THE NEW CHAPTER IN INDIA: IL-REALITIES
By PROFESSOR HAROLD TEMPERLEY
THE utterances of official speakers on the elections, whether in India or here, have struck me as lacking in realism. Their allusions to the greatness of the experiment, their claims as to the orderliness of the elections, even their ob- vious optimism for the future, are intelligible so far as they went.
But they have not gone far enough. Perhaps you can hardly expect officials to reveal the whole truth, and to disclose how far their intentions have been carried out. Still less can they admit that they have already proved mistaken in their forecasts over many important matters.
The fact is that almost every known canon concerning elections and every ordinary political prediction has already been violated or falsified. For instance, it was thought that the number of voters would amount to some thirty-five millions; in reality they seem to have been three millions less. This was an unexpected advantage, for the arrangements for polling and for recording votes were, in some cases, inadequate. The Post Office made immense preparations to deal with circulars to candidates, but found, to their surprise, that their labour was largely wasted. They might perhaps have remembered that circulars were useless to electors who can neither read nor write. It was an election with fewer literary appeals, and with more illiterate electors, than ever took place before.
The last difficulty led to all sorts of expedients being tried. Parties were distinguished by signs and denoted at the ballot box by colours. Even this last method had singular results, because in India colour-blindness is more common than here, and a large number of electors were liable to be misled. Also the colour sense seems to have affected some voters in a peculiar way. Thus a holy man was proceeding to the polls when a ripe mango fell at his feet. It had something the same effect as the fall of the apple had upon Newton. The holy man perceived that the mango was coloured a rich yellow, and knew that ripe mangos are unusual in February. He arrived at the polling-booth meditating on this fact and saw before him a ballot-box coloured a rich yellow. It was the decision of heaven ! He cast his voting in the yellow box and bade his disciples do the same. Now yellow was the colo of the Congress Party, and for Congress he voted. The incident thrilled the whole country. How far did it contribute to the unexpected majority of Congress ? We should need an expert not only in politics but in religion to say.
This is harmless enough, but there was much else that arouses speculation. For instance, a woman often went to the polls under the escort of her husband. Did she, in such case, register his will ? Electoral methods strike one with bewilderment. Though *there was less literature, there were fewer political speeches than at British elections. In fact, other methods of attracting attention were devised. Two women were rival candidates, and one, as a protest against the other's methods, went on hunger-strike. The papers described this as "a non-cooperation of the stomach." Since it was adopted only two days before the voting, it increased the striker's chances of election by surrounding her with the halo of a martyr, and with a reputation not to be gained by a score of speeches.
Two other rival candidates settled an election dispute in unique fashion. They tied at the election, the number of votes being exactly equal. The candidates agreed to decide the matter by drawing lots, and did so. It has been generally assumed that this result will not be contested. (I recall with bewilderment that, when the same state of things occurred at a municipal election in my own town of Cambridge, Parlia- ment had to pass a special law to meet the case.) Last of all— and most extraordinary—is the case of a candidate in Gujerat. He not only forfeited his deposit, but could find no single voter to record a vote in his favour ! I think a zero vote must be unique in the world. These incidents are not merely trivial. They testify to an electoral mentality different not only from voters in West Europe, but even from those in East Europe, and I cannot say more than that. We really are in an electoral world different from anything with which awe re politically familiar.
At the present our information is still imperfect, but two statements can be made with safety. The average of electors voting was certainly low. Even in the _Bombay areas where results were keenly contested, the average percentage of voters was not above 40 per cent., and in some cases was below 20. The highest percentage was 6o, and anything over 50 was distinctly rare. Yet it would probably be dangerous to assert that India did not show herself "election-minded." The fact is the voters showed more, and not less, interest than was generally expected. Yet can any voting system be really successful with so amazing a psychology, and registering so small a percentage on so great an occasion ? What is going to happen on less occasions and in quieter times ? A second most serious result is that a great many notables and tried politicians have failed to be elected. Three rajas, two ex-presidents of Legislative Councils, eight ex-Ministers, and six Knights (and India's Knights are usually important people) have been rejected by the electors. And these are only a few of the political veterans who have been ousted by novices. The new Ministers will therefore have followers of less political experi- ence, and (in most cases) representing a smaller percentage of voters than any responsible Ministers who have ever taken office in the British Empire before. For the first time also they will be the political masters of these permanent civil servants, who have spoken with such authority in so many Official spheres.
The governors of the eleven provinces are now Constitutional kings, as will be seen particularly in those provinces *here a Congress majority declines to take office. They posses (unlike their prototypes) the power of taking over, or of superseding, the normal government in times of disorder. Though Congress has naturally failed to secure an undertaking that the Governor's powers shall never be used, it may be taken as certain that no single Governor would use abnormal powers if he could help it just at the moment when a Parliamentary regime is beginning. But a Governor possesses another power, the prerogative of dissolution, and it may be a very real one where parties are numerous. Even in England the existence of three parties after the War showed that the King might exercise an effective influence by a dissolution. In an Indian province with half a dozen parties its use is much more likely. In fact our eleven governors will probably work out constitu- tional systems as different from one another as are those of the constitutional monarchies of Europe. In six of these the fundamentals of constitutionalism are common, but the practice is diverse. The British system is not the same as the Belgian, the Danish as the Dutch, the Norwegian as the Swedish.
Nor is any one of these systems identical with the other, for it has in fact been adapted to the special problems of the nation concerned. Constitutionalism ar d parliamentarianism are not the same things. Andrassy, the constitutional statesman of Hungary, once told his country- men that they did not possess a true parliamentary system. They had often had a party with a majority in office, but never a party in opposition ready at any time to succeed it. In other words, a dual party system is the only true park- mentary one. Now a dual party system is most unlikely in any province in India. The nearest approach to anything of the kind is in Bengal where the Congress minority might perhaps play the part of " His Majesty's Opposition." But there is no minority anywhere else united enough to play the same part. In such case there will be at least ten provinces in which the variegations of party will play strange tricks with British ideas of parliamentary rule. But these provinces will quite possibly evolve along sound, though different, constitutional lines. They will seldom have a true parliamentary system on the English model.
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