C. Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji as he is affectionately known, was India’s last Governor-General, and was a stalwart of the Independence struggle alongside Nehru, Patel and Gandhi. However, the rapid left turns that the Congress party took immediately after Independence were hard to stomach. Staunch non-alignment and yet close ties with the Soviet Union, central planning for not just the commanding heights of the economy but the entire economy and socialist policies under the guise of co-operatives — the Swatantra Party, center-right, conservative and economically liberal were formed to, literally, re-center Indian politics.

Much of the above sounds like fan-fiction or counter-factual musings from a liberal or libertarian — but the Swantantra (Freedom) Party was the main opposition party to a socialist Statist Congress led government in the 1967 Lok Sabha elections — a mere 7 years after properly codifying its intent. That the founders of the party, the veritable Rajaji, N.G. Ranga and Minoo Masani among others, felt emboldened enough just ten years after the Republic was formed is verifiable proof that Indians did understand true freedom even back then — even though they had spent the past two centuries under Colonial Rule. It is proof that they could see that all 1947 did was swap one ruler for another. A ruler of a different skin colour was swapped for one who looked like ‘us’ but spoke like ‘them’ — Macaulay’s wet dream. Although to be fair — that was India’s entire Constituent Assembly at the time. India, in reality, turned free only on 26th January 1950. Not by installing an Indian President at the Viceroy House, but by “injecting the Constituion (Englightenment) into India’s veins” as Nitin Pai put it.

Even in 1960, Indians understood that individual freedom was the basis for all rights and duties enshrined in the constitution. It was this set of freedoms that a socialist government set out to attack in earnest. Traders, shopkeepers and, most of all, farmers, were disenfranchised through layers of bureaucracy and a multitude of disincentives for seeking a fair and free market for their goods.

The hasty and doctrinaire approach first pioneered in the 1950’s to many rural problems are now packaged as the plethora of Prime Minister Yoganas (arrangements) and the current set of subsidies arose only because the government set out on a path to punish free markets. When the millions of self-employed people of the 1950’s were disenfranchised, the government hooked them onto a lethal dose of dole-outs. Who wants a real job when you can get hand outs? These were the problems that the Swantantra Party foresaw, much too ahead of its time. Indians were ready for identity politics not idealogical politics.

It was this original doctrinaire appraoch which netted Congress the rural vote in perpetutiy —they deployed the drug of free money. Pooling land holdings and making the government the sole trader of grains — the government of the day in the 1950’s appeased many rural (landed and unlanded) peasantry. Punjab, though, had already shown that it was possible to feed India through ‘self-serving’ capitalist farming. The peasantry knew that in time the Minimum Support Prices for their crops would simply turn into a dole-out tap they could control — because their vote counts for as much as the urban vote. An unhealthy inflation inducing Minimum Support Price in conjunction with other inflationary rural measures is still the only way any political party can hope to have their support. A smattering of caste persecution always helps, but their backbone of vote winning is intact half a century later. They formed the largest percentage of India’s population back then as they do now.

The tipping point which led to the formation of the Party were the Avadi and Nagpur resolutions — made in the fascist-type setting of the All India Congress Committee, AICC. The Congress set about on the process of enshrining most of the above into law and this birthed the Swatantra Party.

The Swatantra Party had a simple 21 point manifesto and allowed its members to widely diverge on any policy or issue which didn’t form a part of its core beliefs. It provided for a platform for healthy dissent within its own party — because that is what is purported to support on a national scale. It stood against an all powerful technocratic state at the time. In today’s time we have an all powerful semi-technocratic and theocratic state — fundamentally it is no different and is led by a man who sees it as his legacy to dismantle Nehru’s. How true does the below ring of today’s times?

“The cult of personality has smothered free discussion even within the ruling party itself.” — Minoo Masani on Jawaharlal Nehru, 1960

The 1960’s were politically fascinating times. The Syndicate were busy annointing the successor to Jawaharlal Nehru and thereafter Lal Bahadur Shastri. The ruling party was torn apart by the imposition of President’s Rule on a democratically elected Communist government in Kerala. In fact, the biggest fear was that the Swantantra Party would split the non-communist vote, leaving the communists in power. Well, it sounds as ludicrous now as it must have sounded back then to the idealogues of the Party — because, the millions and millions of disenfranchised don’t naturally look to a continued path to serfdom as their salvation.

Simply put, the party aimed to promote economic freedom without the onerous burden of propaganda and identity politics. India, believe it or not, was still high on the idealism of the constitution which afforded all rights, equally, to all citizens and identity politics were not at all entrenched. India was mature enough, just 10 years after the forming of the republic, to back a truly liberal party. It was backed by industrialists, a small set of rural peasantry but an overwhelming majority of the nobility and a lot of their ‘subjects’ (now you know why Indira Gandhi disenfranchised the maharajas). From winning 6.8% of the total vote (and 18 seats) in their debut, India’s third Lok Sabha (1962–67), they progressed to winning 8.7% of the total vote and a whopping 44 seats in India’s fourth Lok Sabha to emerge as the main opposition. Its decline was just as precipituous. It’s idealogue Rajaji passed in 1972 and the Charan Singh led Bharatiya Kranti Dal, with whom the Swantantra Party merged in 1974, had only anti-Congressism as its plank.

The biggest wins in the column for decades of socialism are our so called ‘temples of learning’ and the commanding heights of our economy. Steel and cement, which were essential to, literally, nation build in the early years of our Republic’s existence were controlled commodities with onerous excises levied on them. Coupled with a very high cost of capital, often at 30%-40%, the Party was quick to see a recipe for decades of slow growth. That voice at the back of every Indian’s head, however radical, keeps telling her that socialism was a must in our first few decades of existence has been honed through decades of propaganda and preaching. That socialism is the only reason IIT’s produce smart kids by the thousands and socialism is the only reason we have highways and cities. This is what our textbooks tell us too. Gandhi is worshipped only for his musings on caste and civil disobedience, whereas his remarks on trusteeship, which forms the backbone of a social contract are whitewashed.

As far back as the second budget in 1957 — there were voices which wanted free markets and saw the driven which would be pedalled in the name of socialism. A.D. Shroff’s review of the 1957 budget pans it for levying duty on essential goods to control inflation. 75% of India’s tea was exported in those days — simply to avoid the levies which made it unviable for the domestic market. Ditto cloth. Once demand substantially cooled down for many of these essentials due to these levies which made them unaffordable, India was left with the anaemic Hindoo growth rate of 2%, seemingly in perpetuity. The tax rates on dividend income were as high as 83% — and this was a decade and a half before Indira Gandhi introduced marginal income tax rates of 97% at the top end of the income spectrum. Imagine slaving away for 356 days every year — sounds a lot like the British Raj, doesn’t it? Even the white men went home for Christmas. If not, at least to Simla for the summer.

Socialism didn’t achieve any of its stated and much vaunted goals if you notice that India’s real growth came in the period where it jumped on the global bandwagon of growth in 1991 — which led to nearly 15 years of uninterrupted high growth. Imagine now, if India had been similarly able to jump on the bandwagon when Ludwig Erhard was rebuilding Germany in miraculous fashion after the war? Ditto Japan which was also successful in making small landholder farming viable — and not through co-operatives! The government of the day asked the baby boomers to sacrifice so future generations could prosper. The Swatantra Party’s last two points on their 1967 elections manifesto simply said,

“Provide a better life to people, here and now. Make today’s prosperity the foundation for tomorrow’s growth”

Wouldn’t three or more decades of uninterrupted high growth have negated the necessity of ‘big bang’ liberalization in 1991, which gave us cars before we had roads?

It is a failure of our critical mind that we consume the garbage fed to us like willing muppets. Our historic socialism has been terrible for our country, just as much as the current government is. Giving a dynasty marks for ‘ushering in reforms’ which would never have needed ushering in, is like praising the government for not completely taking away our constitutional rights.

Any mature democracy needs a liberal party to rule it at some point. Britain was ruled by the Liberal Party before the Great War. Its downfall has been charted in that haunting book, ‘The strange death of the Liberal Party’ which lends this post its title. The Liberal Democrats, successors of the Liberal Party in many ways, also saw strong electoral success in the late noughties only to be decimated in subsequent elections. When will India and Indians be mature enough to understand individual liberty as opposed to group identity? Individual liberty comes with the onerous burden of truly living your fundamental duties too — not pittance like playing, and standing for, the national anthem in movie theaters but respecting the right to property and speech. Not property for the few, but everybody’s right to property — from the tribals to the urban middle class. Even if they start with generational advantages.

None of this is written to absolve any government, past or present, of any blame. It is a lament that individual liberties and free market economics, which were identified and encoded in India 60 years ago, continue to be curtailed, lost and subsumed into the grand narrative of victimhood.

“A cause as great as India’s should not be dependent on the will of a single master.” — Tagore

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

National Identity III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII , IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX

XII: The games Generals play…

XIV: Inside the Special Forces identity crisis

XIX: The Indian soldier in Kashmir

XXV: Doval Durbar

XXVI: Remember Cawnpore

XXVIII: The Minority Army

XXX: Kargil, the Bodyguard of Pakistan’s Lies

XXXI: Kashmir Comes Home

XXXV: The Three Indian Armies