Political Science · Ch 12 — Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System
Fourth General Elections, 1967
Fourth General Elections, 1967
The 1967 elections were a turning point in Indian politics. For the first time since Independence, the Congress party’s dominance was seriously challenged. The results were so unexpected that many called it a “political earthquake.” To understand why, you need to see what was happening in the country before the elections.
Context of the elections
The years just before 1967 were difficult for India. Two Prime Ministers — Nehru in 1964 and Shastri in 1966 — had died in quick succession. Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister in 1966, was seen as a political novice and had been in office for less than a year when the elections were called.
On top of this political instability, the economy was in deep trouble. There were successive monsoon failures and widespread drought. Agricultural production fell, leading to a serious food shortage. Foreign exchange reserves were depleted. Industrial production and exports dropped. At the same time, military expenditure rose sharply, and resources were diverted away from planning and economic development.
One of the first major decisions of the Indira Gandhi government was to devalue the Indian rupee. This was done under pressure from the US. Before devaluation, one US dollar could be bought for less than Rs 5; after devaluation, it cost more than Rs 7. This triggered a sharp rise in prices.
People began protesting against the rising prices of essential goods, food scarcity, growing unemployment, and the overall economic condition. Bandhs and hartals became frequent across the country. The government treated these protests as law and order problems rather than genuine expressions of people’s hardships. This only increased public bitterness and unrest.
The communist and socialist parties launched struggles for greater equality. A group of communists split from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), which led armed agrarian struggles and organised peasant agitations. This period also saw some of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots since Independence.
Non-Congressism
Opposition parties were at the forefront of organising public protests and pressuring the government. They realised that a major reason the Congress kept winning was that the opposition vote was divided among many parties. So, parties with very different programmes and ideologies came together to form anti-Congress fronts in some states and entered into electoral adjustments (seat-sharing) in others.
They believed that Indira Gandhi’s inexperience and the internal factionalism within the Congress gave them a real chance to topple the ruling party.
The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia gave this strategy the name ‘non-Congressism’. He also provided a theoretical justification: Congress rule was undemocratic and opposed to the interests of ordinary poor people. Therefore, the coming together of all non-Congress parties was necessary to reclaim democracy for the people.
Electoral verdict
The fourth general elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies were held in February 1967, in this atmosphere of widespread discontent and political polarisation. For the first time, the Congress faced the electorate without Nehru.
The results were a shock. At the national level, the Congress did manage to get a majority in the Lok Sabha, but it was its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952. Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet lost their seats. Major political stalwarts who were defeated included:
- Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu
- S.K. Patil in Maharashtra
- Atulya Ghosh in West Bengal
- K.B. Sahay in Bihar
The change was even more dramatic at the state level. The Congress lost its majority in seven states. In two more states, defections prevented it from forming a government. These nine states were spread across the country:
| Region | States where Congress lost power |
|---|---|
| North | Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh |
| Central | Madhya Pradesh |
| East | Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa |
| South | Madras (now Tamil Nadu) |
| West/South | Kerala |
In Madras State, a regional party — the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — came to power with a clear majority. This was the first time any non-Congress party had won a majority on its own in any state. The DMK had led a massive anti-Hindi agitation by students against the centre’s decision to impose Hindi as the official language.
In the other eight states, coalition governments of different non-Congress parties were formed. A popular saying at the time was that you could take a train from Delhi to Howrah and not pass through a single Congress-ruled state. For people used to seeing Congress in power everywhere, this was a strange new feeling.
Coalitions
The 1967 elections brought the phenomenon of coalitions into Indian politics. Since no single party had a majority in many states, various non-Congress parties came together to form joint legislative parties, called Samyukt Vidhayak Dal (SVD) in Hindi. These SVD governments were coalitions of ideologically very different parties.
For example, the SVD government in Bihar included:
- Two socialist parties — the SSP and the PSP
- The Communist Party of India (CPI) on the left
- The Jana Sangh on the right
In Punjab, the coalition was called the Popular United Front. It included:
- Two rival Akali parties (Sant group and Master group)
- Both communist parties — CPI and CPI(M)
- The SSP, the Republican Party, and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh
Defection
Another important feature of post-1967 politics was the role of defections in the making and unmaking of state governments. Defection means an elected representative leaves the party on whose symbol he or she was elected and joins another party. …
The figure is a political cartoon from 1974, drawn by the cartoonist Kutty. It shows Charan Singh, a prominent leader of the time, trying to build a "United Front of non-communist parties." The cartoon captures the difficulty of this task by showing Charan Singh struggling to hold together a large, unwieldy bundle of sticks. Each stick is labelled with the name of a different political party or faction — the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Congress (O) — the Organisation Congress that had split from Indira Gandhi's wing — the Socialist Party, and others. The bundle is clearly too big for one person to manage, and the sticks are slipping out of his grasp. …
The figure is a reproduction of a newspaper article titled "India's Disintegrating Democracy", published in the London Times in 1967. The article is by Neville Maxwell, a journalist who argued that India's democratic experiment had failed and that the army would become the only alternative source of authority.
The figure shows the article's headline and a portion of its text. The caption quotes Maxwell's grim prediction: "...in India, as present trends continue… maintenance of an ordered structure of society is going to slip out of reach of an ordered structure of civil government and the army will be only alternative source of authority and order. …the great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed."
The textbook places this figure in the section on the Fourth General Elections, 1967. The point is to show how dramatically the political landscape had shifted. After decades of Congress dominance, the 1967 elections produced hung assemblies and coalition governments in several states. For observers used to single-party majority rule, this was shocking — a "political earthquake." The article's alarmist tone reflects the panic of the time: many believed that without a strong single-party government, India would collapse into chaos. …
The figure is a political cartoon from the NCERT textbook, placed at the end of the section on the 1967 elections and coalition governments. It shows a man — likely a cartoonist’s representation of a common citizen or a political commentator — standing in front of a large map of India. The map is not drawn to scale and does not show authentic external boundaries; it is a schematic outline used for illustration.
On the map, several states are shaded or marked to indicate where non-Congress governments came to power after the 1967 elections. The caption below the cartoon reads: “Is non-Congressism relevant today? Can it be applied against Left Front in today’s West Bengal?” This is a direct question to the reader, linking the historical strategy of non-Congressism to a contemporary (at the time of the textbook’s writing) political situation — the long-standing Left Front government in West Bengal.
The cartoon’s main visual point is the contrast between the past and the present. In 1967, the idea of non-Congress parties uniting to defeat the Congress was novel and dramatic. The cartoonist is asking: now that coalition governments and hung assemblies are common (the text notes “We see them all the time”), does the old strategy of non-Congressism still make sense? And can it be used against a different dominant party — the Left Front — in a specific state? …
The cartoon by Kutty, placed in the section on coalitions after the 1967 elections, shows a man — clearly meant to be Charan Singh — trying to build a structure out of large, irregular blocks. Each block is labelled with the name of a political party: SSP, PSP, CPI, Jana Sangh, and others. The blocks do not fit together neatly; they are odd shapes, with gaps and mismatched edges. Charan Singh is shown struggling to push or arrange them into a stable tower or wall.
The caption reads: “What’s so unusual in hung assemblies and coalition governments? We see them all the time.” This is ironic. The cartoonist is pointing out that by the 1970s, coalition governments had become so common that they no longer seemed strange — yet the difficulty of making them work, especially when ideologically opposite parties were forced together, remained. The awkward, ill-fitting blocks represent the “Samyukt Vidhayak Dal” (SVD) governments formed after 1967, where parties like the socialist SSP and PSP sat alongside the communist CPI and the right-wing Jana Sangh. The cartoon teaches that while coalitions became routine, they were inherently unstable because the partners had little in common except their opposition to the Con …
The figure is a political cartoon by the cartoonist Kutty, published in 1974. It shows a man — clearly meant to be Charan Singh, a prominent non-Congress leader of the time — trying to build a "United Front" of non-communist parties. The cartoon captures the difficulty of this task.
In the drawing, Charan Singh is shown struggling to hold together a large, unwieldy bundle of sticks. Each stick represents a different political party or faction. The bundle is labelled "United Front of non-communist parties." The sticks are of different lengths and thicknesses, and they keep slipping out of his grasp — suggesting that these parties are fundamentally incompatible and hard to keep together. The expression on his face is one of strain and frustration. …