Magic moments of India’s first election

Lt Gen Baljit Singh (Retd)

I was at home on winter vacation in a mofussil town of Punjab, where my father was posted as the Deputy Commissioner, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was scheduled to address an election rally in the last week of December 1951. Here I was to witness the diligent administrator, criss-crossing his district from dawn to dusk, ensuring that all his subordinate revenue functionaries down to the patwari and the police constabulary at each thana understood the import of the historic change-in-the-making, and their onerous responsibility to maintain peace for free and fair polling.

The PM’s motor cavalcade was late by an hour and the crowd of several thousand peasants was becoming restive. However, the moment Nehru, in a brown woollen achkan and white churidar, mounted the podium, the audience fell into instant reverential silence. Though I was privileged to sit on one of the few chairs upon the rostrum, I too was so mesmerised in the shadow of the great man that I registered not a word of his speech.

He concluded, asking the audience to arise and join him in a full-throated chorus of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai Ho’, three times over! And that chant persisted for at least the next half hour, till the last of the gathering had dispersed!

Perhaps an unparalleled episode which captures the magic moments of India’s first election comes from the book ‘The Vanishing Indian Tiger: Diary of a Forest Officer’, edited and gifted to us by the late Vice Admiral MP Awati. A Divisional Forest Officer posted in the interiors of Madhya Pradesh had set out on a 106-km-long bumpy ride over a dirt track to establish a polling booth in Pathera village, along with one clerk, two unarmed police constables and a sealed ballot box.

The district revenue authorities had alerted the headman of the village to expect the DFO’s party. So, all the 20 huts had been given a fresh coat of mud and lime-wash for the big day. At the weekly market in their vicinity, the villagers had even acquired three national flags which were already aflutter, one each atop the hut of the headman and over the two huts vacated for the election party and the election booth!

By 10 am the next morning, the entire village of about 60 persons of all ages had gathered outside the election booth. With utter humility and solemnity, the womenfolk first applied kum-kum on the ballot box and then garlanded it! The DFO then called out the 12 eligible listed voters and explained the object of the election, who the candidates were, what they stood for and the significance of their vote.

Of course, we shall never know what passed through their minds but when the last ballot was cast by 11.30 am, they all arose in unison and led by the headman returned to their huts, cheerfully chorusing aloud, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai Ho’.

Two days later, the sealed ballot box was matter-of-factly deposited at the district headquarters’ treasury.

Have we frittered away that wealth of civilised innocence of a nation for the mockery of hustings as they have come to pass?

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