New Delhi, Feb 24 (PTI) Hailing Ram Manohar Lohia as the “most outstanding” political theorist of 20th-century India, activist Yogendra Yadav argued that while the socialist icon’s political influence grew, his ideas were neglected — a development he termed both a national misfortune and a setback for the socialist movement.
Speaking on the topic ‘The Right to Dream: JP’s Life and Legacy’ at the India International Centre here on Monday, Yadav, also a political thinker, noted that Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan were the two principal pillars of India’s socialist movement.
He further claimed that had the ideological tradition of the movement remained in Lohia’s hands and the organisational legacy with JP, the socialist movement would have progressed much further.
“The misfortune of this country is that we know Lohia mainly because of his politics, and those who declare themselves to be his heirs do so largely in political terms. But politics was not his strongest aspect. Lohia, as an intellectual and as a theoretician, was far more significant,” Yadav said.
“He is probably the most outstanding political theorist of 20th century India. But he wasn’t a great political leader. The problem was that his political leadership came a long way; however, his ideas were left behind,” he added.
Lohia, a towering freedom fighter, was a socialist ideologue, and one of the most original political thinkers of modern India. He was a key leader in the 1942 Quit India movement, co-founded the Congress Socialist Party, and became a prominent opposition figure after Independence, advocating for popular socialism and anti-casteism.
Yadav, 62, argued that not reading Lohia is also what had shaped public perception of the socialist movement in “crude impressions” — that it was confined to “OBC mobilisation”, “anti-English sentiment”, “caste rhetoric”, or driven by “personal hostility towards Jawaharlal Nehru”.
Such perceptions, he said, overlook the fact that the Indian socialist movement was among the “most creative expressions of socialism anywhere in the world in the 20th century”, and that Lohia’s theoretical insights remain far more significant than his political career.
“Those who claim to inherit him (Lohia) often do so in political terms, not intellectual ones,” Yadav added, suggesting that this selective remembrance sidelined the complexity and originality of his thought.
The activist concluded the discussion by linking his assessment of Lohia to what he described as the present national crisis of “the foundation of India”, which he highlighted was even deeper than the crisis of democracy during the Emergency in 1971.
He argued that addressing this challenge requires bringing together two parallel ideological streams of the 20th century that largely functioned in isolation from each other.
One stream is of the “egalitarian traditions” — including Marxist, Ambedkarite, feminist and socialist thought — and the other was the “decolonial” or “Swarajist” stream associated with thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Aurobindo, according to Yadav.
“If anyone attempted to build that bridge, it was Lohia, and later Kishan Patnaik. That was his strength,” he said, suggesting that Lohia’s effort to synthesise these traditions was neither adequately understood by the intellectuals of his time nor fully carried forward. PTI MG MG KVK KVK KVK
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.