Indian National Congress

or Congress Party

Broadly based political party of India, founded in 1885.

The Congress Party was a moderate reform party until 1917, when it was taken over by its "extremist" Home Rule wing (see Bal Gangadhar Tilak). In the 1920s and '30s, under Mohandas K. Gandhi, it promoted noncooperation to protest the feebleness of the constitutional reforms of 1919. During World War II, the party announced that India would not support the war until granted complete independence. In 1947 an Indian independence bill became law, and in 1950 the constitution took effect. Jawaharlal Nehru dominated the party from 1951 to 1964. The Indian National Congress formed most of India's governments from 1947 to 1996, but at the end of the 20th century, its support plummeted. After several years out of power, it returned to government in 2004.

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▪ political party, India

Introduction

byname  Congress Party 

      broadly based political party of India. Formed in 1885, the Indian National Congress dominated the Indian movement for independence from Great Britain and has formed most of India's governments from the time of independence.

History

The pre-independence period

      The Indian National Congress first convened in December 1885, though the idea of an Indian nationalist movement opposed to British rule dated from the 1850s. During its first several decades, the Congress passed fairly moderate reform resolutions, though many within the organization were becoming radicalized by the increased poverty that accompanied British imperialism. In the early 20th century, elements within the party began to endorse a policy of swadeshi (“of our own country”), which called for the boycott of imported British goods and the promotion of Indian-made goods. By 1917 the group's “extremist” Home Rule wing, which was formed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Tilak, Bal Gangadhar) and Annie Besant (Besant, Annie) the previous year, had begun to exert significant influence by appealing to India's diverse social classes.

      In the 1920s and '30s the Congress, led by Mohandas Gandhi (Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand), promoted nonviolent noncooperation to protest the perceived feebleness of the constitutional reforms of 1919 and Britain's manner of carrying them out. Much of this civil disobedience was implemented through the All India Congress Committee, formed in 1929, which advocated tax avoidance to protest British rule. Another wing of the Congress Party, which believed in working within the existing system, contested general elections in 1923 and 1937 as the Swaraj (Home Rule) Party, with particular success in the latter year, winning 7 out of 11 provinces.

      When World War II began, Britain made India a belligerent without consulting Indian elected councils. This angered Indian officials and prompted the Congress to declare that India would not support the war effort until it had been granted complete independence. In 1942 the organization sponsored mass civil disobedience to support the demand that the British “quit India.” After the war the British government of Clement Attlee (Attlee, Clement, 1st Earl Attlee of Walthamstow, Viscount Prestwood) passed an independence bill (1947), and in January 1950 India's constitution as an independent state took effect.

Postindependence: from dominance to decline

      From 1951 until his death in 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru (Nehru, Jawaharlal) dominated the Congress Party, which won overwhelming victories in the elections of 1951–52, 1957, and 1962. The party united in 1964 to elect Lal Bahadur Shastri (Shastri, Lal Bahadur) and in 1966 Indira Gandhi (Gandhi, Indira) (Nehru's daughter) to the posts of party leader and thus prime minister. In 1967, however, Indira Gandhi faced open revolt within the party, and in 1969 she was expelled from the party by a group called the “Syndicate.” Nevertheless, her New Congress Party scored a landslide victory in the 1971 elections, and for a period it was unclear which party was the true rightful heir of the Indian National Congress label.

      In the mid-1970s the New Congress Party's popular support began to fracture. From 1975 Gandhi's government grew increasingly more authoritarian, and unrest among the opposition grew. In the parliamentary elections held in March 1977, the opposition Janata Party scored a landslide victory over the Congress Party, winning 295 seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's Parliament) against 153 for the Congress; Gandhi herself lost to her Janata opponent. On Jan. 2, 1978, she and her followers seceded and formed a new opposition party, popularly called Congress (I)—the “I” signifying Indira. Over the next year, her new party attracted enough members of the legislature to become the official opposition, and in 1981 the national election commission declared it the “real” Indian National Congress. In 1996 the “I” designation was dropped. In November 1979 Gandhi regained a parliamentary seat, and the following year she was again elected prime minister. In 1982 her son Rajiv Gandhi (Gandhi, Rajiv) became nominal head of the party, and, upon her assassination in October 1984, he became prime minister. In December he led the Congress Party to an overwhelming victory in which it secured 401 seats in the legislature.

      Although the Congress Party remained the largest party in Parliament in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi was unseated as prime minister by a coalition of opposition parties. While campaigning to regain power in May 1991, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber associated with the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group in Sri Lanka. He was succeeded as party leader by P.V. Narasimha Rao (Rao, P.V. Narasimha), who was elected prime minister in June 1991. In contrast to the party's historical socialist policies, Rao embraced economic liberalization. By 1996 the party's image was suffering from various reports of corruption, and in elections that year the Congress Party was reduced to its lowest number of seats ever in the Lok Sabha, becoming Parliament's third largest party. Rao subsequently resigned as prime minister and, in September, as party president. He was succeeded as president by Sitaram Kesri, the party's first non- Brahman leader.

      The United Front government—a coalition of 13 parties—came to power as a minority government with the support of the Congress Party. However, as the largest single party in opposition in Parliament after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; Indian People's Party), the Congress Party was vital in both making and defeating the United Front. In November 1997 the Congress Party withdrew its support from the United Front, prompting elections in February 1998. To boost its popularity among the masses and improve the party's performance in the forthcoming elections, the Congress Party leaders urged Sonia Gandhi (Gandhi, Sonia)—the Italian-born widow of Rajiv Gandhi—to assume the leadership of the party. She had previously declined overtures to play an active role in party affairs, but this time she agreed to campaign. Although a BJP-led coalition government came to power, the Congress Party and its partners were able to deny the BJP an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. The party's better-than-expected performance in the national elections was attributed by many observers to Sonia Gandhi's charisma and vigorous campaigning. After the 1998 elections, Kesri resigned as party president, and Sonia Gandhi assumed the leadership of the party.

      National elections were again held in 1999, when one of the BJP's major allies, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party, withdrew its support. Despite aggressive campaigning by the leaders of the Congress Party, the party suffered its worst-ever electoral performance. Nevertheless, in the 2004 national elections the party scored a surprising victory and returned to power. Gandhi, however, declined an invitation to become prime minister and instead supported Manmohan Singh (Singh, Manmohan), a former finance minister, who in May 2004 became the country's first Sikh prime minister.

Policy and structure

      The Congress Party is a hierarchically structured party. Delegates from state and district parties attend an annual national conference, which elects a president and the All India Congress Committee. However, the 20-member Congress Working Committee, the majority of whose members are appointed by the party president (handpicked by the prime minister when the party is in power), wields enormous influence. The party is also organized into various committees and sections (e.g., youth and women's groups), and it publishes a daily newspaper, the National Herald. Mirroring the party's declining fortunes, the party's membership dropped from nearly 40 million in the mid-1990s to under 20 million at the beginning of the 21st century.

      The party has traditionally supported socialist economic policies within the framework of a mixed economy. In the 1990s, however, it endorsed market reforms, including privatization and the deregulation of the economy. It also has supported secular policies that encourage equal rights for all citizens, including those in lower castes. Throughout much of the Cold War period, the Congress Party championed a foreign policy of nonalignment, which called for India to form ties with both the West and communist countries but to avoid formal alliances with either. Nonetheless, American support for Pakistan led the party to endorse a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971.

Additional Reading

The history of the Indian National Congress is traced in B.N. Pande (ed.), A Centenary History of the Indian National Congress (1985– ); and A. Moin Zaidi and Shaheda Zaidi (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Indian National Congress (1976– ). The party's policy and history are also discussed in Mike Shepperdson and Colin Simmons (eds.), The Indian National Congress and the Political Economy of India, 1885–1985 (1988); Paul R. Brass and Francis Robinson (eds.), The Indian National Congress and Indian Society, 1885–1985: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Dominance (1987); Jim Masselos (ed.), Struggling and Ruling: The Indian National Congress, 1885–1985 (1987); S.R. Mehrotra, A History of the Indian National Congress (1995– ); and N.R. Ray, Ravinder Kumar, and M.N. Das, Concise History of the Indian National Congress, 1885–1947 (1985).

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