Welcome Address

Summary

This six-page English welcome address, delivered by Raja Bahadur Kamakhya Narain Singh at the Swatantra Party’s first All India Convention in Patna on March 19, 1960, presents the new party as a response to what the speaker describes as India’s political, economic, and national-security crises. Invoking Ashoka and Patna’s historical importance, Singh contrasts the ideal of peace, virtue, and individual flourishing with a present in which the state is expanding its control, traditional institutions are being dismantled, and no credible new political order has emerged.

The address sharply criticises the Congress government’s commitment to various forms of socialism, nationalisation, progressive taxation, land ceilings, and joint co-operative farming. Singh argues that these policies suppress private enterprise, weaken managerial performance, destroy individual initiative, and produce unemployment and mass poverty, while corruption, nepotism, casteism, and one-party rule continue. He also links the domestic crisis to Chinese aggression, alleging the loss of nearly 5,000 square miles of Indian territory and warning that democratic government may give way to dictatorship and totalitarianism.

Singh frames the Swatantra Party as filling a political vacuum and identifies its programme as avoidance of over-government, property-owning democracy, prosperity through freedom, and restoration of individual liberty. He describes the movement as gaining support among both intellectuals and the masses, and closes by placing the convention within Bihar’s long history—from ancient empires and Buddhist and Jain traditions to the anti-British resistance of Babu Kunwar Singh—while calling for the party’s success in the state.

Key points

• The address welcomes delegates to the Swatantra Party’s first All India Convention in Patna on March 19, 1960.
• Ashoka and the historical significance of Patna are used to frame peace, virtue, and political responsibility.
• The speaker condemns Congress’s socialist programme, nationalisation, taxation, land ceilings, and co-operative farming.
• State intervention is presented as suppressing private enterprise, individual initiative, employment, and national wealth.
• The address attacks Congress for corruption, nepotism, casteism, one-party rule, and the absence of an effective opposition.
• Chinese aggression and the alleged occupation of nearly 5,000 square miles are presented as evidence of a national emergency.
• The Swatantra Party is defined by opposition to over-government, support for property-owning democracy, and restoration of individual freedom.
• Bihar’s historical and anti-imperial traditions are invoked as a basis for confidence in the party’s future.