Political Science · Ch 12 — Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System
Split in the Congress
Split in the Congress
The Congress that won the 1967 elections was a very different party from the one that had dominated Indian politics for two decades. It held on to power at the Centre, but with a sharply reduced majority, and it lost control of several state governments. More important than the numbers was the psychological blow: the 1967 results proved that the Congress could be defeated at the polls. Yet no single alternative party had emerged to replace it. Most of the non-Congress coalition governments that formed in the states were short-lived. They lost their majorities quickly, forcing either new political combinations or the imposition of President's rule.
The real challenge to Indira Gandhi's leadership came not from the opposition, but from within her own party. She had to contend with the 'Syndicate' — a powerful group of senior Congress leaders who controlled the party's organisation.
The Congress Syndicate
The Syndicate was an informal name for a group of influential leaders who had a firm grip on the party machinery. It was led by K. Kamaraj, a former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and then the President of the Congress party. Kamaraj was a freedom fighter who, having suffered educational deprivation himself, worked to spread education in Madras province and introduced the mid-day meal scheme for schoolchildren. In 1963, he had proposed the 'Kamaraj plan', under which senior Congressmen would resign from office to make way for younger workers.
The Syndicate included other powerful state leaders:
- S. K. Patil of Bombay city (later Mumbai)
- S. Nijalingappa of Mysore (later Karnataka)
- N. Sanjeeva Reddy of Andhra Pradesh
- Atulya Ghosh of West Bengal
Both Lal Bahadur Shastri and, later, Indira Gandhi owed their positions as Prime Minister to the support of the Syndicate. This group had a decisive say in Indira Gandhi's first Council of Ministers and in policy formulation and implementation. The Syndicate leaders expected Indira Gandhi to follow their advice.
Indira Gandhi's Counter-Move
Gradually, Indira Gandhi began to assert her independence. She chose her own trusted group of advisers from outside the party and, slowly and carefully, sidelined the Syndicate. She faced two challenges simultaneously: she needed to build her independence from the Syndicate, and she needed to regain the ground the Congress had lost in the 1967 elections.
Indira Gandhi adopted a bold strategy. She converted what was essentially a power struggle into an ideological struggle. She launched a series of initiatives to give government policy a Left orientation. In May 1967, she got the Congress Working Committee to adopt a Ten Point Programme, which included:
- Social control of banks
- Nationalisation of general insurance
- A ceiling on urban property and income
- Public distribution of food grains
- Land reforms
- Provision of house sites to the rural poor
The Syndicate leaders formally approved this Left-wing programme, but they had serious reservations about it.
The Presidential Election of 1969
The factional rivalry between the Syndicate and Indira Gandhi came into the open in 1969. Following the death of President Zakir Hussain, the post of President of India fell vacant. Despite Indira Gandhi's reservations, the Syndicate managed to nominate N. Sanjeeva Reddy, her long-time opponent and then Speaker of the Lok Sabha, as the official Congress candidate for the presidential election.
Indira Gandhi retaliated. She encouraged the then Vice-President, V.V. Giri, to file his nomination as an independent candidate. She also announced several big and popular policy measures:
- The nationalisation of fourteen leading private banks
- The abolition of the 'privy purse' — the special privileges and hereditary allowances given to former princes
Morarji Desai, who was the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, strongly opposed these moves. Serious differences emerged between him and the Prime Minister, leading to Desai leaving the government.
The showdown came during the presidential election. The Congress President, S. Nijalingappa, issued a 'whip' asking all Congress MPs and MLAs to vote for Sanjeeva Reddy, the official party candidate. Supporters of Indira Gandhi requisitioned a special meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) — which is why this faction came to be known as the 'requisitionists' — but this was refused. After silently supporting V.V. Giri, the Prime Minister openly called for a 'conscience vote', meaning that Congress MPs and MLAs should be free to vote as they wished.
The election resulted in the victory of V.V. Giri, the independent candidate, and the defeat of Sanjeeva Reddy, the official Congress candidate.
The Formal Split
The defeat of the official Congress candidate formalised the split in the party. The Congress President expelled the Prime Minister from the party; she, in turn, claimed that her group was the real Congress. By November 1969, the two factions had distinct names:
- Congress (O) — the Organisation group, led by the Syndicate
- Congress (R) — the Requisitionists group, led by Indira Gandhi
These were also described as the Old Congress and the New Congress. Indira Gandhi projected the split as an ideological divide: socialists versus conservatives, the pro-poor versus the pro-rich.
After the split, the leaders of the Syndicate and those owing allegiance to them stayed with the Congress (O). But it was Indira Gandhi's Congress (R) that won the test of popularity in the 1971 elections. All those big and powerful men of Indian politics lost their power and prestige after 1971.
The Abolition of the Privy Purse …
The cartoon, published in Shankar's Weekly on 20 July 1969, captures the bitter leadership rivalry inside the Congress Party just before the formal split. It shows two distinct groups facing each other, with the central figure of Indira Gandhi standing apart from the older party bosses.
On one side are the leaders of the Syndicate — K. Kamaraj, S. Nijalingappa, and others — drawn as elderly, established figures. They are shown clustered together, representing the old guard that had controlled the party organisation for years. On the opposite side stands Indira Gandhi, depicted as a lone figure but with a determined posture. The cartoonist uses the spatial separation between the two groups to highlight the growing distance between the Prime Minister and the party's organisational leadership.
The most telling element is the caption: "So, there is nothing new about State level leaders being the king-makers at the centre. I thought it happened only in the 1990s." This is a direct comment on the irony that powerful regional leaders — like Kamaraj from Tamil Nadu, Nijalingappa from Mysore, and Sanjeeva Reddy from Andhra Pradesh — were calling the shots at the national level, long before the era of coalition politics in the 1990s made such arrangements familiar. The cartoon thus teaches that the Congress's internal crisis was not just a personal feud but a clash between central authority and regional power bases, a pattern that would recur in Indian politics decades later. …
The cartoon, published in Shankar’s Weekly on 20 July 1969, captures the leadership rivalry within the Congress Party just before the split. It shows two figures locked in a boxing match. One boxer, representing Indira Gandhi, is shown landing a powerful left hook on his opponent. The other boxer, on his knees and reeling from the blow, represents S. Nijalingappa, the Congress President and a key leader of the Syndicate. A garland hangs around the victorious boxer’s neck, signifying that he has just won the match.
The cartoon’s title, “The Left Hook,” is a deliberate double meaning. It refers literally to the boxing punch being thrown, but also to Indira Gandhi’s political strategy of adopting a Left-wing ideological stance — nationalising banks, abolishing privy purses, and championing pro-poor policies — to outmanoeuvre the Syndicate. The defeated Nijalingappa, on his knees, symbolises the Syndicate’s loss of control after the 1969 Presidential election, where their official candidate, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, lost to V.V. Giri, whom Indira Gandhi had backed.
The cartoon was published after V.V. Giri’s victory, so it is a commentary on the outcome, not a prediction. The garland on the winner confirms that the match is over. …
The figure is a cartoon by Vijayan, originally published in Shankar's Weekly on 20 July 1969. It captures the bitter leadership rivalry inside the Congress party just months before the formal split.
The cartoon shows two figures locked in a tense, physical struggle. On one side stands Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister. On the other side is S. Nijalingappa, then the Congress President and a key leader of the Syndicate. The two are shown grappling with each other, each trying to push the other off balance. The image conveys a fight for control — not a polite disagreement, but a raw power struggle where both sides are equally determined.
The setting is minimal, focusing attention entirely on the two protagonists. There are no extra objects or background details. The cartoonist uses the body language of the two figures to tell the story: neither is backing down, and the contest is direct and personal. This matches the real events of mid-1969, when the Syndicate had forced the nomination of N. Sanjeeva Reddy for President against Indira Gandhi's wishes, and she had retaliated by backing V.V. Giri as an independent candidate.
What the cartoon teaches is that the Congress split was not a sudden event but the climax of a long factional war. The Syndicate — led by Kamaraj, Nijalingappa, Patil, and others — had controlled the party organisation for years and had helped make Indira Gandhi Prime Minister in 1966. But she refused to remain a figurehead. By 1969, she had begun asserting her own authority, adopting left-wing policies and sidelining the Syndicate's advice. The cartoon captures this moment when the two sides were locked in a stalemate, each refusing to yield. …
The cartoon, published in Shankar’s Weekly on 20 July 1969, is a visual commentary on the power struggle between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Congress Syndicate. It shows two elephants — the traditional symbol of the Congress party — locked in a violent fight, their trunks and tusks interlocked. One elephant is labelled “Indira” and the other “Syndicate.” The ground beneath them is cracked and uneven, suggesting the party itself is breaking apart under the strain of this internal conflict.
In the background, a small figure representing the common citizen or the voter watches from a distance, looking worried. The cartoon captures the moment just before the formal split: both factions claim to be the true Congress, but their rivalry is tearing the organisation apart. The artist, Vijayan, uses the elephant — usually a symbol of strength and stability — to show how the party’s own internal war was weakening it. …