 "Book review | 'The Dream of Revolution' is much more than just another biography of Jayaprakash Narayan")
A biography on Jayaprakash Narayan or JP was long overdue, especially one written with a personal touch about this prominent leader who contributed immensely to India’s freedom-struggle and even after it attained freedom at midnight on 15 August 1947. India’s former ambassador to Nepal and a close relative of Jayaprakash Narayan, Bimal Prasad (with Sujata Prasad), the close family-members of Jayaprakash Narayan, have accomplished the task of profiling one of India’s most remarkable leaders of the 20th century and with a balanced narrative in The Dream of Revolution – A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan (2021; Penguin). The book carries the research of Bimal Prasad and it is published posthumously with an articulate contribution made by the co-author Sujata Prasad.
The book is more about JP and lesser known important facts about his life that shaped the course of India’s journey as a newly-born but a significant democracy—and less about the ideological grounding of the man in frame.
JP’s relevance in the contemporary discourses is intact and the book is a kind of testimonial. It is neither a hagiography nor a work that does critical assessment of JP’s ideological shifts at times. Rather than what it rightly does, it reflects on the impacts JP made through his action during the peak of India’s struggle for independence during colonial time, and subsequently, while India was getting shaped as a democracy in the post-independent India. One of the key attributes given by the authors’ to JP is recognising his leadership as the key factor that decisively responded to the extremes of Emergency in 1975 with a mass-based ‘Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution)’ from his home state Bihar. As a matter of fact, since then, India’s democracy has seen no other turning point like that.
Hailing from Bihar, JP had a deep Nepal connect with the first-generation leaders of Nepal, who went on to script a new chapter with securing the democracy in their country. Prior to that, they were part of India’s struggle for independence and even jailed for helping India’s fight against the tyranny of repressive British rule. The author Bimal Prasad and Sujata Prasad write with emphasising on B P Koirala’s importance as a public figure in India and exemplifying the shared past of struggle that also defines India-Nepal relations:
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View All“The arrest of Achyut Patwardhan was followed by the arrest of Lohia and other socialists on 25 May 1949, for demonstrating in front of the Nepal embassy, demanding the release of Nepalese leader BP Koirala. Jayaprakash issued a strongly worded press statement against the arrest the next day: ‘Free India is being slowly converted into a vast prison…citizens in a free country possess the fundamental right to assemble peacefully and the right cannot be taken by the simple device of declaring such assemblies as unlawful. There are more restrictions on the liberties of citizens in Free India today under Congress rule than under the worst of British despots. This must cause deep anxiety to all freedom lovers in this country and perhaps the day is not distant when they all must join together irrespective of party creeds to save this country from fascism.’ Through the rumble of history and politics, Jayaprakash’s life oscillated constantly between the quotidian and the monumental—and that’s what makes it so special. He campaigned for a building grant from the education ministry for the Nritya Kala Mandir in Patna, wrote to the chief engineer, Public Works Department, to complete work on a bridge before the monsoon, and appealed for the proper care of B P Koirala, ailing in prison in Nepal, all with equal intensity.”
For the stakeholders of India-Nepal relations, the book is particularly helpful as it offers rare insights and tells stories not easily available in the public domain. One gets reassured in reading something of this sort on pages:
“The British authorities soon got wind of what was happening and began closing in. Intelligence Bureau reports of the Home Department took note of two highly ‘pernicious’ documents titled ‘A.B.C. of Dislocation’ and ‘Instructions-Sabotage of Communication’. Both of them were attributed to Jayaprakash. There were reports of trains being looted in Barauni and other junctions, and wagons of ammunition falling into guerrilla hands. An Intelligence Bureau report of the Bihar Special Branch alleged the formation of suicide squads and four guerrilla training centres. The British applied pressure on the Government of Nepal to arrest Jayaprakash and members of his Dasta and deport them to India. The Nepalese authorities succeeded, in due course, in locating Jayaprakash and Lohia, arresting the along with four of their associates, including Kartik Prasad Singh and Baidyanath Jha, in May 1943.”
Not often featured in the long-form publications dealing with India’s past, especially related to its struggle for independence, this book delves deep in bringing out the unnoticed sagas from North Bihar and Nepal’s Terai:
“Members of the Azad Dasta were lodged in a makeshift prison that went by the name of Bada Hakim ka Jail at Hanuman Nagar, near Janakpur. During his visit to the riverbank the next morning to wash himself, Jayaprakash spotted a boy known to him and asked him to convey the news of their arrest to other members of the Azad Dasta. In a dramatic move, a little before midnight, the prison were supported by Jayaprakash’s men and several young Nepalese supporters. The prison police responded with knee-jerk alacrity but were distracted by the flames emanating from a torched hut. They lost their wits completely when two of their constables were shot in the crossfire. Risking their lives, the guerrilla warriors managed to cut the electric wires, enabling Jayaprakash and his team to escape. They managed to reach Bihar and then travelled to Calcutta and from thereon to Delhi. Jayaprakash disguised himself in European clothes and assumed a false identity.”
At this point of time, it is vital to note how the leading torch-bearers of India’s freedom movement worked in unison with the first-generation leaders of Nepal in their struggle to end the oppressive British rule from India. Taking root of democracy in Nepal had a close bearing with the culmination of India’s freedom movement as the emergence of a free India, which also became the world’s largest democracy. This deeply researched biography of Jayaprakash Narayan or JP goes beyond the commonly pervasive perceptions, with rich anecdotes and not much heard stories, presents a credible account of the remarkable life and work of India’s one of the eminent freedom-fighters.
The Dream of Revolution – A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan should get a long shelf-life, it should be read widely in India as well as by the readers beyond boundary, more so, in Nepal.
The author is a policy professional, columnist and writer with a special focus on South Asia. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._
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