the Man to Watch IN India

...During a press conference one reporter asked, "Shall we say: After Nehru, J.P...

...A good idea, but "a more radical step than that is necessary," responded Jayaprakash...

...Nehru's eventual admission that the Hungarian uprising was, in fact, "national" was due in no small part to the popular uproar which Narayan led...

...SEYOM BROWN, lecturer in general studies at the University of Southern California, recently completed a year in India studying the politics of that country under a grant from the Fulbright fund...

...If the interested foreigner is persistent he will be treated to a survey of the favorable and unfavorable attributes for national leadership possessed by each member of the Cabinet and the handful of articulate legislators in the Congress Party...

...The evil ends that resulted from the evil means in Russia, particularly the foul means that were used to perpetrate the staggering crimes during the purges," he recalls, "revolted me from the 'revolutionary ethics' of Marxism and forced me to question if good ends could ever be achieved by bad means...

...Even the Gandhians are finding they have to rely on the state...

...Though party labels might be significant in normal times, they lost their meaning when the nation was confronted with crisis after crisis...

...Like Nehru, Narayan can rivet audiences to their seats anywhere in India, even though they may not understand the dialect he speaks in...

...Bhave had caught the country's imagination by convincing many landholders to give part of their property for redistribution to landless agricultural workers...

...There are today two imperialist systems," said Narayan...

...the Man to Watch in India by SEYOM BROWN The confusion in the Congress Party which greeted the Prime Minister's threat to resign last April tore the veil once more from the big question in India's future: After Nehru, who...

...After the 1952 elections Narayan carried the Socialist Party—which received only 10 per cent of the votes, but more than any other opposition party—into a merger with the Gandhian Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party...

...Communism . . . has ended up in state capitalism and dictatorship...

...you might put it that way...

...At the beginning of April Narayan was again in the news with a surprisingly noncommittal answer to a question he usually responds to in the negative...

...Narayan, like Nehru, built up a devoted following during the Independence Movement...

...Then, on the eve of his departure for England, Narayan was asked to comment on the prime minister's expressed wish for a holiday from office...

...What got most attention was the fact that J.P...

...Except for issuing a few statements pointing to the need for a strong opposition party if the parliamentary system was to survive, Narayan did no electioneering...

...doesn't mean it...

...But I had not yet been completely converted and so found myself in the half-way house of democratic socialism...

...After the elections (in which the Praja Socialists made an unimpressive showing), Narayan said he was through once and for all with what he called "the corrupting and corroding struggle for power" inherent in party politics...

...There is the hope that J.P...

...When in New Delhi, however, most of his work was in official circles...

...Here was a private citizen going abroad on his own to talk to private organizations...

...But many observers of India's fragile political crust, which even today cannot keep the pressures of caste antagonism, religious commu-nalism, and linguistic provincialism from breaking through, find reason to sympathize with the despairing shrugs...

...The merger was justified by pointing to the need for a broad-based non-Communist opposition...

...that he has not given up politics for good...

...Scaling a 20-foot wall surrounding the British jail at Hazar-ibagh, Bihar, he eluded the police for nearly a year while organizing armed revolts and mass agitations throughout India...

...But the Socialists, still good Marxists, were unable to envisage an imperialist power peacefully surrendering its colony and continued to urge the masses to prepare for the inevitable revolution...

...As the movement was given official support by New Delhi, Narayan's national prestige rose...

...Narayan admitted that it meant Bhave now had first call...

...His Praja Socialist Party colleagues were disconcerted and asked if his declaration meant he would no longer have time for politics...

...Thus, both have failed...

...However, the Congress Party in panic prevailed upon their leader to retract his bombshell before it dropped and blew apart the nation's thin crust of stability...

...Speculation concerning Narayan's future role increased late in March when it was reported in the press that he had been conferring with the prime minister on foreign policy before leaving on his summer trip to England and the continent as the guest of some societies interested in Gandhian thought...

...His articles on India have appeared in The Reporter and The Commonweal...

...Members of the newly formed Praja Socialist Party (PSP) began to complain that every time J.P...

...Thus, when the militant socialists formed the Congress Socialist Party within the National Congress in 1934, Nehru kept aloof...

...One is the old system of Western imperialism, the other is the new system of Communist imperialism...

...To apply one set of rules to Egypt and another to Hungary is to make use of a double standard which, to say the least, is unworthy of this country...

...But he was losing his grip on the Praja Socialist professionals...

...The occasion was Menon's failure to support the United Nations' resolution condemning the Russian intervention in Hungary, the Indian delegation's subsequent ambivalence, and Nehru's ambiguous explanations...

...Nevertheless, the philosophy he gropingly tried to explain to subsequent gatherings of the new party was a far cry from the battle-cries of his Why Socialism...

...And it was also important that the Communist Party was not left an open field in its race to capture the mantle of "His Majesty's Opposition...

...Gramdan villages were running into a bit of trouble...

...Such philosophy as I have is earthy and human," was Narayan's adamant response...

...An admirer of British parliamentary democracy, Nehru was not particularly averse to having a strong opposition party, especially if it was led by a man like Jayaprakash Narayan...

...The Praja Socialists were elated at having a foreign policy issue for the coming elections...

...that relieved of the burdens of office he might be more at liberty to grapple with India's larger problems...

...Gandhi introduced him to Nehru at the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress in 1929...

...Some critics of Bhave's movement were beginning to say, "I told you so...

...that he may yet return if he can be convinced his country needs him and wants him...

...Not only did Narayan withhold his support from the Mountbatten Plan for the partition of India but he refused to take part in the national assembly which was to draft free India's constitution...

...Village self-sufficiency and the corollary Gandhian doctrines are unrealistic...

...It was at this time that Jayaprakash became enchanted with Vinoba Bhave's voluntary land reform movement...

...Both believed in the democratic way of life, the dignity of the individual, and a socialism which would ensure the people social and economic justice...

...However,- when the inquisitive visitor is about ready to shake his head helplessly in recognition of the problem, he is likely to be pulled up short by the comment, rendered wistfully as an afterthought: "Still we can't dismiss J.P.—" "J.P...

...Gandhism, to my mind, offers the third alternative— that of revolution by non-violent mass action...

...spoke they were treated to a proselytizing sermon for Bhave's Bhoodan (land-gift) crusade...

...I no longer believe that the real problems of society can be solved by politics," said Jayaprakash...

...Jayaprakash," Nehru told Louis Fischer, "is the future prime minister of India...

...A strong opposition party was important, but the country's needs went deeper than that...

...Politically knowledgeable Indians are aware that Nehru was anxious to groom Jayaprakash Narayan for the prime ministership...

...The fear is that politicians in New Delhi, unable to rely on the welding force of a magnetic personality, might be tempted to compensate with the grip of a strong-armed bureaucracy...

...The Socialists were finally forced out of the Congress Party shortly after Gandhi's assassination...

...In April, 1954, at the historic Buddhist town of Bodh Gaya, in the middle of a conference organized by Bhave supporters, Narayan stood up and—as if on sudden impulse—dedicated his life to Bhoodan...

...Sweeping the air with his right hand, Narayan replied cryptically, "This question had better be left unanswered...

...was again conferring with Jawaharlal, and the government seemed to be giving him the assistance he wanted...

...If Narayan had any plans for coming home to a Nehru-less political area in the fall, they now required Israel's Ben-Gurion...

...It was the next morning, April 28, that Nehru remarked that he would, in fact, like to take more than a holiday...

...Narayan's time during the first few months of 1958 was occupied primarily in touring the country spreading the gospel of the new Gandhian society...

...Nehru is in full command of the situation . . . And if anything went wrong he would be available and could step back into his office...

...Narayan's statement made public criticism of Nehru's foreign policy legitimate and unleashed an unprecedented flood of editorial condemnation of India's unedifying U.N...

...Some time before the . . . general election I came to the decision that I should give up even the sleeping membership of the PSP," he wrote to his party colleagues...

...It will be noticed that all this questioning and rethinking was gradually bringing me nearer to Gandhiji...

...Gandhi had been against such a showdown with the Socialists, feeling that the problems in the wake of partition demanded that all sections of the country continue to pull together...

...But Narayan became a founder member and was soon recognized as their most articulate spokesman...

...Narayan was back in the headlines again with an act more dramatic than surprising...

...Nehru should step aside and place somebody of his own choice in his seat and help him from the outside . . . This should be done now while Mr...

...It was in the insurrection of 1942 that Narayan established an all-India following...

...Therefore, why the high-level "coordinations...

...When asked if he meant that some sort of coalition government should be formed, he answered: "In a way, yes...

...became a bible for the anti-Gandhians...

...Some startled party comrades, hearing their leader proceed to talk of the need for "spiritual regeneration," accused him of abandoning Marxism for religion...

...Yes...

...The champion of the anti-Gandhians was beginning to quote Gandhi in support of his own ideas...

...I would therefore ask you on bended knee to send back Jayaprakash Narayan, and others like him, to their real places of duty...

...Theoretical democrats may see nothing alarming in this, feeling that the current "cult of personality" inhibits the young republic's maturation...

...In an open letter to Vinoba Bhave, Goray wrote: "I can never excuse you for seducing away men like Jayaprakash Narayan...

...I . . . find myself at a point of the journey where I must decide to part company and walk alone...

...Easy government credit for seeds, fertilizers, and implements was therefore needed...

...And most would have accepted this (as they did Gandhi's designation of Nehru), not so much because of a feeling that Nehru's judgment is infallible but because of their regard for the nominee himself...

...It would have gladdened my heart beyond measure had I been able to persuade you to come along with me, but I realize that this is not possible—at least for the present...

...I have heard eminent judges of the Supreme Court, high dignitaries in the Army and Civil Administration, and discerning men in other walks of life—say that Jayaprakash Narayan was the only person whom they could think of as a worthy successor to Nehru...

...Nehru's doctrinal convictions were already tempered by a pragmatism 'born of the burdens of organizational leadership...

...his book Why Socialism...

...With Gandhi, he was willing to push factional disputes to the background in the interests of nationalist unity...

...However, ordinary citizens did not appear to view Narayan's petitions to New Delhi as a retreat...

...A few months prior to the 1957 general elections it looked as if he had decided it was time to exercise that tenuous connection...

...So in 1948 the Socialist Party was formed, proclaiming itself India's only true party of "democratic-socialism...

...But while ideologically compatible, they differed over the question of strategy for the Congress socialist wing...

...A heroic reputation, part fact and part myth, now added to his impressive six-foot-two-inch frame and handsomely chiseled face, allowed him to radiate that charismatic force which Indians perceive in great personalities...

...Looking back, Jayaprakash now describes this change as natural, considering his basic values...

...Nehru, however, who could have intervened, allowed Patel to press the issue...

...Narayan was the first Indian public figure of note to take the government to task for its hesitant policy...

...And the resultant splintering would find the Communist Party the most eager scavenger for the pieces...

...Socialism . . . has lost its pristine idealism and has become only a parliamentary or legalistic creed...

...In February the popular hope that 56-year-old Narayan was not lost to politics forever was expressed by a leading Praja Socialist member of parliament, N. G. Goray...

...If the state is looked upon as the sole agent of reconstruction," he said, "we get nothing but a regimented society . . . and the individual is made a cog in a vast unhuman machine . . . Democracy requires that the people should depend as little as possible on the state...

...But if they expected their former leader to return to lead the fight, they were disappointed...

...Nehru, then president of the Congress, took a liking to the young man who had just returned from seven years in the United States where he worked his way through college, and appointed him secretary of the Congress Labor Research Department...

...Under the instigation of Sadar Patel, the right-wing's leader, the Congress constitution was amended to deny membership to individuals belonging to other "political parties...

...A despairing shrug of the shoulders continues to be the standard response to the question, even among Indians whose personal political futures are not involved...

...The Congress and the PSP had much in common, he said...

...It will be pointed out that those who show any particular dynamism—like Krishna Menon or Feroz Gandhi (Nehru's son-in-law)— are distrusted or disliked by large sections of the Congress...

...Jayaprakash Narayan...

...Both were Marxists at the time, intensely critical of Gandhi's economic theories and skeptical of the ultimate utility of non-violence...

...Both socialism and communism were faced with failures, he maintained...

...In meetings with the prime minister and other government administrators he was attempting to develop a scheme for coordinating the government's Community Development program with Gramdan (the experimental collective-farming phase of Bhave's movement...

...and those who are generally well received by the various factions in the party— like Finance Minister Morarji Desai, the man most likly to be appointed prime minister by his colleagues in Parliament when Nehru leaves the scene—have lack-luster reputations...

...It will be in the fitness of things," he continued, "if the Congress and the PSP get together and work in collaboration for the good of the country and the world which is torn apart today by conflicting ideologies...

...But events within the party—the defection of the Lohia group and the death of the national chairman—forced him to accept the pleading of some party friends to hold back his resignation until after the elections...

...He resigned his active membership in the party but reserved the right to comment on political questions, and he promised to come to the party's service whenever he thought he might be able to help...

...Where private landholdings had been pooled, the old sources of rural credit had dried up, since the individual villager could no longer mortgage his plot with the local money lender...

...Narayan responded strongly, asking his friends to do "some fresh thinking...

...But a significant faction of the Socialists charged the merger was a hoax, there being no real ideological compatibility between the two parties...

...After 1945, when most of the nationalist leaders were released from prison upon the British relaxation of wartime security measures, Narayan and his Socialists continued to pursue an independent line in defiance of the Gandhi-Nehru-Patel triumvirate...

...These problems are in essence moral in nature and can only be solved by man's development . . . What little connection I still have with politics is in the nature of a compromise and an indication of the transitional period through which we are passing...

...The Congress leaders believed that with the Attlee government coming to power in Britain they could negotiate for independence, and they received the British Cabinet Mission hospitably...

...Jayaprakash Narayan's speech to the delegates, however, went even further and left many of his followers puzzled...

...A few days later at another press conference Narayan called for cooperation between the centrist parties...

...Though anti-Communist, the Socialists still considered themselves good Marxists (but now more in the Menshivik than the Bolshevik, more in the Rosa Luxemburg than the Stalin tradition...

...performance...