Women and the Vote: Registration, Representation and Participation in the Run-Up to India’s First Elections, 1951–52

Abstract

Indian leaders and women’s organisations wanted to ensure that women would participate in and be elected to the legislatures in India’s first elections. Ultimately, however, only a small number of women were selected as candidates, and even fewer were elected to the legislatures. This article explores some of the mechanisms and ways in which this gap emerged in relation to the registration, representation and participation of women in the run-up to and during India’s first elections. In pursuing these three lines of inquiry, the article aims to shed light on the ways in which women related to and appropriated the notion of popular authorisation of the government, and what was their role, in this regard, in democratic state-building during the early days of the republic.

Keywords:

• Democracy
• first elections
• India 1950s
• popular sovereignty
• women’s representation
• women’s vote

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ayesha Seth for her research assistance. For their engagement with the article and their helpful comments, I thank and appreciate Uditi Sen, Mytheli Sreenivas, Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, and the three anonymous South Asia reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to all provincial premiers, 4 Jan. 1950, National Archives of India, Ministry of State, File 5 (23)-p.

2. ‘Report of the Election Department by Smt. Tara Sathe (Ranade), Member-in-Charge’, The All-India Women’s Conference Silver Jubilee Session, May 2nd to 5th, 1953, Poona (New Delhi: Central Office, 1953), p. 87.

3. ‘Women Member: First Lok Sabha’ [http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Members/womenar.aspx?lsno=1&tab=15, accessed 19 Sept. 2019]. Four of the women were elected in by-elections between 1953 and 1955. Irene Tinker, who was in India conducting her PhD research during the first elections, notes that only 51 women contested seats to the Lok Sabha: Irene Celeste Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London, London, UK, June 1954, p. 553.

4. The data for the number of women elected to the legislative assemblies is not clear-cut. The figure of 61 is taken from Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, ‘Towards Equality? Cause and Consequence of the Political Prominence of Women in India’, in Asian Survey, Vol. 18, no. 5 (1978), pp. 473–86. Notably, the Election Commission’s statistical reports on the first election do not contain specific data on the number of female candidates or on their performance. The categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ appear as column headings in the reports, but either no data was entered in the columns, or all candidates are marked as M (male). An exception is the statistical report on the election results in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which contain references to M (male) and F (female), though it is clear that some of the entries are wrong. Irene Tinker suggests that ‘[o]f the 15,573 candidates who contested for seats in State Assemblies or Electoral Colleges there were 216 women, of whom 82 were successful. This is only 2.4% of the total membership of these bodies’: Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’, p. 553. Tinker notes, however, that ‘[t]here was no method of ascertaining the percentage of women voters in this election since electoral rolls, checked for voters, were sealed’: Ibid., fn. 1, p. 554. The first chief election commissioner, Sukumar Sen, noted in the report on the first election, which was published only in 1955, that ‘[s]ome of the States found it difficult to collect the facts and figures readily and it was only in late 1954 that all necessary materials were made available’: see Election Commission of India, Report on the First General Election in India, 1951–52, Vol. I (New Delhi: Manager Government of India Press, 1955), p. i. On the incomplete data on elections in the 1950s, see Francesca R. Jensenius and Gilles Verniers, ‘Studying Indian Politics with Large-Scale Data: Indian Election Data 1961–Today’, in Studies in Indian Politics, Vol. 5, no. 2 (2017), pp. 269–75. Moreover, it is not clear how many women applied for candidacy. The reports from the Pradesh (state) Congress Committees, for example, mention the number of applications they received for the Lok Sabha and for the state legislatures, but only a few of them note the number of women candidates.

5. Election Commission of India, Report on the First General Election in India, 1951–52, p. 113. There were of course many more who applied for a ticket, but who were denied.

6. Ibid., pp. 72–3.

7. For the early stages of the preparations for the elections before the Constitution came into force, see Ornit Shani, How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

8. One woman was from the Socialist Party, one from the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (Farmer Worker People’s Party), and two stood as independent candidates.

9. ‘General Elections: Election Analysis—80’, United Kingdom National Archives (hereafter, UKNA), Press Information Bureau, Government of India, DO/133/115.

10. For studies of the question of quotas for women in the Congress Party during the 1957 elections, see Wendy Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’ and Other Social Histories of Indian Elections (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 62–73. Also see Ramashray Roy, ‘Selection of Congress Candidates I: The Formal Criteria’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 1, no. 20 (31 Dec. 1966), pp. 833, 835–40; and Ramashray Roy, ‘Selection of Congress Candidates II: Pressures and Counter-Pressures’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 2, no. 1 (Jan. 1967), pp. 17–24.

11. Election Commission of India, Report on the First General Election in India, 1951–52. Another extensive study is Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’. Tinker also published a few short articles in Parliamentary Affairs soon after the elections. For a recent study, based in the main on the Election Commission Report and press reports from the time, see Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Anupama Roy, Election Commission of India: Institutionalising Democratic Uncertainties (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 44–125.

12. Among the reports that were published soon after the elections, the most comprehensive are M. Venkatarangaiya, The General Elections in the City of Bombay, 1952 (Bombay: Vora & Co., 1953); S.V. Kogekar and Richard L. Park, Reports on the Indian General Elections, 1951–52 (Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956); Richard Leonard Park, ‘India’s General Elections’, in Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 21, no. 1 (1952), pp. 1–8; and Margaret W. Fisher and John V. Bondurant, The Indian Experience with Democratic Elections (Berkeley: University of California, 1956). Also see All India Congress Committee (AICC), The Pilgrimage and After: The Story of How the Congress Fought and Won the General Elections (New Delhi: AICC, 1952); and Asoka Mehta, The Political Mind of India: An Analysis of the Results of the General Elections (Bombay: Published by Madhu Limaye for the Socialist Party, 1952).

13. Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (London: Pan Books, 2008), pp. 133–43. Also see Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’, pp. 73–82. On the first elections in Hyderabad, see Taylor C. Sherman, Muslim Belonging in Secular India: Negotiating Citizenship in Postcolonial Hyderabad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 132–42; and for a focus on the issue of corruption/anti-corruption in relation to the elections, see Sarah Ansari and William Gould, Boundaries of Belonging: Localities, Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 157–67.

14. For important studies of women during the 1957 elections and thereafter, see Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’. Also see Roy, ‘Selection of Congress Candidates I’; and Fainsod Katzenstein, ‘Towards Equality?’, pp. 473–86.

15. See footnote 4.

16. A conspicuous example is Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 61–4.

17. See Shani, How India Became Democratic, pp. 44–6.

18. The Government of India Act, 1935, stipulated special constituencies for women and five distinct types of seats for women. For the number of enfranchised women at the time, see Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’, pp. 39, 44–5. Also see Shani, How India Became Democratic, pp. 42–6.

19. Ibid., pp. 46–7.

20. P. Chakraverti, secretary, Congress Parliamentary Board Department, ‘Note’, 24 Jan. 1951, All-India Congress Committee (hereafter, AICC) papers II Instalment (hereafter, II Inst.) Part II, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (hereafter, NMML), F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

21. Press Note no. 1242, ‘Names of Women Voters to be Entered in Electoral Rolls’, 20 Nov. 1950, Patna, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i). An additional press note was published on 7 Dec. 1950.

22. Diverse women’s organisations and associations, which focused on promoting women’s rights locally and regionally, were active across India at the time. For an important discussion of these organisations, especially the All India Women’s Conference (hereafter, AIWC), see Emily Rook-Koepsel, Democracy and Unity in India: Understanding the All India Phenomenon, 1940–1960 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 73–101.

23. Telegram from the Akhil Bhartiya Mahila Sangh, Benares, to the president of the Congress Party, Purushottam Das Tandon, 18 Dec. 1950, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

24. Letter from the general secretary, Sri Arya Mahila Hitkarini Mahaparishad, Benares, to the chief election commissioner, India, 25 Dec. 1950, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

25. P. Chakraverti, secretary, Congress Parliamentary Board Department, ‘Note’, 24 Jan. 1951, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

26. Letter from Shanta Trivedi, president, Rajasthan Women’s Association, Udaipur, to P. Chakraverti, secretary, Congress Parliamentary Board Department, ‘Proposal of the Rajasthan’s Women’s Association’, 16 Jan 1951, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

27. Letter from Sharda Bhargava, president, Mahila Samiti, Jaipur, 12 July 1951, AICC papers II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Letter from the Mahila Mandal, Alwar, 14 Aug. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2625 PG–6 (ii).

31. See Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writing and Speeches, Vol. 15 (New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India, repr. 2014), pp. 1063–4, 1085 [https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_15.pdf, accessed 12 Oct. 2019].

32. Ibid., p. 1065.

33. Ibid., p. 1067.

34. Letter from the chief secretary to the Government of Rajasthan to the secretary, Election Commission of India, ‘Progress Report of Election Work for the Period Ending 31 December 1950’, 24 Jan. 1951, Election Commission of India Record Room (hereafter, ECIR), 1/22/51–Elec. II.

35. Note from P.S. Subramanian, secretary, EC, to V.P. Menon, 9 Mar. 1951, ECIR, 35/51–Elec. II.

36. Directorate of Public Relations, Government of Rajasthan, ‘Press Note’, 9 Oct. 1951, ECIR, 35/51–Elec. II.

37. Letter from Kumari Draupady Devi Jatave to the secretary, Congress Parliamentary Board (through the president, Pradesh Congress Committee of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow), 4 Aug. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2625 P–6 (ii); emphasis in the original.

38. Letter from Srimathi K. Rama Subbamma, president, Andhra Rashtra Mahila Sungham, to Shri Purushottam Das Tandon, president, AICC, 9 July 1951, AICC Papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

39. Letter from G.P. Sidhwa, joint honorary secretary, and Constance Remfry, president, National Indian Association of Women, Calcutta branch, to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2302.

40. The Assam Tribune (28 Sept. 1951) (newspaper cutting), AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2270. Nehru was also reported to have asked the Provincial Congress Committees’ (PCCs’) election committees ‘to give representatives for the minorities in accordance with their population and to consult representatives of minority communities in the matter of selection of candidates’: ibid.

41. General secretaries, Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee, ‘Why Vote Congress’ (Bombay: Bombay Chronicle Press, n.d.), AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2314.

42. ‘Order Passed by the Congress President Appointing an Election Committee to be in Charge of the Election Office of the AICC’, 28 Sept. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4750.

43. Fifty-three parties (fourteen national parties and 39 other state parties) and 533 independent candidates contested the elections to the Lok Sabha: see Election Commission of India, Statistical Report on General Election, 1951, to the First Lok Sabha, Vol. I (National and State Abstracts & Detailed Results) (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, 1951) [https://eci.gov.in/files/file/4111-general-election-1951-vol-i-ii/, accessed 19 March 2021], pp. 1–2, 70.

44. ‘Procedure for the Scrutiny of Candidates by the Election Sub-Committee’, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4749.

45. See, for example, M.K. Jinachandran, Application Form to the Kerala PCC, 29 Sept. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4409.

46. ‘Procedure for the Scrutiny of Candidates by the Election Sub-Committee’.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. ‘Important Notice for Candidates’, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4589 PT-5.

50. ‘Proceedings of the Meeting of the Congress Coordination Committee for Conducting General Elections in Madras Province’, 27 July 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2635 PG-16.

51. ‘General Principles Laid Out and Accepted by the Punjab State Parliamentary Board’, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2291.

52. See, for example, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2277.

53. Letter from the chairman, Bombay Pradesh Election Committee, to the chairman, Central Election Committee, 18 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, Bombay PCC papers, NMML, List 23, F. 10.

54. Ibid.; emphasis added.

55. Ibid.

56. ‘Delhi State Assembly Recommendations (Confidential)’, 30 Nov. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4354.

57. Ibid.

58. Letter from West Bengal Provincial Congress Committee to Lal Bahadur Shastri, general secretary, Congress Election Board [Committee], 4 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2342.

59. V. Venkata Rao, ‘General Elections in Assam, 1952’, in Journal of the University of Gauhati (1953), pp. 133–68.

60. ‘Note 10 Assam PCC’, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2310.

61. Telegram from the Assam PCC to Sri Prakasa, chairman, Election Sub-Committee, Delhi, 26 Nov. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2310.

62. Election Commission of India, Statistical Report on General Elections, 1951, to the Legislative Assembly of Assam (New Delhi: Election Commission of India, n.d.), pp. 77, 113.

63. ‘Comparative Merits and Demerits of the Candidates for Election to the Indian Parliament from Chhindwara Constituency in Madhya Pradesh’, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4753.

64. Office of the Chhindwara District General Electoral Association, Madhya Pradesh, ‘Copy of Proceedings of the Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Chhindwara District General Electoral Association’, to Shri Prakashji, member, Central Parliamentary Board, 28 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4753.

65. Election Commission of India, Statistical Report on General Elections, 1951, to the First Lok Sabha, Vol. I (National and State Abstracts & Detailed Results), p. 107.

66. Letter from Lal Bahadur Shastri to the secretary, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, 20 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2277. It is noteworthy that there were six women members in the Travancore-Cochin Legislative Assembly between 1949 and 1952.

67. Quoted in J. Devika, ‘Negotiating Women’s Social Space: Public Debates on Gender in Early Modern Kerala, India’, in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, no. 1 (2006), pp. 43–61 (fn. 13). The source for this statement is the report of a statement by the Kerala PCC president, Kumbalathu Sanku Pillai, in the Malayalam-language newspaper Nazrani Deepika on 29 Oct. 1951.

68. Letter from M.S.H. Jhabvala to Jawaharlal Nehru, president, Indian National Congress, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2314.

69. Letter from Ashoka Mehta, general secretary, Socialist Party, to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 4753.

70. Letter from M.S.H. Jhabvala to Jawaharlal Nehru, president, Indian National Congress, n.d., AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2314.

71. Ibid.

72. It is striking that, on the whole, there are only scant recollections of the first elections in the private papers, memoirs and autobiographies I was able to review thus far of women who were involved in different ways in the elections. This is the case, for example, with the private papers of Padmaja Naidu, Oral History Transcripts of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, and of Dr. Usha Mehta. Begam Qudsia Aizaz Rasul also writes very little on the elections in her From Purdah to Parliament: The Memoirs of a Muslim Woman in Indian Politics (Delhi: Ajanta, 2001). I thank Humaira Chowdhury for drawing my attention to this book. A personal account of the elections is found in Sushama Sen, Memoires of an Octogenarian (New Delhi: Hilly Chatterjee and Jai Pradeep Sen, 1971). But Sen’s memoir was written long after the elections and some details are not clear or accurate.

73. Letter from the general secretary, Sri Arya Mahila Hitkarini Mahaparishad, Benares, to the election commissioner, India, 25 Dec. 1950, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2624 PG–6 (i).

74. For a discussion of this tension in the context of the expansion of the franchise in the 1930s under colonial rule, see Mrinalini Sinha, Spectres of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), chap. 5, DOI: https://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2090/10.1215/9780822387978.

75. See, for example, the letter from a group of women to the president of the AICC, 4 Dec. 1951, AICC Papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4354. A few branches of the AIWC and other women’s organisations sent similar letters.

76. The Assam Tribune (28 Sept. 1951) (newspaper cutting), AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2270.

77. Letter from Central Publicity, AICC, New Delhi, to all PCCs, 6 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4750.

78. Letter from the secretaries, Bombay Pradesh Congress Election Campaign Committee, to all members of the committee, 22 Sep. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2314.

79. Letter from the general secretary, Nowgong District Congress Committee, Nowgong, to the general secretary, AICC, New Delhi, 13 June 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

80. Letter from Jadu Nath Bhuyan, MLA, to the general secretary, AICC, New Delhi, 4 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

81. Letter from Lila Kanata Bora, MLA, to the general secretary, AICC, New Delhi, 6 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

82. Letter from Santosh Kumar Roye, general secretary, DCC, Hailakandi, to L.M. Chakraborty, general secretary, Assam PCC, 4 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

83. Letter from Amarnath Chawla, zonal officer, Congress Election Office, New Delhi Zone, to all candidates, 24 Dec. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4357.

84. ‘Notice Issued by the Congress Election Office, New Delhi, 1 Jan. 1952’, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 4357.

85. Letter from Mridula Sarabhai to Lal Bahadur Shastri, 28 Nov. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2292.

86. Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’, p. 330.

87. ‘Report on the Sirmur District Congress Election Work’, 10 Nov. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2275.

88. This is clear from photographs from the first elections: see, for example, AICC, The Pilgrimage and After, pp. 12, 26. Also see B.B. Majumdar, ‘Bihar’, in S.V. Kogekar and Richard L. Park (eds), Reports on the Indian General Elections, 1951–52 (Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956), pp. 17–30.

89. See, for example, Letter from the secretary, the Refugee Association, Bara Hindu Rao, Delhi, to Jawaharlal Nehru, 1 Oct. 1951, AICC papers, II Inst. Part I, NMML, F. 2316; and Venkatarangaiya, The General Election in the City of Bombay, 1952, p. 114.

90. B. Shiva Rao, ‘An Indian Election’, 1952, B. Shiva Rao papers, II Inst. NMML.

91. Sen, Memoires of an Octogenarian, pp. 493–4.

92. Letter from Dr. R.P. Chaubey, Silchar-Itkhola, Assam, to general secretary, Assam PCC, and general secretary, AICC, 25 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

93. Letter from Lila Kanta Bora, MLA, to the general secretary, AICC, New Delhi, 6 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

94. Letter from M. Moinul Haque Choudhury, MLA, to the general secretary, AICC, New Delhi, 30 June 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

95. Letter from Sawaj Singh Mandloi, MLA, to the prime minister, head, AICC, New Delhi, 14 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

96. Election Commission of India, Report on the First General Election in India, 1951–52, pp. 123–4.

97. Letter from M.K. Surpur, Bijapur, to AICC, 23 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

98. Letter from S.S. Rama Moorthy, government pleader and public prosecutor, Coorg, to Karnataka PCC, Hubli, 26 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

99. Letter from P.R. Chakravarti (sic), MLA, to Khubi Ram Jajoria, secretary, Delhi PCC, 31 July 1952, AICC papers, II Inst. Part II, NMML, F. 2647 A PG-19.

100. Richard Leonard Park, ‘Indian Election Results’, in Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 21, no. 7 (1952), p. 62.

101. Ibid.

102. Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’, p. 554.

103. S.R. Sharma, ‘Madhya Bharat’, in S.V. Kogekar and Richard L. Park (eds), Reports on the Indian General Elections, 1951–52 (Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956), pp. 188–203.

104. S.C. Dash, ‘Orissa’, in S.V. Kogekar and Richard L. Park (eds), Reports on the Indian General Elections, 1951–52 (Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956), pp. 120–34.

105. ‘Bombay State Elections; Heavy Polling in Most Places; Enthusiasm of Women Voters’, The Hindu (3 Jan. 1952), reprinted in ‘A Walk Down Memory Lane: When Bombay Went to the Polls’, The Hindu (29 April 2019) [https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha-2019/a-walk-down-memory-lane-when-bombay-went-to-the-polls/article26975700.ece, accessed 21 Oct. 2019].

106. Fisher and Bondurant, The Indian Experience with Democratic Elections, p. 5.

107. The All-India Women’s Conference Silver Jubilee Session, p. 26. Also see Tinker, ‘Representation and Representative Government in the Indian Republic’, p. 364.

108. B. Shiva Rao, ‘An Indian Election’, 1952, in B. Shiva Rao papers, II Inst. NMML.

109. Sen, Memoires of an Octogenarian, p. 494.

110. B. Shiva Rao, ‘An Indian Election’, 1952, in B. Shiva Rao papers, II Inst. NMML.

111. Irene Tinker Walker, ‘The General Election in Himachal Pradesh, India, 1951’, in Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 6, no. 3 (1952), pp. 254–5.

112. See Shani, How India Became Democratic.

113. For example, Sushama Sen contested her electorate against eight men, and Usha Barthakur and Manorma Sinha against nine men each.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [Grant no. 1153/14].