Total forgetfulness

The nation is celebrating the centenary of Jayaprakash Narayan who was adorned with the title of 8216;Loknayak8217; by students in 1974 du...

The nation is celebrating the centenary of Jayaprakash Narayan who was adorned with the title of 8216;Loknayak8217; by students in 1974 during the Bihar movement. It was during this movement that JP blew the whistle for 8216;Total Revolution8217;: 8216;8216;It is revolution friends, and it is total revolution. It is not merely a movement for the dissolution of the legislative assembly. That is only a wayside stop. We have to cover a long distance, a long distance.8217;8217;

Ironically, in present-day corruption ridden Bihar, the prominent leaders of both ruling and opposition parties are not only products of the JP movement but are the direct participants and witnesses to the call for total revolution. The NDA government at the Centre, lurching from scams into the mess in Gujarat, is led by those who not only publicly profess his ideology but were also incarcerated during Emergency with him.

JP wrote, 8216;8216;total revolution is a combination of seven revolutions 8212; social, economic, political, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational and spiritual.8217;8217; JP fervently felt that only a change of government or that of the system of governance would not usher in a new society. It could be constructed by a revolution which brought about change in all aspects of life. About the method he wrote, 8216;8216;the total revolution had to be peacefully brought without impairing the democratic structure of society and affecting the democratic way of life of the people.8217;8217;

Acharya J.B. Kripalani made a frontal attack on the very concept of total revolution. In his opinion, revolution was complete in itself, then why total revolution? He added that in the erstwhile Soviet Union under the total revolution Lenin attacked even institutions like family and marriage that led to the crumbling of the social structure there.

JP believed that a permanent revolution was a revolution for the people, of the people and by the people. But the history of revolutions shows that the common people remain at the receiving end while the vanguard prospers. Therefore, emphasising 8216;8216;persuasion and conversion8217;8217;, JP thought of 8216;8216;social revolution through human revolution8217;8217;. But care has to be taken that in the name of persuasion, status quoists do not derive legitimacy.

JP wanted to take advantage of the atmosphere surcharged by the movement: 8216;8216;All I mean to emphasise is that when a revolutionary movement is on, its aims should not remain limited to whatever they were at the beginning but, taking advantage of the revolutionary atmosphere, they should be widened to cover as many fields of social life as possible8230; To those who might cavil at the use of revolutionary methods to achieve what could be done by constitutional means, my answer is that constitutional means and state action have failed to make any appreciable dent in the moral, social and economic stagnation that the country is now victim of.8217;8217;

To conclude, it would be pertinent to quote Ivor Jening8217;s statement JP referred to frequently 8212; that the most rudimentary qualification of a minister is honesty and incorruptibility. And it is not sufficient for a minister to be honest and incorruptible 8212; he also must appear to be so. How many of our ministers and leaders live up to such an expectation?