The Central Legislature in British India, 192147. Mohammad Rashiduzzaman
his ballot box. The Franchise Committee (Lothian) strongly recommended the use of colored boxes in all the provinces. ← 43 | 44 →
Tables II and III provided summaries of general elections for the Assembly and Council of State; they signified certain special trends which require a little elaboration. One feature was that a good number of the seats were filled without contest: the number of members returned unopposed in 1929 and 1930 were 39 and 65 respectively in the Assembly. On both these occasions, the Congress boycotted the elections and, therefore, many persons with local influence were returned without contest. Only 29 members were returned without contest in 1923; it was the smallest number of unopposed members in the Assembly from 1921 to 1945. One obvious reason for this was the contest of Swarajists and other nationalist Independents who were determined to oust the so-called Moderates among the Indian politicians. In 1926, some of the members who returned without opposition were the Swarajists. The Congress contested the 1934 elections and 32 members returned unopposed, eight of whom were amongst the Congress and Congress-Nationalist nominees. There was a sweeping victory for Congress and Muslim League in 1945 when out of 46 uncontested members, 36 belonged to the Congress and the Muslim League. Detailed analysis of the uncontested seats (Table VII) divulged that the European constituencies seldom held election as almost all the members recurrently returned without contest. The Indian Commerce constituencies also returned most of their members unopposed except in 1920 and 1934; one main reason for the lack of contest was the absence of party politics in those bodies. Except in 1920, the landholders’ constituencies also returned nearly half the seats without contest; possibly, most prominent landlords won without contest.
If we make a comparative study of uncontested seats in Muhammadan and non-Muhammadan constituencies, it was clear that except in 1926 and 1945, nearly half the Muslim seats were returned without contest. The number of uncontested Muslim seats in 1926 and 1945 were 7 and 8 respectively in the Assembly; it was, however, difficult to ascertain the precise reasons for a greater proportion of unopposed seats in the Muhammadan constituencies. However, several likely reasons were not difficult to perceive: before 1945, there was no country-wide attempt by the Muslim political organizations to contest the Central Legislature elections. Most of the Muslim members were returned as Independents; in the absence of party-politics, there was a greater scope for the prominent Independents to get through without contests in certain constituencies. There were a few provinces, for example, the Punjab and the U.P. that mainly returned unopposed candidates to the legislature: the relative backwardness of the Muslim community was one of the potential causes ← 44 | 45 → for such a tendency. Another possibility was that the constituencies returning unopposed candidates did not actually have any rival who could come forward to contest the locally dominant lawyer, landlord or businessman. What is more, the proportion of the Muslim candidates for contested seats was also generally lower than those of non-Muhammadan constituencies in most of the provinces. Such dearth of candidates in Muhammadan constituencies was, perhaps, the relatively smaller number of Muslims in the professions. Generally, most of the Muslim candidates were landed aristocrats.
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