Write: “Divisionism” in Indian political parties with special reference to Janta Dal, Congress, CPI and Akali Dal. (1999, 20 Marks)
Divisionism is the recurring slide of Indian parties from internal faction into formal split. Robert Michels (Political Parties, 1911) argued that organisation breeds oligarchy. Indian parties add a further defect: no procedure lets a faction lose an argument and stay, so exit becomes the usual outlet. The four parties named each split along a different fault line.
Congress: the leadership fault line
- The 1969 split set Indira Gandhi against the Syndicate. The Election Commission recognised her faction as the Congress, and the dispute produced the Sadiq Ali (1971) tests for deciding which faction is the party.
- She split the party again in 1978 to form Congress (I). The Tiwari Congress of 1995 (N. D. Tiwari and Arjun Singh against P. V. Narasimha Rao) and Sharad Pawar‘s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of 1999, over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, were revolts against a leader, not a programme.
Janata Dal: fragmentation as a way of life
- Formed in 1988 under V. P. Singh, the Janata Dal split within two years when Chandra Shekhar and Devi Lal formed the Samajwadi Janata Party (1990) and took office with Congress support.
- George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar left to found the Samata Party (1994). Lalu Prasad formed the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Naveen Patnaik the Biju Janata Dal in 1997. In 1999 the remainder divided into H. D. Deve Gowda’s JD(S) and Sharad Yadav’s JD(U) over supporting the NDA.
- Each fragment became a state party with its own caste or regional base, so Mandal politics was federalised through splits.
CPI: ideological divisionism
- The 1964 split produced the CPI(M). The quarrel was over how to treat the Congress-led “national bourgeoisie”, the 1962 war with China and the Sino-Soviet dispute. In 1969 the Naxalbari rebels broke away to form the CPI(ML).
- Here doctrine drove division. Democratic centralism forbids open factions, so dissent could only end in exit.
Akali Dal: panthic and personal factions
- After Harchand Singh Longowal’s assassination in 1985, Parkash Singh Badal and Gurcharan Singh Tohra broke with Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala in 1986, and later fell out with each other. Simranjit Singh Mann‘s SAD (Amritsar), founded in 1994, carried the radical panthic line.
- Factions fight over the SGPC as much as over Punjab. Rebels left the Badal-led party in 2018 and 2020, and in 2025 a breakaway group chose former jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh as its head.
The recent form: claiming the whole party
The Shiv Sena (2022) and NCP (2023) splits followed succession disputes inside family-run parties. Each breakaway group claimed to be the party itself. The Election Commission recognised the Eknath Shinde faction (February 2023) and the Ajit Pawar faction (February 2024) on legislative majorities. It described the Sena’s 2018 constitution as “akin to a fiefdom”. In Subhash Desai (2023) the Supreme Court held that legislative numbers alone cannot settle which faction is the party.
Why Indian parties split
- Factions as building blocks: Paul R. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State (1965), found Uttar Pradesh Congress factions to be vertical leader–follower groups held by patronage and loyalty, not ideology. When patronage fails, they walk out.
- Leadership and succession: with no internal elections to channel dissent, personal ambition and dynastic succession set off most splits.
- Ideology and social base: communist doctrine, Mandal caste coalitions and Sikh religious politics.
- The anti-defection law: the 1985 law protected a one-third “split”, which made breakaways legally survivable. The 91st Amendment (2003) removed that protection, so divisionism now takes the form of a claim to the party’s name and symbol.
Conclusion
Divisionism bred unstable governments in 1990–91 and 1996–98, yet it also opened space for new social groups and federalised the party system. It is structural rather than accidental. Only enforceable internal democracy would give factions a reason to stay.