Reflections on the Republican Party: (Prompted by Recollections of Encounters at 15 Janpath)

Towards the end of the 1960s, the Ambedkarite Republican Party of India was facing a serious crisis. Its plight intensified with the death of the leader Dadasaheb Gaikwad at the end of 1971. This article takes the long view of the predicament of the party and asks why it had suffered such frequent and lasting instability. Drawing on interviews conducted at that time, including those conducted at the party New Delhi headquarters on Janpath, more recent discussions and a close examination of documentary records, the article examines the volatility and factional conflict exhibited by the party. In contrast to approaches that seek to find the roots of factionalism in personal rivalries and individual animosities, the article searches for more structural causes. It concludes that the inability of the party to broker differences about political cooperation and electoral alliances was a major cause of dissent. Particularly intense differences and division were generated by the issue of cooperation with the Congress party. Ultimately, it was the absence of any institutional procedures for settling disputes that caused the party to decline and eventually collapse into rival factional organizations.