Total oblivion

By conferring the Bharat Ratna on Jayaprakash Narayan, the BJP government has made amends for a national lapse. What is surprising about ...

By conferring the Bharat Ratna on Jayaprakash Narayan, the BJP government has made amends for a national lapse. What is surprising about the decision is that it took so long to materialise. It is an irony that even the Janata Party government, which owed a lot to JP, fought shy of honouring him with the nation8217;s highest award. And even when the Janata Dal, which claims to be the custodian of JPism, was in power, JP8217;s claim was not considered. It obviously took solace in the fact that Gandhi had also not been given this award.

Ordinarily, JP should have been one of the first recipients of the award. His contributions to the Quit India and socialist movements, involvement in the Sarvodaya missions like Bhoodan and his pioneering role in the surrender of Chambal dacoits easily made him one of the tallest leaders of the nation. But the Congress government overlooked his claim as he was not favourably disposed towards it.

JP, who shunned power, would have been happier if the Congress leadership had followedthe Mahatma8217;s advice and dissolved the party once India attained freedom. It is a different matter that JP got disillusioned with not just Congress politics but party politics as well. However, his doughty spirit that lay dormant during his Sarvodaya days got a spark when in the early Seventies students in Gujarat launched their anti-corruption crusade.

The Nav Nirman movement, as it was called, captured JP8217;s imagination and when students in his home state too rose in rebellion, he found himself in the vanguard of a new movement with its self-proclaimed aim of Total Revolution. The agitation he spearheaded caught the fancy of the youth all over the country and its reverberations began to be felt even in the national Capital.

Indira Gandhi and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi recognised the threat JP posed to the domination of politics by the Congress party. Far from meeting the challenge democratically, Indira Gandhi took to the easier path of imposing the Emergency on the nation and putting JP behind bars.But the inspiration he provided was enough to unite heterogeneous forces like the Jan Sangh and the socialists under the banner of the Janata Party and bring down the Congress government in the 1977 election.

But the celebrations did not last long, as cantankerous Janata Party leaders fought among themselves and helped the Congress stage a quick comeback. The return of Indira Gandhi also marked the failure of JP8217;s mission. His Total Revolution today lies in a shambles as can be gauged from the fact that one of its leading lights 8212; Laloo Prasad Yadav 8212; is now in jail charged with amassing a fortune through fraudulent means.

On the political front, the Janata Dal, which claims to follow JP8217;s ideals, is now a spent force waiting for its obliteration even as its caste-based offshoots like the RJD and the Samajwadi Party stay afloat, purely on caste issues.

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On the plus side, some of the political forces inspired by JP continue to play a leading role as in Bihar where the radical left movement owes itsgenesis entirely to him. The anti-landlord agitation in Bodh Gaya has spawned a political movement which has given the landless self-respect and the ability to stand up for their rights.

The irony is, none of these groups today professes any connection with Jayaprakash Narayan.