RSS betrayed Jayaprakash Narayan. He failed to de-communalise it, died a broken man

Today, JP’s dream of ‘total revolution’ lies shattered beyond recognition. His ‘devil’s bargain’ with the 'forces of evil' cost India dearly.

Jayaprakash Narayan | Photo: Jayaprakash Narayan College of Engineering

Jayaprakash Narayan had falsely hoped that the RSS would take forward his dream of revolution, only to be ruthlessly betrayed. On 3 November 1977, he addressed a huge RSS training camp in Patna, hailing it as a revolutionary organisation with the capacity to transform society, end casteism and wipe the tears from the eyes of the poor. He believed that the RSS had a historic role to play in creating a new India, and there was no other organisation in the country which could match them.

“This society, its glorious history and the heritage of our forefathers, the sacrifices of the builders of this country and their achievements and the freedom that we have won-you are the inheritors of it all and it is for you to make the best use of it….Your word has a far-reaching effect…. Here is the arena of a vast country open to you. You can accomplish a lot. May God give you strength and may you live up to such expectations,” he had said.

There is a distinct background behind this exhortation, which many feel is repugnant to the very “idea of India” as a diverse, federal and secular country to which RSS is perceived as the sworn enemy. For Jayaprakash Narayan, also known as JP, 22 March 1977 marked the culmination of his heroic efforts to bring in some kind of revolution and transformation in India’s polity and his emergence from defeat and despair to victory.

That was the day when Emergency was soundly defeated by the “will of the people” and an alternate political dispensation was voted to power. The media heralded the news as ‘Great Defeat’, ‘Exit Indira’, ‘Americans see a new hero in India’, and ‘JP’s role bigger than Gandhi’s’, among others. By common consent, both in India and abroad, it was agreed that JP was, par excellence, the architect of the victory. He was the liberator acclaimed by a grateful nation and a relieved world. On 24 March, JP administered the pledge to all the Janata Party MPs assembled at Gandhi Samadhi at Rajghat in New Delhi.

“Whatever the future might hold for him, JP has accomplished a great part of his mission in life. As Gandhi liberated India from foreign rule, JP was India’s ‘second liberator’ from domestic despotism. He has by no means achieved the ‘Total Revolution’ to which he has aspired, but he has certainly accomplished the first part of his mission, namely, to restore democratic processes and a free society in which the rest of the revolution could perhaps be peacefully accomplished,” distinguished parliamentarian MR Masani wrote on the development.

JP was a beacon of light

In pursuance of this dream, JP broadcast a message to the nation on April 13, 1977. “Finally, if God grants me better health in the coming months, I look forward to take up my cry of ‘total revolution’ and do whatever might lie in my power. Meanwhile, the work need not be stopped. Let everyone do his bit singly or in cooperation with others. Here is a beacon of light for our youth. I hope they will steer the course of their life towards that light. I am at their disposal even in my sick bed for advice and such guidance as I might be capable of giving. So, forward young friends, Sampoorna Kranti ab nara hai, Bhavi itihas hamara hai,” he had said.

In December 1974, RSS Sarsanghchalak, Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras, declared the JP Movement as ‘a force for the good of the society’. The encomium was reciprocated by JP when he told a Jana Sangh/RSS conclave in March 1975, ‘if you are a fascist, then I too am a fascist.’ RSS and its supporters have been repeatedly using this statement as a de facto testimonial, often quoting it out of context. JP perhaps did not realise that he was dealing with a propaganda machine that believes in ‘Asatyameve Jayate.’

It was on JP’s initiative that Jana Sangh, the political front of RSS, merged into the Janata Party in 1977. Due to the JP Movement’s widespread impact and the pressure of the Emergency, the Jana Sangh had changed its strategy. During the 1977 Lok Sabha election, this party neither used its flag nor campaigned on its staunch pro-Hindutva ideology. All Jana Sangh candidates signed on the Janata Party’s membership form, which stated, ‘I express complete faith in the values and ideals as propounded by Mahatma Gandhi, and I dedicate myself to the cause of establishing a socialist state.’

Further political occurrences proved that this was merely political drama and opportunism by the Jana Sangh and the RSS to attain their far-reaching goals. They never drifted from their original aim nor changed their ways of achieving it. But the honesty of JP’s intention to bring them to the mainstream of politics was evident from what he wrote from the Emergency prison, to the people of Bihar, in which he explained his motive: “By incorporating them in the Sampoorna Kranti Andolan, I have tried to de-communalise them (RSS and Jana Sangh).”

How RSS betrayed JP

Be that as it may, the Janata men, particularly those associated with the Jana Sangh, which had come to power in 1977, were very much a part of the rotten system that created the culture of Emergency. They were not the ‘party of good men’ JP had thought them to be. The Janata Party government collapsed in mid-1979 due to the intrigues and betrayal by the RSS, Jana Sangh, and other elements who were part of the Morarji Desai government.

Shortly after this, I visited JP in his Kadam Kuan residence in Patna. He was on dialysis, but made me sit beside him. That he had taken Janata’s collapse to heart was evident when he said with tears welling in his eyes, “Devasahayam, I have failed yet again”. Then he opened up and told me how RSS/Jana Sangh was responsible for the ‘destruction’ of the Janata Party, which he had laboriously put together as an alternative to the Congress Party so that a healthy democracy could be sustained in the country as an integral part of his “revolution” agenda.

He narrated the beginning of the JP Movement and the ideals it represented. Since the movement was almost entirely spearheaded by unorganised youth, he had to rely on cadre-based entities like the RSS, which had taken full advantage of the situation to spread its tentacles. ABVP, the student wing of the RSS, had been deployed to penetrate the student movement through the Lok Sangharsh Samiti route.

JP was deeply anguished by Sangh supporters portraying him as their patriarch and as a fascist, on the basis of an innocuous statement he had made at a Jana Sangh-RSS rally. He was fully aware of the RSS’ sinister conspiracies to destabilise the Morarji Desai government, which eventually led to its fall. As part of their strategy, they exploited the ‘dual-membership’ issue — high on JP’s agenda — to demand that former Jana Sangh members either sever ties with the RSS or resign from the government.

JP is proof tall leaders can be fallible

The Janata Party’s demolition was complete and it did not recover from this body blow and faded away except for a few sparks here and there. JP was inconsolable when he narrated the account of this ‘betrayal most foul’. The hardboiled revolutionary, who was a front-soldier of the Mahatma in his fight for the first freedom and who almost single-handedly won India’s second freedom, was a sad man when he died of a broken heart weeks later on 8 October 1979, with a sinking sense that he had ‘failed the nation again’.

This betrayal reached its zenith when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was elevated as the ruling party’s icon. This is a direct affront to JP, who had trashed the vicious, communal and polarising agenda of ‘Hindutva’ originated by Savarkar on which the BJP’s politics and governance survive.

JP has been candid in his remarks. “Some like the RSS might do it openly by identifying the Indian nation with Hindu Rashtra, others might do it more subtly. But in every case, such identification is pregnant with national disintegration, because members of other communities can never accept the position of second-class citizens. Such a situation, therefore, has in it the seeds of perpetual conflict and ultimate disruption.” JP squarely condemned the “hostile and alienating nationalism we hear about today which is antithetical to the ethos of freedom struggle and against the belief of all those who helped it evolve,” he had said.

Remember that in 1948, as the general secretary of the Socialist Party of India, JP had demanded a ban on the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, which was believed to be behind the plot to kill Mahatma Gandhi. “The people should give no quarter to communalists in the society,” he had said, calling the RSS and the Mahasabha “forces of evil.”

Today, betrayed by the very people he trusted, JP’s dream of ‘total revolution’ lies shattered beyond recognition. The lesson is clear. Howsoever tall a man may be, he is fallible — and JP is the proof. His ‘devil’s bargain’ with the “forces of evil” to defeat the Emergency and its ruler, Indira Gandhi, cost the Janata Party, Indian polity, nay democracy itself, dearly. This is the Indian tragedy.

M.G. Devasahayam is a retired IAS officer and chairman of People-First. He also served in the Indian Army. As the District Magistrate of Chandigarh, he was the custodian of JP in jail. He had a ringside view of Emergency and has written a book titled Emergency and Neo-Emergency: Who will defend Democracy?. Views are personal.

(Edited by Saptak Datta)