Jayaprakash Narayan

Jayaprakash Narayan (born October 11, 1902, Sitab Diyara [now in Bihar], India—died October 8, 1979, Patna) was an Indian political leader, socialist thinker, and independence activist. Widely regarded as a revolutionary figure, he championed the cause of the disenfranchised and the voiceless. He was popularly known as Lok Nayak (“People’s Leader”) not only because of his advocacy for social and economic equality but also for his refusal of political power.

Early life and education

Narayan, the eldest son of a government officer, was born in a village that is now in Bihar state. He began his schooling there and at age 12 went to Patna College, where he was inspired by the public speeches of prominent nationalist leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad. Consequently, he left Patna College just weeks before his exams to join Bihar Vidyapeeth, a college established by the Indian National Congress (Congress Party), the organization that led the campaign for Indian independence. When he was 18, he married Prabhavati Devi, the daughter of an independence activist, further deepening his ties to the independence movement. In 1921 Narayan actively joined the noncooperation movement (1920–22) against British colonial rule.

A year later he left India to pursue further education in the United States, where he found himself drawn to Marxism. Narayan funded his education by taking on agricultural, industrial, service, and teaching jobs, thereby gaining a close view of the hardships faced by working-class people—struggles that are a central focus of Marxist thought.

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Anti-colonial resistance and imprisonment

After Narayan returned to India in 1929, he joined the Congress Party and his spirited resistance to colonialism began. When leading figures of the Congress Party were jailed during the civil disobedience movement (1930–34), Narayan kept the party’s work active by setting up a clandestine network to circulate printed material and enlist supporters. Eventually, he was arrested in 1932 and sent to prison for a year. Upon release he took a leading part in the formation of the Congress Socialist Party, a left-wing group within the Congress Party.

In September 1939 the viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, unilaterally declared that India would be joining World War II on the British side, prompting furious protests from the Congress Party. Many leaders were arrested for their opposition, including Narayan, who was imprisoned for nine months in 1940.

In 1942 he was again arrested, this time for his role in the Quit India Movement (1942–43). However, he made an audacious escape from Hazaribag jail on Diwali night by scaling a 17-foot (5-meter) wall while the guards were preoccupied with the celebrations. The British government offered a hefty reward for his capture, dead or alive.

After he escaped from prison, Narayan created Azad Dasta (“Freedom Brigade”), a guerrilla group intended to spark a countrywide uprising. The group sought to damage the British government’s machinery and weaken its military control, and it organized training camps to equip people to do so. It recruited mainly students, schoolteachers, political workers, and defectors from the British army and police.

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After nearly a year on the run, he was rearrested in 1943 and taken to Lahore Fort, an infamous torture chamber. He was subjected to ruthless physical and mental brutalities before his release in 1946.

Postindependence activities and the Bhoodan movement

In 1948 the Congress Party declared that its members could not simultaneously belong to another party with its own constitution. Because the Congress Socialist Party faction had its own constitution and had already signaled a gradual break from the Congress Party by dropping “Congress” from its name (to Socialist Party) in 1947, Narayan and others left Congress in large numbers. After the Socialists performed very poorly in the 1951–52 general election, they decided to join with the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party to create the Praja Socialist Party in 1952 so that they could form a stronger opposition to the Congress Party.

However, Narayan soon became dissatisfied with party politics and announced in 1954 that he would henceforth devote his life exclusively to the Bhoodan movement (“Land-Gift movement”), founded by social reformer Vinoba Bhave. The Bhoodan movement was a nonviolent revolution that worked toward uplifting rural poor people by attempting to distribute privately owned land among those without land. Narayan relinquished his landed property and established an ashram (religious retreat) in Hazaribag, the place from which he made his dramatic escape from jail, in what is now Jharkhand state. In fact, he became so committed to social and political reform that he declined Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1952 invitation to join his government, choosing to abandon politics and slip away from the limelight.

In 1959 Narayan wrote a book called A Plea for Reconstruction of Indian Polity, where he argued for a system of governance consisting of a four-tier hierarchy of village, district, state, and union council. Throughout the following years, he mentored young political activists while also championing social change and national revival.

JP movement and the Emergency

In 1974, some 15 years after Narayan stepped away from active politics, students in Bihar protesting inflation, unemployment, and corruption in their state appealed to Narayan to guide their movement. Despite suffering from kidney troubles and other ailments, he agreed, on the condition that the movement remain peaceful and extend beyond Bihar.

Known as the JP, or Bihar, movement, it quickly spread across India. At a mass rally in Patna on June 5, 1974, Narayan called for “sampoorna kranti,” or “total revolution,” before a crowd of nearly 500,000 people. “Total revolution” was Narayan’s plea for a sweeping transformation of Indian life extending beyond government and policy to the moral character of individuals and society itself. It was grounded in nonviolent action and ethical principles with an emphasis on decentralizing power—ideas he had championed since the 1940s.

As the call gained ground, the movement morphed from student unrest to the nucleus of a broad opposition alliance against what was perceived as the corrupt and increasingly undemocratic government of Indira Gandhi, who was the prime minister at the time. Soon Narayan became the focal point of a widespread anti-government alliance. He led the Janata Front, a coalition of major opposition parties, to victory in the western state of Gujarat and then directed its campaign against Gandhi at the national level.

Tensions heightened in 1975 when a lower court convicted Gandhi of electoral malpractices and invalidated her parliamentary mandate. Narayan called for her resignation, but she instead advised the president to declare a national emergency. The Emergency (1975–77) period has been widely denounced for its curbing of civil liberties, censorship of the press, and arrests of Gandhi’s political foes. During this time Narayan and scores of other opposition leaders were jailed.

In prison, Narayan’s health broke down further, and he was put on dialysis in the hospital while detained. He was released after five months. Despite his failing health, Narayan remained resolute in opposing the Emergency. On December 5, 1975, while at Jaslok Hospital in Bombay (Mumbai), he wrote a searing critique of Gandhi’s government in an open letter. Though the letter was not published in Indian newspapers, it was covertly circulated and later printed in full by the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review on February 20, 1976. In his letter, he wrote that Gandhi had “muzzled the press and every kind of public dissent,” thereby attacking the very foundation of democracy.

Besides his political critique, Narayan also made a personal plea, urging Gandhi to remember the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (the “Father of the Nation”) and her own father, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had laid the groundwork for India’s democracy. He wrote:

Please, do not destroy the foundations that the Father of the Nation, including your noble father, had laid down. There is nothing but strife and suffering along the path that you have taken. You inherited a great tradition, noble values and a working democracy. Do not leave behind a miserable wreck of all that. It would take a long time to put all that together again.

Gandhi and her party were defeated in the 1977 elections. It was Narayan who advised the victorious Janata Party, a merger of political parties opposed to the Emergency, in its choice of leaders to head the new administration.

Awards

In 1965 Narayan received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, an honor named for a former Philippine president and given for exceptional service in Asia. Narayan was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1998.