Congress Election Manifesto

The Government of India Act 1935 abolished provincial diarchy and introduced Provincial Autonomy, paving the way for democratic elections in early 1937. The Indian National Congress (INC) faced an intensive internal debate before agreeing to participate. While the constitutionalist right wing favored contesting to capture administrative power, the left-wing bloc viewed the Act as a mechanism to perpetuate colonial rule. To maintain organizational unity, the Congress resolved at the Lucknow Session (April 1936) and the Faizpur Session (December 1936) to contest the elections. The strategy was to demonstrate the party’s mass popularity and “wreck the 1935 Act from within.” The ideological and socio-economic agenda for this campaign was institutionalized in the Congress Election Manifesto, adopted in late 1936.

Core Commitments of the Congress Election Manifesto

The Manifesto was drafted to appeal to a broad cross-section of Indian society, specifically targeting the peasantry, industrial labor, women, and depressed classes, while maintaining a staunch anti-imperialist posture.

Political Goals and Civil Liberties

• Rejection of the 1935 Act: The manifesto explicitly stated that the Congress was entering the legislatures not to cooperate with the colonial framework, but to combat and reject the Government of India Act 1935.
• Demand for a Constituent Assembly: It demanded the creation of a sovereign Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of adult franchise to frame a constitution for an independent India.
• Restoration of Civil Liberties: It promised the immediate repeal of emergency powers, repressive laws, and wartime ordinances used by the British to suppress the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• Release of Political Prisoners: It committed to releasing all political prisoners, internees, and revolutionary nationalists detained without trial.

Agrarian Reforms

• Reduction of Burdens: The manifesto promised a substantial reduction in land revenue and rent paid by tenant cultivators.
• Exemption for Uneconomic Holdings: It advocated for exempting uneconomic agricultural holdings from rent and land taxes.
• Fixity of Tenure: It guaranteed security of tenure for tenants and promised legislative action to prevent arbitrary evictions by Zamindars.
• Rural Debt Relief: It pledged to scale down rural indebtedness and institute state checks on usurious practices by indigenous moneylenders.

Labor and Social Welfare

• Workers’ Rights: For industrial labor, it promised the right to form trade unions, the right to strike, and the establishment of statutory mechanisms to settle industrial disputes.
• Working Conditions: It committed to improving working conditions, securing a decent standard of living, and introducing insurance against old age, sickness, and unemployment.
• Gender Equality: The manifesto advocated for the removal of political, social, and economic disabilities faced by women.
• Upliftment of Depressed Classes: It emphasized the removal of untouchability and the social, educational, and economic advancement of the depressed classes (Harijans).

Role of Subhas Chandra Bose and the Left Wing

The formulation and dissemination of the Election Manifesto reflected a significant compromise between the radical Left and the pragmatist Right within the Congress.

Infusing Socialist Ideals

Subhas Chandra Bose, along with Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), played an active role in ensuring that the manifesto carried a distinct socialist orientation. Bose believed that the national movement could only succeed if it integrated the immediate economic grievances of the masses with the political demand for independence. The emphasis on radical agrarian reforms, labor welfare, and debt liquidation was largely a result of pressure from the Left.

Electoral Campaigning

During the campaigning phase in 1936 and early 1937, Bose spent substantial time either exiled in Europe or under strict detention in India, which limited his direct field campaigning. However, his ideological writings and statements from abroad consistently reminded the Congress rank and file not to let the election manifesto become a tool for parliamentary opportunism. He insisted that the manifesto must remain a revolutionary program to organize the peasantry and working class for the next inevitable wave of mass struggle.

Execution of Manifesto Promises by Congress Ministries (1937–1939)

Following an overwhelming victory where the Congress won 716 out of 1,585 seats and formed ministries in eight provinces, the party spent 28 months trying to execute the commitments laid out in the manifesto.

Legislative Implementation of Manifesto Promises

Bose’s Critique of the Manifesto’s Execution

As Congress President during the Haripura Session (1938) and the Tripuri Session (1939), Bose monitored the performance of the provincial ministries against the benchmark of the 1936 Manifesto.

Institutionalization of the Right Wing

Bose grew critical of the ministries, observing that the right-wing leadership of the Congress was using state machinery to suppress radical peasant agitations (led by the Kisan Sabhas) and industrial strikes. In Bombay and Kanpur, Congress ministries used Section 144 and police forces to maintain public order against striking workers, which Bose and the Left viewed as a betrayal of the labor commitments in the election manifesto.

The Shift to Planning and Radicalism

To ensure the industrial and economic promises of the manifesto were handled with a long-term perspective rather than piecemeal reforms, Bose established the National Planning Committee (NPC) in October 1938 with Nehru as Chairman. By 1939, convinced that the ministries were becoming overly comfortable with constitutional power and neglecting the core anti-imperialist objective of the manifesto, Bose resigned the presidency. He formed the All India Forward Bloc to bypass parliamentary politics entirely, aiming to fulfill the manifesto’s ultimate promise—the revolutionary overthrow of British rule through extra-constitutional struggle.