October 11th marks the 122nd birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan, famously known as ‘Lok Nayak.’ What was his role in the Indian Freedom Movement? How did he spearhead the ‘total revolution’ against Indira Gandhi? Take a look at the essential concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up your knowledge. Here’s your knowledge nugget for today.

Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as Lok Nayak, was born on 11 October 1902 in the village of Sitab Diara in Bihar’s Saran district. As we commemorate his 122nd birth anniversary this year, his legacy as a people’s leader and champion of their cause continues to inspire. He played a noteworthy role in the Indian national struggle and especially in leading the call for ‘Total Revolution‘ during the Emergency. He passed away on 8 October 1979, leaving behind a huge legacy of bringing social reform.

1. The first encounter of Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) with India’s freedom movement happened during the Swadeshi movement itself. He gave up his foreign clothes and footwear in support of the Swadeshi movement. From the very beginning, he was greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi.

2. In December 1920, Gandhi visited Patna with the message of Non-cooperation. Inspired by his speech, JP wanted to invest all his time, energy, and passion into political work but was held back by a nagging sense of apprehension. His misgivings disappeared a month later when Maulana Abul Kalam Azad visited Patna and prompted students to give up their English education. Inspired by Azad’s speech, JP quit college just twenty days before the examination and became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement. In 1922, he left India to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where Karl Marx’s ideas influenced him.

3. In 1929, upon returning to India, he joined the freedom struggle and the Indian National Congress. During the Civil Disobedience Movement, when all the prominent leaders were arrested, Jayaprakash Narayan kept the Congress functional. He began working on building an extensive illegal underground network distributing printed literature and recruiting supporters. Several warrants were issued at different places against him, eventually leading to his arrest in September 1932. He was taken secretly to the Arthur Road Jail in Bombay, sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, and sent to the Nasik Central Jail.

4. Influenced by Socialist ideas, the young congressmen in Bihar founded the Bihar Socialist Party in 1931, JP was closely associated with the organisation since its inception. JP became instrumental in the formation of the All India Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934 with Narendra Deva as president and himself as secretary.

5.  It was during the Quit India Movement (1942) that JP came to the forefront of the national struggle for freedom. He along with Ram Manohar Lohia and Aruna Asaf Ali, took charge of the movement after all the senior leaders were arrested. Soon, he was also arrested under Defence India Rules, a Preventive detention law that did not require trial. He was taken to Hazari Bagh Central Jail from where he escaped on a Diwali night in November 1942.

6.  JP organised an “Azaad Dasta” (armed guerrilla revolutionaries) in Nepal after escaping from jail. Bakro ka Tapu, a forested area north of Jaleswar, served as the Azad Dasta’s station. It was from here that Jayaprakash hoped to launch a countrywide revolution. However, he was arrested on the morning of 19 September 1943, exactly ten months and ten days after he escaped from Hazaribagh jail. It was only in 1946 that he was released from jail.

7. Following Independence, JP took the CSP out of the Congress and formed the Socialist Party, which he merged with J B Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party to form the Praja Socialist Party. Soon afterward, after turning down Nehru’s calls to join the union ministry, JP decided to walk away from electoral politics entirely and involved himself with Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement, which aimed to persuade the landed to voluntarily give up a part of their land to the landless.

8. In March 1974, students in Bihar protesting against rising prices and unemployment, invited JP, who has given up from active politics, to guide the student movement. JP accepted it on one condition that the movement will remain non-violent and will not limit itself to Bihar.  JP demanded the dismissal of the Congress government in Bihar and gave a call for a “total revolution“ in the social, economic, and political spheres to establish what he considered to be true democracy.

9. A massive protest was organised in Delhi’s Ramlila grounds on 25 June 1975 where JP announced a nationwide satyagraha for then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi’s resignation and asked the army, the police, and government employees not to obey “illegal and immoral orders”. In response, the government declared a state of emergency on 25 June 1975. This brought the agitation to an abrupt stop; strikes were banned; many opposition leaders were put in jail; the political situation became very quiet though tense.

10. As the Emergency was over, the  General Elections were called in 1977. The election results turned into a referendum on the experience of the Emergency, at least in north India where the impact of the Emergency was felt most strongly. The opposition fought the election on the slogan of ‘save democracy’. Ultimately, Indira Gandhi’s government was defeated, paving the way for the formation of the first-ever non-Congress government at the Centre. Throughout the Emergency, JP fought vigorously against the authoritarian and became a beacon of hope in the face of adversity.

(1) Rammanohar Lohiya belonged to the generation of leaders who came to the limelight in the wake of the Quit India Movement. 12th October marks his death anniversary. Lohia and JP were the two most popular leaders when CSP members walked out of the Congress to form the Socialist Party in 1948.

(2) Lohia wrote that Gandhians are of three kinds, priestly, governmental, and heretic, and that the Socialist Party was the abode of the heretic Gandhians.

(3) Lohia’s seven revolutions (sapta kranti) — for equality between man and woman; against political, economic, and race-based inequalities; for the destruction of castes; against foreign domination and democratic world government; for economic equality, planned production and against private property; against interference in private life and for democratic; and against arms and weapons and for satyagraha — in a way interprets the radical Gandhi for our times.

(4) The Lohiaite is today a political animal like the Gandhian, Nehruvian, Ambedkarite, Communist, Maoist, and so on. The Mandal revolution transformed politics in northern India, but the ideological ground for OBC empowerment was prepared by Lohia, both intellectually and organisationally.

(Source: Jayaprakash Narayan: The man, the movement and his protégés, Jayaprakash Narayan: Reluctant messiah of a turbulent time, Read More: The Dream of Revolution: A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan (book) by Bimal Prasad and Sujata Prasad)

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