JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN 1903-1979
P., S.
The death of Jayaprakash Narayan—known to his compatriots and throughout the world simply as JP —brings to an end a life that spanned every important event in 50 years of Indian history, ranging...
...JP asked essentially the same question: can democratic processes be adapted to carry out a significant redistribution of income, status, and power to alter the structure of existing society...
...The death of Jayaprakash Narayan—known to his compatriots and throughout the world simply as JP —brings to an end a life that spanned every important event in 50 years of Indian history, ranging from the struggle for independence to the most recent effort to solve the country's major political, social, and economic problems...
...But in integrity, courage, example, JP never wavered...
...His argument in favor of a neo-Rousseauist politics within the context of a radical decentralization of a life to be lived in small-scale communities seemed increasingly utopian...
...His proposed "total revolution" meant just that: a secular socialist society, a dismantled hierarchical caste system, a devolution of political power to the lower ranks of India...
...JP belonged to those who consciously choose the hard road...
...His answer became increasingly problematic and pessimistic...
...This is not the time to evaluate his historical role (I would only suggest now that his major achievement will undoubtedly be his almost single-handed success in bringing to an end the authoritarian regime set up by Indira Gandhi...
...We must accept the fact that he died a disappointed man as he contemplated the fragmentation of Indian politics...
...We now mourn the passing of a good and noble man who was indeed the "conscience of his nation," much in the sense that Norman Thomas was of his...
...His eyes are warm and have a touch of sadness...
...As Herbert Passin wrote in Encounter ("The Jeevan-Dan," June 1958): At a little over fifty, JP is tall and handsome, as if chiselled by some ancient Greek sculptor and brought to life...
...His inspiration clearly was Gandhi, but he never achieved the balance between "saintliness" and politics so evident in the Mahatma...
...Instead, he struggled throughout his life with the issue of power and its responsibility, always rejecting offers of the highest posts...
...Throughout his lifetime and while passing through a series of intellectual and political changes (Marxist, moderate socialist, Gandhian, etc...
...he speaks slowly and softly...
...But underneath the gentleness one feels a barely restrained violence, and an occasional flash of fire will remind one that after all he has been an underground guerrilla leader...
...Known to millions of people in every corner of India, JP was a complex man who deeply felt the poverty and misery of so many of his compatriots...
...The idea of political consensualism as opposed to partisanship, which he had advanced in his later years, seemed routed by the realities of Indian political life...
Vol. 27 • January 1980 • No. 1
