industrial and commercial classes that came into being after independence.
In the countryside, landowning dominant castes made some gains at the
expense of the large landlords, as did superior tenants.
THE SLOW REVERSAL: THE RE-EMERGENCE OF THE
RIGHT AND THE ‘FOREIGN HAND’
The 1957 general elections, in which once again Nehru had been the main
campaigner and the central figure for the Congress, had underlined the
Congress’s supremacy: it won 371 of 494 seats in the Lok Sabha – 75% of
the seats, with 48% of the vote, a marginal increase from the previous
general elections. (Many journalists wrote – as they had in 1952, only
now more strongly – that without Nehru’s leadership, the Congress would
have done far worse: voters’ open contempt for some of its candidates was
offset by the fact that they were voting for Jawaharlal Nehru, and were
therefore willing in practice to cast their vote for the sometimes pathetic
figures placed before them.) The CPI, meanwhile, now operating under
the constraints of the Indian Constitution, won 27 seats, which in the
slightly larger Lower House was a smaller percentage of the seats (5%),
but its vote share had almost tripled, from 3.3% to 9%. The Praja
Socialists won 19 seats, with 10% of the vote. At the other end of the
political spectrum, the Jan Sangh won four seats, with 6% of the vote; and
the Hindu Mahasabha won one seat, with 1% of the vote. So the old
Hindu right was still not doing particularly well, but it had doubled its
vote share as compared with 1952.^7
The simultaneous State Assembly elections of 1957 returned Congress
majorities in most states; but opposition parties, many of these drawing
on communal, regional or linguistic loyalties, increased their strength
relative to the Congress. Most states had Congress governments; in Orissa,
the Congress had to combine with independents to form a ministry
that commanded a majority. In West Bengal, an electoral alliance of left
parties strongly increased their electoral showing; and right across the
country, the CPI did far better than it had done in the previous round
of elections. But it was Kerala that produced the most difficult results: a
communist government, led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad, came to power.
Namboodiripad had been a major figure in the Malabar branch of the old
Congress Socialist Party at the time of the United Front – Malabar was
now the major part of the new, linguistically-defined, state of Kerala
HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63 229