The Swaraj Party

The Swaraj Party or the Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party was formed on 1 January 1923 by C R Das and Motilal Nehru.

Background

• After the Chauri Chaura incident, Mahatma Gandhi withdrew the non-cooperation movement in 1922.
• This was met with a lot of disagreements among leaders of the Congress Party.
• While some wanted to continue non-cooperation, others wanted to end the legislature boycott and contest elections. The former were called no-changers and such leaders included Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, C Rajagopalachari, etc.
• The others who wanted to enter the legislative council and obstruct the British government from within were called the pro-changers. These leaders included C R Das, Motilal Nehru, Srinivasa Iyengar, etc.
• In 1922, in the Gaya session of the Congress, C R Das (who was presiding over the session) moved a proposal to enter the legislatures but it was defeated. Das and other leaders broke away from the Congress and formed the Swaraj Party.
• C R Das was the President and the Secretary was Motilal Nehru.
• Prominent leaders of the Swaraj Party included N C Kelkar, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Subhas Chandra Bose.

Aims of the Swaraj Party

• Attaining dominion status.
• Obtaining the right to frame a constitution.
• Establishing control over the bureaucracy.
• Obtaining full provincial autonomy.
• Attaining Swarajya (self-rule).
• Getting people the right to control government machinery.
• Organising industrial and agricultural labour.
• Controlling the local and municipal bodies.
• Having an agency for propaganda outside the country.
• Establishing a federation of Asian countries to promote trade and commerce.
• Engaging in the constructive programmes of the Congress.

Work of the Swaraj Party

• Gandhiji and both the pro-changers and the no-changers realised the importance of putting up a united front in order to get reforms from the government.
• So, it was decided that the Swarajists would contest elections as a separate ‘group’ within the Congress Party.
• The Swaraj Party won 42 out of 104 seats to the Central Legislature in 1923.
• The party’s programme was to obstruct the government. They wanted to create deadlocks on every measure.
• They boycotted all official functions and receptions held by the government.
• They voiced their grievances and aspirations in the Legislative Assembly.

Achievements

• Swarajist Vithalbhai Patel became speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly in 1925.
• They outvoted the government many times even in matters related to budgetary grants.
• They were able to defeat the Public Safety Bill in 1928.
• They exposed the weaknesses of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms.
• They gave fiery speeches in the Assembly on self-rule and civil liberties

Drawbacks

• They could not coordinate their struggle inside the Assembly with the mass freedom struggle outside.
• They totally relied on newspapers to carry their work and message in the Assembly to the outside world.
• Some of them could not resist the perks of power. Motilal Nehru was a member of the Skeen Committee and A Ramaswamy Iyengar was a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
• Their policy of obstructionism had its flaws and limitations.
• The death of C R Das in 1925 further weakened the party.
• There were internal divisions among the Swarajists. They were divided into the responsivists and the non-responsivists. The responsivists (M M Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai, N C Kelkar) wanted to cooperate with the government and hold offices, whereas the non-responsivists (Motilal Nehru) withdrew from legislatures in 1926.
• The party was in shambles when it went into the 1926 elections, and as a result, did not fare well.
• The party’s failure to support the peasant cause in Bengal led to a loss of support of many members.
• The party merged with the Congress in 1930.