The Dream Of A Revolution: A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan

by Bimal Prasad, Sujata Prasad

Few figures in modern India have enjoyed such acclaim and adoration as Jayaprakash Narayan. And yet, he has been equally vilified for all that went wrong in the unfinished post-colonial movement for freedom and democracy. Jayaprakash Narayan, or JP as he was universally known, epitomized the Marxian and Gandhian styles of political engagement, and famously brought a powerful government to its knees. Throughout his life, he channelled an emotional hunger for transformative politics, jettisoned easy options, shunned power and incubated revolutionary ideas.A comprehensive study of JP's life and ideas-from the radicalism of his thought process at American university campuses in the 1920s to his political coming of age in the 1930s and subsequent disenchantment with Gandhi's leadership; from his infectious confidence about the future of socialism to his seemingly naive plans to outmanoeuvre powerful forces within the Congress; from his fractious friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru to his relentless crusade against the stifling of dissent-The Dream of Revolution, Bimal and Sujata Prasad's rigorously researched biography of JP, dispenses with clichés, questions commonly held perceptions and pushes the limits of what a biographical portrait is capable of.Rich in anecdotes and never-before-told stories, this book explores the ambiguities and ironies of a life lived at the barricades, and one man's unremitting quest to usher in a society based on equality and freedom.

Genres: Biography, History, India

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 6, 2021

About the author

Bimal Prasad (1923-2015) was an Indian historian known for his scholarship on modern Indian history. He was Indian ambassador to Nepal during 1991-1995.

Reviews

[Kirti Upreti · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw


It's the destiny of a hopeless idealist to encounter disappointment more often than the rest. Yet it's the fertile ground of their heart where germinate the seeds of revolution.

In the chronicles of Indian history, JP often doesn't get the space he deserves, with his persona often captured through the lens of someone else's story. But the tables need to be turned, and our memory to be given a fresh chance to acquaint with the Loknayak.

With both domestic and global geopolitics turning wildly polarised, it is high time we reminisced the lost art of conscience keeping. This biography, a dispassionate and utterly gripping rendezvouz with "an incurable romantic", is the desideratum of the present day.

[Sagar Sumit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traces the life of a man who said in his final days "how can I rest on the shore, when the waves are beckoning me." He was the kingmaker, the negotiator, the conciliator, the glue among the warring factions, an idealist and yet not a conformist, a hero of India that left when she needed him the most. I wonder how the post-independence history of India would have taken course if he had lived just as long as Morarji Desai. But, let's keep aside the hypothesis, even what he did between 1929-1979 has a lot to inspire ordinary folks who truly care about freedom more than those kurta-pyjama cladded living in high-walled gardens and unable to see beyond those walls.
JP is right there among the likes of Gandhi and MLK Jr. And if you think I am exaggerating, then you need to go no further than this book, which brings his philosophy to life recounting his active role in Quit India Movement, Kashmir negotations, Bhoodan and Gramadan movements, fight for our fundamental rights. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of 20th century India.

[Sanjay Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dream of Revolution: A Biography of Jayprakash Narayan

Bimal Prasad & Sujata Prasad

Nadime Gordimer's ' At the Rendezvous of Victory' poignantly describes the marginalization of a Guerilla general who finds himself sidelined after the independence of his nation. The discarded hero-still a flaming radical, still true to revolutionary fervour- is neglected by his ex-comrade and now the prime Minister. His predicament is acute and choices before him are becoming increasingly limited. He seeks to draw new battle lines and fight all over again but that would not be easy. Jayprakash-popularly known as JP- and his life- trajectory comes close to Gordimer's guerilla general.

Sujata Prasad's biography of JP must have been a difficult enterprise for her partly because it had been started by her father who could not complete it but mainly because her family was intimately close to JP. Intimacy affords ring-side view; intimacy might impair objectivity. Given this peril, she has done an admirable job in writing the biography of a very unusual Indian who was the country's " foremost dissenter, critic, visionary and fighter for lost causes which never lose their value."

What comes through the book most perceptively is the personal equation between JP and Nehru on the one hand and JP and Indira on the other. They would pen long, perceptive letters to each other which spoke of their political differences as also their craving for accommodation and reconciliation. With Gandhi gone early, JP sincerely sought to position himself as the moral compass, as the conscience keeper of the nation. His transition from Marxism to Socialism and thereafter, to Sarvodya which came close to Gandhi's " wiping every tear from every eye"- was a way to show mirror to power, expose its hollowness and hubris and impressing upon it the need to remain attuned to plight and aspirations of the common people of India.

Be it taking up cudgels on behalf of Sheikh Abdullah or dacoits of the Chambal ravines or the naxals of Bihar, he would not flinch from what he perceived to be true. Quintessentially a democrat, an expansive Nehru would engage with JP in a spirit of accommodation but the daughter with her totalitarian temptations would be less amenable to JP's views. The author argues that JP expected 'Indu' to listen to and implement his views but Indu would progressively show her intransigence. For JP, a close Indu would become a formal and alien ' Indira Ji' and this marked the parting of ways. The intensity of students' movements in Gujarat and Bihar would bring the matter to a head and the rest is too well known to merit repetition.

A few questions have always been posed in relation to JP. First, the relationship between electoral democracy and popular-agitational democracy. The latter could definitely intensify democratization of democracy but it could induce an element of chaotic anarchy in the functioning of democracy too. The author points out that JP was always open to evolving political consensus but 1970s were difficult years. Indira was feeling both triumphant and beleaguered, both vindicated and threatened and oxymorons and consensus do not go together. Second, what might have happened if JP had chosen to be part of active politics. The author doesn't address this question directly but her sharp arguments seem to suggest that he was too much of a rebel to have been part of the establishment.

Personal aspect of biography highlights his unusual but extremely interesting relationship with his wife Prabhavati. An inmate of Sabarmati Ashram, she had her own views and predilections. After a long battle with cancer, she died in April, 1973. He wrote painfully to Indira," She filled such a large part of me and my life that it doesn't seem possible that I can live without her." The author speculates in beautiful prose," One wonders if a sense of dread shot through Indira upon Prabhavati's death. For with her death, the voice of moderation in Jayprakash's life also died."

At the end of the book, one is left craving for more, wishing for more, may be less of well-known political side of JP and more of the mojo of his persona which could as easily connect with the grassroots as with the high and mighty of the world, as much concerned about flotsam and jetsam as about broader political transformation. A remarkable book indeed!

[Sarthak Bhatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bad, like really bad!! Important events are discussed in a few lines or pages, no importance is given to jp's intellectual growth. The author's father had 10 volumes of jp' s work but she does not present even a few segments of these . And then there was a period where he organized gurilla warfare against the British(hey i want to read more about that!!!) And she literally gave a paragraph to that period of his life!!. His evolution from communism to socialism to Gandhian socialism is barely discussed. The author just wrote that he used to cheat on his wife but does not tell us about any of his relationships with women. The time spent in America, where he was moulded in socialism is again covered in a few lines, the period of emergency is given maybe 10 pages. The book felt just too short!!! If you are writing a biography at least make it 300+ pages, this was 226 pages long.

Overall this book was a waste of money!! I hope someone writes a good and detailed biography of jp soon.

[Dhuniraj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a review:
The idea of India as a secular democratic nation is difficult to understand until we know the struggle upon which it stands. one of the most influential figure of 70's and 80's Jp is the important point in the history of new India, that is India after independence. Reading biography has its own charm and pleasure, and more value gets added when it is crafted very well in terms of story telling. It holds the interest of reader till end. If life is about surpassing certain given boundaries then reading about people who has lived extra ordinary life gives us sense of life beyond what is set by society. This book is not just about historical fact, it shows the change in him, and how he keeps reinventing himself with the time through his relentless struggle to see his country prosper and grow into beautiful place to live. After all what keeps us going in life is not the reality but the dream.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Jayaprakash was not a textbook revolutionary, but he delighted in debunking received orthodoxies and revitalized new ways of thinking. The fact that he dreamt impossible dreams, pushed against certitudes, shunned power and remained an unputdownable dissident all his life is key to his relevance. The socialist and Gandhian ideas that he lived and died for certainly seem to be our best hopes in what Naomi Klein has called the make-or-break times…” [Introduction – Sujata Prasad]

This book is a magnum opus. It narrates to us the story of a reluctant messiah!! It takes us on a journey through the life of one of the most tantalising characters in Indian politics. Jaya Prakash Narayan!

Ten chapters make this book up:

1. The Formative Years
2. Evolution of Political Life
3. The Congress Socialist Years
4. The Making of a National Hero
5. Parting of Ways
6. Emergence of New Fault Lines
7. From Socialism to Sarvodaya
8. The Sting in the Tail
9. Hope in Dark Times
10. The Death of a Dream

Narayan was a conundrum to many, perhaps even to himself. He had trekked many roads but almost every time he had hit upon a blind alley --- from Marxism to Democratic Socialism to Sarvodaya. He had travelled through a tortuous course. As a matter of fact, J.P. was no pedant for steadiness and changed paths several times in his life.

To demonstrate, in the 60’s, he stood for partyless democracy but in the 70’s he himself brought into existence the Janata Party and subsequently he gave up again the idea of partyless democracy. A bizarre nonconformist with a maverick's touch, he had a queer penchant for championing lost causes. But notwithstanding different political labels, his underlying concern for freedom and liberty was consistent.

From a close understanding of this book, two facets in JP’s character stand out:

1) His total consecration to the service of man without personal reservation; and
2) The hardheaded pursuit of his idealism.

But at the same time, there were two negative traits in his character daydreaming and naïveté.

To illustrate his escapism, Bimal Prasad points out that he refused Congress leadership that Nehru offered to him after his retirement. As regards the romantic streak in his character, there can be no better illustration than his advice to students to overthrow the immoral government, and to hang up their studies for the purpose without realising its hazardous imports.

Correspondingly, his instruction to armed forces to violate orders of the government was nothing short of a romantic illusion. All the same, J.P. was not only the last flicker of idealism in the politics of India but also the last of the legends to leave the land.

Among the Indian socialists, J.P. was the most well-known; he was a recognised personality in the history of the Indian socialist movement. His socialism was not only a philosophy of social and economic revolution of Indian society but also a philosophy of moral and spiritual rebirth of life. The idea of participatory democracy conceived by him ia a valuable contribution to political thought of India.

Now as far as the question of how good a leader JP was, the author says: "While Gandhi led India to freedom and Nehru laid the foundations of a modern democratic state, it was left to Narayan to go on a struggle for the establishment of a just social order. His single-minded devotion was to the cause of a social revolution.”

Like Nehru, JP has left behind the culture of a respected political philosophy based on Marxism, Gandhism and Western democracy. Though equal to Gandhi and Nehru in courage and capacity for sacrifice, JP, however, lacked sharpness, applied wisdom and was often led astray by his romanticism and unrealistic dreams. The existence of a certain romantic streak in his personality always revolted against hard-headed realism, which was amply shown when he allowed the Communist Party's leaders to capture the key position in the Congress Socialist Party organisation.

Bimal Prasad shows that like Nehru, J.P. too was unsuccessful in shaping up a second level of leadership -- a team of youngmen. He lacked Gandhi's appeal and political flair. But like Gandhi, he belonged to the same genre of leadership who devoted their whole lives to political activities and brought about major changes in politics without ever aspiring to hold sole power in their own hands.

While J.P. played a prominent part in the struggle for freedom, his most important contribution lay in placing the foundations of a new India after independence. He played a prominent role after the accomplishment of freedom as a leader of the Congress Socialist Party, and later on, when he walked out of the field of power politics, he contributed in building the power of the people rather than capturing the power of the state.

Thus, his entire life was marked by the pursuit for a revolution which might usher in a new society. To be sure, J.P. has an assured place among the great political thinkers of modern India.

An unputdownable book.

[Prasenjit Basu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written book about one of the political titans of 20th century India. My main quibble with the book is that, while the chapters are chronological, the paragraphs are whimsical in their lack of chronological continuity. This forces the reader to go back to previous paragraphs to understand the flow of the narrative; and, on one key occasion, the authors imply that the 1971 election occurred after the Bangladesh war had been won, which is of course untrue (the Bangladesh War was 9 months AFTER the 1971 election).

That apart, this is a wonderfully-readable book, written with a sympathetic lens (not a hagiographic one, implying that it is interspersed with mild criticisms). It is also, rather surprisingly, written from a firmly Nehruvian perspective, perhaps even more sympathetic to Jawaharlal and Indira than it is to Jayaprakash! The latter spent a few years living in the Nehru family home (Swaraj Bhavan) in Allahabad (now Prayagraj), and JP's wife Prabhavati Devi grew very close to Kamala Nehru, while Jayaparakash referred to Jawaharlal as "Bhai" (brother) throughout his life.

The other telling fact the book brings out well (from its apt title on) is that Jayaprakash Narayan was a lifelong Marxist, who was consequently anti-capitalist in his basic thinking, and fully committed to the abolition of private property, full redistribution of land and the nationalisation of all industrial property. This approach (if truly implemented) will be catastrophic for any economy (as Lenin and Ho Chi Minh's periods of "War Communism" should have amply demonstrated), but JP never gave up this bizarre 'dream' (which was incorporated into the policy planks of the parties he led). He was never a really committed Gandhian, unlike his wife Prabhavati (who took the pledge of celibacy completely against his wishes, and effectively gave her life to Gandhi more fully than to JP as long as Gandhi lived). This fundamental Marxist commitment explains the failures of JP's career -- including his strange romantic fascination with the Naxalites, whose methods he never fully condemned, while only mildly distancing himself from them.

JP was the founding leader of the Congress Socialist Party, from its start in the late-1930s until he was ousted by Ram Manohar Lohia in 1953, when the party shed the word "Congress" from its name, following its dismal showing in the 1952 election (when most voters saw the CSP as being Nehru's B-Team). He gave up party politics to join and grow Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan and Gramdan movements, never fully leaving the political realm while professing not to be interested in party/power politics. But the contradictions in his approach are legion: he was strongly critical of Nehru's Tibet policy, and made emphatic statements often that Tibet was ALWAYS an independent country (never a part of China), and yet he proposed a romantic resolution to the Aksai Chin problem through "arbitration" and some sort of lease arrangement.

The book perhaps pays too little attention to the apogee of JP's career - and the one that I know well, having grown to political consciousness during the Emergency (which was declared a couple of months before I turned 11) and its aftermath. In 1974, JP finally returned to a political leadership role -- taking over the leadership of the Bihar student rebellion (that began on its own in 1973, with such luminaries as Nitish Kumar, Sushil Modi, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Lalu Yadav in its vanguard). Ironically, even here, it was Morarji Desai who was more effective -- in forcing Indira to call an election in Gujarat, where he harnessed the students and opposition parties, leading them to an emphatic victory in June 1975. (JP couldn't force an election in Bihar despite the 'revolutionary' impact of his yearlong agitation). When the Emergency was declared, almost all non-CPI political leaders were jailed (including of course JP, Morarji, Vajpayee, etc.). JP played the key catalytic role in uniting the non-communist (and non-regional) opposition in the Janata Party, which won a landslide victory in the 1977 election (in alliance with regional parties like CPI-M, DMK, Alkali Dal). The final pages are poignant, as an ailing JP is largely ignored by Morarji Desai and the top Janata leadership (although he is feted in Seattle when he goes there for treatment), and he sees the disintegration of his dream of both revolution and even the more banal one of Janata unity.

Overall though, this is an insightful book about one of the more enigmatic figures in the making of modern India. From the seven years he spent in the US, working as a labourer while paying for his education in California, Wisconsin and Iowa -- all the while becoming a Marxist in the bastion of robustly successful capitalism -- to his odd relationship with his wife (who, nonetheless, was able to influence his turn towards Gandhian action after 1954), there is much that is deeply insightful in this charmingly written book.

[Narayani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jayaprakash Narayan, for most of my generation, is a legend - the one man who dared to challenge the entrenched power of the Indian National Congress. My parents belonged to his generation - they were witness to the kind of power he held over the youth of the country in the 1970s. They watched the impact of speaking truth to power as JP (as he was known) did.

In 2022, India stares down the barrel of a crisis, with bigotry, hatred, corruption and naked power inflaming the fabric of our land. There is, more than ever, a need for a man like JP. But since we don't have that -- art historian Sujata Prasad gives us the next best option. A biography - simply and crisply written - of the man she calls a "poster boy of dissent." The Dream of A Revolution is co-authored with Prasad's late father, Bimal, himself a close associate of JP. Bimal Prasad passed away before he could complete it and his daughter took up the difficult task of matching her father's writing style and tone. It is a task that she has managed admirably, presenting a portrait of a deeply complex, flawed human being.

A childhood spent watching revolution (against the Raj) unfold across India primed JP for the years ahead. His early twenties were spent in the United States, broke and brilliant, sustained on Marxism and whatever little income he could scrape together from various menial jobs. It was his return to India - and his active work in the organisational wing of the Congress - that kickstarted a career which JP always hoped would culminate as being part of a revolution. In 1934, he started the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and from then on, for nearly four decades, every ruling regime - whether it was the Raj, Nehru or Indira's India -- was dogged by JP, ever ready to attack or oppose -- always dreaming of a revolution that would save the country from itself.

For my generation, the stories of the legend that was JP emanate from the days of the Emergency, in Indira's India -- when he stirred an entire country to dream of a revolution. Prasad tells the story of one man's turbulent, deeply political life with quiet yet gripping flair, never forgetting that at the heart of this telling are the eyes of her father, yet maintaining her own unique style. It is a remarkable melding of voices that is rarely achieved - especially when one of the authors is absent altogether.

JP Narayan was a man who straddled turbulent epochs in modern Indian political history. There was not one crossroads at which he was not present, and not one opportunity for revolution that he did not seize. Prasad embraces his foibles and his virtues with a dispassionate yet insightful eye, never letting the reader forget that great men are not saints. In this day and age of whitewashed histories and the eulogising of stalwarts, The Dream of A Revolution is a breath of much needed fresh air. There is a sentence in this book that stands out with its poignancy. “Revolution has come, but now, when I have grown old,” JP would say, in 1974. It was close to the end, a time when this icon of dissent would himself fail to see those who were using his own coattails to build their cult of power.

In his review of the book for the Indian Express, Raghu Karnad writes that those in power today have every reason to prevent us from remembering JP Narayan today. I'd say there is no better time for us to bring JP out from the shadows of political memory. This book is a vital stepping stone towards that resurrection.

[Anshuman Goenka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written and balanced political bio. Learnt about the solidarity between JP and his wife, his journey from the sharp left to Sarvodaya, his complex relationship w Nehru. His personal story well drawn in early years but only teased fleetingly in adult life. Not a hagiography at all, esp commendable in spite of the connection between the authors and the subject

[Deepak Yadav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Inspiration for generations