Illiterate voters, spread of communism and a staggering success: How the world saw the first Indian elections.

As early as November 1947, amid much skepticism from the West, India had embarked upon a monumental and courageous task — to prepare for its first general elections. Turning all adult Indians into voters within a span of less than five years was no small task and, as described by Ornit Shani in her book on the making of Indian democracy, “required an immense power of imagination”. There was no colonial legacy of universal adult franchise to fall back on, nor was there a precedent to look up to in the form of a similar exercise being carried out by another decolonized nation. In the words of historian Ramachandra Guha, the first general elections in India were “a massive act of faith, with few parallels in the history of humankind”.

‘Baptism in ways of Parliamentary democracy’

And yet, five years later, as India concluded its long-drawn polling process, officials from the West and the foreign press could hardly suppress their words of praise over the remarkable success of the exercise. In February 1952, as voting came to an end, Archibald Nye, the UK High Commissioner in India, wrote a report for the Secretary of State for the Commonwealth Relations, with details of his observation of the elections. “The election has been India’s baptism in the ways of Parliamentary democracy and the country has survived the test well,” he wrote. “The elections have been conducted throughout the country with remarkable efficiency. The largely illiterate population has also shown by its orderly behavior and by its discrimination in its use of the vote that it’s alive to its new responsibility,” he added.

Headlines and reports in the foreign press lauded India’s unexpected electoral success. “Unprecedented Experiment in Democracy” screamed a headline in the New York Times on January 20, 1952, with an excerpt that said, “history’s biggest free elections, now going on in India, offer a challenge to all of Asia”. The Manchester Guardian, on the other hand, noted in a report in February 1952 that “if ever a country took a leap in the dark towards democracy it was India”.

British skepticism towards Indian elections was far from surprising. “Part of the justification of the British Empire was that these countries did not deserve to rule themselves, and that India, by virtue of its size and diversity, could not possibly carry out democratic elections,” said historian Taylor Sherman in an interview with The Indian Express.

The concerns of the West ranged from the lack of administrative machinery required to carry out elections in a country as large as India to whether ordinary people, a large majority of whom were illiterate, could even make a rational choice of a leader.

Writing for The Washington Post on January 6, 1952, journalist Selig S Harrison noted that “harried officials trying to put 170 million ‘first voters’ through the pages of democracy finds that self-government takes a lot of teaching in this land of high illiteracy and low diet”. He added that “many Indian languages have no word which means ‘election’.” Yet another article from the same publication a month later, titled, “India’s Act of Faith”, noted that “the outer world will look at the results of India’s general election with a mixture of wonder and concern. The wonder will come from the fact that such an election could have been held at all”.

Reporting for the New York Times, journalist Robert Trumbull made note of a few quirky instances that he believed were suggestive of the “problems encountered in imparting democratic political education to an illiterate population”. Among these incidents reported by him was one in Ambala (then in Punjab), where a dozen young women exercising their franchise for the first time, removed their sandals and entered the polling booth one by one, where they paid obeisances to the ballot box, in Trumbull’s words, “as if it were a god”.

The franchise being extended to all adult women voters was, in fact, lauded by The Irish Times. “Indian elections could be ‘housewives’ choice”, said the headline of an article published on December 3, 1951. Of India’s 17.5 crore voters, 8.5 crore were women who were eligible to vote. Consequently, women were a key factor in the electorate, noted The Irish Times. “Political parties with a big stake in the forthcoming elections are going all out to please them, both in their election manifestos and in their choice of candidates and slogans,” said the publication.

Suspense over princely states, fear over Communism

Several foreign publications also expressed both concern and curiosity over the 500-odd princely states which, until now, had been under the rule of a monarchy. In an article titled, ‘Princely Plotting's’, the New York Times reported on October 7, 1951, that “with India’s first national elections coming up the former feudal rulers are busy at politics”. Yet another piece published by them after the Maharaja of Bikaner and the Raja of Bilaspur won their respective constituencies noted, “‘Hated’ ex-rulers elected in India”.

The biggest concern though, for both Britain and America, but more for the latter, was the performance of the CPI in the elections. “In 1951, both Britain and America cared very less about whether India was democratic or not. They cared much more about whether it created a problem for other decolonizing countries and whether it would turn to Communism,” said historian Sherman.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) had scored particularly well in the southern states of Travancore, Madras and Hyderabad. “America overreacts to the success of the CPI,” said Paul McGarr, a lecturer in Intelligence Studies at King’s College, London. These were the years of McCarthyism in America, which included widespread fear of Left-wing influence on American institutions and life. “Most headlines in the American press at that time were about Red (Left) success in India, rather than Nehru or the Congress,” he added.

There were also fears that India might go in the direction that China had taken just about three years back in 1949.

McGarr observed that the CPI’s success was blamed on poor economic conditions, especially in rural parts of India, where the party campaigned rigorously. “Soon after the elections, Chester Bowles, then Ambassador to India, used the success of Communism to lobby in America for more economic aid to India,” he said. Consequently, in January 1952, he managed to persuade Washington to sign an agreement with the Nehru government to give extra aid of $50 million.

Interestingly, both the Soviet Union and China were rather muted about the success of CPI in their press. “The Soviet policy by now was to work with the Congress in India to move them away from the West. They had given up on the CPI thinking it would never be a national force in Indian politics,” McGarr said.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the colonized world, like Malaya (later Malaysia) and Indonesia, the 1951-52 elections were seen with much pride and proof of the fact that other Asian countries too could function effectively as democracies.