Jayaprakash Narayan

[Ramacchandran]

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Can any one remember JP?

 

[B.Krishnamurthy]

Shri.Jayaprakash Narayan wrote a letter from prison to Madam Indira Gandhi during
emergency.The letter was in circulation during the Emergency.
If any member has a copy of the letter,I request him to post the letter in this thread..

 

[kunjuppu]

Testament of Protest - An Open Letter to Mrs. Indira Gandhi


here is the url to jp's note to ig.

 

[SuryaKasyapa]

There was some brief mention about JP in some media discussions/newspapers during the Ramdev_Hasare peak time.

At That time it also brought to my memory a lot of things , including a weekly Everymans.It was our best reading for getting all the messages from JP. The price was only 11 paise or so..Then it was closed...

That was the time the MISA act was ridiculed as maintenance of Indira and Sanjay act.

Something forebodes...?

 

[kunjuppu]

sury,

i dont know anything about the forebodes, but i think it may be a good time to preamble jp in what can become a interesting thread.

the indian national congress (inc) attracted a wealth of talent and dedicated in the early 20th century, some were whites like annie besant, but most were upper class, moneyed, caste hindus. there were muslims, but most muslims were suspicious of the congress, particularly after gandhi (mkg) took over the idealogical end of inc (khadi, harijan, villages and above all purna swaraj).

jp was always left of centre (and among the first of the indians to go to the usa for higher studies incidentally). my familiarity with his name started when he was a member of the praja socialist party (psp). ideally, the inc on the achievement of independence should have split into two, the right (patel, rajaji, prasad) & the left (nehru, narayan, kripalani).

that was mkg's advice. but the lure of power was too much, and who wanted to start a new political party with new symbols, when the inc with the national tricolour and the two bulls were already known symbols.

narayan, lohia and such became the most vocal critics of nehru, even though philosophically they were very close to him, in their fuzzy eyed view of socialism, which increasingly became strained with the decay of the ussr.

from a political wilderness, jp had his proverbial 15 minutes of fame, when he was the only old time leader alive, and who could safely criticise indira gandh (ig). jp could face some jail terms, but knew, that he would not be put to death.

gandhi (sg) would soon be gone and with him died the goonda raj, who commandeered the illiterate vilalgers and performed vasectomy on them. for the first time money was beginning to play a role in the corruption of indian public life. ie crores and crores.

anyone remember how state bank of india, one branch, lost a couple of hundred crores of rupees. it was withdrawn by some benami guy, who just uttered the word to the manager, that ig had sent him for the money. sure enough, the confirmation came from the pmo, only to be denied later, and the eventual 'suicide' of the br mgr of sbi.

the stage was set was mass scale corruption. early 70s, when the fools were rejoicing the election of v.v.giri.

it was a popular question at that time - ஆணா ? பெண்ணா ? syndicate or indicate?

பெண் வென்றது. indicate won.

THE COUNTRY LOST.

 

[biswa]

Something I grasped only recently: the INC was founded by A.O.Hume an Englishman! Perhaps the British were not all bad after all.

 

[kunjuppu]

yes biswa,



as the 19th century progressed, the british society was having a huge upheaval from within.



the prime cause of that ofcourse, was the the onset of the industrial revolution which started in the 3rd quarter of the 18th century when the british discovered to harness the power of steam.



along at the same time, britain passed agricultural laws and laws of primogeniture, which made a huge seciton of the agricultural population surplus, and these provided the cannon fodder to feed the insatiable appetite which the factories demanded. much like our BPOs and call centres of today in india. except more cruel. definitely more cruel.



child labour was the norm. the coal mines consumed the miners faster than they could be replaced. widowhood among the twenty year olds was common. child mortality was so bad, that an average woman, who gave birth to 10 babies, was lucky to see, if 3 of them survived her. her own chance of survival at childbirth was no better than that in india.



all this along with new revolution within the protestant christian church, and without, along with karl marx, gave rise to movements which appealed, for the first time in history, to the conscience, fairness, liberty, equality and fraternity, in much achievable terms than the french revolution of 1789.



great writers like walpole and dickens took the cause of child labour and managed to get them abolished. anti slavery movement in britain flourished and the british abolished slavery in the 1820s, well in advance of the american civil war.



britannia ruled the waves then. meaning that portugal, spain, france, netherlands, america no longer could deal with transportation of african slaves, with impunity the way they did before. the british navy, with its resident quaker, sometimes a terrifying female, was dominant in the atlantic, prowling all over, smelling and searching human african cargo, and shipping them back to that dark continent.



so, what happens. indentured labour happens. that jewel of the british crown, aka india, had a huge surplus population, never ending famines, and now replaced the africans, as labour resource in the west indies, mauritius and elsewhere where prevously african slaves serviced. but that is another story.



back to britain. thoughtful englishers understood, that the empire building cannot go on forever. the white colonies like australia, canada, new zealand were given self rule early. usa we know what happened.



what to do with india? macaulay figured (AND TAMBRAMS SHOULD THANK MACALULAY NEVER ENDING) that english language and european civilization was t


...................... more if you want biswa. dont want to bore you...

thank you

 

[Brahmanyan]

I want to bring the following incidents from Jaya Prakash Narayan's life to show how great this Leader was.

Jaya Prakash Narayan was a great revolutionary who met other impatient radicals, Acharya Narendra Deva, Ashok Mehta, Ram Manohar Lohia, Achut Patwardan, Minoo Masani, Yusuf Meherali and others while he was imprisoned in Nasik Jail and formed the Congress Socialist Party, under the Presidentship of Acharya Narendra Deva when they were released from the Jail in 1934.

Jaya Prakash Narayan was arrested for speaking against Indian participation in the Second World War in February 1940 and sent to Deoli detention camp in Rajasthan. He was appalled by the conditions in Deoli. and organized a hunger strike to protest against the conditions in 1941. The Government immediately released him. Again he was arrested in 1942 for participating in the Quit India movement called by Gandhiji. In November 1942, on Diwali night, Jaya Prakash Narayan along with five others escaped the prison by scaling a 17 feet high wall while the guards remained distracted by the festivities. The British Government offered Rs.10,000 reward for Jaya Prakash’s capture, dead or alive. Jaya Prakash Narayan escaped to Nepal and organized a guerrilla army called the “Azad Dasta”. Jaya Prakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia were captured briefly but were rescued by the Azad Dasta members, who set fire to a hut to distract the guards. Both freedom fighters escaped to Bihar. Finally the British closed in on Jaya Prakash Narayan in Amritsar while he was on his way to Rawalpindi to meet Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan. He was taken to Lahore Fort, notorious for its “Torture chamber” on September 18, 1943. to suffer16 months of mental and physical torture. J.P. was put in solitary confinement for the first month. Here he had to face interrogations, physical torture and humiliation till he was released from jail on April 12, 1946.

He was against partition of India and pleaded with Gandhiji not to accept the British plan. Highly disillusioned he went into political hibernation, till he led the nation against the imposition of emergency by Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1975 . He refused all offers made by Nehru to join the Government.

As a student I was greatly impressed by J.P. and his Socialist movement, I have attended all the public meetings of this great leader in Coimbatore. Even managed to get his autograph on a photo of his.

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

 

[Iyyarooraan]

Good and bad coexists everywhere perhaps each feeding the other. The Railways, Postal Services, Principles of democracy, Law and so many other things are gifts of the Raj, but Independence is our birth right.