An unlikely hero

The meeting was a success in the sense that JP went from Bihar to Gujarat, where the students’ stir (Navnirman) forced the state government to quit. It was another matter that students like Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was in the chair at the Patna meeting, derailed the movement when the Janata government took over at the Centre. The only morality they knew was how to capture power and to retain it by hook or by crook.

This was an anti-thesis of what JP stood for. JP’s movement, the Sampoorna Kranti Aandolan, was for wholesale change. Was it possible to retrieve the nation which showed the best of its qualities of sacrifice and dedication during the struggle for independence? Could he put it back on the road to idealism and values? JP wanted real social and economic progress to be ushered in and believed that this would not happen until the opportunity was given to ordinary men and women to develop. The touchstone for it should be how far any political or social theory made the individual rise above his/her petty self and think in terms of the good of all.

Although the target was Mrs Gandhi’s autocratic and corrupt rule, JP raised the larger question of propriety and morality in public life. Ultimately, the movement developed into people’s wrath against the mode of governance.

Strange, the intelligentsia remained distant. Cocooned in its own way of comfortable living, it did not associate with JP out of fear. Even ordinary constable was seen to be law unto himself. The response stayed confined to the drawing room tittle-tattle. Most of the intelligentsia just caved in. The press that was asked to bend began to crawl. Never had even Sanjay Gandhi imagined that it would be so easy. JP was disappointed. He did not expect the Congress, a party of his one-time comrade, Jawaharlal Nehru, to go to the extent of suspending fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. But he definitely expected more resistance from the thinking classes.

There is a wrong assumption in certain quarters that the JP movement provoked Mrs Gandhi to impose the Emergency. Similarly, it is incorrect to believe that the Emergency was imposed to suppress the JP movement. Both were independent developments. What was common between them was the fact that they both failed. Both exposed the deficiencies of society and the governing class. Mrs Gandhi imposed the Emergency not because there was a rightist combination building up to dislodge her. There is not a shred of evidence to support the thesis. She imposed it because after winning at the polls on the Garibi Hatao slogan in 1972, she was finding it difficult to govern. She had failed to deliver. She believed that the Allahabad High Court judgment to unseat her would consolidate the unrest.

The JP movement was a failure because it evoked very little protest when the emergency was imposed. As Mrs Gandhi put it, not even a dog barked! People were not inspired with lofty ideals of liberty and fair play to rise against Mrs Gandhi’s dictatorial ways. They were simply scared. However, they defeated her when the occasion arose. That was their catharsis.

The Janata government should have taken steps to restore people’s confidence in the rule of law. But its leaders got caught in power politics and petty personal quarrels. They had hardly any time, much less inclination, to make changes in the system which was reeking with crime and corruption. JP had wanted them to break the cartels of tainted politicians. When the Janata government went on bungling and as their internal bickering went on hitting the headlines, JP tried to intervene. He wanted to get some of them to Patna where he was lying sick. When I met him during those days, he was despondent and forlorn. Would Mrs Gandhi come back, I asked him in desperation. He said he didn’t know. But one thing he made clear was that she would never dare to impose the Emergency again.

JP’s real disappointment was not Morarji Desai — whom he had made the prime minister — but the Sangh Parivar. He had permitted its members to join the movement on the promise that they would sever their links with the RSS. The Janata party’s difference with the RSS was ideological. The Janata party woefully realised how the Jan Sangh members had used the two-year period in the government to penetrate, not only the administrative machinery but also the media, both official and private. They wanted credibility by being part of the Janata party. Once they got it, they appeared in their true colours. JP was helpless and felt cheated. But then he was dying.