India: Political Parties Material
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- Creator
- Institute of Commonwealth Studies
TitleIndia: Political Parties Material
Reference codePP.II
Date1898-
Scope and ContentManifestos, speeches, pamphlets, leaflets, letters, newsletters, journals, posters, and miscellaneous election material at national, state and youth levels issued by the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, the Akhil Bhartiya Ramarajya Parisada, the Association of Indian Communists of Great Britain, the All India Forward Bloc, the All India Kisan Sabha, All-India Ramarajya-Parishad, the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Congress Seva Dal, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Four Party Alliance, the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, the Gujarat Sanyukta Sadachar Samiti, independent candidates, the Indian National Congress, the Indian National Congress (I), the Indian National Congress (O), the Indian National Congress (U), the Indian National Youth Movement, the Indian Youth Congress, the Janata Dal, the Janata Party, the Jammu and Pradesh Congress Committee, the Kashmir Democratic Union, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, the Lok Dal, the Mysore Pradesh Congress Committee, the Orissa Provincial Congress Committee, the Praja Socialist Party, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, the Revolutionary Communist Party of India, the Radical Democratic Party, the Republican Party of India, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Republican Party, the Shiv Sena, the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Swatantra Party, the Telangana Congress Party, and the United Left Front.
NotesThough some of the material here does date back to the latter period of British rule, the majority is from the 1950s-1980s and is concerned with the India that emerged from independence and partition . The ramifications of the circumstances in which the new republic was born are present in much of the party literature here, in terms of the relationship with Pakistan, the struggle between secular and non-secular ideas of the state and the attempt to maintain a position of non-alignment during the Cold War. Other recurring themes are the issues of the dominant role of the Congress Party (with all the subsequent implications for Indian democracy that this entailed), and the seemingly intractable problem of widespread poverty. Also of interest are the materials dealing with the communist parties, with much early debate centring on the contradictions of theoretically anti-parliamentary organisations operating in the democratic sphere - brought to the fore in Kerala with the formation of the first elected communist ministry in the world in 1959 - and later arguments dealing with the repositioning of these still powerful parties given the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.
Conditions governing accessAccess to this collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the supervised environment of the library.
Extent23 boxes
System of ArrangementAlphabetically by party, and then in rough chronological order.
Finding aidsItem-level descriptions are available on the library catalogue: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S17/
Related files
See also India: Trades Unions Material (TU.II) and India: Pressure Groups Material (PG. II), as well as Political Party, Trades Unions and Pressure Group Materials for other Commonwealth countries and material in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library's main classified sequence.
Level of descriptionfonds