India After Independence

                                          India After Independence

The transfer of power and the birth of two countries

Elections held in the winter of 1945–46 proved how effective Jinnah’s single-plank strategy for his Muslim League had been, as the league won all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and most of the reserved provincial seats as well. The Congress Party was successful in gathering most of the general electorate seats, but it could no longer effectively insist that it spoke for the entire population of British India.

The Republic of India

The Nehru era, 1947–64

India’s first years of freedom were plagued by the tragic legacy of partition. Refugee resettlement, economic disruption and inadequate resources for virtually every need, continuing communal conflicts (as more than 10 percent of India’s population remained Muslim), and, within a few months of independence, the outbreak of undeclared war with Pakistan over Kashmir were but a few of the major difficulties confronting the newborn dominion. Lord Mountbatten remained in New Delhi to serve as India’s first new governor-general, mostly a ceremonial job, while Nehru took charge of free India’s responsible government as its first prime minister, heading a Congress cabinet, whose second most powerful figure was Patel.

Government and politics

The dominion of India was reborn on January 26, 1950, as a sovereign democratic republic and a union of states. With universal adult franchise, India’s electorate was the world’s largest, but the traditional feudal roots of most of its illiterate populace were deep, just as their religious caste beliefs were to remain far more powerful than more recent exotic ideas, such as secular statehood. Elections were to be held, however, at least every five years, and the major model of government followed by India’s constitution was that of British parliamentary rule, with a lower House of the People (Lok Sabha), in which an elected prime minister and a cabinet sat, and an upper Council of States (Rajya Sabha). Nehru led his ruling Congress Party from New Delhi’s Lok Sabha until his death in 1964. The nominal head of India’s republic, however, was a president, who was indirectly elected. India’s first two presidents were Hindu Brahmans, Rajendra Prasad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the latter a distinguished Sanskrit scholar who had lectured at the University of Oxford. Presidential powers were mostly ceremonial, except for brief periods of “emergency” rule, when the nation’s security was believed to be in great danger and normal constitutional procedures and civil rights were feared to be too cumbersome or threatening.