HT@100 | 1951-1959: The Republic votes
A decade of flux and many firsts, democratic India votes, new states are formed; a nation builds itself up
The 1950s were marked by many firsts: the first general elections held between 1951 and 1952; in 1951, the first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur inaugurated by education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), set up in 1952; the Sahitya Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi set up in 1954; the National Book Trust in 1957. Health minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (once Gandhi’s secretary) was responsible for the establishment of the first All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi in 1956. India excelled on many fronts and in many fields: in 1958, India received its first Oscar nomination for Mother India, and missed cinema’s most coveted prize by a whisker.
Sukumar Sen, India’s first Chief Election Commissioner, had a monumental task in overseeing the first general elections based on universal franchise. Polls were held across 4,500 seats and 224,000 polling booths, with 56,000 presiding officers and 224,000 policemen on duty to guard against violence, intimidation and unfair practices.
All India Radio, set up in 1936, became a partner in helping to educate the people in the mechanics of democracy at a time when literacy was less than 20%.
{{/usCountry}}All India Radio, set up in 1936, became a partner in helping to educate the people in the mechanics of democracy at a time when literacy was less than 20%.
{{/usCountry}}From October 1951 to February 1952, as the country voted, HT deployed reporters across different states to bring to its readers news and stories from the remotest parts of the nation, of common people voting for the first time.
{{/usCountry}}From October 1951 to February 1952, as the country voted, HT deployed reporters across different states to bring to its readers news and stories from the remotest parts of the nation, of common people voting for the first time.
{{/usCountry}}An HT editorial published on January 6, 1952, titled “Peaceful Polling” celebrated the wisdom of the Indian voter: “Not only have there been no rowdy scenes or attempts to intimidate voters or use force but there has been general anxiety everywhere to maintain a completely calm and peaceful atmosphere and build up a high standard of electoral conduct. There can be no greater tribute to the political sense of the people, and no more auspicious heralding of the new democracy under adult franchise, than the spirit in which both the voters and the candidates have faced their new obligation.”
{{/usCountry}}An HT editorial published on January 6, 1952, titled “Peaceful Polling” celebrated the wisdom of the Indian voter: “Not only have there been no rowdy scenes or attempts to intimidate voters or use force but there has been general anxiety everywhere to maintain a completely calm and peaceful atmosphere and build up a high standard of electoral conduct. There can be no greater tribute to the political sense of the people, and no more auspicious heralding of the new democracy under adult franchise, than the spirit in which both the voters and the candidates have faced their new obligation.”
{{/usCountry}}The Congress won with a great majority, and Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as Prime Minister. On May 14, 1952 a banner headline in HT read, “Nehru’s New 15-Member Cabinet Sworn In” and the page carried photographs of its ministers: besides Azad and Amrit Kaur, there were Dr KN Katju (home affairs and states), Gulzari Lal Nanda (planning), NG Ayyangar (defence), and CD Deshmukh (finance).
The first general elections may have unified the country in a singular act of a democratic mandate, but the federal structure of the Indian polity kept the country in flux for most of the 1950s, with demands for linguistically defined states. After an intense agitation, Andhra Pradesh came into existence on December 19; the next day, HT’s page one headline read, “Andhra State Without Madras City”.
Similar demands followed. In 1953, the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was formed, as clamour from Punjabi and Marathi speakers grew. SRC recommended that the southern states be redistributed according to language; Hindi speakers were divided into Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan; the demand for a Sikh state was rejected; and Bombay was to be the bilingual province of Gujarati and Marathi speakers.
The Cabinet accepted these recommendations, and on November 1, 1956, the linguistic map of independent India became a reality. HT published a map of a new India alongside a map of the country before reorganisation.
Since then, the map has been redrawn a few times, starting in 1960, when a groundswell of support for a separate state for Marathi speakers resulted in the formation of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
On the external front, under Nehru, India’s foreign policy of non-alignment — it condemned equally the Anglo-French attack at Suez in October 1956, as the Russian invasion of Hungary the following month — helped cement India’s position, at least domestically, and promoted the narrative that India “was not submitting to a new imperial relationship”, writes political historian Taylor C Sherman.
On November 6, 1956, HT, which backed the country’s non-alignment policy, gave enthusiastic support in an editorial: “The middle-east crisis and the happening in east Europe have opened the eyes of Indian leadership to the realities of world politics… The main purpose of Mr Nehru’s address at the opening session of UNESCO in New Delhi on Monday was to name Russia as an aggressor in Hungary. He considered the Soviet action as a breach of the pledge Moscow had given him to respect the principles of Panchshila.” The piece was written by Durga Das under his pen name “Insaf”.
In 1957, Devadas Gandhi — HT’s longest-serving editor till the time of writing — passed away suddenly, and Das, who had joined HT in 1944, was asked to take over. In 1958, GD Birla brought in S Mulgaokar as editor, and Das was promoted to editor-in-chief.
India’s engagement with the Asian and African world was rooted in the global fight against racism and imperialism. India also played a vital role in the formative years of the United Nations.
However, India’s relationship with China was a “perfect storm of post-imperial problems”, as Sherman puts it. Both countries had inherited indistinct imperial borders and the people of these spaces had not yet been fully integrated into either nation. The annexation of Tibet in 1950 by China worried India, which supported Tibetan independence.
Domestically, it was also a period of nation building. India laid the foundations of industry and development, with factories and dams, the famous modern temples in Nehru’s evocative phrase, as the infrastructure of change.
On February 4, 1959, in a front story on the inauguration of the Rourkela steel plant, built with German assistance, an HT reporter wrote: “As the molten iron, matching the crimson setting sun, poured out of the furnace, the President said, ‘May the bellows of this plant herald the new age we are so eager to usher in’.”
The next day, another correspondent wrote about the inauguration of the Bhilai steel plant, set up with Soviet help. This push for industrialisation certainly pleased GD Birla, who had spent the past three decades venturing into cotton spinning, jute, sugar, paper, textile machinery, automobiles, bicycles, ball bearings, fans, non-ferrous metals, rayon plastics, plywood and vegetable oil.
Nehru’s idea of nation building didn’t deviate much from GD’s, at least on this subject.
But building industries wasn’t enough. The country also needed trained technical workers. The 1950s saw the setting up of a raft of IITs — in Roorkee, Bombay, Madras, and Kanpur.
A day after the inauguration of the first IIT by Azad, HT reported the news on Page 1, peppered with the minister’s spirited speech: “...The main function of the institute would be to provide facilities for training high grade engineers and technologists. The institution would have provision for the teaching of 2,000 students at the undergraduate level, and 1,000 students for postgraduate study and research.”
