Nature of Congress dominance India is not the only country to have experienced the dominance of one party. If we look around the world, we find many other examples Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar ( - ): Leader of the anti-caste movement and the struggle for justice to the Dalits; scholar and intellectual; founder of Independent Labour Party; later founded the Scheduled Castes Federation; planned the formation of the Republican Party of India; Member of Viceroy’s Executive Council during the Second World War; Chairman, Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly; Minister in Nehru’s first cabinet after independence; resigned in due to differences over the Hindu Code Bill; adopted Buddhism in , with thousands of followers. of one-party dominance. But there is a crucial difference between these and the Indian experience.
In the rest of the cases the dominance of one party was ensured by compromising democracy. In some countries like China, Cuba and Syria the constitution permits only a single party to rule the country. Some others like Myanmar, Belarus, Egypt, and Eritrea are effectively one-party states due to legal and military measures. Until a few years ago, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan were also effectively one-party dominant states.
What distinguished the dominance of the Congress party in India from all these cases was it happened under democratic conditions. Many parties contested elections in conditions of free and fair elections and yet the Congress managed to win election after election. This was similar to the dominance the African National Congress has enjoyed in South Africa after the end of apartheid. The roots of this extraordinary success of the Congress party go back to the legacy of the freedom struggle.
Congress was seen as inheritor of the national movement. Many leaders who were in the forefront of that struggle were now contesting elections as Congress candidates. The Congress was already a very well-organised party and by the time the other parties could even think of a strategy, the Congress