the first elections

The First Elections
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
With these words of Jawaharlal lal Nehru, India awake to a new dawn. Before her laid the future envisaged by great leaders. Before her laid the optimism of millions of people who had dreamt oft the day ever since they started dreaming. Before her laid the pessimism of west who believed that India will now become a battlefield of religious and racial forces and will be pushed several centuries back in the history. Before her laid the task of rehabilitating millions of people who had been displaced from the land which they called their home. Before her laid the task of countering the religious forces who were looming their ugly heads over democracy. And most importantly before her laid the task of rebuilding the biggest democracy of world and prevent it from falling into the traps of imperialism, capitalism and communalism.
25th October. Though mostly forgotten, this date has as much importance if not more as 15th august or 26th January has in Indian history. On 25th October first general elections started in free India. More than anything they were an act of faith. A matter of faith people of India had placed in national leadership when we got independence. From many years of servitude and before that a history of autocracy people of republic of India were suddenly introduced to adult suffrage. The first general elections were a test for people of India. They had to prove to the world that India could run its government itself. But it was not an easy task.
176 million Indians aged twenty one or more, of whom 85% were illiterate. Each one had to be identified, named and registered. Party symbols were to be designed for a mostly unlettered electorate. At stake were 4500 seats. 224,000 polling booths were constructed, and equipped with 2 million steel ballot boxes.380,000 reams of paper was used for printing. These numbers alone can demonstrate the sheer magnitude of task that lay before the country to make these elections fair and successful.
Other than this geographical and social problem were too faced. India is a mass of land, vast and widely diverse. It spans from the heights of Himalayas to small islands in the south. Socially, people were not aware of the importance of adult franchise. Women had never come out of their houses. In fact, they didn’t have their own names. They were rather known as A’s wife or B’s mother. Now they had to stand in a queue with a man not their husband or son to vote and decide the country’s future by voting for a man again not their husband or son.
In the tahsil of Chini in Himachal Pradesh first votes were caste by a group of Buddhists. For a country as a whole about 60% of registered voters exercised their franchise this despite more than three fourth of the total population were illiterate. At least in this first elections politicians and public were essentially law abiding. It was one of the biggest experiments of human history comparable to French and American revolutions.
After the first elections congress emerged as the single largest party and Pt. Jawaharlal lal Nehru was elected as the prime minister of sovereign socialist democratic republic of India.
India had finally got hold of the reins of her destiny. She now was a free state with a government elected by the people for the and of the people. India had awakened to freedom. The new dawn had come.