M.G Devasahayam, who was JP's jailor during the Emergency, has a new article in Print.in where he bewails the BJP's claiming of JP's mantle. Presumably, the reference is to Amit Shah's recent speech- attacking Nitish and Lalu and accusing them of betraying JP by joining hands with Congress. Shah knows that few remember JP in Bihar. What he is saying is 'Lalu is corrupt and a friend of gangsters. Now Nitish has joined hands with him, Bihar will go down the toilet.'
Devasahayam, however, belongs to a generation for whom JP was a great ideologue and political operator.
If Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi won freedom for India,
he didn't. Atlee said 'Quit India' had 'minimal' impact on the decision to give up colonies in Asia and proceed rapidly with decolonization in Ceylon, Burma, Malaysia and elsewhere.
it was Jayaprakash Narayan, or JP, who made it shine through his acts of bravery and sacrifice.
JP achieved nothing. He wasted time on the 'Bhoodan' scam. Then the Naxals confronted him with the truth- no land had been transferred to the landless. JP realized he had made a fool of himself. He needed to take a role in mainstream politics. Thus, he became ready to endorse a non-dynastic Prime Ministerial candidate.
When Jawaharlal Nehru talked about India’s Independence, he had some premonitions: “We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.”
To be fair, Nehru kept a vice like grip on power to his dying day.
Little did he realise that about a quarter century later, his own daughter, Indira Gandhi, will blow out that ‘torch of freedom’!
Indira had brought down the Communist administration in Kerala- an act her husband described as 'Fascist'- while Nehru was alive.
This ‘extinction’ of freedom happened at midnight on 26 June 1975, when a nationwide Emergency was imposed in the country.
Because a Judge, very foolishly, tried to get Indira barred from holding office.
This brought about a direct confrontation between Indira Gandhi and JP for who freedom was uncompromisable:
The confrontation had already occurred. Indira could have ridden out the storm. Sooner or later there would have been a backlash against crazy students running amok.
“Freedom became one of the beacon lights of my life and it has remained so ever since… Above all, it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become a passion of my life and I shall not see it compromised for food, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else,” JP wrote in his book From Socialism to Sarvodaya (1956).
But, since JP did not enter politics, he was powerless to do anything. On the other hand, he was generally useful to the Government in various ways.
He took up the fight in right earnest
He was jailed. His health suffered.
and within 21 months, democracy and freedom returned to India.
Probably because Indira feared her son's cronies were planning a convenient little 'accident' for her.
JP was the architect of this ‘second freedom’.
No. Indira acted unilaterally. She could not have predicted that JP and Kripalani would be crazy enough to appoint the 80 year old Morarji as Prime Minister. The Janata Morcha self-destructed in spectacular fashion. Within 3 years Indira would return as an openly dynastic PM.
By defeating Emergency, he became India’s post-Independence liberator.
He didn't defeat anything. He ensured Janata would fail by appointing the one man everyone hated even more than they hated Indira.
From being an apostle of Gandhi to stepping into his shoes, JP truly became his moral heir.
He was just as useless. Gandhi anointed Jawaharlal. JP ensured Indira would return to power as a dynastic Empress.
JP’s quality of a ‘fiery freedom fighter’ became evident when he was confined in the Hazaribagh Jail in Jharkhand during the launch of the Quit India movement in August 1942.
So, this 'Socialist' was trying to weaken the anti-Fascist forces fighting Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo.
In jail, JP felt frustrated at not being able to actively participate in this historic movement. So, on Diwali night in November 1942, he along with five others, escaped the high-security jail by scaling a 17-foot-high wall while the guards remained distracted by the festivities. The British government announced a handsome reward for JP’s capture. British troops and police launched a massive nationwide search, and the news reached every nook and corner. This electrified the nation and propelled the movement further, which was otherwise languishing. It was this momentum that eventually led to India’s Independence.
It is true that parts of India became ungovernable during the war. This became the basis of Viceroy Wavell's claim that the Brits had no choice but to leave as quickly and safely as possible. But much of the lawlessness was spontaneous. Political leaders no longer mattered.
A.P. Sinha, a close friend of JP and jailmate at the Hazaribagh prison, put facts together succinctly when he said: “JP, you have got the passion that can make people’s spirits soar up. You can inspire them to self-sacrifice, to accept sufferings. You are a great national leader.” Braving all odds, JP reached Delhi undetected where he was housed and provided with facilities to launch and run an underground movement.
It failed. It had become obvious that the Muslim League alone was the beneficiary of Congress's hubris.
With other Congress leaders still in prison, JP was now India’s foremost public figure, acknowledged as a fiery leader of the Independence movement by the British themselves.
But he was recaptured soon enough. The thing was an exercise in futility. Why go to jail if you are only going to escape? Why escape if you will go back to jail if you try anything?
Taking advantage of his emergence as a rebellious personality, the government indulged in sinister propaganda to depict the freedom movement as an underground, seditious activity with all the trappings of terrorism, political dacoity, sabotage, and unscrupulous opportunism in complete disregard for the safety and welfare of the general public.
Sadly, this was the view that prevailed. Those areas where the administration had collapsed had not turned into utopias.
This infuriated Gandhi, and he struck back against the British’s filthy charges: “Jayaprakash Narayan differs from me on several fundamentals. But my differences, great as they are, do not blind me to his indomitable courage and his sacrifice of all that a man holds dear for the love of his country. I have read his manifesto. Though I do not subscribe to some of his views expressed therein, it breathes nothing but burning patriotism and his impatience of foreign domination. It is a virtue which any country could be proud.” [Allan & Wendy Scarfe, “JP, His Biography”, (Hyderabad, Orient Longman-1975)]
But Gandhi had lost salience. On getting out of jail the one thing he did was to elevate Jinnah to the role of leader of the Muslims. This was a spectacular own goal. JP, at that time still had Socialist credentials. The trouble was that creed trumped class. There could only be some top-down, Nehruvian Socialism. JP himself, choosing with his heart, not his head, abandoned his academic Socialism to become Vinobha Bhave's lieutenant. Still, he was very useful to the Government in helping resolve some internal issues as well as in making India's case to the Socialists of the world.
JP became a “sentinel and custodian of the Indian conscience” after Independence.
He strengthened Nehru's hold on power just as Gandhi had paved the way for a Nehruvian India which had little atavistic love for the villagers and their folk-ways.
In the same mould as Gandhi, JP never sought power.
He exercised it irresponsibly in a manner ultimately fatal to every cause he held dear. He could have joined Nehru's Cabinet and been his successor. He preferred to become stupider than the village folk amongst whom he lived. It was the Naxals who opened his eyes to the fact that Bhoodan was a scam. Then his intervention in politics helped the BJP become a National Party while his own natal Bihar groaned under Lalus' misrule.
Instead, he wholeheartedly adopted the Gandhian creed of Sarvodaya, which meant ‘Universal Uplift’ or ‘Progress of All’ through non-violent means.
It was a ludicrous failure. The whole state of Bihar was gifted away but no poor people got anything.
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, JP’s chronicler, explains this transformation stating that JP was an iconoclast with compassion and heir to an ancient and formidable legacy. “Bihar’s Magadha heartland, where JP was born, ‘not only produced relentless fighters and exterminators of kings’ but also hearkened at the same time to the devout teachings of Vardhamana Mahavira and Gautama Buddha,” he wrote in Encyclopedia of Indian War of Independence, Vol. 11.
What about the devout teachings of Lalu or Pappu Yadav? That's what prevailed thanks to JP's foolishness.
JP, who had spurned the high offices of Union Cabinet minister, deputy prime minister, and prime minister and returned to active politics in 1974 to lead the student movement against corruption, unemployment, and high inflation. He called for a ‘total revolution’, declaring: “After 27 years of freedom, people of this country are wracked by hunger, rising prices, corruption…oppressed by every kind of injustice… it is a Total Revolution we want, nothing less!”
A Total Revolution which brings back an 80 year old former Deputy Prime Minister is no Revolution at all. Why did Kripalani and JP choose the one man everybody hated? I suppose they thought they would have more influence for that very reason. But Desai was ruthless in shutting them out. He announced JPs death while the guy was still alive!
JP’s ‘Total Revolution’ is a combination of seven goals, viz., political, social, economic, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational, and spiritual.
None were achieved. Corruption increased. On the other hand, Vajpayee was put on the path to the Prime Minister's seat. Bihar, however, had to suffer under Lalu.
The main motive was to bring change in society to tune with the ideals of the Sarvodaya.
Which turned out to be nonsense.
Emergency halted all these initiatives, and the suspension of Articles 14, 19, 21, and 22 of the Constitution resulted in the deprivations of the fundamental rights of Indians.
Which was welcomed in the South. Since then an increasing socio-economic gap has opened between them and JP's cow-belt.
Acting fast, the Indira Gandhi government detained JP and the leaders of the opposing factions. Freedom of the press was fettered, and thousands were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act.
This was welcomed. Had Indira not done 'forced sterilization', she may well have returned to power with a bigger majority. Indians like 'the smack of firm government'. Sadly, many Northern states could provide nothing but corruption and crime.
JP bid for time, and immediately after the announcement of election on 18 January 1977, he plunged into the fight despite his failing health. He put together a disparate coalition of political parties and campaigned vigorously. His passionate plea to “defeat the dictators” reached every home, and the people of India, on whom JP had placed implicit faith, responded with fervour and enthusiasm.
Not in the South.
With the popular upsurge thus created, the Janata Party and its allies were victorious, winning 330 out of 542 seats. Winning just 2 out of the 234 seats, the Congress was virtually wiped out in the seven northern states.
Much credit must go to the RSS for this outcome.
The Janata government that JP crafted to counter Congress’ hegemony collapsed in mid-1979 due to egos, intrigues and betrayals among party members.
It collapsed on the 'dual membership' issue. Demonizing the RSS turned out to be a stupid move.
JP passed away in October 1979, and Congress returned to power in January 1980. Despite being a crucial chapter of India’s post-Independence history, JP Movement and the Emergency were not properly chronicled for posterity.
The thing was a shit-show. What more can be said?
We are a nation of lotus-eaters who celebrate frauds and ignore genuine patriots like JP.
No. India celebrates people like Modi who are good at their job. We have forgotten JP. The Mahatma is cool coz Richard Attenborough made a very good film about him.
What Nelson Mandela said about South Africa — “The history of our country is characterised by too much forgetting. A forgetting which served the powerful and dispossessed the weak” — is truer in the case of India.
No it isn't. South Africa had a large White settler population. India did not. True, we may exaggerate the role of Gandhi and Nehru and JP but we all well know that only about 90,000 people went to Jail during 'Quit India'. By contrast, 2.5 million Indians enlisted in the military. About 80,000 lost their lives in combat. India chose to fight for the right cause, albeit under British command, rather than join Gandhi's crazy, defeatist, campaign to have the country handed over to the Japanese.
Otherwise, this country would not have reached the nadir it has today in freedom and equity—the two noble ideals of JP.
India is now freer of dynasticism and the sway of senile IAS officers than ever before.
It is in this context that eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala’s words become relevant: “Since public memory is so alarmingly short,
nobody now remembers this palki-wallah.
let us reiterate our gratitude to the men who suffered in diverse ways
we should certainly be grateful for jailers who lock up folk who commit nuisances
and whose sacrifices made the restoration of freedom possible. The first name that springs to anyone’s mind is that of Jayaprakash Narayan. Not since the time of Gandhiji has moral force—personified by a frail invalid—triumphed so spectacularly over the forces of evil. He changed decisively the course of history. One life transformed the destiny of 620 million.” [“We The People”, Bombay, Strand Bookstall-1984]
But, by choosing Morarji for the top job, that life transformed it back to what it had been previously- viz. dynastic.
Former US President Bill Clinton’s statement made at the turn of the century bears recalling too: “The story of 20th century is the triumph of freedom.
The story of the 21st century, so far, has been about the triumph of China- which doesn't have any freedom.
We must never forget the meaning of the 20th century or the gifts of those who worked and marched, who fought and died for the triumph of Freedom.”
All we remember of Clinton is his cigar and Monica Lewinsky's twat.
If there is one country to which “triumph of freedom” has the greatest relevance, it is India, the second-most populous nation in the world,
it is now the most populous.
afflicted with privation, poverty, and penury for the best part of the 20th century.
because it is too fucking populous.
It is in this country that JP “worked and marched, fought and died for the triumph of Freedom”, not once but twice—
he died twice? Did nobody notice the fellow was a Vampire or a Zombie?
as a rebel during the freedom struggle, and later winning it back from the native ‘Emergency durbar’ under his own stewardship. This is a rarity, unparalleled in human history.
Why not say that JP overthrew the Tzar and established the Soviet Union? Also he arranged Princess Diana's marriage to the Prince of Wales. Previously, Diana was a Sarvodaya worker named Dayanand. Thanks to JP's blessing Dayanand became blonde lady and married Prinz Charle. This is a rarity unparalleled in human history but which is not at all rare in the history of goats.
For this, JP should have been venerated and celebrated as the ‘second Mahatma’.
He was venerated as 'Loknayak' or some other such title.
Instead, he is forgotten and forlorn today.
He is dead.
He was even missing from the Karnataka government’s poster of ‘freedom stalwarts’ put out during the 75th Independence Day celebrations, replaced by V.D. Savarkar.
Who suffered much more in prison.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party, which claim JP as their icon, have betrayed his legacy and abandoned the values for which he marched, fought and died.
Good. His values were stupid. On his deathbed, he was demanding the release of all Naxalites.
None of his political, social, and economic ideals—freedom, civil liberties, secularism, federalism, equity, Sarvodaya—are being adhered to.
Why isn't India releasing Naxals and terrorists? Don't Indians want to be massacred?
In fact, they are doing just the opposite. Electoral corruption, including the trading of legislators, has reached horrendous proportions,
this happened in the Sixties. Then JP entered mainstream politics and things got a lot worse.
posing a clear danger to India’s democracy.
Very true. If JP hadn't mouthed off about 'Sampoorna Kranti' Indira would not have had an excuse to subvert the Constitution.
And from the autocratic way the country is being governed and freedoms suppressed, will India’s ‘story of the 21st century” be one of ‘enslavement’ instead of freedom?
It will be one of 'enslavement' if India does not try, if not to catch up with China, then at least to use its larger population to contain it militarily on the land border.
What a travesty to the memory of JP.
JP's political choices ruined our memory of JP. He should have stuck to playing at 'bhoodan' in the boondocks. Still, he and Lohia helped the rise of the Sangh Parivar. True they also helped Lalu and his ilk, but those nutters are confined to their own states.
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