Question

Examine political liberalism in 19th century india about 500 words

Answer 1

The 1949 Constitution gave to Indians some of the liberal rights that the British and Americans had come to expect by then. In addition, India extended franchise to everyone: all adults had the right to vote in the republic. That was earlier than even most developed countries had provided to their citizens at that time. But on most political issues, India adopted Nehru’s socialist model, that included a significant dilution in property rights, among others. The government entered businesses as its primary activity, to help it achieve the ‘commanding heights of the economy.’ Government factories sprung up quickly and began churning out shirts, watches, fridges, scooters, bicycles, milk, bread, and cheese.

Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, the second Governor-General of India and a Bharat Ratna, and Minoo Masani, and economists like B.R. Shenoy advocated greater freedom. However, they were unable to over-ride the Indian fascination with socialism. Rajagopalachari (informally called Rajaji) was a close colleague of Nehru during the independence movement. But soon after independence he quickly began to see the risks to India of letting Nehru’s fervour with socialism go unchallenged. Despite having fought for independence by Nehru’s side, and without regard for his own advanced age (Rajaji was 80 by then), Rajaji decided to act to block Nehru’s onslaught on freedom. He parted ways with the Indian Congress in 1957 and formed the Swatantra Party which supported classical liberal principles and free enterprise.[1] For the next 14 years till his death in 1972 he waged a battle with Nehru’s Indian National Congress party to advance freedom. But as Nehru was extremely popular at that time, and also had the resources of the government at his command, Rajaji’s was inevitably a losing battle.

The Swatantra Party stands for the protection of the individual citizen against the increasing trespasses of the State. It is an answer to the challenge of the so-called Socialism of the Indian Congress party. It is founded on the conviction that social justice and welfare can be attained through the fostering of individual interest and individual enterprise in all fields better than through State ownership and Government control. It is based on the truth that bureaucratic management leads to loss of incentive and waste of resources. When the State trespasses beyond what is legitimately within its province, it just hands over the management from those who are interested in frugal and efficient management to bureaucracy which is untrained and uninterested except in its own survival. The Swatantra Party is founded on the claim that individual citizens should be free to hold their property and carry on their professions freely and through binding mutual agreements among themselves and that the State should assist and encourage in every possible way the individual in this freedom, but not seek to replace him.— Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari writing about his party in 1960

Rajaji’s opposition arguably helped India minimize the excesses of socialism. His party held 44 seats in Parliament in the 4th Lok Sabha (1967–71). Swatantra was also part of the opposition to the Nath Pai Bill that advocated primacy for the Directive Principles of State Policy over Fundamental Rights. There were many other occasions when Swatantra acted as the voice of reason in a very unreasonable time. Making use of the free press and democracy, Swatantra pressed on for freedom, regardless of the difficulties it faced, but ran out of steam in 1973. Since then, many new thinkers such as Sanjeev Sabhlok, SV Raju, Sharad Joshi, Barun Mitra, Parth Shah, Gurcharan Das, Sauvik Chakraverti, and many others have emerged on the Indian liberal scene, contributing to the debate on freedom in India, and advancing classical liberalism.