Jayaprakash Narayan,Indian National Congress and Party Politics,1934–1954

1934–1951: From a Pressure Group to an Opposition Party

The starting point for this analysis is the coming together of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bombay and Delhi socialist groups into a Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934, a ginger group inside the Congress, led by JP (first Organizing Secretary) and Narendra Deva (first President). This self-avowed Marxist-Leninist initiative was in response to the collapse of the Gandhian Civil Disobedience movement against the British Raj (Shankar, 2004; Singh, 1958). Soon, with the passage of the Government of India Act, 1935, as most provincial Congress committees showed a desire to contest provincial elections for fear of ceding political space to other groups (Brown, 2003, p. 125), the CSP opposed this ‘growing willingness’ among the party to participate in legislative activities under British rule (Weiner, 1957, pp. 42–44). The CSP’s patron in the Congress was JP’s hero, Jawaharlal Nehru, who at this time had a ‘natural political affiliation’ towards them (Brown, 2003, p. 117). Under his party presidency in 1936–1937, followed by that of the Bengal leftist Subhash Chandra Bose in 1938–1939, on occasions, the Congress socialists contributed almost one-third delegates to All-India Congress Committee (AICC) in these years, and JP, Narendra Deva and Achyut Patwardhan were appointed to the CWC in Lucknow Congress in March–April 1936. Alongside the presence of communist leaders, M.N. Roy and S.A. Dange, there, this was the high point of left unity in nationalist movement (Limaye, 1986; Masani, 1954) and an instance of the CSP’s presence in the all-important ‘inner group’ of Congress leadership. ⁴

Unsurprisingly, it led to much acrimony between Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, the strongman of the Congress right wing (Gandhi, 2006, p. 403). Regardless, between 1936 and 1939, the CSP was strong enough in provincial Congress committees to let their followers like E.M.S Namboodiripad be simultaneously a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), a member of the National Executive of the CSP and an organizational secretary of the Kerala Provincial Congress (Namboodiripad, 1987, pp. 73–74). Further embellishing their credentials, Nehru took JP and Narendra Deva to meet the British Labour Party leader, Stafford Cripps, when he came to India in 1939 (Yunus, 1980, p. 44). This rise of the socialists, however, was also accompanied by Congress’ transformation into a party of government in the period 1937–1939, when it formed ministries in eight provinces after winning the elections held under the 1935 Act. The extent to which this proved to be a disillusioning experience for the socialists can be seen in an anguished letter JP sent to Nehru in November 1938 that summed up the early differences between the CSP and the Congress organization/ministries:

Things are happening which are converting the Congress from a democratic organisation into a handmaid of vested interests. A vulgarisation of Gandhism makes this transition easy…(2) The attitude of Congress Governments towards Labour should be an eye-opener…We are faced today with the real danger of Indian industry being made a synonym for Indian nationalism. (3) Congress organisations have been reduced to election machines…all that you added to the Congress programme after such strenuous fights in the CWC have been shelved—democratisation of committees, mass contacts, Muslim contacts, combating the slave constitution. (4) There remains the more important question of the next offensive against the enemy…I suppose the technique of Satyagraha does not permit one to prepare plans of offensive in advance… ⁵

This was an example of the younger Congress cohort ‘pressing to adopt socialism and more radical measures to dispatch the Raj’ (Anderson, 2013, p. 36). Naturally, they were targeted by the old guard of Vallabhbhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari and others. At the Haripura Congress in February 1938, JP complained to Mahatma Gandhi about the ‘severe’ speech made by Patel on them and Gandhi had to write to Patel, ‘you cannot win over the socialists like that’ (Gandhi, 2006, p. 414). In 1940, the CSP candidate, Damodar Swaroop, was defeated by his Gandhian opponent in the election of the UP Provincial Congress Committee. ⁶ Same year, a division occurred on the question of conditional cooperation to the British war effort. To the CSP, this was tantamount to ‘surrender to Imperialism’ (Brecher, 1959, p. 269) and it exhorted the Congress for a ‘stiffening of satyagraha’. ⁷ When Nehru supported the resolution, a hurt JP wrote to him thus:

All of us expect you and beseech you to lead the opposition in the AICC. You should resign your seat on the CWC, must leave the Congress and form another political organisation to fulfil the remaining part of the political task and the main part of the social task of the Indian revolution…Will you hesitate to fulfil your obvious historic task? ⁸

By 1942, with the ‘Imperial War’ becoming a ‘People’s War’, the CSP’s relations with the communists too broke down, despite JP’s desire otherwise. Earlier, in 1940, the CSP had managed to wrest the control of the General Council of the All-India Trade Union Conference from the communists. ⁹ Patwardhan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Minoo Masani and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay were those Congress socialists who differed from him on this count. ¹⁰ Even JP had to admit that the communists regarded the CSP as ‘Marxists when it suits them and Gandhi-ites when it does not’. ¹¹ Meanwhile, more than the youthful JP, it was the mature Patel who had a more accurate finger on Nehru’s socialist pulse. Patel had long told JP and others that ‘if Jawaharlal wanted to establish a [socialist] party, he would have resigned from the Congress…As long as he does not do so, he supports the official policy of the Congress.’ ¹² As Rajni Kothari showed, ‘the contribution of Nehru was not to have started a revolution but to have given rise to a consensus’ ¹³ and, notwithstanding the fear of Nehru’s opponents and the hope of his supporters, he did not ‘usher in Socialism’ in the Congress in the late 1930s. ¹⁴ He repeatedly ‘extolled socialism as a vital creed but was unwilling to divide the house’ on this issue (Gandhi, 1990, p. 254). So, even as some provincial Congress committees claimed themselves to be ‘a shape, a tool of CSP’s views’ (Namboodiripad, 1987, pp. 79–82), every Congress provincial ministry in 1937–1939 was formed by the Congress right wing, some of which were not above banning the CSP members. ¹⁵ Its conservative conduct in office would result in appreciable alienation of especially labour and minorities, leading to the strengthening of the communists and the All-India Muslim League in the 1940s, and also contribute to the socialists’ break from the Congress (Low, 1977; Weiner, 1957, p. 26; Wolpert & Sisson, 1988).

After a spell of political wilderness between 1942 and 1945, the Congress came back to the centre stage by once again winning elections and forming ministries in eight provinces in early 1946, as well as forming an interim government at New Delhi on 2 September 1946 after parleys with the Cabinet Mission (Clarke, 2002). As it sought, once again, to privilege a continuity of the colonial state apparatus, the socialists within its organization, led by JP who had been taken into the CWC in 1946 by President Nehru, strained to continue their ‘uncompromising opposition to colonial political domination’, disregarding the Congress’ increasing participation in it. ¹⁶ While Patel’s thwarted party presidency that year has been much remarked, it is not equally well known that in 1946, JP too was nominated for Congress presidency (Yunus, 1980, p. 62). But as he was still in prison, following his daredevilry between November 1942 and September 1943, when he had escaped from Bihar’s Hazaribagh jail and had led an underground movement sabotaging railway lines and British installations, his candidature was ruled ineligible (Brecher, 1959, p. 314). With the Bihar CSP being ‘most active in the whole country’ in this phase, ¹⁷ JP emerged as the leader of a group that Myron Weiner called the 1942ers, those socialists who had gained in strength in Orissa and Bombay too, apart from Bihar, by their activities during war years—the centrepiece of which had been the Deoli hunger strike—and demanded to be absorbed in Congress organization in 1945–1946. ¹⁸ To JP’s disappointment, not many were taken in (Weiner, 1957, pp. 45–46). Nevertheless, with his own nomination to the CWC, JP’s testy exchanges with Vallabhbhai Patel, now Member, Home, in the interim government, constitute an acute case study of the concerns of former and character of latter. It was made more topical for JP because the issue involved affected his state, Bihar, and somewhat painful because Prabhavati, his wife, was a friend of Maniben, Patel’s daughter, during their many stays in Gandhi’s ashram (Gandhi, 1990, p. 249).

The ball was set rolling by a speech given by JP in Patna Police Lines on 10 October 1946. Taking up police grievances and supporting their right to strike, JP encouraged their political awakening, warned against any victimization on this count, resented the retention of British police officers in the provincial police and advocated an uprising amongst the constables to demand their removal. The British officers, according to JP, had acted ‘inhumanly’ during August 1942 and their presence was ‘intolerable’, now that Bihar had a Congress ministry. A resolution was also passed in this meeting asking the ministry to reinstate all those constables who had been discharged since 1942 on ‘political grounds’. A furious Patel asked JP whether it was not ‘unwise to agitate about this matter in this manner publicly, instead of approaching your own Ministry in the province in a proper constitutional manner?’ As a member of the CWC, JP was ‘expected’ to raise the matter there. Agitation and propaganda of this nature was sure to ‘embarrass the Ministry and also, to some extent, us here’. ¹⁹ In reply, JP informed Patel that contrary to the impression the latter had, he (JP) had seen Sri Krishna Sinha, Premier Bihar, twice in connection with the deteriorating police situation in the province and had written to him as well before making this speech. But he was ‘sorry to say that the matter never received the attention of [the Premier] that it deserved’ and warned that ‘the situation is not likely to remain at standstill and unless some sympathetic action is taken one must be prepared for its further deterioration’. ²⁰ An unimpressed Patel told JP that he felt that the ‘tremendous indiscipline’ in Congress body politic was due to socialists who had ‘embarrassed’ Congress ministries and created ‘difficulties’ in their functioning.

In reply, JP wrote a long 2,200 words letter to Patel. It began by emphasizing the fact that ‘as far as the fight for freedom was concerned, the Socialists were true and loyal Congressmen’. However, his personal experience of the inner politics of party was that his loyalty was suspected and his contribution unaccepted because of his social and economic views. Picking up Patel’s point about police grievances and indiscipline, JP denied having a hand in it and warned Patel that he was shooting the messenger.

JP also drew Patel’s ire during the 1946 riots in Bihar when he ‘helped stop police raids and searches of Muslim houses’ (Sajjad, 2014, p. 238). Over October 1946–January 1947, as the ‘lower strata of the Congress [in the state], communalized on Hindu lines’, ‘organized very thoroughly’ the revenge of Noakhali killings in Bengal, Patel kept insisting that ‘there is no trouble in Bihar’ (Sajjad, 2014, p. 232) and protected the Sinha ministry in Bihar from an enquiry, despite Gandhi’s desire (Sajjad, 2014, pp. 232–234). JP, on the other hand, had penned a long ‘Note on the Muslim Communal Question’ in 1946 that aimed at removing ‘Hindu Communalism from its own ranks’ by suggesting that ‘the Congress take up tasks like the economic betterment of Muslims; their representation in Congress committees; ensure a share for Muslims in licenses, contracts, jobs; and give support to nationalist Muslims’ (Sajjad, 2014, p. 34). ²³ On these points, JP would repeatedly confirm to Gandhi that the record of Bihar’s Congress ministry was ‘appallingly inadequate’ (Gandhi, 2006, p. 600). And, on this occasion, he ended by reminding Patel that while he may have succeeded in bargaining the evolution of the Congress along the lines of capital and community, he would not get the cooperation of the socialists by a ‘distribution of loaves and fishes’. It would require an ‘ideological adjustment’, which was ‘not impossible’, but it depended ‘more on [Patel] than anyone else’. This was the high point of JP and the CSP acting as a party of pressure inside the Congress, ‘criticising, censuring and influencing’ the party of consensus. ²⁴ It was also symbolic of the basic difference between the socialists and the Congress in 1946–1947, in their respective attitude towards the endgame of the British Raj, which was at cross purposes (Chattopadhyay, 1947; Deva, 1946; Nanda, 2002). Against the wishes of the Congress leadership, JP and the other prominent socialists had rejected the Cabinet Mission and boycotted the Constituent Assembly (Brecher, 1959, pp. 332, 349). Elected on the back of the provincial elections of 1945–1946, ‘for which only one out of seven subjects of British India had been allowed to vote’ (Anderson, 2013, p. 94), the Constituent Assembly was unacceptable to them. Challenging Nehru’s interim government, they would also vote against the Mountbatten Plan in the AICC (Lohia, 1960; Weiner, 1957, pp. 42–54) and would not relent in their denunciation of the Constituent Assembly and its labours after independence, as can be seen next:

[Draft Indian Constitution is] disappointing to lovers of democracy and socialism…permeated with conservatism…likely to lead to executive despotism…Governor’s discretionary powers…continuance in the Commonwealth…provision of ordinances…private property [favoured], public ownership [not]…Constituent Assembly cannot by any stretch of imagination be called fully representative. ²⁵

Attempts were made periodically to breach this widening gulf between the Congress-in-office and the Congress socialists. In end 1946, discussions had been held between JP, Congress President J.B. Kripalani and Patel to appoint socialists on CWC, but these broke down upon the selection of the conservative Shankarrao Deo as General Secretary (Weiner, 1957, pp. 49–50). Earlier, in May 1946, Sri Prakasa, a UP Congressman who had managed to remain a close friend of Nehru while being cut from Patel’s conservative cloth, had urged JP to not get ‘carried away by mere intellectual appreciation and moral enthusiasm’ for social progress and, patronisingly, asked JP to ‘make sure of the material which you deal [with], the general mass of the people’. Personifying a certain kind of Congressman, Sri Prakasa was perfectly able to claim awareness of the fact that freedom movement had ‘degenerated into a scramble for personal position’ and yet, refusing ‘to join any foolhardy attempts at shock tactics’, ²⁶ accepted many such positions. From Bombay, Minoo Masani had written to Patel that ‘if through lack of contact between yourself and Jayaprakash, Socialists form part of a different grouping; it would be unfortunate for both the Congress and the country’. ²⁷ The mutual mistrust between them, however, grew and in April 1947, JP accused Patel of ‘trying to suppress’ Congress socialists. Patel retorted that while he had ‘succeeded in convincing’ many Congress socialists of the ‘correctness’ of his views, he had ‘failed to convert’ JP and charged the latter of ‘trying to divide our forces’. ²⁸ An atmosphere of suspicion had been building up in the aftermath of the February 1946 Naval Mutiny in Bombay, where Congress socialists led by Aruna Asaf Ali were charged by the provincial Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of aiding and abetting the mutineers in direct contravention of Congress’ stand on the matter that was presented by Patel personally in strong language in Bombay. They had also invited Nehru there, much to Patel’s annoyance and disapproval. ²⁹ In June 1947, Patel gave what amounted to an ultimatum to JP about his position in the Congress as a socialist: ‘If reports [about Bombay Naval Mutiny and Bihar Police Strike] are true, you will have to make serious efforts to change…’ ³⁰ Undaunted, JP refused to give in and would mock Patel by saying that he could understand ‘nothing else than police action’. ³¹

Lest it be thought that it was only Patel that JP had differences with or that it was only domestic issues on which JP and the Congress socialists were interested in, it would be pertinent to bring out an early episode of JP taking on his patron Nehru. In the summer of 1947, as Member, External Affairs, in the interim government, Nehru asked JP to perform some back-channel diplomacy in Nepal with the Nepalese Congress Party, which had started an agitation for civil liberties against the monarch in Nepal. B.P. Koirala, President of the Nepalese Congress, was a friend of JP. Nehru, who had received a delegation from the Nepal government at his ambitious Asian Relations Conference in March and was in the middle of a three-way negotiation involving London on the retention of Gurkha troops in the Indian Army after the transfer of power, could ill-afford the Nepalese Congress’ agitation. JP informed Nehru that at the root of this agitation was an industrial strike and its suppression in Nepal in which among those arrested were Congress socialists from Bihar. Further, 80 per cent of the labourers in Nepalese mills in areas close to border were Indians. He was not going to suggest a retreat to his Nepalese friends ‘till the Nepal Government agrees to release unconditionally all those who have been arrested and refers the demands of the workers who were on strike to a board of arbitration’. ³² Going further, JP joined issues with Nehru on the latter’s position that ‘nationals of another country cannot take shelter in India or run an organization to bring about political changes in their own country’. Reminding Nehru that many European countries had been a ‘progressive haven of refuge for political revolutionaries’, JP hoped that independent India ‘would like to build up a similar liberal tradition’. It did not appear to him ‘to be the duty of an Indian Government to suppress or forbid political activities of [foreign] nationals’. ³³

Nevertheless, Nehru remained as keen in 1947 ‘to lessen the gap between the Congress and the Socialists’ as he had been 10 years ago. An avenue of cooperation was making one of them president of Congress; another was offering them diplomatic posts abroad. In September 1947, JP and Narendra Deva were nominated for presidency but a sympathetic Nehru ‘gave way before Patel’s firm opposition’ (Brecher, 1959, p. 381). In November, Gandhi himself thought of ‘making Jayaprakash or Narendra Deva the Congress President’ (Gandhi, 2006, p. 656). As Rajmohan Gandhi (2006, p. 657) elaborates, ‘Placing Jayaprakash in the Congress chair would have thrilled India’s youth and paved the way for an interesting succession but this was another of Gandhi’s ideas that [was] successfully resisted.’ Indeed, up until his assassination, notwithstanding their differences, Gandhi sought to keep the socialists inside the Congress fold (Weiner, 1957, pp. 51–54). Soon thereafter, the prime minister approached Narendra Deva, Patwardhan and JP for diplomatic posts abroad. Nehru felt that Congress socialists were becoming an ‘isolated and sectarian’ lot. He had long held them to be ‘academic, theoretical, professional [if] lacking in contact with reality’, but had liked them, above all, for the fact that their conclusions on most issues were same as his. ³⁴ In the communal climate of riots post-partition in 1947 and post-annexation of Hyderabad in 1948, the prime minister needed the energies of all like-minded groups. ³⁵ Patel too found the socialists ‘impractical and academic’, but he did not indulge them like Nehru (Gandhi, 1990, p. 491). For him, socialists were people ‘adept at fishing in troubled waters’ and, priding himself on having ‘sensed the danger from them long ago’, he was ‘alive’ to a challenge from them as a separate organization even before their formal separation from the Congress. ³⁶

By September 1947, a large majority of CSP leaders and rank-and-file wanted to sever links with the Congress. Narendra Deva cautioned them that ‘in view of the socialist orientation of the Congress policy, the burden of showing why we sever our links with the Congress fell squarely upon us’. The dilemma was how to leave the Congress in a way that would serve to illustrate why the CSP did not think ‘the Congress could become the instrument of socialism’. The CSP, by now, realized more than others that the ‘will’ of its party machine worked against a socialist orientation of the Congress, especially in provinces like Bombay, Madras, Bihar and Bengal. It also admitted in the same vein, though, ‘the intrinsic weaknesses of our organisation’ and therefore decided to ‘defer’ the final decision until after the AICC met. It was, however, plain for all to see that ‘except for a miracle that decision would be along the lines desired by the bulk of the membership’. ³⁷

In February 1948, the CSP finally fell out of the ‘organisational ideology’ of the Congress, ³⁸ when the AICC decided to bar any dual membership of the Congress. The following month, a separate Socialist Party, ‘broadly along the lines of European Social Democracy’, was born. ³⁹ The trigger for the break was provided by the tussle for control of the Bombay trade union and was pulled by Patel and his henchman in Bombay, S.K. Patil (Weiner, 1957, pp. 46–49). Patel’s differences with the socialists had morphed in a simple, all-encompassing desire to either disband them or debar them (Shankar, 2009; Weiner, 1957, pp. 50–52). Thus, ideological divide, individuals’ differences and questions of institutional membership/control, itself a reflection of socialist optimism and Congress right-wing’s cynicism, came together to effect the birth of non-Congress socialism in India (Limaye, 1988; Mohan, Sharma, Singh & Mishra, 1997; Weiner, 1957, pp. 53–55). Lohia declared that the ‘Socialist Party makes a clear distinction between the state and the government. Ours is an Indian state with a Congress government. We are striving to replace this government.’ ⁴⁰ Among the first events the new party organized was an All-India Labour Convention in Bombay in November 1948, presided by N.M. Joshi and convened by JP. In 1949, in a new constitution, the Socialist Party upheld JP’s belief in ‘democratic socialism, non-violence, de-centralisation and constructive methods’, and he would remain its undisputed leader till 1952. Party’s membership that was 3,964—with 2,869 probationers—in August 1947 rose to 12,360—with 7,200 probationers—two years later. ⁴¹ Subsequently, resolutions on national reconstruction, revival and regeneration were adopted in party conferences at Patna and Madras in 1949–1950 (Shankar, 2009) and JP was confident that it would emerge as ‘a parliamentary alternative’ to the Congress. ⁴²

Nehru had tried to dissuade the socialists from leaving the Congress and even after their departure, urged JP to return (Shankar, 2009). In his fortnightly letter to the provincial premiers, he expressed ‘regret that many old Congressmen should have found it necessary to leave’ and emphasized upon them that ‘nothing should be said or done to add to the rift that has been created’. ⁴³ However, JP’s frankness and outspokenness made Nehru’s attempts to bring him in difficult, especially with many of Nehru’s less-than-scrupulous ministers. A typical example comes from JP’s interactions with the redoubtable Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, who was the Minister of Communications in the closing years of the interim government in 1950–1951. At this time, Kidwai’s department was plagued by strikes and JP, characteristically, took up the right of employees to strike and the question of their pay in the strike period. He held talks with Kidwai in which the minister ‘promised to explore the possibility of a formula [other] than the forfeiture of pay’. JP believed in Kidwai’s ‘private’ promise ‘to compensate strikers for the loss of pay’, which the wily minister had no intention of keeping and blamed JP for interpreting a ‘private discussion as commitment’. ⁴⁴ JP was not impressed by this and reminded Kidwai that they had both agreed that the government need not pay ‘directly’ and ‘the payment might be made in some other form such as against leave due’. It was clear to JP that Kidwai was side-tracking the issue by emphasizing the financial aspect. Here was one of the key economic discords between the Congress and the socialists, that is, management–labour relations. It was also becoming clear to him that the Congress government, much like its colonial predecessor, was not agreeable ‘to do anything for labour except under pressure’. ⁴⁵

1952–1963: From Party Politics to a ‘Quarter’ Politician

The first general election of independent India, held in 1952, has provided reasons to wax eloquent on this ‘biggest experiment, gamble in history’ that was ‘an act of faith’ (Guha, 2008, pp. 127–150). Held in the face of stupendous demographic, geographical and social challenges, a sceptic international climate and deeply diverse political opposition, the election has been celebrated as one that was held by an honest bureaucracy under an honest prime minister. And so it was, largely but perhaps not totally, for between the prime minister and the bureaucracy came the party, Congress. JP’s experience of opposing the Congress shows, from yet another vantage, the dual nature of Indian democracy from its inception. In March–April 1950, as the prime minister was busy passing the People’s Representation Act, JP was pointing out to him that this was not the ‘real problem’ in ensuring fair elections. That was going to be ‘the moral tone of the Congress organisation and the Congress ministries’. Like a prophet of doom, JP talked about Congress ‘intimidation, violence, dishonesty [and] tampering’. When Nehru mentioned ‘circumstances which extenuate irregularities and unfairness’, promised to ‘draw the attention of all provincial governments to [the] question of governmental interference in elections’ and pointed to the appointment of an impartial Chief Election Commissioner, JP argued that ‘the Election Commissioner would function merely as the Secretary of a new department of Government’. He had reasons to fear so. The Congress ministry in Orissa, headed by H.K. Mahatab, had refused to permit the secretary of the Socialist Party in that province to meet the visiting Chief Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen. JP, quite rightly, failed to understand ‘why a representative of an opposition party must see the Election Commissioner through the Provincial Government [of] the Congress Party’. This was just one of many instances in the two years preceding the first general election, which gave an impression to JP that ‘the office of the Election Commissioner [was] being made subservient to the Government’. ⁴⁶

How far JP had come from the Congress in these two years leading up to the first general election can be seen from his denouncement of Nehru’s Congress as ‘a body of sappers and miners for world communism’. ⁴⁷ That he was quoting Patel here was neither lost on Nehru nor on JP. Nehru responded with a charge as ironic. In his election rallies, he painted the socialists as ‘American Agents’ and people ‘[who] have entered into a pact with the [Hindu right wing] Jana Sangh’. One of the Congress slogans had been: ‘America ke teen dalal; [Asoka] Mehta, [Ram Manohar] Lohia, Jayaprakash [Narayan]’. The Indian Embassy in Washington, where Nehru’s sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, was the Ambassador, was behind the rumours that America was funding the Socialist Party. These had first emerged in the aftermath of Ram Manohar Lohia’s trip to America in 1951, where he did not get along well with Pandit. A livid JP informed Nehru that Lohia had been funded by socialists themselves, who may be objectionable to Pandit but that was no reason for her to vilify them. He added that socialists may be ‘thoroughly bad in your eyes but I hope you do not believe that we have all started accepting bribes from foreign sources’. On the Jana Sangh charge, JP hit back even more strongly by challenging Nehru that if he was interested, JP would send him ‘details of alliance between [individual] Congress candidates and the Jana Sangh’; affairs that Nehru had dismissed as ‘local’ in their earlier correspondence. ⁴⁸ JP carried this hurt into the first presidential election as well where, despite his old and almost filial association with the Congress’ Rajendra Prasad, he and the socialists voted for the opposition candidate. ⁴⁹

In the 1952 general election, the socialists managed 10 per cent of the national vote and 12 seats out of the 285 they contested for the Lok Sabha. In state legislative assemblies, they won 124 seats out of the 1,799 contested. By way of comparison, the CPI won 16 out of 49 candidates for the Lok Sabha and 173 out of 563 state seats; and the Congress won 364/489 in Lok Sabha and 2,248/3,283 in states. JP and Asoka Mehta, the election manager, had perhaps forgotten that the socialists had earlier ‘thrived’ as Congressmen. Their party organization was poor, finances skewed, strategy of maximum participation flawed and, above all, there were differences among their top leadership. JP was ‘disinclined’ to contest himself, Lohia only wanted to stand against Nehru, while Narendra Deva, Mehta and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay were among those who fought and lost. ⁵⁰ This electoral failure forced the socialists to come to terms with a ‘polarisation of the country between the Congress and the Communist Party’, in the words of Mehta at the key Pachmarhi convention of the socialists in May 1952 (Shankar, 2009). They began their bid at political consolidation by merging with the dissident Congressman and Gandhian J.B. Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP). The KMPP, born in June 1951, was the climax of a turmoil in Congress that had begun with Kripalani’s defeat at the hands of Purushottam Das Tandon in the party’s presidential election in August 1950 and the formation of a ‘Democratic Front’ within the party by Kripalani, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and others the following month (Weiner, 1957, pp. 42–98). It had grabbed 5.8 per cent of votes share and nine seats in 1952. This merger was based on ‘identity of programme and policy and not on ideology’. ⁵¹ As Asoka Mehta put it, ‘neither Marx nor Gandhi satisfies some of us’. ⁵² It led to the formation of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) in September 1952, but not before considerable objection by Narendra Deva (Weiner, 1957, pp. 98–117). ⁵³ JP had been a key mover here. He had been in talks with Kripalani over November 1950–April 1951 to explore the extent of their cooperation against the Congress. His growth ‘closer to the Gandhian ideals professed by the KMPP’ facilitated the merger, as did the desires of Lohia and Mehta (Shankar, 2009). The PSP was to be ‘a third way for a politics sandwiched between Soviet-backed communism and Nehru-style democratic socialism’. ⁵⁴

The PSP, the first major party merger in independent India, was welcomed by Nehru, who parleyed with JP and Kripalani between autumn 1952 and spring 1953 for ‘co-operation at all levels’. This now-forgotten episode was somewhat extraordinary. The prime minister of an overwhelming majority single-party government was seeking a coalition. As the best early biographer of Nehru, Michael Brecher (1959, p. 465) explains: the prime minister desired ‘to strengthen the moderate left-wing in the government and the country [and] to groom Narayan for succession’. However, JP’s far-reaching and ambitious ‘fourteen point’ minimum programme, strong opposition from the Congress right wing and opposition among the PSP, from especially Lohia, who bore personal animus towards Nehru, jealousy towards JP and refusal to be involved in ‘bureaucracy and organisation’, put paid to these talks. ⁵⁵ Nevertheless, it reflected the ‘considerable personal importance’ that Nehru gave to the socialists even in opposition. ⁵⁶ On the other hand, it brought to fore the growing distinction between three ideological streams among the socialists: Narendra Deva and his Marxism; Asoka Mehta and his democratic socialism; and Lohia and his left radicalism. All three were in response to the enduring problem the socialists had faced since 1934, namely, how to indigenize socialism and how to remain distinct from the Congress as well as the communists. Between 1952 and 1955, the divergence between Asoka Mehta’s stress on the ‘political compulsions of a backward economy’ like India, which brought the Congress and the PSP closer, and Lohia’s doctrinaire insistence to remain ‘equidistant’ from the Congress and the communists grew and, after failed attempts to achieve a compromise under Narendra Deva, Lohia broke away in 1955 to form a Socialist Party of his own. ⁵⁷

JP, on the other hand, was by now attracted towards a Gandhian emphasis on social work and left the PSP in 1954, thus reducing himself to a ‘quarter’ politician. He agreed with Lohia that time had come ‘to shake the party and the country’, but differed on how to go about it. When Lohia, foreshadowing the JP of the 1970s, urged him that ‘you have an intimate relation with the country and only you can emerge as the leader’, ⁵⁸ JP emphasized community development and replied that ‘the most important task was to set up an educational centre for legislation’. ⁵⁹ In 1959, Rajagopalachari would urge him to lead an initiative against Congress, but JP ‘tossed the ball back’, leading to the formation of the Swatantra Party (Gandhi, 1997, p. 373). Instead, aligned with the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave in his Bhoodan (land gift) movement, JP tried to persuade Rajendra Prasad, towards the end of his first term as President of India, to join him in social work. He had started to feel that ‘Nehru does not want any other voice—apart from his own—to rise strongly in the country’ and with Prasad expressing himself ‘unfettered and uninhibited’ by the office of the President, that shall not be the case. JP reminded Prasad how the Congress High Command (including Prasad) in 1946–1947 ‘had started disliking [Gandhi’s] voice’. Vinoba—Gandhi’s spiritual successor—was there but as JP put it archly, he ‘gets lost in the hills and forests of the country. The English press does not understand him—let alone publish. This shall not happen with you.’ ⁶⁰ This was JP’s criticism of what has been called ‘Nehru acting as if only he could hold the country together’, when the reality was that at the state and local levels, it was the Congress organization that ‘forced its way’, ⁶¹ as JP knew only too well.

His early years of social work also saw spirited exchanges with big capital houses of the country, like the Tatas, from whom both Vinoba and JP sought and received financial support for their Bhoodan and Sampattidan (wealth gift) movements. J.R.D. Tata made it clear to JP that his support did not extend to the realm of ideas even as he professed to envy JP’s socialist faith. Only free enterprise for Tata went alongside free vote; only market went with democracy. ⁶² With G.D. Birla, the other leading Congress capitalist, JP had a much longer interaction. In December 1930, Gandhi had recommended the then United States (US)-returned JP to G.D. Birla for a job and in 1936, Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary, had recommended JP’s Why Socialism to Birla (Ross, 1986, p. 60). The response was not favourable. Birla claimed that he was ‘for the equal distribution of wealth’ but did not think ‘it can ever be achieved through ways and means JP has suggested…More production not Socialism is the first necessity.’ Questioning the socialists’ admiration for Russia, Birla retorted that ‘their success in production is due to dictatorship…why should our Socialists feel shy of the ballot box?’ (Ross, 1986, p. 116). From the other end of the ideological spectrum, E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1987, pp. 71–72, 76) was to later muse, ‘[JP’s Why Socialism] appeared very close to Communism but it was very far to the Communists’ way’. Their differences were not on ‘Why Socialism’ but ‘How Socialism’. Now, in the late 1950s, JP was out on a limb to forge a democracy that could function untrammelled by both the degenerate party system/dictatorship and destructive market forces. ⁶³ This quest, unfulfilled it might have been, unacknowledged it certainly was not. He appeared as a possible successor to Nehru to Michael Brecher, who wrote in words that proved prophetic for the mid-1970s:

Narayan is the only political figure other than Nehru who commands the affection of the masses, and his reputation for devoted service to the cause of independence is second to none…He is the only person who is ideologically akin to Nehru…The fact that he has retired from formal politics does not exclude him from succession. On the contrary, Narayan has followed the time-honoured Indian path of renunciation and is strengthening his attachment to the peasantry. A combination of Narayan and Bhave, like Nehru and Gandhi, heading a mass movement cannot be ruled out. (Brecher, 1959, p. 635)

Next, Wells Hangen (1963) included him in his celebrated list of After Nehru, Who. ⁶⁴ By 1963, it was JP who had become the ‘moral authority’ of the country, internally and internationally. ⁶⁵ It was he, who was believed to be ‘in a position to give a sense of the inner conflict’ in India in that difficult decade of 1960s. It was he, who was being asked ‘for an account of why India [was] in such a quandary’ and who was being held up as the ‘man of conscience’; the personification of this national conflict ‘between principle and practice’. ⁶⁶ Nehru was well aware of it. In his last years, India’s ailing, tired and beaten prime minister reached out to his estranged disciple with something of the old, unalloyed affection. He touchingly asked Vinoba Bhave why was JP angry with him? Why did he dislike him? The younger man had his own grievances that he felt neither loved nor respected. ⁶⁷ Nehru wrote directly to belie this ‘wrong impression’. ⁶⁸ JP responded equally warmly with an unqualified apology for all the hurt his disagreements had caused Nehru. ⁶⁹

Conclusion

After 20 years of following Nehru, who he fondly called Bhai (elder brother), JP chose to follow Gandhi, Father of Nation, in leaving party politics in 1954, to eventually become ‘the conscience of the nation and not its chief constable’ (Prasad, 2003, p. 60). But during his 20 years as, first, a Congress socialist and then, simply a socialist, JP had tried to match democracy, nationalism and radicalism to strengthen first his Bhai and then progressive forces in the country. This phase of JP’s political career shows, first, how between the Government of India Act in 1935 and the Indian Constitution in 1950, the Congress saw a tussle along paternalist, conservative and confessional lines and a transmission of power from the colonial state. JP was right in the forefront of the critical reception accorded to this deployment of colonial coercion and instrumentalization of popular will. ⁷⁰ Congress had managed to mean many things to many people as a political movement, but it proved impossible to do so as it moved into government. Apart from a clash of ideas, there came of age a ‘managerial class’ of politicians, ⁷¹ anxious to reach and retain power, with which JP and his kind, the ideological politicians, found themselves unable to coexist.

Their departure also made it a party populated by conservative individuals, instincts and idioms. This nature of the Congress beneath its surface may have clashed with Nehru’s rhetoric, but it was this reality of control over a segmented society that brought the party its electoral hegemony and pushed JP and his socialists to sidelines from 1948 onwards. Electioneering wheels of the Congress tapped into local and narrow loyalties, parochial and sectional issues (Brown, 2003, pp. 286–394), and JP and his socialists were crushed by them in 1952. However, as Nehruvian vision and vigour started getting frustrated, JP’s status rose and by 1963, when the erosion of Nehru’s authority was complete, so was JP’s social stature as the Loknayak. Starting out as Nehru’s disciple, evolving as an ally, spoken of as his successor, becoming his opponent and, much later, bringing down his daughter; these were phases of JP’s most meaningful political engagements and relationships. This personal trajectory mirrored the situation in the Congress body politic. JP rose into prominence during Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement. Forty years later, he would use Gandhian tactics learnt then against Indira Gandhi.