Challenges to & Restoration of the Congress System Test - 3

This time the senior leaders in the party decided to back Indira Gandhi, but the decision was not unanimous. The contest was resolved through a secret ballot among Congress MPs.  Indira Gandhi defeated Morarji Desai by securing the support of more than two-thirds of the party’s MPs.

DMK the non-Congress party that had for the first time secured a majority of its own in any state in the General Elections of 1967.

The Congress Socialist Party was founded by Ram Manohar Lohia.

The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia gave this strategy the name of ‘non-Congressism’. He also produced a theoretical argument in its defence: Congress rule was undemocratic and opposed to the interests of ordinary poor people; therefore, the coming together of the non-Congress parties was necessary for reclaiming democracy for the people.

Thus the Congress faced the challenge of political succession for the second time in two years. After the death of Shastri, there was an intense competition between Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai.

To make matters worse for Indira Gandhi, all the major non-communist, non-Congress opposition parties formed an electoral alliance known as the Grand Alliance. 

R. M. Lohia founder editor of Mankind and Jan.

Karpoori Thakur was a prominent political figure who strongly opposed the use of the English language in India. He believed that promoting Hindi and regional languages would contribute to economic development, preserve cultural diversity, and make education more accessible.

C. Natarajan Annadurai formed DMK as a political party in 1949.

The SVD government in Bihar, for instance, included the two socialist parties – SSP and the PSP – along with the CPI on the left and Jana Sangh on the right. In Punjab, it was called the ‘Popular United Front’ and comprised the two rival Akali parties at that time – Sant group and the Master group – with both the communist parties – the CPI and the CPI(M), the SSP, the Republican Party, and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.