The Congress at the 1937 Elections in Madras

8/3/2019 The Congress at the 1937 Elections in Madras

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Modem Asian Studies, 10, 4 (1976), pp. 557-589. Printed in Great Britain.

The Congress at the 1937 Elections in MadrasCHRISTOPHER BAKER

University of CambridgeIN February 1937, the Congress party in the Madras Presidency won159 of 215 seats in the provincial Legislative Assembly at the first elec-tions under provincial autonomy.

1It was the most convincing victoryfor the C ongress in any province of British In dia , and neither the M ad ra sGovernment nor the Congress leaders had expected it. 2 In the two anda half years of Congress rule that followed, their ministers made adeptuse of their powers. They cut land revenue and dismantled the pro-cedure for revising the land revenue demand, thus appealing to thepocket of every landholder. They re-instated all the village officers whohad been dismissed for aiding the Congress during Civil Disobedience,thus instructing the leaders of rur al society where the source of power an dinfluence now lay. They passed two measures to alleviate the burden ofagricultural debt, and threatened to legislate in favour of the tenantsinside the major landed estates. Meanwhile, for the first time, theCongress established a network of committees throughout the province,and by 1939 this new machine had placed virtually every local govern-ment board under a Congress regime. The number of Congress mem-bers in the Tam il and A nd hr a areas rose from 115,971 on the eve of the1937 elections to 594,397 in 1938.3Thus the Congress acquired in fact the organization and the politicalleadership that it had aspired to for so long. Although Congress with-drew from the ministries in 1939 (partly because of the British attitudetowards India in wartime, partly because it needed time to at tune itsnew organizational machine to the demands made upon it), it returnedto secure power once the war had ended and to retain it for the nexttwenty years.

Thanks to David Washbrook and Tom Tomlinson who read early drafts.1 In elections to the M adras Legislative Council, the upper chamber, on a narrow erfranchise, Congress won 26 out of the total of 46 seats. This article concentrates on themore important Legislative Assembly.2 Erskine to Willingdon, 6 Janu ary and 3 February 1937, Erskine papers [hereafterE.P.], Vol. 8, India Office Library [hereafter I.O.L.].3 All India Congress Committee papers [hereafter A.I.C.C.] files P25 of 1937 andPig(ii) of 1937-8, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [hereafter N.M.M.L.];Hindu, 17 October 1936.557


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55 8 CHRISTOPHER BAKERThe transformation of the Congress in these years makes the victoryat the 1937 elections peculiarly important. Several explanations havebeen advanced for the victory. Some have pointed to the gradualaccumulation of support for the Congress over the years, while othershave laid special stress on the 'mass' support acquired in the CivilDisobedience agitation. Some have suggested that the new and muchlarger electorate required the sort of organization and ideologicalpurchase that the Congress provided, and that those newly enfranchisedincluded many social groups already well-disposed towards the nation-alist cause. Some have pointed to the emergence of a cadre of young

and idealistic leaders.All of these arguments are important, and none is immediatelyopp osed to the analysis presented in this article. Yet, on their own, sucharguments are clearly deficient. Any explanation that relies on theinexorable growth of the Congress cannot explain why the most strikingvictory came in Madras, where the Congress had by no means enjoyedspec tacular supp ort over the past two decade s. Nor had Civil Disobedi-ence really attra cte d 'mass' sup po rt; large parts of the province had beenvery quiet during the agitation. As for the electorate, it was not entirelynew . M ost of it ha d been voting in local elections in M adras since 1920,and all of it in local elections since 1930; it had not, until 1935, shownany marked predilection for the Congress. Indeed, most of those whogained the right to vote at legislature elections for the first time in 1937were rural smallholders, who in village and local politics were notori-ously amenable to their local leaders. Moreover, even though thelegislature electorate was five times what it had been in dyarchy,the problem s of constituency organization w ere not changed as m uchas th a t m ultip lier suggests. T h e larger n um be r of constituenciesin 1937 as compared to the dyarchy elections, the abolition of pluralseats, and the low turn-out, meant that the average number of votesrequ ire d for victory in a general constituency was ju st twice what it hadbeen in dyarchy elections.4 There were, indeed, new leaders, many ofthem student organizers and young political workers, who showed amore zealous and idealistic attachment to the nationalist cause thantheir more cautious predecessors. Yet, as the fourth section of thisarticle shows, they formed only one section of a varied Congress elite,and were outnumbered by experienced politicians whose adherence tothe Congress was perhaps more calculated.

4 Average polled by victorious candidate in 1926, 11,590; in 1937, 23,525; calcu-lated from 'Returns showing the results of elections in India in 1925 and 1926',G.B. Parliamentary Papers igsj, Cmd. 2923, and 'Returns showing the results ofelections in India 1937', G.B. Parliamentary Papers 193J-8, Cmd. 5589.


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TH E CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELEC TION S IN MADRAS 55 9T he first section examines the early 1930s, an d the ba ckg roun d to thegrowth of widespread support for the Congress in Madras. At thiscrucial time, the Congress was not leading so much as being pushed,and men were not being recruited by the Congress so much as beingurged towards it by factors within a wider political context. The secondsection examines how the tactics and organization of the provincialCongress were elaborated during three phases of local board elections.These election campaigns provide a muc h better guide to the shape an dthe success of the Congress in 1937 than a study of the internal workingof the provincial Congress organization. The third section traces theCongress's deployment of its new resources and position at the legisla-ture elections, and the final section analyses the men and womenelected. It was significant not only that the Congress won, but alsowhat people now constituted the Congress.

I. BackgroundThe Congress in Madras emerged from Civil Disobedience with greatprestige, bu t very few influential supporters and almost no o rganization.Most of the prominent men in provincial affairs, including many oldCongress mem bers, steered well clear of the nationalist m ovem ent whenit plunged into agitation in 1930. The machinery of party organizationhad fallen into disarray during the torpid years of the late 1920s; itcould not be refurbished before Civil Disobedience began, and in both1930 and 1932 the government jailed all experienced leaders andworkers as soon as agitation started, and gave the Congress no chanceto build up a provincial organization.The agitations only faintly embarrassed the rulers and, except in onem on th of pan ic, the M adra s Governm ent affected a blase attitudetowards them. Yet Civil Disobedience had two important conse-quences for the Congress. Firstly, it helped secure a large number ofyoung and enthusiastic party workers. Many of these were the sons ofsubstantial land lords a nd mercha nts, who since the late 1910s had filleda growing num ber of the places in higher edu cation. M an y of them hadexperience in student politics and journalism, an unqualified commit-ment to the nationalist creed, and also the social status which theireducation and family background lent them. They played importantroles in the agitation, and were ready to do much of the spadework ofrebuilding the party organization once the agitation had ended.53 See D. Arnold, 'The Gounders and the Congress: Political Recruitment in SouthIndia 1920-37', South Asia, No. 4 (October 1974), pp. 1-20.


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5 60 CHRISTOPHER BAKERSecondly, there was the effect on the prestige of the Congress. UnlikeNon-cooperation when their efforts were dissipated in several small

agitations, the handful of Congress leaders approached the business ofcivilly disobeying with single-minded purpose. They concentrated theirefforts in a few campaigns which earned them moral authority and theadmiration of their countrymen, and by persisting in these campaignsoften lured government into protracted and ugly exercises in repression.As Congressmen were beaten down at the salt-pans, and successiveCongress 'dictators' were arrested merely for publicly assuming thattitle, the Congress strengthened its claim to political leadership. Con-gress had , of cou rse, been making such a claim for years, yet in the 1920s,when few politically active persons disagreed with the Congress's long-term goals, very few actually looked to the Congress for leadership.After Civil Disobedience, things would be different, not merely becauseof changes in the character of the Congress, but also because changes inthe circumstances facing the influential men in Madras society werenudging them towards an organization like the Congress.

Over the past forty years, the extension of governmental activity andthe introduction of local boards, legislatures, temple committees,education councils and co-operatives had obliged the leaders of southIndian society to participate in the political contests that surroundedthe machinery of government.6 Indeed, the vitality of these politics inMadras had hitherto helped to direct interest away from nationalism.In the 1930s there were dramatic changes. Firstly, the provincialgovernment started to revoke many of the concessions and devolutionsmade in recent years. Secondly, constitutional reforms set out a newrange of opportunities and disappointments for the political elite.Th ird ly, the econom ic depression gave a severe jol t to the no rmallystable society over which this elite was perched.In the 1930s, the Madras Government set about dismantling manyparts of the provincial and local administration which prominentIndians had only just learnt how to neutralize or use to their ownad va nta ge . Su dden ly, the process of gradually h and ing over the adm ini-stration of temples, local government, education and co-operatives tonon-officials was brou ght to an end. Faced by the problem s which thesedemissions had caused, the provincial government imposed stricterrules on the flow of government money, placed more of the activities oflocal boards and committees under the close supervision of the bureau-cracy, and thus reduced the opportunities open to local politicians.

6 See D. A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1976).


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T H E C O N G R E S S A T T H E 1 9 3 7 E L E C T I O N S I N M A D R A S 5 6 1Disgruntled men talked bitterly of the 'reaction against the principle ofdeofficialisation' in local government7 and fought cantankerously withtheir new bureaucratic overlords. In the same period, the fact that therewere no elections to the provincial legislature, and no overall chang e inthe ministry for six years, added to the feeling that many of the oppor-tunities opened u p in th e previous decades were now being closed do wn.8

Meanwhile, the British were preparing to abandon the provinces.From 1930 it was apparent that Britain was soon going to hand overautonomous provincial government to Indian ministers. The Govern-m ent of Ind ia Act of 1935 provided for a full Indian ministry in Madras,responsible to a Legislative Assembly of 215 persons; 116 of these were tobe elected from territorial constituencies and the rest of the seats werereserved for special com munities and interests. Seven million peo ple(fifteen per cent of the population) qualified for the electorate, usuallyby holding land or paying any urb an tax. The new constitutional frame-work, added to the changes in local and provincial administration,altered the imperatives and options which Madras politicians faced.

At the same time, economic depression was disturbing the groundunder their feet. The prolonged slump of agricultural prices in the1930s hit hardest at merchants, rural traders and large landholders whoproduced mainly for the market. Further, by staunching the flow ofrural credit and encouraging landlord and tenant to fight over a re-duced money yield from the lan d, it sullied relations between the leadin gmen of rural society and their dependants. Population movements,rura l agitations and occasional jacquerie s were testimony to a new an dless stable social order.' After seven years of depression many of theold m asters of society were anx ious to find new means to fortify them -selves, and many new hopefuls were seeking avenues to social andpolitical eminence.

Thus there were pressing reasons why many people, includingestablished politicians, were seeking new modes of political organiza-tion in the 1930s. Moreover, certain factors in the circumstances facedby the politicians encouraged them to seek nationalist organization inparticular.Those hurt by the depression were attracted to the view that theforeign rulers failed to use fiscal and other governmental tools to

7 Hindu, 18 Feb ruar y 1935. For mo re detailed consideration of this theme see C. J . B aker, The Politics of SouthIndia ig2O-iQ37 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 224-37. C. J . Baker, 'Debt and the Depression in M ad ras 1929-3 6', in C. J . Dewey an dA. G. Hopkins (eds), The Impact of Imperialism (Athlone, forthcoming).


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562 CHRISTOPH ER BAKERcounter distress in India, yet did so in their own country. Manybusinessmen believed that Britain was shifting much of the incidenceof depression from Britain to India by maintaining the rupee exchangeratio at an 'unnatural level' . Meanwhile, the dyarchy constitution hadalso helped to convince politicians of the need to win power at thenational level. The centre had given financial autonomy to the prov-inces but had first divided up the heads of revenue between centre andprovinces in a way that made it difficult for the provincial governmentsto expand their budgets. Inside the province the Governor and hiscouncillors had retained control over finance and had used this as aweapo n to limit or influence the actions of In di an ministers. Th isnational focus had been further encouraged by the negotiations overconstitutional reform; it seemed to Indian politicians that whereas theMontagu-Chelmsford negotiators had emphasized the special characterof each province and had invited representations from provincialinterests, the Simon Commission and later the Round Table negotia-tions had given precedence to associations with national pretensions.U n de r these pressures, it was no coincidence th at th e Justice pa rty,whose success in the 1920s was deeply rooted in its purely provincialconcern, was by the end of the decade frustrated at the limitations ofdyarchy and anxious to find allies in other parts of India to form anational party.10

Once Congress dropped its agitational strategy, it provided somethingwhich many people were anxious to havea rudimentary but presti-gious organization which could act as the focus for the sort of politicalorga nizatio n requ ired by new and fluid conditions in the province. Th usthe years 1933-6 saw the Congress transformed, against the wishes andin spite of the efforts of most of those who had led the party in recentyears, from an ag itating force to an electoral pa rt y ." T he back-trackingby C . Ra jagopalachari, the leader of Civil Disobedience in the province,illustrated the tren d. In 1933 he was ad am an t th at Congress should no tbe involved in the complex and divisive business of elections; in 1934he was horrified when Gandhi abandoned the cause of the irreconcil-ables and blessed the electoral strategy; later he accepted the electoralstrategy b u t arg ued that it should be m erely anoth er form of agitationa tactic to enable Congress to wreck the constitution from the insideand opposed any involvement of the Congress in local board elections;

" A . P. Patro, 'The Justice Movement in India', Asiatic Review, XXVIII (1932),39-40-'i For this transformation on an all-India scale see B. R. Tomlinson, The IndianNational Congress and the Raj, igsg~4s: The Penultimate Phase (Macmillan, 1976), Ch. 2.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE I g 3 7 ELECTION S IN MADRAS 56 3in 1936, he reluctantly helped in local elections but forswore any ideatha t Congressmen should become ministers; in 1937 he ran th e prov inceas Chief Minister.12Satyamurthi, the Madras City Congress politician who led thecampaign to return Congress to involvement in elections, had soonfound large areas of support. When government announced that therewould be elections to the Central Legislative Assembly in October1934, he seized the opportunity to mount a campaign. This campaignhad to be quickly and thus loosely organized, yet there was littleserious opposition and Congressmen won eleven of the fourteen seatsthey contested in Madras. The Assembly was a rather flaccid institu-tion, and this victory did not significantly advance the power of theCongress. Yet the event did hold important promises for the future.In the first place, the men elected on the Congress slate were clearly avery mixed bunch: five were veterans of Civil Disobedience, three hadbeen Swarajists in 1926 and had not liked the idea of agitation, twowere political organizers whose experience and support lay outside theCongress organization, and the last was a wealthy businessman with nopast history in nationalist politics." In the second place, Congresssqueezed every ounce of possible prestige out of success. The electedcandidates did victory laps round their constituencies, receiving theplaudits of local boards, mercantile guilds, legal associations, castesamajams and public meetings. On the impetus, Congress started anenrolment campaign and began building up its organization of com-mittees. Other politicians could not help but be impressed by thiscelebration. At a victory meeting in South Arcot, an old Justicitepolitician announced that he was so struck by the crowds and theenthusiasm for the Congress, that he was converted on the spot.14Just over a year later, the same man was elected president of theSouth Arcot district board on a Congress ticket.15

I I .LOCAL ELECTIONS I

By the 1930s, local government boards (chiefly 25 district boards and 81mun icipal councils) w ere spending a third of the M ad ras Go vernm ent's12 Rajagopalachari to Gandhi, 4 April 1934, intercepted and held in HomePolitical [hereafter H.P.] 4/4 1934, National Archives of India [hereafter N.A.I.];C. Rajagopalachari, 'The Congress Campaign', Indian Review (August 1934),pp. 511-12; Hindu, 7 January 1935, 12 July 1936.13 For fuller treatment of the 1934 election see Baker, Politics of South India, pp.'< Hindu, 17 November 1934. 13 Hindu, 27 February 1936.


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564 CHRISTOPH ER BAKERincome, and enjoying considerable interest from Indian politicians.1*In 1930, government passed Acts aimed at eliminating many of theabuses in local boards. On the one hand, these Acts widened thefranchise, created more seats, abolished nominations to special seats,and increased the boards' taxes, duties and powers; on the other handthey re-wrote the rules which had allowed the ministers in Madras andovermighty subjects in the localities to dominate local government andoften use it for very personal ends. These changes made way for a newinflux of people and interests into local government. Both the old con-trollers of local government and the new aspirants could see that, infuture, local board politics would demand more elaborate organizationthan the loose ties between ministers and various local magnates thathad served hitherto. At a Congress meeting in 1931, Satyamurthipoin ted ou t th at after these Acts 'elections to these bodies have certainlybecome easier for a democratic organisation like the Congress'.1 ' Theagitating Congress took little interest at this point, but Satyamurthi gothimself elected to the Madras Corporation in 1932, and in 1933-4argued that local government should form just as important a part ofthe electoral strategy of the Congress as the legislatures.After the Assembly victory, Congress campaigns were mounted in afew municipalities. These campaigns were promoted entirely within thelocality without recognition or organizational help from the provincialorganization. Then came two highly instructive campaigns. Firstly,men in Chidambaram asked the provincial organization to recognize aCongress campaign in Chidambaram. For much of the past decade,this municipality had been run by a local landowner-cum-businessmanwh o used terror , pa tron age an d the supp ort of the Jus tice m inisters tokeep himself in power.1* In July 1935, the long-standing opposition tothis local baron mounted a campaign against him in the name of theCongress and swept him out of power. 'Some of the old councillors', asthe now ex-chairman put it, 'called themselves Congressites whichna m e they clu tched at as an easy weapon to hoodwink the voters . . .[The new chairman], who was afraid of even uttering the name of theCongress till then, was made to sign the Congress creed and to loosenhis purse for love of power.'19 These events revealed that there were

1 See C. J . Baker an d D. A. W ashbrook, South India: Political Institutions and PoliticalChange i88o-ig40 (Delhi, 1975), pp. 39-40, 45-8, 213-14.17 Hindu, 5 Ju ne 1931.18 Government Order [hereafter C O . ] 3337 (Local Self Government [hereafterL.S.G.]) 30 August 1927; G.O. 2473 (L.S.G.) 27 May 1929; G.O. 151 (L.S.G.)11 January 1933, Tamilnadu Archives [hereafter T.N.A.]."Justice, 11 June 1936.


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T H E C O N G R E S S AT THE I 9 3 7 E L E C T I O N S IN M A D R A S 5 6 5politicians ready and anxious to invoke Congress help in local affairsand to marry their local assets to the provincial and national prestigeof the Congress in the hope of a tangible benefit for both parties. It wassignificant, too, that this first major campaign came in the town whicha Hindu columnist called 'the certified capital of corruption and mal-administration in matters municipal ' .20 Chidambaram was only themost flagrant example out of many towns where the Acts of 1920 haddelivered local government into the hands of tight cliques, who hadused the board machinery and personal ties to government to stay inpower, and where there were now frustrated oppositions.

Secondly, in Bezwada, local Congressmen organized at the municipalelections, won a majority of seats, but were then outmanoeuvred byexperienced local politicians who stole some of their supporters andthus managed to elect their own man into the chair.21 This failureshowed the Congress the need for a greater degree of party organizationand discipline in local elections. In May 1935, the provincial Congressformally resolved to 'capture local bodies', and set out to organizecampaigns which struck a nice balance between local initiative andparty discipline.22In June and July 1935, small committees appointed by both theAndhra and Tamil provincial Congresses toured the districts wherethere were to be local board elections at the end of the year. Theyconsulted with old Congressmen and with influential men of anypolitical colouring in the locality to see whether the Congress shouldmount a capaign. Only in Chingleput did they fail to find support; inthe other districts, the Congress campaign was announced and a localelection committee appointed. These committees invited prospectivecandidates to sign a 'pledge' of agreement with the aims and policies ofthe Congress and send it to the election office. In most cases the com-mittees were flooded with applications.23The Congress was concerned not only that its candidates shouldformally record their agreement with Congress policy, but also thatthey should have a fair chance of winning. Next, the committees set outto persuade those persons who were likely to win the election anyway,to win it in the name of the Congress. In Anantapur, there had been 80applications for the 52 Congress candidatures, yet the committee stillset out to tour the district and find better men. In Chittoor, there had

20 Hindu, 22 August 1935.2> Hindu, 2g M arch , 15 Apri l , 11 May 1935.22 Hindu, 13 May 1935.23 Fortnightly report from Madras for second half of May [hereafter in form: F.R.May (ii)] H.P. 18-15 1935, N.A.I.; Hindu, 9, 11 July, 5 September 1935.


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566 CHR ISTOPH ER BAKERbeen a hundred applications, yet the tour started and several influentialJusticites were approached and persuaded to run as Congressmen. InCuddapah, the committee won over the man who had been vice-president of the board in the old Justicite regime, and in Tinnevelly itlur ed a leadin g Justicite whose accession, gov ernm ent noted , 'wouldgreatly facilitate the success of the Congress'. In North Arcot so manynew men were approached that the Congress leaders took care tocounsel long-standing Congressmen who had applied for the partyticket not to be disgruntled if less loyal servants of the organization werepreferred. Rig ht down to the eve of the poll, men who had already beennominated as candidates were pressed to sign the pledge and becomeCongressmen. In many cases the Congress threatened to oppose inde-pe nd en t c andidate s if they did no t accede to the Congress or at leastmake a donation to the Congress election fund.24By election day in these districts, no-one was quite sure exactly whowere Congress candidates and who were not. After the results werean no un ce d, the Congress and its rivals m ad e very different claims abo utthe number of men elected on their respective slates, each inflating itsclaims in the hop e of attra ctin g wavere rs. In Chittoor, for instance,assessments of the number elected for the Congress ranged from 13 to25.2S In general, however, the Congress had clearly done well andseveral m en elected as independ ents now joined the party. T he questionthen was to find a candidate for the district board presidentship. Insome cases, since so many new people had joined the Congress, thechoice was by no means clear or easy. In a few districts, like Chittoor,several factions fought bitterly for the nomination, while in other casesthe Congress leaders used even this opportunity to woo new members.In West Godavari, the Congress offered to help re-elect the previouspresident, a confessed Justicite, if he merely changed his political spotsand became a Congressman; he refused, but the same ploy worked inTinnevelly where the old president carried his substantial personalfollowing with him into the Congress. In both Anantapur and Kurnool,the local Congress absorbed o ld Jus ticite factions by arra ng ing to electtheir faction leaders to the post of vice-president of the board.26

T he re w ere elections in ten district boards in 1935; in Ch ingleputthere was no Congress campaign, in Bellary an independent was electedpresident without opposition from the Congress, and in Cuddapah the"Hindu, 13 August, 11, 12, 19, 21 September, 1 November, 11 December 1935,29 January 1936; Justice, 23 M ay, 8 June 1936."Justice, 1 November 1935; Hindu, 30, 31 October 1935. Hindu, 5, 10, 26 November, 31 December 1935; Justice, 26 November, 2 Decem-ber 1935.


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T H E C O N G R E SS A T T H E 1 9 3 7 E L E C T I O N S I N M A D R A S 5 6 7Congress candidate was beaten; in all the seven othersChittoor, WestGodavari, Anantapur, Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly, Kurnool and SouthArcotthe Congress elected its man president. Besides this, severalmunicipalities, including the largest in the province, Madura, fell tothe Congress.Meanwhile, the Congress also fared well at five by-elections to theprovincial legislature. In these campaigns, too, the Congress managedto attach influential candidates to its flag, and to profit from a lack ofopposition. In the Trichinopoly-Srirangam seat, a local politicianregistered himself as a candidate and was not adopted as the Congresscandidate until a few weeks later. In Chittoor, the Congress ran a manwho had un til recently been identified as a Jus ticite an d who stillenjoyed the confidence of the Justicite chief minister. In Ch ittoor an d intwo contests in Madras City, the Congress faced little opposition andpolled over eighty per cent in a low turn-out. In Anantapur theopposition had collapsed; 'the Justice party polling agents', the Col-lector recorded, 'not only themselves voted for the Congress candidatebut persuaded others to do so'.27

The rate of defection into the Congress party was beginning to in-crease. In Madras City, the apostates included two labour leaders and afabulously wealthy diamond merchant whose family had been Justicitesince 1920.28 One old Congress leader noted that in the local elections'success has been possible because a considerable number who are notreally Congressmen have . . . adopted the Congress because it suitedthem as well as local Congressmen with a view to secure support'.29Indeed, of the seven Congress district board presidents elected in 1935,three were old Congressmen but the other four had all until quiterecently been identified with the Justic e pa rty . 'T he po int', w rote one ofthe City labour leaders about his recent conversion, 'is no doubt afertile subject for denunciation [by] opposing party politicians, but it isthe future that must fill our minds with faith, hope and charity'.30

LOCAL ELECTIONS 2In early 1936, the phenomenal success in local elections threatened to

F.R. March (ii) H.P. 18-3 1935, N.A.I.; Kistna Patrika, 23 April 1935, MadrasNative Newspaper Reports; Hindu, 19 January, 8, 10 April 1935, 11 February 1936;Justice, 23 January 1935.u Hindu, 29 October 1934, 6 September 1935.2 Recorded in Bhulabhai Desai's diary, entry for 29 February 1936; I am in-debted to Tom Tomlinson for this reference. Hindu, 17 September 1935.


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56 8 CHR ISTOPHER BAKERturn sour. The looseness of the campaigns and the welcoming attitudeto new convertsthe factors which had paved the way for recent vic-toriesnow threatened to get out of hand and tear the Congress apart.The trouble started when the Congress party in West Godavariboard fell apart. The choice of a presidential candidate split the partyinto two factions, and the choice of vice-presidential candidate widenedthe rift. By the time of elections to standing committees, the Congresscontin gent was so divided tha t th e president himself failed to get electedto some committees. In the next month, people started to quit theCongress, complaining that the president was using the board's powersan d p atr on ag e in a highly personal fasb.ion.3i Th en , in Ja n ua ry , therewere elections to the Guntur and Ongole boards. In Ongole, Congress-m en w ere in a min ority after th e polls, bu t converted this into a majorityby prom ising to elect an inde pen den t to the presidentship if he broughthis six followers with him into the Congress. This m an won the p residen-tial contest by a single vote but, as his biographer noted, 'it was notparty allegiance that counted but loyalty to individuals'.32 At the vice-presidential election, similar loyalties caused ten Congressmen to voteagainst the party candidate and defeat him, and, soon after, the Con-gress contingent split into two warring factions. One Congress notableresigned from the board and announced:I regret that no Congress spirit prevails in the Congress party of the OngoleDistrict Board. Our party and presidents are more busy seeking to providejobs for some of their men than in devising ways and means by which theycan utilise the immense power, influence and resources of the Boards tofurther the public interest and rouse the national consciousness. . . . It painsme very much to find that as days go on, the Congress is becoming more andmore unpopu lar with the masses who had reposed so much confidence in us,not knowing that they had so little control over the doings of our partyand party men.33In Guntur, too, the party divided over the nomination of a presidentialcandidate, and the split was widened when the dominant faction, toensure the election of the ir nom inee, offered the vice-presidentialnomination to a rather shady non-Congressman. Five men walked outof the board meeting during the election, three more resigned from theparty soon after, and then the leader of the local Congress contingentalso resigned,34 proclaiming:The trouble started with elections to local bodies. Tactical success at any cost

31 Hindu, 30 Ap ril 1936; Justice, 17, 29 April , 23, 30 M ay, 8 Ju n e 1936.32 K. Kasipa thi , Tryst with Destiny (Hy derab ad, 1970), pp . 36 -8."Justice, 9, 10June 1936.34 Hindu, 25 February, 27 March, 8 August 1936; Justice, 25 May 1936.


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THE CONGRESS AT TH E IO,37 ELECTIO NS IN MADRAS 56 9became the sole and chief concern of the Congress. Completely obsessed withthis one idea, the . . . committee in charge of the elections began to mis-manage the whole show. Opportunists, self-seekers and place-hunters werelabelled as Congress candidates and the credulous elector was exploitedto a degree by the Congress. All sorts of persons with no community ofinterest, with little team spirit and with less esprit de corps were herdedtogether and proclaimed to the world as Congress parties. The Congress isnow reaping the fruits of its blundering. Defections and disciplinary actionsconsequent thereon have become the order of the day.35

These events occu rred in the An dh ra deltas which were accustom ed tofierce political struggles. In the following months, they spread to thenormally more peaceful Tamil districts. In South Arcot, the Congressparty in the district board fell apart in the same fashion as the Gunturand Ongole parties.3* At the North Arcot elections in March, four menwho applied for the Congress ticket and were refused, stood anyway,defeated their Congress rivals, and were then hurriedly welcomed intothe party. After the elections, the Congress contingent housed fourdifferent factions, each bent on securing the presidential nomination.When one man was chosen, the other factions revolted, ten Congress-men voted for his opponent at the presidential election, and theoppon ent w on. Un da un ted , Saty am urthi tried to woo the successfulman into the Congress fold, but others were disgusted by the wholefiasco.37 In the midst of rumours that Congress tickets had virtuallybeen auctioned, one old stager, Tiru Vi Ka, set off to form a 'NewCongress' and prosecute a campaign to 'clean up' the nationalistmovement.38The most disturbing disaster came at elections to the Trichinopolymunicipality in Ju ly . T he most prom inent local politician in the town ,P. Ratna velu The var, quit the Justice pa rty in 1934, switched quicklyinto the Congress, and w as voted on the Congress slate to both the townseat in the legislature and the presidentship of the district board. Theinflux of Thevar, his followers, and others into the local Congress hadembarrassed other members of the organization. The most prominentGandhian in the town, Dr T. S. S. Rajan, had resigned from some of hisCongress duties in disgust, and been unceremoniously kicked out ofothers. When Thevar began organizing to capture the municipality,Dr Rajan opposed him bitterlynot least because Thevar had recently

35 F.R. August (i) H.P. 18-8 1936, N.A.I." Justice, 5 Oc tobe r 1936." Hindu, 29 February, 2, 21 March, 27 April , 2, 12 May 1936.' T. V. Kalyan asundara M udal ia r , Valkkaik Kurippukkal (Madras, 1969), pp. 399-

4O5-


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57 CHRISTOPHER BAKERfomented discord between Hindus and Muslims for political gain. Afterthe municipal polls, there were five people chasing the Congressnominat ion for the municipal chair, including Thevar, Dr Raj an anda Christian, Ponniah Pillai. Thevar's skill at politicking won him thenominat ion, and Ponniah Pillai promptly stood against him as anindependent . Dr Rajan backed Ponniah Pillai and Thevar was de-feated.39 O n the next day, Rajagopalachari, Gandhi 's most prominentfollower in the south, resigned from the Congress. He was a closefriend of Dr Raj'an and had pleaded with Rajan not to work againstthe party. After the debacle he wrote to Gandh i : ' I have now lost allfaith in this business. I have no heart to be pretending any longer thatwe can build up organised work on party discipline.'40

Rajagopalachari saw that the Trichinopoly affair exemplified thedi lemma of the Congress. The party had to keep the door open to wel-come new recruits , but it also had to impose discipline to ensure that theCongress gained from the influx of new men and was not simplymanipu la ted and distorted by them. He could understand why a com-mitted Congressman like Dr Rajan should object to the apparentmanipulat ion of the Congress for the self-aggrandizement of a com-munalis t l ike Thevar; yet he could also see that to allow Dr Rajan topursue his own conscience and work against the party ruling would, inhis ow n words, 'hav e amo unted to abdica tion of the Congress as a party' .41Further, Rajagopalachari could see that this dilemma, and the ruc-tions it was creating not only in Trichinopoly but in many other partsof the province and nation, threatened to wreck the Congress ship justwhen landfall seemed imminent. A month later he wrote to RajendraPrasad : ' I think the encouragement to revolt and rebellion that dis-gruntled and mischief-making Congressmen in the south have receivedowing to a variety of circumstances has made success in the electionsvery p roblematical in this province.'42

The success of the Congress at the Assembly and local elections, andtheir subsequent embarrassment, spurred the ruling Justice party intoact ion. Throughout 1935 there w ere Ju stic ite conferences initiated bylocal politicians distressed by the Congress campaign and anxious togoa d the Jus tice leaders into retaliation. By early 1936 there was a newcentral committee, a party fund (for the first time), a district network

39 Hindu, 1 June, 28 July, 10, 11, 17 August 1936.40 Rajagopalachari to Gandhi, 11 August 1936, Rajendra Prasad papers, fileVII/36.

Ibid. Rajagopalachari to Prasad, 7 September 1936, Rajendra Prasad papers, file

VII/36.


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T H E C O N G R E S S A T T H E 1 9 3 7 E L E C T I O N S IN M A D R A S 5 7 1of organizers, and plans for a party newspaper. But this Justic ite revivalfaced enormous problems. The party leaders were not convinced of theneed for a party organization. Throughout their career, the Justiceleaders had found their most important base of support in GovernmentHouse, and had used the patronage and power conferred by govern-ment office to build up a network of supporters in the districts. Thecu rren t G overno r, Lo rd Erskine, still looked on the Justicites as his 'verygood friends',43 and the party leaders found this cosily adequate. Theydid not want a party organization which might fetter their actions, orforce policies and programmes on them. They looked benignly on theenergetic efforts of their followers in the districts, but firmly barredthem from any say in the running of the party.44Yet circumstances had changed. With the 1935 Act, the British werewithdrawing from the provinces; and even before the Act, they had,through other reforms, begun to disentangle themselves from thedetails of provincial adm inistration. The British were a vanishing asset.Moreover, as they withdrew, the British made important changes to thestructure they left behind. Most importantly, they reduced the patron-age and the discretionary powers which the ministers had exercisedin local governmentnot only in local boards, but also in the manage-ment of schools, temples and co-operatives. In the 1930s, the Justiceministers found they no longer wielded the power to cajole supportin the localities; in its place, they had the power to punish localpoliticians who went astray. A nice basket of carrots had been replacedby an ugly array of sticks.In many localities, the Justice ministers found their erstwhile sup-porters fighting bitterly with one another over the diminishing stockof patronage they could offer. 'It is surely impossible', wrote the chiefminister, the raja of Bobbili, after one such dispute had torn the Justiceparty in Tanjore apart, 'to accommodate them all . '4 ' In other districts,many were irritated by the ministers' attempts to rescue their positionby deploying what few powers they had left. After elections in Nellorethe Collector wrote that 'people generally voted against the Justicitecandidates because the Justice Party's tactics in its attempts to cling topower were questionable.'4* Elsewhere, local politicians merely foundit was no longer necessary or advantageous to propitiate the ministers,and gra dually drifted away from the Just ice pa rty.


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572 CHRISTOPHE R BAKER

But Bobbili was not defeated, and in 1935 he discovered a newweapon. Government abolished the taluk boards (sub-units of a districtboard) and decided that it might therefore be advisable to reduce thear ea covered by some of the larger district b oards. W hen the first districtboard (Tanjore) was bifurcated (divided into two), Bobbili found thatthe bifurcation rules gave him considerable powers to influence thecomposition of the two new boards, and he used these powers in hisparty's interest.47 T he n, in late 1935, as district boards started to tum bleinto Congress hands, Bobbili started to deploy this new weapon withgreat zeal. Erskine soon found out what his chief minister was up to:If the Congress wins the elections then the Minister postpones, as he haspower to do, the entry into office of the new Board and issues an order allow-ing the old Board to carry on for a month or so. During this period attemptsare made to induce various members of the new Board . . . to change theirallegiance and vote for a Justice Party President... If these blandishmentsfail then the Board is bifurcated in such a way that the Justice Party make'sure of one President out of the two. Again there is power when a Board isbifurcated for the Government to nominate persons to represent minoritiesif the circumstances require it. The power of nomination has been used farmore in the interests of the political party to which the Minister belongs thanin the interests of the minorities. The power has in fact been used to alter thepolitical complexion of the new Board and thus upset the results of theelection.48The Governor told Bobbili to stop, and so he did, for a time; but in thelatter part of 1936 the fight between Congress and Justice heated up.

LOCAL ELECTION S 3

In late 1936, the Congress recovered from the fiascos at local electionsin the earlier part of the year. Many of the leaders and young workers,who had become steadily more alienated from the organization sincethe end of Civil Disobedience, now returned to active participation inthe campaigns. Some young Congressmen, including one or two whowere soon to become prominent leaders, had drifted so far from theCongress since 1934 that they had even started negotiations withBobbili to create a new coalition.49 Now, in 1936, the new Congressconstitution (written in 1934 and subsequently modified) gave more" Hindu, 19 December 1934. Erskine to Willingdon, 23 December 1935, E.P., Vol. 8, I.O .L. C. R. Reddy to Bobbili, 7 July 1936, C. R. Reddy papers, file 31 of 1935-42,N.M.M.L.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELECTIONS IN MADRAS 57 3opportunity for party workers to influence party decisions. Moreover,the enormous load of organizational workwith voter registration,enrolment campaigns, re-organization of the committees, several localelections, and the start of the legislature election campaignmeantthat there was an obvious demand for the 'volunteers' to return to thefront line. In Ju ly , Rajagop alach ari declared his agreement with th epolicy of office acceptance, and began to help in local campaigns.In October, one of his Civil Disobedience lieutenants exhorted veteransof the salt campaign not to let the new members take over the Congresscommittees. At local Congress conferences, there were many demandsfor the Congress to be more careful in its selection of candidates.The provincial and local civic boards, which had chosen electioncandidates, were abolished and replaced by ad hoc election committees;these were not elected, bu t crea ted by the fiat of the prov incial workingcommittee, and usually contained four prominent local Congressmenand one emissary from the provincial organization. At the same time,both the Tamil and Andhra organizations laid down tighter conditionsfor the allotment of Congress candidatures. The Andhra party declaredthat they should not be given to persons who had a history in 'anti-national' politics, or who had only recently joined the Congress. TheTamilnad party added that candidates should have been enrolled for atleast three months, should be in the habit of wearing khaddar, andshould not hold a title, office or honour conferred by the British.50While these conditions were not always fulfilled, the renewed involve-ment of many experienced leaders and workers made the local electioncampaigns in late 1936 ambitious and effective.

The leaders of these campaigns actively sought out promising candi-dates among non-Congressmen, and even worked to bring local official-dom into the contest on the Congress side: 'in quite a large number ofplaces', wrote one observer, 'we found the village headman helping theCongress. In one village it had been announced by beat of tom-tomthat all should vote for the Congress.' They also brought in an armyof youthful organizers:The Congress organisation managed to spread its network among importantvillages long before the elections, with the result tha t as soon as the nom ina-tion papers were filed, it was able to put into the field a very large num berof volunteers and workers to address public meetings, visit the countrysideand canvass votes. You might visit any village even in outlying areas and youwere sure to come across groups of urchins wearing Congress khaddar uni-forms and Gandhi caps and holding aloft the tri-coloured banner. Nearlyeighty per cent of these men workers and volunteers had been drawn from

so Hindu, 30 Ap ril , 9, 20 Ju n e, 11 Ju ly , 1 Augu st, 12 Oc tob er 1936.


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57 4 CHR ISTOPHER BAKERthe voteless, propertyless, unemployed hundreds of the urban and villageareas . . . 51The Congress also took steps to ensure that members elected on theCongress ticket all voted for the Congress nominee for the president-ship. In some cases, Congressmen voted openly, to prevent anyoneconcealing his treachery in a secret ballot; in others, they were madeto swear a solemn oath before an image of Gandhi; and in one district,to ensure that no-one could tamper with the loyalties of the Congressmembers, they were locked away in a lonely place and escorted to theboard m eeting in th e care of a professional wrestler. 52

In August, Congress captured Coimbatore district board, and inO cto be r, the M ad ra s C orporation, one of the strongholds of the Justiceparty. In November, there were elections in Kistna, West and EastGodavari, Nellore, Ramnad, Tanjore and Salem, and Congress didwell in a ll of the m . Now Bobbili brough t the weap on of bifurcation intofull play.He ordered bifurcation in Tinnevelly, South Arcot and Coimbatorewh ere C ongress regimes were already installed, and in Nellore, R am na dand Salem where elections were in progress and the Congress clearlydominant. He also completed the bifurcation of West Godavari whichthe Governor had halted a year before. He then used nominations tosteal several of these boards from the Congress grasp.Now v iolence invaded the local cam paig ns as bo th sides fought to winat all costs. There had been tremors in the earlier campaigns in Tin-nevelly and West Godavari, but nothing to compare with the eventsin Madras City where a leading Congress organizer in the campaignover the Corporation found he had to fight not only against rivalcand ida tes at th e polls, but also against gangs of thugs arm ed with stavesin the streets.53 In R am na d, du ring the last local election of the year, thecampaign almost degenerated into a brawl.The Justice leaders paid special attention to the contest since thebrother-in-law of a minister was involved. On polling day, the chiefminister suspended the election in this man's ward on the grounds ofimpending violence, and the Congress believed this was no more thana man oe uv re to save the Justicite candid ate from certain defeat. At there-run, violence was renewed. Congress meetings were dispersed bypolice baton charges or by cars driven through the crowd, Congressmenretaliated with seditious speeches, the police made mass arrests (up to

" Justice, 16, 25 July 1935."Hindu, 10 November 1936; Justice, 23 May 1936, 8 January 1937. Ma. Po. Sivagnanam, Enatu Porattam (Madras, 1974), pp. 128-9.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELEC TIONS IN MADRAS 57 5a hundred in one batch), and Congress followers stoned the car ofa prominent Justicite campaigner. On polling day, the two sides foughtpitche d battles over control of the polling booths. Th e Jus ticite favouritewon in this constituency, bu t overall the Justicites lost. Bobbili prom ptlybifurcated the board, but failed to prevent one of the two new boardsfalling to the Congress. The Congress workers celebrated their victoryby running riot, stoning a caste samajam run by a leading Justicite,smashing up a Justic ite lawyer's car, and looting shops owned byJusticite merchants.54 A journalist who visited R am na d a few monthslater was told th at the Justicites' m anip ulatio n of the police and localgovernment machinery during this election had boosted Congresssupport in wh at ha d once been a Justicite stron gh old ." Bobbili hadplayed his last trump.

m . The campaignBy late 1936, two-thirds of the district boards and several of the majormunicipalities were in Congress hands. Government had announcedtha t th e general elections to the new legislatures wou ld fall in Febru ary1937 and Congress had immediately started its campaign. In May 1936the Congress worked to ensure that all potential electors got themselvesregistered, in July committees of provincial leaders toured the districtsto lay the groundwork for the choice of candidates, and in AugustTamil and Andhra Parliamentary Boards were set up to make the finaldecision on selecting candidates.56 One problem, however, still re-mained : would Congress, if successful in the elections, take up minis-terial office?This was an important point. Satyamurthi was adamant that Con-gress should not repeat the fiasco of 1926 when the Madras Swarajistshad built up an impressive party, fared well at the legislature elections,and then watched the party disintegrate rapidly when the all-IndiaCongress leaders denied them the chance to form a ministry. As earlyas Ju n e 1935, the Ma dra s Gov ernment repo rted t ha t several mem bersof the legislature were ready to join the Congress so long as it plannedto capture the ministry." The Gandhian irreconcilables argued that

" Issues of Hindu and Justice between 6 and 15 December 1936, Justice, 22 January9375 G -O - 2 7 ' (Home) 27 January 1937, T.N.A .; G .O. 385 C. (Public) 24 February1937, T.N.A.; G.O. 424 C. (Public) 1 March 1937, T.N.A." N. Perumal, Chettinad (Madras, 1938), pp . 26 -8.s Hindu, 11 July, 1 August 1936; F.R. May (ii), H .P. 18-5 1936; F.R. August (ii),H.P. 18-8 1936, N.A.I. F .R. Ju ne (ii), H.P. 18-6 1935, N.A .I.


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576 CH RISTO PHE R BAKERCongress could only enter the legislatures in order to wreck the un-pleasant 1935 constitution; meanwhile, Satyamurthi campaigned hardfor an official announcement in favour of office acceptance.The all-India Congress leaders feared that a debate on this questionwould divide the party at an inauspicious time, and forced Satyamurthiand others to agree to a moratorium on the problem. 58 This was irk-some, especially when only a few days later several rather jaded poli-ticians formed a new 'Swarajist party' openly committed to the pursuitof ministerial office, and threatened to steal* the supp ort of those whodisliked the Congress's prevarication.& I n late 1935 and early 1936,several Tamil and Andhra Congress conferences called for the all-Indiabody to make a clear statement in favour of office acceptance, but theall-India leaders sought safety in silence and arranged that the issueshould not even be discussed at the annual Congress session at Lucknowin April. Several Madrassis were infuriated by this ostrich-like attitudeand demanded an unequivocal statement in the Congress electionmanifesto, but aga in this was denied.60 Satyam urthi, however, man agedto soothe anxious supporters and keep within the moratorium, by sug-gesting that there was no need for public discussion on the question inMadras because amongst Madrassis there was not really any disagree-ment.*1

In private, the Madras leaders made no reservations about the factthat , if victorious, they intended to accept ministerial office. In J u n e1936, Erskine told the Viceroy: 'I saw Satyamurthi the other day. Hewas cooing like a dove and there is no doubt that he and his friendsmean to work the new constitution in Madras . In fact the bulk of theCongress down here are panting to take office.'62 In November,Satyamurthi returned to assure the Governor that there would be nowrecking, and two weeks before the election Rajagopalachari turnedup to give the Governor a final guarantee that the Madras Congresswould not shy away from ministerial office.63Once this issue was effectively resolved, the rate at which establishedpoliticians cut old ties and moved into the Congress increased enor-mously. The defectors included: in May, three of the biggest local

58 Hindu, 4 Ju ne 1935. Hindu, 23 June 1935.60 Hindu, 12, 27 July 1936; Erskine to Crack, 20 April 1936, H.P. 4/6 1936, N.A.I.61 Justice, 7 December 1936.62 Erskine to Linlithgow, 14 June 1936, Linlithgow papers [hereafter L.P.),Vol. 116, I.O.L. Erskine to Willingdon, 1 November 1936 and 3 February 1937, E.P., Vol. 8,I.O.L.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELECTIO NS IN MADRAS 57 7politicians in Chittoor, all with strong Justicite connexions; in Ju ly ,Dr S ubba royan , who had been chief minister for the Indep en den t pa rtyin 1927-30 and who had twice contested for the leadership of the Ju stic eparty; in August, a City labour leader and journalist, a Christianpolitician from Madura, and a leading light from the fanatically anti-Congress Self Respect movement; in September, two more City labourleaders; in November, a rich Kumbakonam businessman and a Coim-batore politician, who gave up eighteen years' connexion with theJustice movement and a British title.64 In early 1937, one of the richestbusinessmen in Madras City, the lieutenant of the first Justicite chiefminister, a major weaving magnate, and the leading local politician ofTu tico rin all slid into the Congress in time to get Congress ca nd ida ture sfor the legislature elections.*5 One depressed-caste leader wrote toGandh i :Some of my community men who were basking in the sunshine of the JusticeParty thought it wise on the eve of elections-one of them in particula r jus ttwo days before filing nomination papers . . . to join the Congress in orderto avoid Congress opposition and secure the support of the general elec-torate.66

Some old Congressmen disliked this access of new talent. GunturCongressmen complained that one man who had been preferred to oldpa rty faithfuls was 'in the ha bit of presenting Christmas cakes and oth erpresents to officials', and another was 'known only for his wealth'.67A Cuddapah man quit the Congress 'as it has become impossible tofight the moneyed classes on one side and the new converts from theJustice Party . . . on the other' ,6s and a South Arcot man complainedof 'the adoption of pseudo-penitent prodigal sons of India by theParliamentary Boards . . . the spectacular resignations of Kaiser-i-Hindmedals, Rao Bahadur sanads, Dewan Bahadur sanads, and the widepublication given to such marvellous somersaults, rather wonderfulmetamorphoses on the eve of the coming elections'.6 ' One non-Con-gressman observed hopefully that 'these wolves will cast off their cloaks64 Hindu, 27 May, 12, 15 July, 31 August, 6 September, 18, 30 November 1936;

K. Baladandayutham, JivaValkkai Varalaru (Madras, 1966), pp . 23-7 ."Hindu, 22 January, 2, 10 February 1937; Cenkunta Mittiran, II, No. 1 (January1937). P- 5'9-" M. C. Rajah to Gandhi, 12 March 1937, M. C. Rajah papers, Vol. Gi,N.M.M.L."Justice, 18 January 1937, Ch. Suryanarayana to president, A.I.C.C., 5 May 1936,A.I.C.C . file P3 of 1936, N.M .M.L.68 Justice, 18 November 1936. Justice, 9 January 1937.


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57 8 CH RISTOP HER BAKERsoon after their election' and Bobbili claimed to be indifferent to theCongress capture of so many local boards on the grounds that so manyof the Congress candidates were, on past evidence, really Justicites.70But this was sheer bravado . In a time of such rapid chan ge, po liticiansappreciated opportunities rather than antecedents, and past evidencewas no guide to future political loyalties. Both the old Congressmen andthe Justice leaders had to accept that the Congress was changingdramatically. Prakasam tried to calm old Congressmen by suggesting'it was a mistake to think that non-Congressmen were not patriots.Swaraj was intended for all, both [for] those who went to jail as well asthose who stood aloof from the non-co-operation movement' .71With control of local govern me nt and the support of so many localpotentates, Congress required only one more element to complete theformula which had proved so successful at legislature elections duringdyarchythe support of Government House.In 1935 Erskine gave the Justicites considerable encouragement, yetin 1936 his enthusiasm palled. 'The Justice party are all asleep', hewrote to the Viceroy, 'and kick their leaders as I may I have not yetsucceeded in affecting their le th ar gy .'" T he V iceroy wished to tame theCongress by getting its leaders into ministries, and now Erskine,exasperated by Bobbili and his men and charmed by the assurancesof the Congress on the office question, came round to this opinion.Bobbili and his friends were horrified to find that it was privately butwidely known that the Governor and several senior civilians were'inclined to suppo rt the Con gress ' ." In public the Governor maintainedan air of strict neutrality, yet after a long period in which the Governorhad patently backed the Justicites, even such neutrality seemed likedesertion. Both Congress and Justice were well aware how importantit was tha t the electorate should see that government was no longerback ing the Justicites and was not averse to a Congress victory. Erskinefound that 'it is being said that Government are abdicating in favourof the Congress and have deserted the Justice Party and the othermoderates who have always been supporters of the British Raj.'7*

With this final touch to their campaign, the Congress entered thefinal stages of electioneering. They deployed all their weaponsthe

70 P. S. Sivaswami Iyer to V. Guruswami Sastri, 12 November 1936, SivaswamiIyer papers, N.A.I.; D. Kotaiah to Gandhi and Nehru, 31 October 1936, A.I.C.C.file P3 of 1936, N.M.M.L." Hindu, 1 August 1936. Erskine to R. A. Butler, 9 May 1936, E.P., Vol. 19, I.O.L.73 N. Perumal, Bobbili (Goimbatore, i960), p. 121.74 Erskine to Linlithgow, 24 December 1936, L.P., Vol. 116.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELECT IONS IN MADRAS 57 9machinery of local government, the mediation of important vote-brokers, the energy of their volunteers, and the confidence that theywould in fact win.Various Congressmen made good use of their bridgehead in localgovernment. The Ongole district board president (whose brother wasstanding for the legislature) 'toured the constituency from door to doorand contacted almost every voter'.75 Schoolteachers commanded thesort of local influence that made them useful as agents, and they couldeasily be persuaded to support the district board president's party bythreats of transfer or dismissal. The Ongole president transferred 200teachers, inserted some new m en in other staff posts and, according to alocal opponent who had been in a position to use these methods inprevious elections, 'expected all the elementary schoolteachers to beready with the votes of the respective villages in the polling area'.76In West Godavari, it was alleged that seven hundred teachers weretransferred, several district board contracts reallocated in return forsupport, and the distribution of grants to panchayat boards revised tocoerce the support of panchayat presidents.77 In Guntur, the vice-president, who was an election candidate, employed sixty new teachersfrom his constituency, founded a new school there, and allegedly paidhis election workers from board funds. In Tanjore the district boardcut the land cess in an attempt to win support,79 and in several placesthe boards went on a spending spree in the weeks immediately beforethe polls.In all constituencies, Congress lobbied the support of locally in-fluential men, and persuaded them to chair their campaign meetings.In the rural areas, candidates toured villages in the company of thevillage officer or major landowner; in the towns they held meetings inthe temple precincts and welcomed the support of big merchants,leading lawyers, mercantile associations and artisan guilds.soOther aspects of the Congress campaign were novel. 'As the electionproceeded', noted Erskine, 'it became clear that the Congress organisa-tion was of a most efficient character. They had committees in everylarge village and town, whilst even in the smaller hamlets they had

Kasipathi, Tryst, p. 40. G . O . 3181 (L.S.G.) ao August 1937, State Archives Hyderabad [hereafterS.A.H.]." G.O. 1240 (L.S.G.) 31 March 1937; G.O. 3698 (L.S.G.) 21 August 1936, S.A.H. G.O . 3149 (L.S.G.) 17 August 1937, S.A.H.' Hindu, 1 June 1936.o See the description of a campaign in R. S. Maniparathi, Maddapparai CinkamR. S. Venkadramayyar Jiviya Carittiram (Dindigul , 1956), pp . 22- 7.


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580 CH RISTO PHER BAKERagents and canvassers. '" The army of students and voluntary workerswhich had proved so useful in the later district board elections was herebrought into full play.All along, the Congressmen exuded an air of confidence, even to theextent of making premature use of the power which they shortly hopedto win; 'in certain cases', wrote Erskine, 'threats have publicly beenmade to the Police that if they do their duty and prevent Congresshooliganism, they will be individually punished by dismissal afterApril ist'.szFinally, on polling day, the Congress arranged to get voters fromremote places to the polling booths, and worked to turn the day intoa festival. They provided entertainment and refreshment at pollingstations and in some places such as Ramnad 'the voters from somevillages came in batches with drums and country music in processionssinging national songs'.83But to a large exten t, the final phases of the cam paig n w ere irrelevant.To many it seemed that the Congress had won, largely by default, sometime before polling day.

Seven months before the poll, the Governor noted that interest wasalready waning:The fact that the Congress contested the district board elections has had anadverse effect upon their prospects. For in the districts which they lostCongress showed they could be defeated; while in those that they won, theiradministration has proved to be even more corrupt than tha t of their Justicepredecessors. The position at present therefore is very fluid and both Congressand Justice seem to be disliked by the population. I suppose that the partythat is disliked least will do best, but there is no real enthusiasm for eitherside.84In the months after this observation, Bobbili's flagrant mishandlingof local government ensured that the balance of negative feeling workedaga inst the Ju stic e pa rty. T h e Collector of one district found that 'mostof the edu cated m en . . . ap pe ar to have voted for the Congress cand i-dates owing, it is said, to their disgust with the Chief Minister's policyof bifurcation of and nomination to District Boards', and Erskine found'the class who run the District Boards and generally take an interest inlocal self go ver nm en t. . . hav e shown their resentm ent at Bobbili'sconduct of affairs by voting against his candidates'. 85 Congress main-

i Erskine to Linlithgow, 1 March 1937, E.P., Vol. 8, I.O.L.2 Erskine to Linlithgow, 24 December 1936, L.P., Vol. 116, I.O.L.J Collector of Ram na d, 4 March 1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937, T.N.A.14 Erskine to Linlithgow, 14 June 1936, L.P., Vol. 116, I.O.L. Collector of West Godavari, 28 February 1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April1937, T.N.A.; Erskine to Linlithgow, 1 March 1937, E.P., Vol. 8, I.O.L.


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THE CONGRESS AT THE 1 9 3 7 ELECTION S IN MADRAS 581tained an air of confidence, and many observers thought this wascrucial; a South Arcot official thought the contest had effectively endedwhen Congress beat Justice at the local elections.8* Congress leadersactively exploited past successes; when the staggering of the electionsto the new legislatures in the various provinces caused the Congressvictory in Orissa to be announced just before Madras went to the polls,one Congress leader invited Madrassis 'to follow the example of thepeople of Orissa'.87Over a third of the total of 494 candidates were Congressmen.88In many constituencies, the opposition to them was nominal. In SouthArcot, an official noted that amongst the opponents 'there was noregu lar organisation . . . except the eleventh hou r meeting of a fewadherents of this party at a few important places. Their canvassing andpropaganda proper began only a few days before the elections'.89 In thespecial constituencies for women, labour and scheduled castes, theCongress was the only organization which arrayed several candidatesunder a party label and ran the campaigns for these candidates inharness with the candidates for the general constituencies.

M an y influential oppo nents of the Congress gave up before the polls.In Madura, three local notables withdrew their candidatures and leftthe only serious opposition in the district in the hands of one man, whostood himself in two constituencies, put up 'his brother's dancing-girlconcubine' in a third, and mounted no real campaign. ' 0 In Tuticorin,the only rival to the Congressman pulled out on nomination day; inTinnevelly, the municipal chairman standing against the Congresswithdrew a few days later; and in Ra m na d, both a leading Justicite anda powerful local zamindar gave up a few days before the polls. InOngo le, a leading Justic ite, district boa rd leader and caste head wasexpected to win, but he abandoned the fight, and in Vizagapatam,a Justicite ex-minister stood by while his campaign fell apart and wasresigned to defeat well before polling day.91Despite prolific efforts by the government to register the new elec-

" R . D . O . Tirukkoilur, 27 February 1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937,T.N.A."Hindu, 1 February 1937." 171 Congress, 112 Justice and 212 other; F.R. Janu ary (i) H .P. 18-1 1937,N.A.I.; the elction results file , H .P . 129 1937 N.A.I., gives a total of 500 candidates.As fn. 86.90 Collector of Madura, 26 February 1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937,T.N.A.' Hindu, 20 February 1937; 'A Gandhite', Kamaraj the Shrewd, igo3~4O (Madras,1961), p . 37; K asipathi, Tryst, p. 41; Collector of Guntur, 4 March 1937, G.O. 708 C.(Public) 8 April 1937, T.N .A.; P atro to Erskine, 4 March 1937, E.P., Vol. 19, I.O.L.


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582 CHR ISTOPHER BAKERtorate, they only reached the expected figure of 15 per cent of thepopulation in 19 of the 25 districts, and overall registration was nearly15 per cent below the expected level.92 On polling day, only 51.6per cent of this deficient electorate came forward to votethe lowestfigure in any Indian province except Bengal.93For the most part the elections were calm and peaceful, except in thechief minister's constituency where both Congress and Justice put on aspecial show of force, and parts of Ramnad where the violence of therecent district board elections spilled over and there were threats toburn one of the Congress candidates alive.94 One Collector called it a'comparatively gentle contest' , and another noted that 'having regardto the pas t history of the district especially d uring the last DistrictBoard elections when arson, dacoity and murder were committed, theelections must be considered to have been completed without anyserious incidents'.9* The victory in Fe bru ary 1937 was little more th ana rubber s tamp.

IV. The resultThe Congress lost only four seats in the 116 general constituencies, andw on 159 of the to tal of 215. It secured 64.5 per cent of the votes cast andwon 74 per cent of the seats. It was the most striking victory for theCongress in any province.9*Most of the Congressmen not only won but won emphatically. In the190 principal constituencies (discounting labour, landholders, and thoseshown below as 'European' and 'other' , which all had special fran-chises) Congress won 152 seats. In 44 of these, the victor secured over80 per cent of votes cast, and in 78 over 70 per cent of votes cast. Onlyone non-Congressman, the richest landholder in the province, gainedmore than 80 per cent and only 6 more than 70 per cent. Moreover, asa general rule, the lower the turn-out in any constituency, the higherwas the percentage of votes cast for the Congressman. This shows up ina regional analysis of the 112 general seats won by the Congress. As arule , the turn-out decreased, and the margin of Congress victoryincreased as we pass from the north to the south of the province.

"Hindu, 15 July 1936." H . P . 129 1937, N.A.I. Hindu, 23, 24 February 1937; 'A Gan dhite', Kamaraj, pp. 36-7. Collector of Tinnevelly, 28 February 1937, Collector of South Arcot, 4 March1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937, T.N.A.' Data on results from H.P. 129 1937, N.A.I.


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28/33

584 CHRISTOPH ER BAKERTABLE 2

Madr as Legislative Assem bly elections ig37: turnout and percentage poll in generalconstituencies won by Congressmen

Region (number of seats)Northern Circars (9)Kistna-Godavari deltas (14)Coromandel, Andhra (10)Ceded Districts (9)Coromandel, Tamil (14)Madras City (4)Interior Tamilnad (12)Cauvery delta (11)Southern districts (14)West Coast (14)Andhra area (42)Tamil area (51)Province (107)

Average turn-out

56575949455352475153564953

Average % polled byCongress victor67667068687975*798 7t79687274

* in this region, three seats were unopposedf in this region, two seats were unopposedW hile the num be r of seats was larger and the franchise wider tha nin previous legislature elections, the type of man elected in 1937 did notdiffer radically from his predecessors under dyarchy.'? The electors hadnot selected many full-time political workers (only nine were on theCongress pay -roll), nor had it for the most pa rt chosen ordin ary m orta ls;

only 21 (mostly scheduled caste candidates) came from poor families,while as many as 61 came from families which could boast eitherpedigree or extreme wealth or both. As in the dyarchy legislatures, largelandowners, businessmen and lawyers predominated, and there washardly a labourer, artisan or common tradesman in sight. Amongst 215Members of the Legislative Assembly (M.L.A.s) 94 had degrees, 132owned land and at least 89 owned substantial holdings, 52 paid theincome tax (which was an indication of a substantial income outsidel and ) , 42 had business interest and 36 owned urban properties. Sixty-three had legal qualifications and 53 of those also practised. Over half

97 The information for the analysis of elected candidates comes from a wide varietyof sources including: G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937, T.N .A.; T. N. Satchit (ed.),Who's Who in Madras (Coch in, 1935 and 1938 editions ); Directory of the M adrasLegislature, published by the Madras Legislature Congress Party (Madras, 1938);C. Ranga Rao (ed.), Andhra Desa Directory and Who's Who (Bexwada, 1939); severalbiographies, government files and newspaper reports.


29/33

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30/33

58 6 CHRISTOPHER BAKERof the 137 Hindu M.L.A.s came from the major landholding castes(including those nominally 'warrior'), and another quarter wereBrahmans. In background and caste, the Congress contingent did notdiffer markedly from the overall picture.Many of the M.L.A.s had the sort of interests and attributes whichh ad been th e componen ts of political influence in the past. Te n cam efrom village officer families, 27 had an interest in banks, insurance orm on ey -len din g, an d 25 played some pa rt in co-operative societies.

TABLE 4Madras Legislative Assembly ig37: caste of candidates returned

CasteTOTAL*BrahmansBrahmanWarriorsVelamaRajuTraders etc.VaisyaChettyVania ChettyNattukottaiBalijaNadarSengundarDevanga

SaurashtraLandholding etc.KammaReddyTelagaVellalaGounderMaravarPadaiyichiVokkaligaNairTiyyaMiscellaneousGoud SaraswatDevadasiBadagaUnidentified

General seatsTamil

44' 3

51

81 03

4

Andhra57' 4

1

2I22IIII4

' 39211

1

Othprseats361 0

2

11

2111

2

61

1

16

Congress12535

5121212111

8144' 49231

5111

1 0

Totals'3 737

26121312111

1 1' 54' 4923161

111

1 0

30 Scheduled Caste, 9 C hristian, 29 M uslim, 9 European and Anglo-Indian, 1 Backward and Tribal member are excluded from the table


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T H E C O N G R ES S A T T H E 1 9 3 7 E L E C T I O N S IN M A D R A S 5 8 7Twenty-two had some interest in the affairs of temples, generally byhav ing sat on a temple comm ittee or acted as a temple trustee. Again th eCongress contingent conformed to the overall pattern. The M.L.A.spossessed considerable political experience among them. Thirty-two,including 10 Congressmen, had sat in previous legislatures,9^ while 63per cent of them had experience in local government, many of themover many years.The Congress party in the Assembly may be divided into threerough ly equa l group s. The first consisted of those who h ad been devotedmembers of the Congress for at least a decade. The 55 who had been tojail for taking part in Congress agitations formed this group. A handful

TABLE 5Number of M.L.A.s who had been in localgovernment by the year:1920 1925 1929 1933 1937

To tal 17 50 70 109 136Congress 9 36 51 80 102

of them had quit college during Non-cooperation, spent some time inNational schools and Congress ashrams, and had taken part in all theCongress campaigns. Others, like A. Kaleswara Rao who had beena leading light of the Andhra Congress since 1920, had managed tocombine devotion to the Congress with a variety of other politicalinterests (in his case, involvement in local gov ernm ent in K istna).' T hesecond group was more mixed. It contained young men who were justentering on a political career, experienced politicians from outlyingareas who had not previously been called upon to align themselves withthe divisions of provincial and national politics, and men who hadbefore been associated with the Congress but had qualified their loyaltyto the organization; in the latter category were several who had joinedthe Swarajist Congress in 1926 but faded into the background duringCivil Disobedience. The third group consisted of the recent adherents.Forty-eight of those elected on the Congress ticket in 1937 had becomeactively identified with the Congress for the first time since 1934. Thisgroup contained many whose conversions have been described above,

O u t of the 92 mem ber s of the old Legislative Co un cil, as man y as 58 stood forelection to the new Legislative Assembly and Cou ncil . On ly 25 were elected, includingall twelve who stood on the Congress ticket. Dyarchy electorates had been onlyma rginally kinde r to sit t ing me m ber s: 17 were rejected in 1926 an d 12 in 1930. A. Kaleswara Rao, Najivita Kalha Nauya Andhramu (Vijayawada, 1959)-


32/33

588 CHRISTO PHER BAKERand also V. I. Muniswami Pillai, who won the elections as a Justiciteand thereafter moved into the Congress in time to be made a minister.

ConclusionM ost previous treatm ents of 1937 have proceeded from the facts tha t th eCongress victory followed on the heels of the Civil Disobedience cam-paign and the extension of the electorate, and have treated these factsas causal. This article has presented a chronological and analytic treat-ment of the elections in one major province. It may be objected thatit was undoubtedly a national victory and that therefore a provincialtreatment may be irrelevant or misleading. Yet most of the elements inthe Madras storythe aftermath of Civil Disobedience, changes inadministration, economic depression, Congress commitment to elec-tions and office acceptance, and the defection of political notableswe re comm on to all the provinces.100 Indeed , the article has argued tha tit was not changes in any one section of the community, or changes inany one sector of the Congress organization or leadership that werecrucial; but rather, changes within a wider framework of Indian politi-cal life, and in the circumstances facing all Indian politicians.The analysis highlights the importance of the local board elections in1935-6, no t only in mou lding th e organization and strategy of Congress,but also in drawing new men into an active part in the nationalistmovement. Local government was an arena where many men had per-sonal interests, and an aren a w here in the 1930s the im portance of supra-local powers and the clarion-calls of nationalism were becoming increasingly relevant. Here was grassroots support in search of leader-ship.Thus , paradoxically Congress was so successful in Madras in 1937 form uc h the same reasons tha t the anti-Congress Justice party had beensuccessful under dyarchy. Madrassis were extremely interested in thegovernmental machine, for through its network of local boards andcommittees it reached out into the localities, and these local institutions(in the absence of little kingdoms such as zamindaris and significantcommunal organizations) provided important channels between theindividual and the state. The Justice party had acted as the focus for allthose interested in the politics of these institutions under dyarchy.D yarch y was now disappearing, an d the Justice party with it, and the

io See To m lins on , The Indian National Congress and the Raj, Ch. 3, for all-Indiatreatment of the 1937 elections.


33/33

THE CONGRESS AT THE I 937 ELECTIONS IN MADRAS 589Congress was set fair to fill a vacuum in the system that would re-place it.The strength of the Congress in the mid-1930s arose out of a ra theruneasy alliance between devoted servants of the national movement,and some of the most important men in local society. One half of thealliance contributed moral leadership and a considerable followingof zealous party workers; the other contributed local prestige andpower. This alliance changed matters for both of them.The local notables who invested their political assets in the Congress,found tha t individually they gained little interest. The victor at the pollsin 1937 was undoubtedly the Congress as an organization. As oneCollector reported: 'The success of the Congress candidates was moredue to the glamour people have for the Congress than [to] individualefforts . . . Personalities counted least in the elections.'101 The sum ofnotables' influence, added to the authority and organizing power of theCongress as an institution, had added up to something larger than thesum of parts. The notables could not now withdraw their investmentand 'go it alone' with much hope of success; they now had to workthrough the organization.102 Ironically, the influx of these influentialmen raised the importance of the organization, and of past service to it,and thus boosted the political status of men who had little or no localbase but who had served the Congress well. Men like C. P. Subbiah andKamaraj in Tamilnad, K. Koti Reddi and Dr B. P. Sitaramayya inAndhra, who had laboured hard in the vineyard of Congress organiza-tion without hitherto enjoying much fruit, now took on important rolesin the affairs of the province.Yet there was another side to the coin. The ideologues and zealotsnow stood at the head of an influential Congress party, the body ofwhich consisted of men whose interests were often less idealistic andmore mundane. It was no coincidence th at the ministry installed in 1937devoted its major efforts to cutting land revenue, easing problems ofrural credit and restoring village officers, and that in the years to comeit would always find it difficult to match its principled policy-statementsto its more qualified practices.101 Collector of Anantapur, 27 February 1937, G.O. 708 C. (Public) 8 April 1937,T.N.A.

102 When a death caused a by-election to one of the four general seats the Congresshad lost (emphatically), the Congress candidate was not even opposed.

Documents

The Congress at the 1937 Elections in Madras