Ira Pande writes in The Economic Times that:
"Swatantra Party, founded in 1959 by C Rajagopalachari and others and which died out by 1974, had swung away from the socialist, statist path Jawaharlal Nehru had decided to make post-Independent India follow. Private industry, creating wealth and a free marketbased economy — these were like red rags to a Congress bull in the 1950s-70s.
"Swatantra Party, founded in 1959 by C Rajagopalachari and others and which died out by 1974, had swung away from the socialist, statist path Jawaharlal Nehru had decided to make post-Independent India follow. Private industry, creating wealth and a free marketbased economy — these were like red rags to a Congress bull in the 1950s-70s.
Nehru called the Swatantra Party belonging to “the Middle Ages of lords, castles and zamindars” since many of its members came from the erstwhile landed or princely families of Bihar, Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. Many of its supporters later gravitated to Jan Sangh.
India long felt the need to have a balance between the so-called Left, Right and Centre. However, with Congress determined to turn more and more to the Left, Swatantra Party’s kind of ‘liberal Right’ mutated subsequently into the Hindu nationalism of BJP. Add to this the evolution of dynastic parties, today seen as private limited companies for family and sycophants."
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