7 - The Jana Sangh in electoral politics, 1951 to 1967

Summary

We have now considered the main factors which worked against the Jana Sangh's attempt to become a major party in Indian politics. It was seriously handicapped in electoral competition by the limitations of its organization and leadership, by its inability to gather support through appeals to Hindu nationalist sentiment, and by its failure to establish a broad base of social and economic interests. In this chapter we shall study how the party became aware of its weaknesses through its experience of constitutional politics and how it tried to compensate for them. The first section examines the party's initial strategy, based on the mistaken assumption that the Congress was about to disintegrate under the opposite pulls of Hindu nationalism and communism, and the second shows how a more realistic analysis of the political prospects in the mid-1960s enabled the party's leaders to consider seriously the possibilities of co-operation with other opposition parties. Finally, in the third section, we look more closely at the Jana Sangh's record in elections and compare the extent of its achievements in western Madhya Pradesh, in the Punjab and in Uttar Pradesh.

The general strategy, 1951 to 1962

At the outset, the founders of the Jana Sangh were strongly influenced by the theory that the Congress Party, which they regarded as materialistic and lacking in genuine principles, was about to disintegrate.