For most of us, the ‘great dance of democracy’—as TV anchors like to describe it—is a blur of names, numbers, and general shouting. It’s as though the media is determined to leach every bit of excitement and interest out of this electoral kumbh mela. We’re trying to do better, with this lively look back at the election of 1951.
The basic deets: Our first national election was held in 1951. We had 175 million eligible voters—over 80% of them illiterate. Today, we have 969 million eligible voters and nearly 75% of them are literate. So we’ve come a long way, baby etc etc. In 1951, only 14% of Indians had ever cast a vote—for legislatures set up by the British. Washington Post reporter Selig Harrison noted, “many Indian languages have no word which means ‘election’.” Historian Ram Guha calls the election “a massive act of faith, with few parallels in the history of humankind.”
Voter registration: in the first election was a breeze. That’s because our founding fathers wanted to make sure refugees from the Partition could vote:
Under the 1950 Act, a voter had to be residing in India for a minimum of 180 days and be 21 years of age to vote. However, refugees continued arriving in India post Independence owing to the long Partition violence. To include refugees under the franchise, the Secretariat of the Constituent Assembly decided to register all refugees in the electoral rolls “on the mere declaration by them of their intention to reside permanently in the town or village concerned irrespective of the actual period of residence.”
No passport size photo, ID proof, or proof of address required!
The feminist election: The first Election Commissioner Sukumar Sen banned women from registering in “the electoral rolls as the ‘wife of someone’ or the ‘mother of someone’.” But 2.8 million out of 80 million did it anyway—and were struck off the list. The voter application guidelines in 2024 advise, “in case of a married female applicant, name of husband may preferably be mentioned.” So not exactly progress. As you can see below, some of the ladies showed up in style:
Pick your ballot box: In the first election, there were separate ballot boxes for each party—and you dropped your vote into the box/party of your choice. There were more than two million steel ballot boxes. This would be impossible today, given the fact we now have 2,600 parties registered.
The boxes were made by Godrej & Boyce—cost Rs 5 each—and looked like this:
Please note the boxes came in four colours: olive green, meadow green, pale green, and Brunswick green. Assembly ballot boxes had their own palette: chocolate, mahogany, teak, dark tan, and bronze.
But the fairest of all: The pretty pink ballot papers:
About those party symbols: In a mostly illiterate India, the symbols were essential to the voting process. Congress’ symbol was ‘Two Bulls with Yoke on’:
The Congress kept the bovine theme when Indira Gandhi split the party in 1969—and added a generous dose of corniness:
The ‘Human Hand’ we recognise today was embraced by Mrs G—when the party split for the second time in 1977.
Voters ahoy: There was no shortage of voter enthusiasm—especially among the Malayalis. Kottayam in Kerala saw the highest turnout—80.5%—while the lowest (18%) was in Shahdol—in present-day Madhya Pradesh. In the end, 60% of the electorate turned out on voting day:
India’s first voter: was Shyam Saran Negi from Himachal Pradesh. He voted religiously in every election—until 2022, when he died at the age of 106. Negi cast his last vote in the HP state election just months before.
Delightful fact to note: According to The Hindu, voter turnout was uneven in tribal areas for good reason:
There was an unexpectedly high turnout in the forest districts of Orissa, where tribals came to the booths with bows and arrows where the highest turnout at a booth was 70%. However, the neighbouring booth saw only two panthers and an elephant, resulting in no voters.
More things change… Almost no one showed at the polling booths in the posh environs of Malabar Hill in Bombay. But 92,000 tribal villagers trekked through the jungles in the Mizo hills to cast their vote.
The biggest shocker: was the defeat of BR Ambedkar—to his former personal assistant, Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar, by 15,000 votes in North Bombay.
The most condescending quote: of the election year belonged to Jawaharlal Nehru—who said after his sweeping victory: “My respect for the so-called illiterate voter has gone up. Whatever doubts I might have had about adult suffrage in India have been removed completely.” To which we offer this all-American phrase—“that’s mighty white of you, Mr Nehru.”
As for the results: Congress won 364 of 489 Lok Sabha seats. Pretty much the equivalent of char sau paar in our 543-seat Parliament today. Its main rivals were the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS)—which was formed by the Hindu nationalist Syama Prasad Mookerjee in partnership with the RSS—after he left the Hindu Mahasabha. (FYI: Gandhi-ji’s assassin Nathuram Godse was allegedly linked to the Hindu Mahasabha—which dissolved itself after the killing.)
Interesting to note: Unlike the BJP, the BJS borrowed its imagery from the Mahabharata—rather than the Ramayana:
A report in The Hindu describes its inaugural meeting, held in New Delhi on September 21, 1951, in the following manner: the party’s founder Dr. Mookerjee sat along with other leaders, against a white backdrop with pictures of Shivaji, Lord Krishna persuading a remorse-stricken Arjuna to take up arms to fight the Kauravas at Kurukshetra, Rana Pratap Singh and of an earthen deepak [lamp], in saffron. From the pandal hung banners inscribed with ‘Sangh Shakth Kali Yuge’, a dictum taken from the Mahabharata, telling people that in the age of Kali the only force was the Jana Sangh.
Ergo: Nehru, Muslims etc were described as ‘Kauravas’—rather than anti-nationals.
If you want more: The Election Commission put out this vid of the first election:
Reading list
Indian Express and The Hindu have the best overview of the 1951 elections. Hindustan Times and Scroll have some lovely photographs from that time. Indian Express also has very good reports on how the world viewed India’s first election and a history of Congress’ party symbols. CNN and The Guardian crunch the numbers related to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Reuters looks at the many challenges faced by the Election Commission to set up voting booths in remote areas.
