Periodicals / Swatantra Party

Swatantra Party

Booklet series · 14 works · 1959–1973

The pamphlet output of India's first liberal party. Founded in 1959 by C. Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani and N. G. Ranga against the Nagpur resolution on cooperative farming, the Swatantra Party fought four general elections and argued its case chiefly in cheap pamphlets sold at meetings and posted to members: the Statement of Principles of 1959, the election manifestos, the annual answer to the Union Budget, and a run of short polemics on land reform, devaluation, planning and poverty. Read in sequence they are the closest thing India has to a sustained liberal opposition programme, written while the argument was still live.