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Changing Patterns of Political Alignment in the General Elections to the United Provinces Legislative Assembly, 1937 and 1946

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

P. D. Reeves
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Extract

This paper discusses some of the initial findings arising from research into the electoral system of the United Provinces in the period before Independence, that is, from about 1935 until 1947. I have chosen to give particular attention to the activities of political parties in the 1937 and 1946 elections to the lower house (or Legislative Assembly) of the provincial legislature.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , March 1971 , pp. 111 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 The research on the election results and the preparation of the four main tables on which this paper is based have been carried out jointly by Professor B. D. Graham and myself at the University of Sussex. I am responsible for drawing the maps and for the preparation of the present paper. The complete results of our research will be published later this year.

2 The election returns on which this paper is based have been compiled from the following sources: (a) Report on the First Elections to the U.P. Legislature under the Government of India Act, 1935 (Allahabad: Superintendent, Printing and Stationery, U.P., 1937)Google Scholar; (b) Report on the Second Elections to the U.P. Legislature (Allahabad: Superintendent, Printing and Stationery, U.P., 1947)Google Scholar; (c) Return Showing the Results of Elections in India, 1937 (Delhi: Manager of Publications, Govt. of India Press, 1937)Google Scholar; (d) Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers, 1937–1938, vol. XXI (Cmd. 5589). ‘Return showing the results of Elections in India, 1937’Google Scholar; (e) Return Showing the Results of Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures in 7945–46 (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1948)Google Scholar; and (f) reports published in the provincial press: in the Leader (Allahabad)Google Scholar and Pioneer (Lucknow) for the 1937 electionsGoogle Scholar; and in the Leader, Pioneer, and National Herald (Lucknow) for the 1946 elections.Google Scholar The maps are based on Report of the Committee appointed in connection with the Delimitation of Constituencies and connected matters, Vol. II. Proposals for the delimitation of constituencies (London: H.M.S.O., 1936) (Cmd. 5100), pp. 86–98.Google Scholar For reasons of economy, only a representative selection of maps are reproduced here.

3 Government of India Act, 1935 (25 & 26 Geo. 5 ch. 42) (London: H.M.S.O., (1935)), schedule 5.Google Scholar

4 Rules Regarding the Conduct of Elections for the United Provinces Legislative Assembly (Allahabad: Superintendent, Printing and Stationery, U.P., 1936), para. 28(b).Google Scholar

5 Government of India Act, 1935, schedule 6, part v.Google Scholar

6 Rao, M. V. Ramana, Development of the Congress Constitution (New Delhi: AICC, 1958), ch. 7, ‘The constitution of 1934’.Google Scholar

7 See Reeves, P. D., ‘Landlords and Party Politics in the United Provinces, 1934–7’ in Low, D. A. (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 261–93.Google Scholar

8 The British Indian Association of Oudh in Lucknow, the Agra Province Zamindars' Association in Allahabad, the U.P. Zamindars' Association in Muzaffarnagar and various district associations, e.g. in Benares, Aligarh and Unao.

9 See Sayeed, Khalid bin, Pakistan, the formative phase (Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House, 1960), pp. 83–93Google Scholar; Khaliquzzaman, Choudhry, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore, Longmans, Pakistan Branch, 1961), pp. 137–46.Google Scholar

10 Indra, Prakash, A Review of the History and Working of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement (New Delhi: Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, 1938), pp. 236–40.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 212.

12 See, e.g., report of Lucknow Division Liberal Conference, Leader, 8 December 1936, p. 8.Google Scholar

13 The regions referred to throughtout this paper are those outlined in the map given in Graham, B. D., ‘A Report on Some Trends in Indian Elections: The Case of Uttar Pradesh’, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, vol. V, no. 3 (11 1967), p. 195.Google Scholar

14 This seat was in Oudh and there was another seat in Oudh where the Congress and Muslim League clashed. Cf. Khaliquzzaman, , op. cit., p. 152, who blames Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, the organizer of the Congress election campaign, for this overlap.Google Scholar

15 Rao, Ramana, op. cit., pp. 63–71 for details of consideration of constitutional changes from 1934–1948 when ‘Jaipur’ constitution was approved.Google ScholarChopra, P. N., Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. His Life and Work (Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwal, 1960), pp. 93–109 for an account of the campaign in 1946. Kidwai was once again the organizer for the U.P. Congress.Google Scholar

16 Sayeed, Khalid bin, op. cit., ch. 6 ‘The Muslim League—its role and organisation’.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 208–9; Khaliquzzaman, , op. cit., pp. 332–8.Google Scholar

18 Sayeed, Khalid bin, op. cit., p. 239, n. 63.Google Scholar

19 Faruqi, Ziya-ul-Hasan, The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan (London: Asia, 1963), pp. 67, 102–4, 116. National Herald, 5 March 1946, ‘The elections’.Google Scholar

20 See Keer, D., Veer Savarkar (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 2nd ed., 1966). The build-up of U.P. personnel in the hierarchy of the Mahasabha is significant:Google Scholar see Herald, National, 1 March 1942, p. 3.Google Scholar Raja Maheshwar Dayal Seth who had been so important to the NAPO was by then general secretary; Jawala Prasad Srivastava and Lala Hari Ram Seth, also NAP members, were on the committee. These were also active on the U.P. Hindu Mahasabha.

21 See Herald, National, 4 April 1940, p. 5Google Scholar; 3 September 1940, p. 3; 20 August 1941, p. 7; 29 November 1941, p. 3.

22 This paragraph based on Windmiller, M. and Overstreet, G., Communism in India (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959), esp. pp. 206–12.Google Scholar See pp. 229–37 for election manifesto and campaign.

23 M. N. Roy's Memoirs (Bombay: Allied Publishers for The Indian Renaissance Institute, Dehra Dun, 1964), pp. vii, 589–601.Google ScholarNiranjan, Dhar, The Political Thought of M. N. Roy, 1936–1954 (Calcutta: Eureka Publishers, 1966), pp. 197–8, 218–23.Google Scholar

24 Dhar, N., op. cit., p. 198.Google Scholar

25 Keer, D., Dr. Ambedkar. Life and Mission (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 2nd ed., 1962), pp. 345–76.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 371.

27 For an outline of his political career which stretches back to the 1920s and which includes connexions with Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha from 1937 onwards, see Times of India, 8 October 1961. He became president of Agra Hindu Sabha in 1946, Herald, National, 31 December 1946, p. 4 and president of U.P. Hindu Sabha in 1947Google Scholar, ibid., 24 July 1947.

28 Herald, National, 5 March 1946, ‘The elections’; also statement by M. A. Kazmi, Nationalist Muslim candidate, National Herald, 9 December 1945, p. 7.Google Scholar

29 Faruqi, Ziya-ul-Hasan, op. cit., p. 75.Google Scholar

30 See Khaliquzzaman, , op. cit., pp. 101, 127.Google Scholar

31 Cf. Kazmi, M. A., Nationalist Muslim candidate 1946: ‘The Muslim Nationalists were responsible for the revival of the Muslim League by their successful election campaign in 1937. Now that the Muslim League has again been captured by the vested interests, nawabs, rajas, knights, Khan Bahadurs and others, who were routed by the Muslim League Parliamentary Board in 1937, the same old Nationalists can again take up cudgels against them, and we hope that they will not succeed.’ Herald, National, December 1945, p. 7.Google Scholar