, and in effect became ‘a single
issue referenda’.7 Describing this phenomenon as ‘plebiscitary politics’, the
Rudolphs have attributed its rise to the de-institutionalization of the Congress.8
Earlier Congress victories are attributed to the party's strategic resort to
populist or plebiscitary politics in terms of electoral and mobilizational
strategies. The Lok Sabha (Lower House) elections since 1971 have been
decided not by a plethora of promises, made in election pledges, but by a single
slogan that appeared decisive at a particular point of time because of peculiar
historical circumstances.9 In 1971, it was ‘garibi hatao’ (remove poverty); in
1977, ‘Emergency hatao’ (remove politicians responsible for the 1975–7
Emergency); in 1980, ‘Janata hatao’ (replace the Janata Party government for its
chronic instability); in 1984, ‘Desh bachao’ (save the country) that acquired a
new majoritarian connotation following Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984; in
1989, ‘corruption hatao’ (remove the Congress government for its involvement in
the Bofors scandal).

An obvious, and perhaps trendsetting, outcome of the plebiscitary strategies

deployed by the Congress to sustain its political hegemony has been a long-term
tendency toward regionalization of ‘oppositional’ politics. The regional
dimensions of oppositional politics were perceived in the growing consolidation
of ethnic movements for autonomy and the formation of new parties with
regional-oriented agenda. Besides, the Congress was divided into splinter
groups in the regions, owing to its inability to accommodate the new interests
that gained salience at the local level. As a consequence, though politics at the
‘national’ level continue to be dominated by a few political parties that are pan-
Indian in electoral and organizational terms, the party system is now fractured
as there is no dominant pattern of political ideology in the regions. The nature of
the party system in the Indian provinces is being increasingly governed by
regional socio-economic characteristics. They influence not only the electoral
strategy of the parties, but also their mobilizational techniques.10

III
Since 1977, after the decline of the one-party Congress system, there have been
a number of coalition governments at the Centre, providing an (p.4) alternative
to the dominance of the Congress. In the process, the party system has also been
dramatically transformed, underlining the importance of the regional parties.
The change is significant, since not only are regional parties crucial for
governmental stability at the Centre, but because regional issues—generally
brushed aside earlier as insignificant because of the grand design of centralized

Page 3 of 18
Introduction

economic planning—also figure prominently in the central government's agenda.

A synopsis of the evolution of coalition governments in India would be in order.

The evolution of political alliances began in 1967, with the formation of coalition
governments of parties opposed to the Congress. Inspired by the ideology of
Ram Manohar Lohia, several parties formed coalitions that drew, if not
exclusively, primarily on anti-Congress sentiments.11 Lohia had been emphatic in
the belief that a continued alliance among parties would enable them to come
closer, despite being ideologically dissimilar. A question had been raised whether
an opposition consisting of such parties as the Swatanatra Party and Jana Sangh,
on one hand, and the communists, on the other, could ever govern together.
Given the clear ideological demarcation between them, the scepticism about
their political viability as a group did not seem unfounded. Responding to this
charge, Lohia cited the instance of ‘a motley Congress’ with Krishna Menon at
one end, and S.K. Patil, at the other, presumably being united in the Congress
despite the groups' diversity and contradictions—they had ‘inherited the habit of
working together and shared loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family’.

Although doubts persisted in his mind about the feasibility of cohesion among
anti-Congress parties, Lohia sought, in attempts at opposition unity, a creative
political process seeking to relocate the non-Congress parties as well. As he
argued, ‘Such a combination might not achieve anything spectacular but it
would at least inspire the confidence that the country could get rid of the
Congress rule at the Centre’.12 Despite their being ephemeral, the non-Congress
governments that came to power in 1967 in as many as nine states, rewrote
history by replacing the Congress party in the provinces. This turned out to be
the beginning of an era ‘non-Congressism’ that had not fully blossomed—
presumably due to the lack of a well-knit organizational network of opposition
parties across the length and breadth of the country.13 Notwithstanding
organizational weaknesses, the anti-Congress coalitions—called the Samyukta
Vidhayak Dal—formed governments in a majority of the Indian states following
the 1967 assembly elections.

What brought the opposition parties together were, essentially, sentiments

opposed to the Congress, where the ideological incongruity (p.5) among them
was not really significant. For instance, the 1967–9 coalition government in
Punjab comprising the Akali Dal, Jana Sangh, and the Communist Party of India
—provided a formation with clearly contradictory ideological positions among its
constituents. The euphoria over the formation of non-Congress governments
was, however, short-lived with their disintegration, presumably due to a lack of
ideological and programmatic compatibility. Lohia's untimely death also left a
void in the arena, for there was no comparable figure who could carve out
another grand coalition of opposition parties. The subsequent split in the

Page 4 of 18
Introduction

Congress party, the 1971 war with Pakistan, and the 1975–7 Emergency—all
combined to retard opposition consolidation in the following years.

However, the state-level experiment of coalition was articulated at the Centre—

in 1977 the Janata Party was formed with the merger of the Jana Sangh,
Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD), Congress (O), and the Socialist Party when national
elections were announced after the Emergency. It was a hurriedly formed
coalition of parties to fight a suddenly called election. Theoretically, the Janata
Party experiment was drawn on Jayaprakash Narayan's (JP) ‘Total Revolution’.
Defining Total Revolution as the continuity of Lohia's saptakranti14, or seven
revolutionary changes, JP found in the formulation new ideological roots for
opposition coalition. JP's effort to further the cause of opposition unity was a
fulfilment of the promise held out by the aborted Lohia experiment of 1967.
However, the ideological distance was soon evident, and the Janata Party
coalition disintegrated in 1979, basically over the issue of double membership of
the Jana Sangh members of the Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS). With the return of the Congress in 1980, the anti-Congress
coalitions received a further jolt, though with the formation of the Janata Dal in
1988, the process of alliance formation got a significant boost. Under the
leadership of V.P. Singh, who was expelled from the Congress, the Janata Dal was
a combination of two Lok Dals, led by Ajit Singh and Devi Lal in north India, and
the Janata Party of R.K. Hegde in Karnataka.

Supporting the strategy to give the Congress one-on-one opposition at the

constituency levels in states where the anti-Congress wave was dominant, the
Janata Dal was a successful pre-election alliance that revived the concept of a
coalition as a viable alternative. This was a two-level alliance. At the first, a
formal pre-election coalition was formed comprising the National Front (the
Janata Dal, the two Lok Dals, and the Janata Party), three regional parties—
Telugu Desam party (TDP), Dravida Munetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Asom Gana
Parishad—and the Congress (Socialist). The second level was a more informal
seat adjustment between the National Front and the (p.6) BJP, on the one hand
(in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana), and the Left parties, on the
other, even though they were ideologically incompatible. It was a coalition of
independent parties with a joint poll manifesto, based on seat adjustment with
its partners at the second level of alliance—the BJP and the Left parties.

A minority government with the ‘outside’ support of the BJP and the Left parties,
the National Front government had to do ‘a tight-rope walk’ from the outset,
seeking to strike a balance between two ideologically opposite forces. Its
collapse was attributed to the growing distance between the BJP and other
National Front constituents, which finally culminated in the withdrawal of BJP
support to the government.

Page 5 of 18
Introduction

The third experiment was the post-election United Front coalition formed in
1996. Comprised of the Janata family, regional and Left parties, the UF
government was compelled to depend on support from its political rival, the
Congress, that had the ideological objective of combating the ‘communal’ BJP.
The UF's dependence on the Congress for its survival made it vulnerable,
presumably because the latter party was the principal opponent to most of the
UF constituents in their home states—particularly, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, West
Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura.

In contrast, the BJP had an ideological ally in states such as Maharashtra (the
Shiv Sena), and electoral partners in Bihar (the Samata Party), Haryana
(Haryana Vikas Party), and Punjab (the Akali Dal). Even in Uttar Pradesh, the
agreement of the BJP with the Bahujan Samaj Party led to formation of a
temporary government.15

In both the 1989 and 1996 elections, the Jana Sangh (later the BJP) was a mere
constituent of an opposition bloc. The 1998 national poll, however, catapulted
the BJP to the centrestage of Indian politics, for it became the leading partner in
the coalition. In 1998, the BJP realized the upper limit of Hindutva, and the need
to expand geographically to the south and east and—socially—downward to the
backward and Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and economically deprived.
What guided the BJP in its spree for alliances was the old dictum of ‘the enemy's
enemy is my friend’. It therefore effected alliances with those parties opposed to
the Congress.

As an essentially north India-based outfit, the BJP could easily acquire new
friends in areas that were difficult for the Congress to regain, presumably
because of its all-India character. At the state-level, the newly moderate BJP
became a much sought-after partner for regional or state-based parties,
challenging the Congress or Congress-allied regional rivals (in Punjab, (p.7)
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana, and Orissa, and with the
Trinamul Congress in West Bengal against the Left Front).

The BJP's moderate face was made evident in its 1998 election manifesto. It
relegated contentious issues to the background, and the party drew on a pledge
to provide ‘a dynamic, pro-people, pro-development and anti-status-quoist (sic)
government’ (through a deliberate process) of consensus-building (because)
several major national issues confronting India today cannot be effectively
addressed without evolving a broad platform of national consensus.16 Based on
this, a government was formed with the tenet of a ‘National Agenda for
Governance’ in which the BJP's Hindutva agenda items were dropped
presumably because of its divisive impact on the coalition partners. By
redefining its ideological character in the context of coalition, the BJP therefore
sustains its viability as a pole around which anti-Congress parties congregate.17

Page 6 of 18
Introduction

What began in 1998 was strengthened in the 1999 national elections and its
aftermath. The BJP-led political parties came together under the umbrella of a
formally constituted National Democratic Alliance (NDA). On the basis of a
common minimum programme, the regional parties cemented a political bond to
electorally defeat the Congress and its allies. The common agenda continued to
guide government-formation. Drawn on the spirit of coalition, the mission of the
NDA was ‘to build a resurgent [and] modern India [by putting] a moratorium on
contentious issues’.18 This ideological flexibility on the part of the BJP created
space for parties in the NDA that did not quite conform to the extreme BJP
ideology. As a result, even such socialists as George Fernandes agreed to
become ministers in an NDA government run on the basis of jointly prepared
programmes for governance.19

IV
The foundation of a minority government with support from smaller parties—
without ideological conformity—unfolds a new dimension of India's democracy
that seems to validate the idea of coalition government as the most appropriate
structure of governance in the context of India's multi-religious, multi-lingual,
and multi-racial character. It also reflects a fundamental shift from the
Nehruvian days of a one-party dominant system of a consensual Congress party
to a genuine coalition of parties, most of which draw on under-represented or
even perhaps unrepresented sections of the populace. Though it is still uncertain
whether this process, manifested in elections and their aftermath, will form a
pattern, it has nonetheless (p.8) effected changes in India's political arithmetic.
At one level, it has challenged the hegemony of a single party at the Centre and
the constituent states, and has thus contributed to the rise of strong political
forces raising region-specific issues. At another, and far more significant, level, it
has brought state-level political forces to the centrestage of all-India politics. In
future, and in the absence of a clear verdict for the government, the ruling party
will need to take them into confidence. Underlining the distinctive features of a
coalition government in which regional parties have equal importance, L.K.
Advani thus argues that

ours is a coalition government … it places certain obligations and

responsibilities—what can be called the dharma of coalition—on all
partners in the alliance. As far as the BJP is concerned, I would like all our
colleagues, especially those in responsible positions in the state units, to
realize that the interests of the coalition at the Centre are paramount. The
Party's strategies in states must be subordinate to its national strategy. As
a broad policy, it should be our endeavour to develop right coalition
chemistry with our allies by constantly enlarging the area of common
interests and shrinking—or, at any rate, inactivating—the area of
differences.20

Page 7 of 18
Introduction

The 1999 Lok Sabha elections reconfirm this trend. Given the fractured
mandate, the dominant partner in the National Democratic Alliance, the
Bharatiya Janata Party had to, perforce, accommodate regional parties with
which it had no ideological affinity at all.21 The constitution of a government
comprising parties with conflicting, if not antagonistic, socio-political aims
clearly demonstrates the extent to which ideological catholicity appears
peripheral in the changed milieu. One of the most remarkable outcomes in
India's recent political history is therefore the growing strength of democracy—
not merely as a mechanism of negotiation of political differences, but also as a
political culture providing a guarantee against the factional exploitation of
sectarianism.22

The 1984 Lok Sabha was the last national poll in which the Congress Party held
a majority in Parliament on its own. Since then, there have been five occasions
when ‘minority’ situations have been resolved by either minority governments or
minority coalition governments.23 Sworn in October 1999, the Vajpayee-led
National Democratic Alliance was a significant break with the past in two
specific ways. First, the NDA was a pre-poll pact, whereby the constituents came
together under a united political platform on the basis of a common minimum
programme. Second, the regional parties that joined the alliance immediately
after the dissolution of the Twelfth Lok Sabha figured prominently in the pre-
election strategies of the alliance. While the 1998 alliance had been a hurriedly
formed post-election coalition, the 1999 NDA was the outcome of thorough
deliberations (p.9) on both election strategies and government formation. Not
only did the major partner, the BJP, agree to reduce the number of its candidates
in the poll,24 but the alliance manifesto gave equal importance to the regional
partners by incorporating those issues relevant to the country as a whole.25
Primary to this pre-election alliance was the sincere belief in consensus-building
that became ‘all the more necessary since several national issues confronting
India today cannot be effectively addressed without evolving a broad platform of
national consensus’.26 Such a strategy paid off, and the BJP gained electorally in
areas where it had earlier been resisted. Thus, through tactful bargaining and
seat-sharing with its regional allies, the BJP made inroads into states where its
presence had been marginal, if not entirely absent.

V
How did the BJP gradually expand its base? Apart from avoiding contentious
issues—such as abrogation of Article 37027, and the imposition of a uniform civil
code—the importance of the national agenda cannot be ignored in the projection
of the BJP in a different garb. To a large extent, the presence of its political allies
has aided this process, and the BJP has gained a foothold in new territories. The
growing expansion of the BJP has been, as an analyst comments, ‘intertwined
with a distinct three-tiered growth in its social appeal’.28 The first-tier growth
involves the growing success of the BJP in extending its sphere of influence
beyond its traditional support base of upper caste Hindus. In the Hindi
Page 8 of 18
Introduction

heartland, besides its core support base—the upper castes—the only other
category that has been mobilized is ‘the Scheduled Tribe’. The second tier
consists of the other backward castes (OBCs), another significant group, that
voted for the BJP presumably because of its poll alliance with those regional
parties with a strong organizational presence in those states. Here, the alliance
with these parties allowed the BJP to strike roots among the OBCs, which had so
far remained peripheral in its agenda.

The first victim of ‘this confluence of lower caste mobilization and regional
assertion [has been] the dominance of the Congress at the state-level’.29 The
most important segment of the BJP's growing social base relates to the
Scheduled Castes and Muslims, which is the third tier of its support base.
Identified as the secondary states where the BJP hardly existed, these areas
became significant in the last national poll and the BJP, through its allies, got a
foothold in these regions. Such parties as the Telugu Desam, AIADMK,
Trinamool Congress, and, to a lesser extent, the Biju Janata (p.10) Dal, had a
stronger organizational base in the regions to which they belonged, while the
BJP was a non-entity. The poll agreement with these political parties acted
favourably for the BJP that ‘prospered by association and without [these parties]
would most probably have been marginalised’.30

Contemporary Indian politics therefore provides, points out an analyst, ‘a dual

framework’ of analysis. On the one hand, the framework of backward caste
politics gains remarkable salience, while the BJP and its frontal organizations
(the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and, above all, the RSS) seek to draw
political capital out of its old Hindutva line.31 There is, however, on the other
hand, another framework based on opposition between the major political
parties—the Congress and the BJP. Within this framework of reference, the
coming together of parties draws upon (a) anti-Congress, (b) anti-BJP, and (c)
opposition to both the Congress and the BJP sentiments.32 In this process of
coalition, regional parties seem to be playing a crucial role in initiating ‘a
democratic upsurge involving women, tribals, dalits, lower castes and rural
voters’.33

As evident, the BJP gained more than any political party since the decline of the
Congress party as a dominant pan-Indian force, and has been able to project
itself into new geographic areas and social segments—a result of holding power
at the Centre and increasing prominence within the national political scene.
However, the extent of this geographic and social expansion is subject to
continuous power-play at all levels of the political process. Besides, and perhaps
more importantly, the BJP and its frontal organizations have compromised with
the idea of strategic coalition with those parties opposed to the Congress for
long-term political gain. As a result, the ideological contour of the organization
is being constantly redefined.34

Page 9 of 18
Introduction

In this respect the BJP is a class by itself, seeking to reconstitute a new form of
national hegemony and adopting a relatively elastic ideology. The pre- and post-
poll agreement with regional parties notwithstanding, ideological incompatibility
is largely the outcome of a reinvented BJP, which appears to be single-mindedly
committed to capture power at the Centre. What may appear to be an
ideological dilution therefore seems to be an upshot of a process that forced the
BJP to renegotiate, considering the country's rapidly changing socio-political and
economic realities, in a qualitatively—and quantitatively—different fashion.
Rather than endorsing the ideological orthodoxy with which the party was
usually defined in the past, the BJP seems to have a reviewed pragmatic
approach—appreciating its constantly changing national profile.

It was not surprising, therefore, that the BJP, which suffered one of its most
humiliating electoral reversals at the hands of the Congress in the (p.11) 1984
elections, emerged as a principal contender for the centrist position in Indian
politics by the 1990s. With its wider organizational capacities for mass
mobilization, the party thus sustained its ‘moderate’ image, presumably because
of its redefined ideological appearance within the constraints of coalition
government. Not only did the effort pay electoral dividends to the party and its
coalition partners, but it also translated into reality a search for a politically
stable alternative to the Congress at the Centre by reconstructing a national
system of political hegemony.

VI
This volume is a synthetic history of the growth of coalition governments in
India. As it is difficult to capture the entire evolution of the coalition experiment
in a single monograph, the effort is organized around major themes that are
useful for grasping the phenomenon, both in its empirical and theoretical
manifestation. The primary object is to dwell on the processes that finally led to
coalition governments. The NDA was certainly a break with earlier examples of
coalition governments that collapsed long before they exhausted their term of
five years. It was therefore a unique experiment that seemed to have set a
pattern in the subcontinent, as in some European countries where coalition
governments are not exceptions. Coalition therefore seems to be a phenomenon
with organic roots in Indian socio-political and economic reality. Illustrative of a
process of increasing federalization, the NDA was perhaps a successful
experiment of ‘a national alternative’ of ‘regional groupings’. The importance of
the regional parties in national politics is a serious challenge to the prevalent
notion that the national space is something different, and discrete from regional
or state-level politics. The idea that a state is the domain of regional parties and
the national domain has no space for ‘parochial’ regional interests is now being
questioned. Fundamentally, the whole notion of representation of ‘national’ and
‘local’ is being redefined in the context of the emerging significance of coalition
politics.

Page 10 of 18
Introduction

In six substantial chapters, the evolution of coalition politics in India will be

outlined. Since coalition is linked with the complex growth of the party system,
Chapter 1 is a theoretical exercise seeking to draw out a probable explanation
for the growth and apparent sustainability of governments of ideologically
dissimilar, if not contradictory, partners. While dwelling on theories, an attempt
will also be made to find out the applicability of western models, based on
divergent socio-economic and political milieu, to a multi-cultural India. Chapter
2 is an empirical study (p.12) of what contributed to the rise of coalition
governments in nine Indian states following the 1967 assembly elections. This
was an articulation of an anti-Congress wave that explains the disintegration of
the Congress system that sustained Congress rule for more than two decades
since Independence.

What began at the state level was articulated at the national level in 1977—a
theme that runs through Chapter 3. As will be shown, the Janata Party is an
outcome of an effort that drew on a growing interest in a coalition to halt the
Congress. The Morarji Desai government was also illustrative of the
regionalization of Indian politics in the sense that the constituents of the Janata
Party were region-based, though they were ideologically national. Exemplifying a
new political trend, the Janata Party alliance is a clear break with the past, by
suggesting an alternative to a single-party majority at the Centre.

By dwelling on the evolution, ideology, and disintegration of the National Front

and United Front that came into being in 1989 and 1996 respectively, Chapter 4
focuses on the so-called Third Front, comprising parties opposed to both the
Congress and the BJP. Supported from outside by the ideologically contradictory
BJP and the Left Front, the 1989 National Front government never looked
confident—presumably because of continuous infighting among its leaders over
the institutional spoils of power. As the V.P. Singh government was dependent on
support from both the BJP and the Left parties for its survival, the National
Front never recovered from the weaknesses connected with a lack of its
numerical strength in Parliament. The second part of this chapter is an
elaboration of the experiment that began with the capture of power at the
Centre by the National Front in 1989. Known as a Third Front government—like
the erstwhile National Front government—the United Front government in its
two different incarnations maintained its continuity for more than a year
between 1996 and 1997, with Congress support from outside. In order to
contain the ‘communal and sectarian’ BJP, the United Front constituents
preferred the Congress in 1996, which had so far remained politically
‘untouchable’, to those seeking to form a third-front alternative.

Chapter 5 seeks to analyse the dynamics of the BJP-led National Democratic

Alliance that came into being in 1999. This was a unique coalition on at least two
fundamental counts. First, the NDA was a pre-poll pact made on the basis of a
common minimum programme, acceptable to those constituting the alliance.

Page 11 of 18
Introduction

Second, the completion of a five-year term by the NDA suggests the level of
understanding among the partners and maturity of the leaders of this 24-party
coalition that steered it through despite occasional hiccups. Apart from its
stability, the NDA epitomized (p.13) the federalization of Indian politics by
guaranteeing legitimate space to the regional political forces that remained
integral to its existence. In the age of liberalization and globalization, with the
state shrinking everywhere, the flexibility of the BJP, with no burden of the past,
unlike the Congress party, has catapulted it to the centrestage of Indian politics.
Earlier a peripheral party with its appeal restricted to a few urban centres in
north India, it is an example of the phenomenal rise of a party that now
proclaims itself as the national party of governance.

Dealing with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) that was formed following
the 2004 national election to the Fourteenth Lok Sabha, Chapter 6 is a
reiteration of the argument concerning the inevitability of coalition government
in India. While the erstwhile NDA was led by the BJP, the present UPA is
constituted by the Congress and its allies. Unlike the last government, which had
a majority in Parliament, the Congress leads a minority government at the
Centre with outside support of the Left Front and the Samajwadi Party.

On the basis of a synthetic account of the evolution of coalitions in India, the

basic argument this volume seeks to offer evolves around various experiments of
coalition government in India. The argument that a coalition government is
naturally unstable no longer seems tenable. Besides, the days of single-party
majority have been relegated to history. Given the importance of the regional
parties in national coalitions—whether led by the BJP or the Congress—the
nature of the party system has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis. Under the
present circumstances, the drive for alliances with regional parties is perhaps
contributing to the rise of a bi-party system and within a multi-party context two
grand coalitions—one under the aegis of the BJP, the other Congress-centred.
Coalition is therefore simply an outcome of a process seeking to articulate the
‘neglected’ regional voice that had remained peripheral in Indian national
politics. Coalition is also an experiment that has evolved historically, with
organic roots in India's democratic experience since the institution of the 1950
Constitution. Given the obvious importance of coalition politics, the nation's
political psyche is being constantly redefined—and so are the regions that so far
remained mere spectators in what is vaguely defined as ‘national’ politics.

Notes:
(1) Jyotirindra Dasgupta, ‘India's Federal Design and Multicultural National
Construction’ in Atul Kohli (ed.), The Success of India's Democracy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 49.

Page 12 of 18
Introduction

(2) This trend began with the 1967 elections, in which the Congress lost power
in a majority of Indian provinces. The transition from Congress hegemony to
‘multipartyism’ has made coalition government inevitable. See N.C.B. Ray
Chaudhury, ‘The Politics of India's Coalitions’, The Political Quarterly, vol. no. 40,
no. 3, July–September, 1969, pp. 296–306.

(3) L.I. Rudolph and S.H. Rudolph, ‘Redoing the Constitutional Design: From an
Interventionist to a Regulatory state’ in Atul Kohli (ed.), The Success of India's
Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 129. Apart from
coalition governments, according to the Rudolphs, there are two important
changes that need to be taken into account while conceptualizing contemporary
Indian politics: first, since the onset of economic reform in 1991, the Indian
economy has moved away ‘from central planning by an interventionist state and
moved toward market competition fostered by a regulatory state’; and secondly,
‘the displacement of an interventionist by a regulatory state has meant a
diminished executive and legislature and enhanced regulatory institutions—less
scope for cabinet and parliament, more scope for the supreme court, the
election commission and the president’.

(4) Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds), The BJP and the
Compulsions of Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 7.

(5) Aditya Nigam has, for instance, elaborated this point in his study of the 1996
national elections. See, Aditya Nigam, ‘India after the 1996 Elections: Nation,
Locality and Representation’, Asian Survey, vol. 36, no. 12, December 1996, pp.
1157–69.

(6) Despite India's remarkable success as a democratic polity, the father of the
Indian Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar noted an incongruity between political
equality and social and economic inequalities that would effectively exclude
sections of the population from the democratic process. He thus expressed his
feelings before the Constituent Assembly by stating that ‘on the 26th of January,
we are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality
and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be
recognizing the principle of one man, one vote value. In our social and economic
life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny
the principle of one man, one value. How long shall we continue to live this life
of contradictions? How shall we continue to deny equality in our social and
economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we do so only by putting our
political democracy in peril’. Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. X, Official
Report, New Delhi, 1989, p. 979.

(7) Achin Vanaik, The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India, London:
Verso, 1990, p. 93.

Page 13 of 18
Introduction

(8) L.I. Rudolph and S.H. Rudolph, In Pursuit of Laxmi: The Political Economy of
the Indian State, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1987, chapter IV.

(9) Achin Vanaik, The Painful transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India, London:
Verso, 1990, pp. 93–7.

(10) John Mcguire and Peter Reeves, ‘What are the Politics of Economic
Liberalization in India? The Case of West Bengal’, Asian Studies Review, vol. 1
(3), April 1996, pp. 30–7.

(11) By providing what is defined as ‘a holistic approach’, Ram Manohar Lohia

exhorted those opposed to the Congress to go for (a) spade (constructive work),
(b) prison (constant struggle) and (c) the vote (elections). Editorial, ‘The Other
Side’, Journal of Socialist Thought and Action, May 1997, p. 4.

(12) Ram Manohar Lohia, Note and Comments, The Elections, 1967 and After,
vol. II, pp. 247–52, quoted in Madhu Limaye, Janata Party Experiment: An
Insider's Account of Opposition Politics, 1977–80, vol. II, New Delhi: DK
Publishers, 1994, p. 542.

(13) Ibid.

(14) The saptakranti consists in revolutions (1) for man-woman equality, (2)
against inequality based on colour, (3) against social inequality and caste and for
special opportunities, (4) against colonialism and foreign rule, (5) for maximum
achievable economic equality, (6) for privacy and democratic rights and (7)
against weapons of mass destruction. Ram Manohar Lohia, Election Manifesto of
the Socialist Party, 1962, p. 3—quoted in Madhu Limaye, Janata Party
Experiment: An Insider's Account of Opposition Politics, 1977–80, vol. II, New
Delhi: DK Publishers, 1994, p. 543.

(15) The 1996 national poll was a pivotal moment in relation to regionalization of
politics. See for details, Zoya Hasan, ‘The Regionalization of Politics’, the Hindu,
23 April 1996; Narendar Pani, ‘Regional Nationalism: Challenge to National
Parties’, the Times of India, 16 May 1996; Chand Joshi, ‘The National Party is
Over’, the Hindustan Times, 19 May 1996; Aditya Nigam, ‘India after the 1996
Elections: Nation, Locality and Representation, Asian Survey, vol. 36 (12),
December 1996, 1157–69.

(16) The BJP Election Manifesto, 1998, pp. 2, 53.

(17) Thus the BJP President, L.K. Advani in his speech at the 2005 National
Executive Meet, held at Chennai, characterizes the BJP as ‘one of the two
principal poles in Indian polity’. Text of the speech, reproduced in The Hindu, 19
September, 2005.

Page 14 of 18
Introduction

(18) The Agenda of the National Democratic Alliance, p. 3. The pledges are: ‘Let
us throw away our old prejudices; let us put an end to divisiveness; let us bind
ourselves with bonds of trust and friendship’.

(19) Interview with George Fernandes, 18 January 2004, New Delhi.

(20) L.K. Advani's presidential address to the BJP national executive, 11 April
1998, Office Secretary, BJP, New Delhi, 2000, p. 253.

(21) There seems to be a theoretical continuity between the NDA of 1999 and ‘a
National Government of Reconciliation’, as mooted by A.B. Vajpayee in 1989 as a
possible solution to the impasse that evolved over the leadership immediately
before the V.P. Singh-led National Front government took office in December
1989. Hindustan Times, 1 December 1989.

(22) For Amartya Sen, the rise of democracy is ‘the preeminent development of
the twentieth century … [and] when people look back at what happened in this
century they will find it difficult not to accord primacy to the emergence of
democracy as the preeminently acceptable form of governance’. Amartya Sen,
‘Democracy as a universal value’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 10 (3), 1999, p. 4.
For an interesting study of the recent trends in India's democracy, see Dipankar
Sinha, ‘Indian Democracy: Exclusion and Communication’, Economic and
Political Weekly, vol. 34 (32) 7 August 1999, pp. 2030–6. Sinha underlines the
relative eclipse of the state in the 1990s with the gradual ascendancy of the
market to a position that was previously held by the state.

(23) With the capture of power by the National Front in the ninth Lok Sabha poll
in 1989, this new phase began:

4 December 1989–10 December 1990: the National Front minority

coalition government, headed by V.P. Singh with external support
from the Left Front and the BJP.
10 November 1990–21 June 1991: The Chandrashekhar government
with outside support from the Congress following the withdrawal of
support by the BJP to the National Front in the wake of L.K. Advani's
well-publicized Rath-Yatra.
21 June 1991–28 July 1993–31 December, 1993: The P.V. Narasimha
Rao (Congress) minority government first survived a no-confidence
motion under peculiar circumstances and then succeeded in
fabricating a majority. The motion of no-confidence was defeated by
265 votes to 251 votes, with the help of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
and Janata Dal (Ajit). The government obtained a stable majority only
when some of these parliamentarians were formally admitted into the
Congress party.
1 June 1996–21 April 1997–28 November 1997: The H.D. Deve Gowda
and I.K. Gujral United Front minority government, both with
Page 15 of 18
Introduction

Congress support. Gujral continued as a caretaker prime minister till

18 March 1998.
19 March 1998–17 April, 1999: The BJP-led minority coalition with
outside support from the Telugu Desam, Trinamool Congress and
others. Vajpayee continued as caretaker prime minister till 12
October 1999.
13 October 1999–13 May 2004: The A.B. Vajpayee-led National
Democratic Alliance with support from as many as twenty-three
regional parties.
19 May 2004–till date: The Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive
Alliance with Indian National Congress as its leading partner and also
with the outside support of the Left Front constituents.

Source: Balveer Arora, ‘Political Parties and the Party System: The Emergence of
New Coalitions’ in Zoya Hasan (ed.), Parties and Party Politics in India, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 512.

(24) The BJP fielded 340 candidates in the 1999 election, as compared to 384 in
1978 and 471 in 1996.

(25) The national agenda for the NDA was therefore ‘aimed at changing the
content and culture of governance of this great nation, freeing it of the triple
curses of hunger (bhukh), fear (bhay) and corruption (bhrashtachar), and
transforming it into a New India that is prosperous, strong, self-confident and at
peace with itself and world’—The Agenda, National Democratic Alliance, p. 10.

(26) Even in its 1998 election manifesto, the BJP felt the need for constructive
dialogue, consultation, and cooperation among those regional and national
political forces involved in governance. The BJP Election Manifesto, 1998, p. 53.

(27) Article 370 of the Constitution of India guarantees special status for Jammu
and Kashmir by stating, inter alia, that ‘the power of Parliament to make laws for
the [state of Jammu and Kashmir] be limited to (i) those matters in the Union
List and the Concurrent List which in consultation with Government of the State
are declared by the President to correspond to matters specified in the
Instrument of Accession governing the accession of the State to the Dominion of
India as the matters with respect to which the Dominion Legislature make law
for that State, and (ii) such other matters in the said Lists, as, with the
concurrence of the Government of the State, the President may by order
specify’.

(28) Oliver Heath, ‘Anatomy of BJP's Rise to Power: Social, Regional and Political
Expansion in 1990s’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34 (34 and 35), 21 August
1999, pp. 2516–17.

Page 16 of 18
Introduction

(29) Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds), The BJP and the
Compulsions of Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p.
10. This confluence, argue Hansen and Jaffrelot, resulted in the eclipse of the
Congress in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in the
1980s, and most of north India, especially from the late 1980s onwards. The
interesting feature of especially northern and western India is, they further
state, ‘that the protracted demise of the Congress here has been executed
interchangeably by the Janata Party, Samajwadi Party, and other parties
appealing to the upward-mobile OBCs and peasant communities’.

(30) Oliver Heath, ‘Anatomy of BJP's Rise to Power: Social, Regional and Political
Expansion in 1990s’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34 (34 and 35), 21 August
1999, p. 2517.

(31) Suhas Palshikar, ‘The Regional Parties and Democracy: Romantic

Rendezvous or Localized Legitimation?’, Ajay K. Mehra, D.D. Khanna, and Gert
W. Kueck (eds), Political Parties and Party Systems, New Delhi: Sage, 2003, p.
329.

(32) While pondering over ‘the politics of coalition’ in the context of the 2004 Lok
Sabha poll, representatives from the Congress, CPI (M), and Rashtriya Janata
Dal were unanimous on the ‘inevitability’ of coalition government at the Centre.
But there were sharp differences on whether it was an outcome of political
expediency, simply a question of political accommodation, or one that should
only be determined by a common minimum programme. For the BJP
spokesperson, coalition politics ‘has ceased to be a question of preferences, it
has become inevitable’, while Laloo Prasad Yadav, the RJD leader, attributed the
success of a coalition to a common minimum programme of ‘ousting the BJP and
its frontal organizations and save the country from disaster’. Concurring that
coalition politics has emerged as ‘a viable option’, the CPI (M) chief minister of
West Bengal referred to the Left Front experiment in West Bengal as an example
of a coalition demonstrating that coming together of parties is possible ‘without
stooping to political opportunism’. Critical of the fragile basis of the NDA that
drew on inherent contradictions of Hindutva, and by underscoring the necessity
of ‘political morality’, he further argued that ‘without ideological coalition no
coalition can survive’. The Hindu, 2 March 2004.

(33) Yogendra Yadav, ‘Reconfiguration in Indian Politics: State Assembly

Elections, 1993–1995, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 31 (2 and 3), 13–20
January, 1996, pp. 96–100.

(34) While analysing the 2003 assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhatishgarh, and Delhi, an expert comments that ‘amidst the usual scramble
for seats and alliances, there is healthy silence on religion and caste’ in this
election. ‘The strident rhetoric of Hindu nationalism seems to have died, and

Page 17 of 18
Introduction

even the talk about Sonia's origin lacks conviction’. … Thus. ‘bijlee (electricity),
sadak (road), pani (water)’ has entered our political lexicon for the present
‘mandir, masjid and mandal—[which is indicative of] a dramatic change in the
Indian political mindset in fifty years’. Gurcharan Das, ‘The Hope of a New
Politics’, the Times of India, 22 February 2004.

Access brought to you by:

Page 18 of 18
Coalition Politics in India

FORGING POWER: Coalition Politics in India

BIDYUT CHAKRABARTY

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780195676761
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.001.0001

Coalition Politics in India

A Cultural Synergy or Political Expediency?

Bidyut Chakrabarty

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195676761.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explores the history of the coalition politics in India. Coalitions are
articulated within an institutional framework, and two specific methods for this
have been concretized in Indian constitutional law and practice. It suggests that
the historical roots of coalition politics can be traced back to the nationalist
movement, especially to the Gandhian conceptualization of Swaraj while its
social roots can be found in the breakdown of the federal and coalitional pillars
of the Congress in the 1970s which reinvigorated regional politics. It describes
the links among the processes that contributed to a significant metaphorphosis
of India's federal system, which highlights its multi-cultural spirit and suggests
that the role of federalism in strengthening India's pluralist character can be
traced back to the complex processes in which federalism is conceptualized
historically.

Keywords: coalition politics, India, constitutional law, national movement, Swaraj, regional politics,
federal system, Congress in 1970s, federalism

Coalition building has, invariably, been integral to democratic politics and

governance. In its broadest sense, the initiation of a coalition implies the
suggestion of a series of measures to secure consensus among diverse social
groups and communities in the pursuit of a common minimum programme.1 In
the competitive environment of democratic society, several agencies—including

Page 1 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

broad mass movements, political parties, and governments—are therefore

constantly involved in building coalitions. The significance of coalition politics
can be perceived even more acutely in the context of socially plural societies.

Keeping the inevitability of governance through formation of coalitions in mind,

several west European countries, such as France and Italy, have mastered the
art of building, consolidating, and justifying coalition governments. When a
single political party fails to achieve a clear majority in the legislature, coalition
government becomes an authentic mode for managing interaction between the
legislature and the executive. In the process, the executive is able to garner
staying power by winning key votes in the legislature. The politics of coalition,
as well as the functioning of multi-party coalition governments, have matured
and stabilized in the context of several European countries.2

Historical Roots
The roots of coalition politics in India can be traced back to the nationalist
movement, especially to the Gandhian conceptualization of Swaraj. While it is
true that the non-Western leaders involved in the struggle for liberation were
deeply influenced by European nationalist ideas, they were also aware (p.20) of
the limitations of these concepts in the non-European socio-economic context
due to their alien origin. While mobilizing the imagined community for an
essentially political cause, they therefore began, by the beginning of the
twentieth century, to speak in a ‘native’ vocabulary. As a consequence, while
drawing upon the ideas of European nationalism, they transformed them
substantially by discovering or inventing indigenous idioms, and investing them
with additional nuances, which is probably why Gandhi and his colleagues in the
anti-British campaign in India preferred swadeshi3 to nationalism.

Gandhi avoided the idiom of nationalism since he was aware that the Congress
flirtations with nationalist ideas in the first quarter of the twentieth century
repelled not only the Muslims and other minorities, but also sections of lower-
caste Hindus. This appears to be the most pragmatic idea conceivable for a
country such as India, which was not united in terms of religion, race, culture,
and common historical memories of oppression and struggle. Underlying this
lies the reason why Gandhi and his colleagues in the Congress preferred ‘the
relaxed and chaotic plurality of the traditional Indian life to the order and
homogeneity of the European nation state [because they realized] that the open,
plural and relatively heterogeneous traditional Indian civilization would best
unite Indians’.4

Drawing on values meaningful to the Indian masses, the Indian freedom struggle
developed its own modular forms that were characteristically different from
those of the West. Although the 1947 Great Divide of the Indian subcontinent
was articulated in terms of religion5, the nationalist language drawing upon the

Page 2 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

exclusivity of Islam appeared inadequate for sustaining Pakistan, resulting in the

creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

As an idea and strategy, Swaraj gained remarkably in the context of the

nationalist articulation of the freedom struggle and the growing democratization
of the political processes that already inducted hitherto socio-politically
marginal sections of society. Swaraj was a great leveller—it helped mobilize
people despite obvious socio-economic and cultural differences, which was a
major reason behind its success as a political strategy. Underlining its role in a
highly divided society such as India's, Swaraj was defined6 in the following ways:
(a) national independence; (b) political freedom of the individual; (c) economic
freedom of the individual; and (d) spiritual freedom of the individual—all
implying self-rule.

Although these four definitions are about four different characteristics of

Swaraj, they are nonetheless complementary to each other. Of these, the first
three are negative in character, while the fourth is positive in its connotation.
Swaraj as ‘national independence’, and individual ‘political’ (p.21) and
‘economic’ freedom involves discontinuity of alien rule, absence of exploitation
by individuals, and an end to poverty, respectively. Spiritual freedom, on the
other hand, is positive in character in the sense that it is a state of being which
everyone aspires to actualize once the first three conditions are met. In other
words, there is an implicit assumption that self-rule is conditional on the absence
of the clearly-defined negative factors that stood in the way of realizing Swaraj
in its undiluted moral sense.

Even in his conceptualization, Gandhi preferred the term Swaraj to its English
translation—presumably due to the difficulty of deriving the exact synonym in
another language.7 The coalition of forces that Gandhi brought together drew
largely on Swaraj—it provided the ideological glue, as it were, to the nationalist
campaign.8 Further, it demonstrates the importance of a process whereby
ideology gets articulated in a particular fashion, underlining the significance of
India's multi-cultural socio-economic environment. Coalition is, therefore, an
ideology of multi-cultural existence with varied manifestations in different
historical phases of Indian history.

Institutional Roots of Coalition Politics in India

Coalitions are articulated within an institutional framework, and two specific
methods for this have been concretized in Indian constitutional law and practice.
The Constitution is illustrative of various devices for creating and sustaining
norms, values, and practices that are integral to the multi-cultural Indian reality,
despite the fact that it has the imprint of the 1935 imperial constitution.
However, a clear change is visible in the working of constitutional institutions,
presumably due to the changing ideological character of the polity in which they

Page 3 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

function and translate the democratic ethos of the polity in the aftermath of the
1947 transfer of power in India.

Despite its imperial roots, the Constitution served a useful purpose in sustaining
India's multi-culturality. Besides, the prevalent socio-economic context, in which
British governmental practices are enmeshed, seems to be an important
influence in this process. The Constitution's greatest success, as a constitutional
expert comments, ‘lies below the surface of government. It has provided a
framework for social and political development—a rational, institutional basis of
political behaviour. It not only establishes the national ideal but, more
importantly, it lays down the rational, institutional manner in which they are to
be pursued—a gigantic step for a people committed largely to irrational means
of achieving other-worldly goals’.9 (p.22)

The Indian Constitution worked favourably presumably because it was based on

consensus, and the principle of accommodation. While the first is a manner of
making decisions by ‘unanimity’ or ‘near unanimity’, the latter refers to the
ability to reconcile, or harmonize. With accommodation, concepts and viewpoints
that seem incompatible stand intact. They are not simply bypassed or entirely
ignored, they are worked out rather simultaneously. Accommodation is therefore
a matter of belief and attitude. As explained by a commentator, ‘The most
notable characteristic in every field of Indian society … is the constant attempt
to reconcile conflicting views or actions, to discover a workable compromise, to
avoid seeing the human situation in terms of all black or all white’.10 Indian
constitutional structure is an excellent example of consensus and
accommodation—as the proceedings in the Constituent Assembly and the
evolution of constitutional practices demonstrate.

Nature of the Indian Union: Constitutional Inputs

Due to peculiar historical circumstances, the consensus that emerged in the
Constituent Assembly was in favour of a Union with a strong Centre.11
Arguments were marshalled for a parliamentary form of government; the
colonial experience was a constant reference point. In devising Union-state
relations, the founding fathers were influenced by the principles underlying the
constitutions of Canada and Australia, which had parliamentary federalism, and
the United States, which had presidential system. The 1935 Government of India
Act seems to have influenced the assembly to a large extent, though the 1950
Constitution was substantially different in spirit and ideology. As it finally
emerged, the Constitution has important ‘federal’ features, but cannot be
characterized as federal in its classical sense. What turned out is a unique
document that is, as Ambedkar had articulated, ‘unitary in extraordinary
circumstances such as war and other calamities and federal under normal
circumstances’. India is therefore described as ‘a Union of states’ in which the
Union is ‘indestructible’, but not the constituent states as their contour and
identity can be ‘altered’ or even ‘obliterated’. There was a consensus and the

Page 4 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

assembly rejected a motion seeking to characterize India as ‘a federation of

states’. Challenging the motion, Ambedkar sought to expose the logical
weaknesses and practical difficulties of imitating the classical federation such as
that of the US by saying (p.23)

… though India was to be a federation, the federation was not the result of
an agreement by the States to join in a federation, and that the federation
not being the result of an agreement, no State has the right to secede from
it. The Federation is a Union because it is indestructible. Though the
country and the people may be divided into different States for
convenience of administration, the country is one integral whole, its people
a single people living under a single imperium derived from a single
source. The Americans had to wage a civil war to establish that the States
have no right of secession and that their federation was indestructible. The
Drafting Committee thought that it was better to make it clear at the
outset rather than to leave it to speculation or to disputes.12

As evident in the discussion in the Constituent Assembly, the framers referred

mainly to two traditions: the British and the American. But in the background
was always a third stream, understandably downplayed by Ambedkar and other
members—the ideas of Reginald Coupland and K.C. Wheare, who appeared to
have provided the foundational basis of the constitutional experiments in the
British dominions. It is, after all, the 1935 Government of India Act to which is
owed not only the federal structure and the legislative acts, but also the
continuance of the unified legal and financial systems, and such distinctive
features as group rights, the machinery for resolution of inter-state water
disputes, state governors, and Article 356.

There had, of course, been strong opposition to the ‘federal’ provisions of the
1935 act that envisaged the future accession of the princes, including the right
of secession that figured unambiguously in the 1942 Cripps Mission proposals.
The 1946 Cabinet Mission also endorsed the plan for a central government with
very limited powers and relatively strong provinces having considerable degree
of autonomy with residuary powers. Despite inputs supporting a weak Centre,
the 1950 Constitution provided a scheme of distribution of power that was
heavily tilted in favour of a strong Centre. The decision to go for a strong Centre
at the cost of regional autonomy was perhaps conditioned by pragmatic
considerations of maintaining the national integrity that had received a severe
jolt with the 1947 Partition—hence there was the deliberate omission of the
word ‘federal’ in the final draft of the Constitution. By accepting the ‘federal’
form, the framers of the Indian Constitution gave ‘recognition’ to the multi-
dimensional, socio-political, and geographical Indian reality.

Page 5 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

It is clear that the framers of the Constitution were in favour of a federation with
a strong Centre. To avoid future friction between the Centre and the constituent
states, the Constitution incorporated an elaborate distribution of governmental
powers—legislative, administrative, and financial—between the Union and
provincial governments. Despite a (p.24) detailed distribution of power
between the two levels of government, the Union government is constitutionally
stronger—simply because the framers wanted it so.

Parliament in India
In the history of India's constitutional development, the idea of parliamentary
sovereignty was pre-eminent—despite Gandhi's characterization of Parliament
as ‘a prostitute’. Gandhi's intervention in the debate actually led to a search for
an indigenous model of governance more suited to Indian traditions.13 It
however had no imprint in either the 1916 Lucknow pact, or the 1928 Nehru
Report. In the latter, an argument was made to defend ‘the Dominion model of
Parliament … and an executive responsible to that Parliament’. As the report
further underlined, ‘what India wants and what Britain has undertaken to give
her, is nothing less than Responsible Government [and] the assimilated tradition
of England has become the basis of Indian thought’ in this regard.14

The Nehru Report appears to have provided the foundation on which the
discussion on India's constitutional future was based. Replacing the old central
legislature, the Constituent Assembly, elected by members of the Provincial
assemblies, was to be a temporary legislature as well as framer of the future.15 A
brief scan of the debates on this question is useful to understand how the idea of
parliamentary sovereignty was articulated by those who appeared to have been
heavily influenced by the British tradition. Seeking to draw attention to other
constitutions, Ambedkar, chairman of the assembly, thus underlined, ‘we have to
look to countries other than Britain to be able to form a correct estimate of the
position of a Constituent Assembly. I have no doubt [that] you will pay … greater
attention to the provisions of the American Constitution than to those of any
other’.16

Apart from Ambedkar's prefacing remarks, the Objective Resolution, moved by

Jawaharlal Nehru, had cast a major influence on the shape of the 1950
Constitution. Nehru was unambiguous in his preference for a political system
drawing sustenance from the people, by saying that ‘all power and authority of
the sovereign Independent India, its constituent parts and organs of government
are derived from the people’. What follows from this, as Nehru further argues,
‘we stand for democracy [but] what form of democracy and what shape it might
take is another matter … for this House to determine’.17

The Objective Resolution and Ambedkar's inaugural address continued to remain

decisive in the deliberations on the charting of India's Constitution. (p.25) The
most clearly spelt-out argument in favour of parliamentary government was

Page 6 of 46
Coalition Politics in India

made in the reports of the two committees, set up in April 1947 to determine
‘the principles of a model provincial constitution’ and ‘the principles of the union
constitution’. While introducing the reports in the Constitutent assembly, Patel
clearly expressed that the members of those committees ‘came to the conclusion
that it would suit the conditions of this country better to adopt the parliamentary
system of constitution, the British type of constitution with which we are
familiar. … The Provincial Constitution Committee has accordingly suggested
that this constitution shall be a parliamentary type of cabinet’.18 Endorsing
Patel's sentiment, N.V. Gadgil, a member of the committee which determined the
principles of the Union Constitution, argued that ‘we have been brought up in an
atmosphere which has been conducive to the establishment of what are
generally accustomed to term Parliamentary Responsible Government. … The
system of government in Britain must be followed here. That system could not
be blamed for the strife in India; in fact, the trouble was that the system had,
properly speaking, not yet been put in operation in India'.19

As Parliament was to be elected by adult suffrage, the Muslim members were

critical of the reports, apprehending that the British kind of parliamentary
sovereignty would invariably lead to ‘the oppression of minorities’ by the
majority. What was articulated as the Muslim opinion was also fractured.
Reflecting the general mood of the assembly and also the division among its
Muslim members, Hussain Imam seems to have been persuaded by the
arguments in favour of parliamentary government. He thus confessed that
‘opinion in India is so much in favour of the British model that is not practical
politics to try to sing the praises’ of other systems.20 The reports were accepted
as they were, though the discussion in the assembly clearly shows a clear
division among its members.21

By November 1947, the Draft Constitution was ready. While presenting it before
the assembly, Ambedkar identified its basic characteristics by announcing that

there is nothing in common between the form of government prevalent in

America and that proposed under the Draft Constitution. … What the Draft
Constitution proposes is the Parliamentary system. … The president of the
Indian Union will be generally bound by the advice of his Ministers. … and
the Ministers are members of Parliament. … The daily assessment of
responsibility which is not available under the American system is, it is felt,
far more effective than the periodic assessment, and far more necessary in
a country like India.22 (p.26)

Ambedkar elaborated on the structure of the proposed form of governance,

drawn on the Westminster model of democracy, in which Parliament reigned
supreme. The model seemed to be most suitable to India since ‘experience with
quasi-parliamentary institutions had become an essential part of Indian
conditions’.23 K.M. Munshi was more categorical, while reinforcing Ambedkar's

Page 7 of 46
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