Opinion Mass movement,did you say?

JP’s ideological evolution was very interesting. He was a staunch Marxist while studying in the US in the 1920s. As a young Marxist,he thought Gandhi was a status quoist,but soon realised he was wrong. Later,he joined the INC and became close to Nehru. Nehru even encouraged him to lead the left-wing group within the Congress,the Congress Socialist Party. All this while,Gandhi was also gradually exercising a deep and lasting influence on him. Later,the Socialist Party formally split from the Congress as it was seen as too left-oriented by the likes of Sardar Patel. The somewhat rigid and collectivist socialist agenda did not fit into the Congress’s middle-of-the-road omnibus character. So after 1948,Jayaprakash led the Socialist Party along with stalwarts like Ram Manohar Lohia,Achyut Patwardhan and others.

The larger point is Gandhi,Nehru,Lohia,Vinoba Bhave had all deeply influenced JP and helped shape his vision. The fascinating dialectic of JP’s vision was that it drew from the old Congress stalwarts only to later launch a movement against the authoritarian Congress establishment under Indira Gandhi. Such a vision therefore had a certain integrity as well as durability. Does Anna Hazare,or anyone else who the BJP may be desperately hoping will play JP in today’s context,have the ideological lineage that he had?

Another factor that is underestimated by many political observers is the long-term impact of key social and socialist ideas that were propagated by JP,Lohia and other leaders of the movement through the 1960s and 1970s. Lohia’s idea of caste as immobile class actually helped to establish the centrality of caste politics in India. In some ways,Lohia,JP and other socialist leaders were permanent rebels who kept challenging the Congress establishment on a continuous basis over decades.

For instance,the centrality of caste in Indian politics,propagated by Lohia,manifested first in the rise of Charan Singh as the undisputed leader of the intermediate caste — the Jat farmers — in North India. Charan Singh had the political clout to oppose even Nehru when the latter sought to introduce Soviet-style collective farming in India. Jats were big landowners in much of western UP and Rajasthan and were averse to collective farming.

So various anti-establishment social movements through the 1960s and 1970s have created a lasting legacy of caste-based politics linked to social justice that is still playing out and will do so for another few decades for sure. Within this continuing narrative,we have,from time to time,very Gandhian-like moral reconstruction movements against corruption and state excesses,like the one led by JP before the Emergency. There is obviously a link between the caste-based politics of social justice and the strong anti-corruption movements,whether led by JP,V.P. Singh or others. For history suggests that after each such quasi social/ political movement,the Congress monolith has fragmented further and caste-based political formations have consolidated their positions in Parliament. This continuing trend has also created a more decentralised polity that the bulk of urban elites sees as harmful to national interest.

Looking at Anna Hazare’s largely urban-centric anti-corruption movement from this perspective,one finds it does not seem to have the foundations on which earlier social movements have helped establish a decentralised polity within the caste-based framework of social justice.

So far,none of the Anna team members have spoken of the link between social justice and corruption. For instance,could Team Anna have created a mass movement to picket tens of thousands of small police stations in rural India,helping Dalits,tribals and most backward caste members of society file police complaints,which they are prevented from doing now?

It is much easier to be in Ramlila Maidan or Ambedkar Stadium,where you are surrounded by TV cameras. Can anyone remember JP complaining that his movement was not getting enough media coverage or that the media was ignoring him? Genuine mass movements lead the media; they are not be led by it.

Another glaring contradiction is that earlier social movements have clearly helped create a more decentralised polity. No one even faintly talks about dismissing a state government arbitrarily under Article 356. In the past,when the Congress had a majority in Parliament,opposition governments in states constantly lived under fear of being dismissed. Now,Article 356 is erased from our discourse. Sometimes profound achievements are also taken for granted.

Anna Hazare’s vision appears to go against the grain of a decentralised polity that India has achieved over the past decades after much struggle. The Lokpal bill itself is a hugely centralising piece of legislation. Witness how Anna Hazare has nothing to say about the Lokayukta framework created by regional leaders like Nitish Kumar which negates the very basis of the monolithic Lokpal proposed by Team Anna. Other members of the team also keep talking about further decentralisation of politics but do not explain how the centrally driven Lokpal fits into it. No wonder,the fundamental question on which the Lokpal legislation fell in Parliament was how it would sit with India’s federal polity.

It is clear that social movements against the establishment,whether led by Lohia or JP,created fertile ground for a certain type of new politics of which the BJP itself was a part beneficiary. The city-centric civil society campaigns today look,at best,like pale imitations of those in the past.

The writer is Managing Editor,‘The Financial Express’

mk.venu@expressindia.com