COMMENTARY

What Makes a Party

a National Party?
M Madhava Prasad

To be deemed national, a party

has to demonstrate an ability to
transcend regional particularities.
In introducing the transcendence
requirement, the Election
Commission appears to propose
implicitly, that though in theory
all inhabitants of the territory of
India are citizens, in practice,
their natural-born citizenship is
only confirmed by a rite of
transcendence.

wo parties from Andhra Pradesh

and Telanganathe Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the All India
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM)
are vying for national party status. The
TDP had strongly opposed the demand for
a separate Telangana state until the very
end but reconciled itself to the inevitable
situation and also discerned an unexpected opportunity in the new situation.
With a presence in two states, the TDP
began to leaf through the rule book on
national party status to see what else it
needs to be qualified.
Ahead of the party conference, Mahanadu 2015, according to one report in
Andhra Jyothi, the TDP was proceeding
cautiously on this front but decided to
take a final decision only after a thorough
study. For the present, a party central
committee has been set up with members
from the two state committees (Telangana
and Andhra Pradesh).
In the [erstwhile] united Andhra Pradesh
the TDP was registered as a regional party.
After the bifurcation, it was registered in
both the states. Further, having decided to
expand its base to neighbouring states like
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, the Andamans, etc,
the party had even launched membership
drives. (Andhra Jyothi, 27 May 2015)

M Madhava Prasad (madhavaprasad@gmail.com)

is with the Centre for European Studies, The
English and Foreign Languages University,
Hyderabad.

22

But supporters in the neighbouring

states felt that with a name like Telugu
Desam it would be difficult for the
party to make any headway in other
states and suggested the adoption of a
more national name. Other problems
included the fact that the Samajwadi
Party has already been allotted the
bicycle symbol in Karnataka. In view
of such impediments, a committee was
formed to investigate and report on the
question of national party status. Meanwhile, in the party constitution, it has
been decided that the words for the
development of the state would be
replaced by for the development of the
country.

The other aspirant for national status

is a party whose activities have until
recently been restricted to the old city
area of Hyderabad. Having recently
debuted in the Maharashtra assembly,
where it now has two MLAs (members of
legislative assembly), the MIM contested
in the Bihar elections unsuccessfully but
looks determined to keep trying. The
twist in the tale is that the MIM, with a
voter base that is only a fraction of the
TDPs in size, has better prospects of
being declared a national party than the
latter. In what follows I am concerned
not with the prospects of these or other
aspirants for this distinction which
comes with a few tangible benefits, but
with the thinking behind this regional
national classification itself, the ideological conditions of its possibility.
National Party Status
The distinction between national and
regional parties appears to have been
introduced by the Election Commission
(EC) ostensibly for its own administrative
convenience and to put in place the
criteria of eligibility for exclusive allotment of symbols, access to time on stateowned media and so forth. National
parties have some privileges that regional
parties cannot claim and regional parties have some benefits which are not
available to independent candidates or
unregistered parties.1
While the eligibility conditions for
regional parties are straightforwardly
quantitative in nature, those aspiring for
national party status have to meet two
criteria, one quantitative and two, qualitative. This is the case even though at
first sight they might both appear to be
quantitative requirements. Thus, if a
party fulfils the conditions of eligibility
for regional party status in four states, it
qualifies as a national party. The criteria
seem to have undergone modifications
over time, but in one place they are
described as follows:
A party is recognised as national if,

DECEMBER 3, 2016

(i) it secures at least six percent (6%) of the

valid votes polled in any four or more states, at
a general election to the House of the People
or, to the State Legislative Assembly; and
(ii) in addition, it wins at least four seats in
the House of the People from any State or
States.
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Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

To be deemed national, a party has to

demonstrate an ability to transcend
regional particularities. That is the simple,

qualitative criterion which is introduced

through the specification of a minimum
number of states. Normative issues of
democracy are not a popular topic among
social scientists and it is no surprise that
a distinction that reveals a fundamental
morphological anomaly in Indias political structure has attracted little critical
attention. That the EC can on its own
introduce a distinction which seems significant enough to warrant a constitutional amendment is another miracle
that calls for explanation.
If we pose the question why, if we seek
the reasons for introducing this distinction, many will be offered: the growing
number of political parties, the dearth of
symbols, the need to ensure rational and
just distribution of various benefits, to
discourage non-serious entrants, in short
to rationalise the system and make the
electoral machine more efficient. Who
can quarrel with such an argument?
There is no doubt that in a polity of such
enormous size, where very often even
individuals like to express their political
passions in party form, quantitative
criteria for recognition are in order. But
in introducing the transcendence requirement, the EC appears to have relied upon
a fact that goes without saying, and which
moreover, must remain unsaid, for the
cost of invoking it explicitly would be an
intolerable discursive incoherence.
Let us submit the problem to a basic
description. According to one reckoning,
India is a set called nation, consisting of
elements called states. By another reckoning, India is a multinational union or
federation of which the states, corresponding to nationalities, are the elements. Both these understandings enjoy
currency, with one or the other gaining
the upper hand at different moments in
time. There prevails a now-hot-now-cold
competition for dominance between
these two visions, and different interests
and ideologies are associated with each
of them. Their existence in a relation of
tension sometimes leading to conflict
seems to be a constitutive rather than
incidental characteristic of the political
whole. In the long term, however, the
first description has enjoyed an overall
dominance and has garnered the support
of increasing numbers of influential

Economic & Political Weekly

vol lI no 49

Or
it wins at least two percent (2%) seats
in the House of the People (i e, 11 seats
in the existing House having 543 members), and these members are elected from
at least three different States (emphasis
added).2

The criteria are of two kinds: on the

one hand, a combination of seat and/or
vote shares and on the other, a minimum
(four in one case, three in the other)
number of states from which these
percentages must be secured.
Quantitative and
Qualitative Criteria
The application of quantitative criteria
for separating small parties with an
insignificant proven support from those
which have demonstrated staying power
and following seems reasonable from
the point of view of administrative efficiency. A minimum number of seats
and/or vote share is, let us say, an unexceptionable criterion of distinction. This
leaves the other criterion which, seemingly also quantitative in nature, nevertheless conceals a qualitative element
that is all important. The importance of
this element can be grasped from the
fact that while the Communist Party of
India (Marxist)CPI(M), and the All
India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(AIADMK) both got 3.3% of the national
vote each in 2014, and the Trinamool
Congress got a slightly bigger share than
both at 3.8%, the CPI(M) qualifies as the
national party, while the AIADMK and
the Trinamool Congress do not.
Even more interestingly, the Nationalist
Congress Party (NCP) whose national
vote share was less than half that of the
Trinamool Congress or the AIADMK,
qualifies as a national party. Going by
seats won, the status difference is all the
more striking. The AIADMK with 37
seats, the Trinamool Congress with 34,
the Biju Janata Dal with 20, the Shiv
Sena with 18, the TDP with 16, etc, are all
regional, while the NCP with six, the
CPI(M) with nine, perhaps even the CPI
with one, are national parties.3
Transcendence Requirement

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DECEMBER 3, 2016

people and the world at large. In other

words, the proposition that India is the
nation and the states its component
administrative parts, is today taken by
the majority as substantially established,
even perfectly obvious.
In light of this, what the ECs transcendence requirement does is to reintroduce, as a fact that must go without
saying, the key proposition of the second
vision. The Indian national discourse,
thus, incorporates the multinational proposition as a pragmatic necessity in some
aspects of its institutional functioning.
The EC proposes, implicitly, that though
in theory all inhabitants of the territory
of India are citizens, in practice, their
natural-born citizenship is only confirmed by a rite of transcendence. S/he,
the citizen of India must, as it were, be
twice-born. This is not in itself unique to
India, for all democracies do, in a manner of speaking, impose the twice-born
principle insofar as they distinguish
between those who, by virtue of being
minors, are not yet full-fledged citizens
and those who have crossed the age barrier
and thus have attained citizenship.
But here we are dealing, not with a
rite of passage related to attaining a
certain age, but an act of transcendence
that is only comparable to the ordeal
undergone by the heroes of old romances,
who attain manhood by some extraordinary adventure. The Indian national
identity is only available to those who
cross internal boundaries and transcend
regional identities. In the general,
discourse of nationalism, the nation and
its subjects are presumed to be consubstantial, but in India precisely these
distinctions of substance are treated as
an obstacle to national belonging, which
is then defined in strictly spiritual or
imaginary terms, as in the popular
expression the idea of India.
Negative Result
What we have arrived at is, of course, a
negative result, derived by implication
from the transcendence requirement. In
imposing this requirement the EC
effectively diminishes the national status
of the residents of any particular state.
That it cannot help doing so is another
matter: what we are interested in
23

COMMENTARY

here is how the two visions must

each deny the existence of the other,
while at the same time, assuming and
relying on its existence at the level of
the practice of democracy. Of course,
again in practice, we know how this
works: the Indian national discourse
treats the region not as the nationality
that it claims to be, but an enclave of
contemptible parochialism that must be
somehow managed, and sublimated in
the long run. Meanwhile, the multinational discourse regards the Indian
national discourse as a parasitical excrescence that is nevertheless indispensable for managing the complex whole.
In the recent British elections, there
were parties which were confined to
specific regions of the United Kingdom:
the Scottish National Party, the Sinn
Fin and the Plaid Cymru (Welsh). From
the point of view of great British nationalism, these would qualify as regional
entities but no such distinction is
officially made, for to do so would entail
reinforcing the claims of these parties
to regional autonomy or independence.
Professing great British nationalism and
designating certain parties as regional would entail an intolerable contradiction whose visibility and immediate
registration would be guaranteed by
the fact that all parties speak the
same language, English. At least to some
extent, it is the prevalence of a language
of governance different from the languages of the regions which enables a
contradiction that would be unconscionable in a linguistically homogeneous democracy to be embraced with impunity by the institutions of governance
here in India.
Club Culture
But the question of what makes a
party a national party is more complicated still. For in truth, there is, within
the category of national parties, an
internal division between those that
were so before the adoption of the
criteria and those that began to qualify
after the criteria were introduced. To
understand this, an analogy with the
club culture of Indian big cities would
be useful. There are social clubs that
were built in the colonial era which,
24

after independence, remained for several

decades as the exclusive property of an
elite. In the end, some of them threw
open membership to the newly rich
who were clamouring for entry. This is
when a membership culture largely
determined by informal workings, begins
to adopt new admission criteria. Although
the loss of exclusivity is immediate, the
distinction between the old members
and the newly arrived persists. The very
exclusivity that draws the newly rich to
the clubs is threatened by their entry, a
paradox neatly captured by Groucho
Marxs famous quip: I dont want to
belong to any club that will accept me
as a member.
Something other than the quantitative
criterion is essential to the national
regional distinction. Of course, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) enjoy large electoral bases in all
but a few of the states and their national
status would seem to be quantitatively
beyond dispute. Even so, when you consider the possibility, however remote, of
the TDP or the MIM becoming national
parties, it is clear that there must be
something else that will continue to
distinguish some national parties (the
Congress, the BJP, the CPI(M)) from
others (the NCP, the Bahujan Samaj Party
(BSP), the Janata Dal United (JDU), the
TDP, the MIM and other actual or potential candidates for the promotion). The
key to the question lies in the qualitative
criterion, the transcendence requirement
as stipulated above. For among those
who meet this criterion, there are some
that were born transcendent while all
the rest must achieve it.
Just as there used to be real aristocrats and those who became aristocrats
by purchasing titles, there are really
national parties and those which achieve
this by accumulating scores. The difference between them is essentially this:
the real national parties are those of
colonial vintage which believed in and
acted upon the essentially British myth
that the subcontinent is either one nation
or two. By this criterion, the Congress
and the BJP are the main national
parties, and the Communist Party (in all
its forms) is also one despite the recent
setbacks.

One can appreciate the distinction

better by the fact that these three
parties, even if it were to fail to achieve
the new national party numbers, would
retain their national status in the eyes
of the public, just as impoverished aristocrats continue to maintain their aura.
But even more tellingly the BJPs earlier
avatar, the Jana Sangh, was always a national party even when it did not win a
single seat anywhere. There are thus
only a limited number of real national
parties and they are really national
primarily by virtue of subscribing to the
colonial idea of India. Although the communists were in the past strongly in favour
of a rigorously federal design, in recent
times they seem to have fallen in line
with the Indian national mythology.
There are nationalities that the independent state of India ought to have nurtured into maturity as the very condition
of full realisation of the freedom that
was formally gainedthis is now a
repressed truth that has led to the centre
state distinction becoming mapped onto
the class struggle as increasingly, for
individuals, English education as the
mandatory rite of transcendence introduces a divergence of interests between
monolingual unfortunates and lucky
bilinguals. All now aspire for the status
of Indianship that is achievable by this
difficult route, a substitute for the citizenship that was supposed to be guaranteed to all.
notes
1

DECEMBER 3, 2016

Election Commission of India: http://eci.nic.

in/eci_main1/RegisterationPoliticalParties.
aspx (accessed on 27 May 2015).
Press note, Election Commission of India released on 2 December 2000, http://eci.nic.in/archive/press/current/PN05122k.htm (accessed
on 27 May 2015).
Some of these have won their national status in
previous elections and are allowed to continue
to enjoy the privileges for some time before a
status update is forced upon them.

available at

Gyan Deep
Near Firayalal, H. B. Road
Ranchi 834 001
Jharkhand
Ph: 0651-2205640
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