The Long Life and Lingering Death of the Indian National Congress

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April 10, 2017 | The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 during the British Raj in India, and after independence in 1947, the Congress Party became India’s dominant political party, winning an outright majority on six occasions and leading the dominant coalition four times, thereby ruling the central government for 49 years. There have been seven prime ministers from this center-left, social liberal party.
In the 2014 general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing Hindu nationalist party, won 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in as the fifteenth prime minister of India, ending the Congress Party’s long ruling streak.
On April 10, the India Initiative hosted Ramachandra Guha, Indian historian and award-winning author, for a conversation on “The Long Life and Lingering Death of the Indian National Congress.” Ramachandra Guha, once named “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler” by Time Magazine, analyzed the long term electoral success of the Congress Party, examined the reasons for its decline, and grappled with questions about India’s political future.