It is impossible fully to comprehend the significant ramifications of the great and successful gamble of Indias first general election without understanding a series of preceding events. Without these,Jawaharlal Nehru could not have taken the plunge. For,if adult suffrage was an article of faith with him,he was also convinced that he could not win the elections without first getting rid of the then Congress president,Purushottam Das Tandon,and bringing the party back to its moorings. An elderly and highly conservative Congress leader,Tandon belonged to Nehrus hometown of Allahabad. As the prime minister said repeatedly,he had the greatest affection and respect for Tandon but had intense dislike for his obscurantism,communalism,zeal for Hindi and so on that were opposed to the basic principles of the Congress.
Since this was fully known to every Congressman of any consequence,Nehru was startled,in the summer of 1950,when Tandon became a candidate in the impending election of the Congress president. The other two contenders were Acharya Kripalani and Shankerrao Deo,a Gandhian from Maharashtra. Nehru considered all three of them unsuitable but his opposition to Tandon was vehement. He therefore wrote to Tandon a courteous,indeed cordial,letter asking him to withdraw his candidature. Only after Tandon had tersely rejected the unsolicited advice did Nehru realize that his bete noire had the powerful backing of Sardar Patel,deputy prime minister and the only near-equal Nehru ever had.
This led to voluminous correspondence between Nehru on the one hand,and Patel as well as a host of other government and party leaders,including Tandon who he once addressed as Priya Purushottam,on the other. Acrimony soon entered these exchanges because of Nehrus refrain that if Tandon,with his increasingly communal and revivalist line,were elected,what use will I be to the Congress and the government? After mulling his favourite remedy of offering his own resignation,he decided to fight. He virtually adopted Kripalani as his candidate,to Patels chagrin because this ran counter to the impression the prime minister had given his deputy.
There is no way to sum up the bitter battle between the two sides in available space,but its flavour is best conveyed by the conversation between Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (then a minister in Assam,later a Union minister and later still,the republics President) with Patel. Told that the Assam Congress would vote as Panditji wants,Sardar shot back: Fakhuruddin,do exactly what you like. But remember that Jawaharlal can never help a friend nor ever harm an enemy. I never forget a friend and never forgive an enemy.
Eventually,in August 1950,Tandon was elected by 1,306 votes to Kripalanis 1,092. Deo got 202. Nehru may be the man of the masses; Patel controlled the party machine. An infuriated Nehru at first refused to serve on Tandons Working Committee,but later reluctantly agreed. However,Tandon persisted in his old ways,especially at the Nasik Congress over which he presided. To Nehrus dismay he remained defiant even after Patels death on December 15,1950. A month later,the AICC passed unanimously all resolutions on Congress policies as drafted by Nehru but Tandon never implemented them. When the prime minister remonstrated with him,pointing out that Congress was losing popularity,Tandon told him to mind his own business. Unpopularity,he added,was not because of the party organisation but because of government policies such as controls on food grains and insistence on passing the Hindu Code Bill.
That is when Nehru decided to fight Tandon to the finish. The time had come to rid the Congress of the viewpoint that Tandon symbolised. Tandon refused to accept Nehrus suggestion to reconstitute the Working Committee (this was the presidents prerogative,he argued) but offered to step down instead. Unknown to him Nehru called a quiet meeting of some chosen friends among senior Congressmen. A conspicuous omission from the list of invitees was Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari) whom Nehru suspected of playing both sides. After his discussions with them,Nehru decided to resign from the Working Committee but not from the Congress because he felt that it still was a major fact in India,and its fading away would be disastrous.
However,he began by first resigning from the Parliamentary Board and the Central Election Committee. Ironically,his further moves were slowed down because of the activities of one of his most loyal colleagues,Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. In the UP Congress,the mutual hostility of Kidwai and Tandon was legendary. In his exuberance,Kidwai resigned from the Congress,joined a dissident group formed by Kripalani that was to morph later into the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party,but stayed on in the Nehru cabinet. When Tandon took strong objection to this,Kidwai resigned from the cabinet,too.
Eventually,in the last week of July 1951,Nehru resigned from the Congress Working Committee. This hit the party with the force of a bombshell. Tandons response was to repeat his earlier offer to resign. But most Congressmen were deeply concerned. What would be the worth of a working committee of which Nehru was not a member? So all members of the CWC met in Nehrus absence. Their decision,conveyed to the prime minister by Maulana Azad,was that they would all resign and request Nehru to reconstitute the Committee,with Tandon remaining the president,if Nehru so desired. Nehru rejected this out of hand,pointing out that it was not a matter of personality but of basic policy. Which viewpoint and outlook are to prevail Tandons or mine?
So the matters came to a head at a meeting of the AICC in Delhi on September 8 and 9. It accepted Tandons resignation and elected Nehru as Congress president in his place.
The climactic meeting had taken place in the charming Constitution Club that was then located on what is now Kasturba Gandhi Marg,at the spot where now stands the ugly multi-storied Asia House. The meeting over,Tandon refused to ride the Congress presidents station wagon (as well as other car owners respectful offers of a lift) and insisted on walking back home (which was not very far),followed by a large crowd.
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator
