Jayprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution (Sampoorna Kranti)

1. The sampoorna kranti or total revolution led by Jayprakash Narayana

combined the issues of rural poverty, unemployment, price rise and bonded
labour together. It provided a coherence to the otherwise seemingly disjoined
issues by linking them to the inefficiency of the state. J.P, as he was popularly
called, emphasised on collective uprising against all these issue which in his
opinion, emanated primarily from the malfunctioning of the polity.

(a) Initially started as a student movement in Bihar the total revolution

gradually spread among peasants, workers, and tribals. It emphasised reform
in education, land tenure and public administration as solution to the social
and political crises of the time.
(b) The movement urged the young people to work among the peasants and
set up janata sarkar, a people’s government that would take responsibility for
the implementation of land reform measures, verification of the electoral rolls,
and initiation of social reform.
(c) Chhtra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, the youth brigade formed by J.P became
the vanguard of the social, economic, political and cultural revolution that
shook the society and polity before the declaration of national emergency by
the ruling Congress party.
(d) The ideological underpinnings of total revolution were a combination of
the socialism propounded by Ram Manohar Lohia and the Gandhian version of
swaraja. Jayparakash, himself a freedom fighter was sceptical of the Nehruvian
path of development.
(e) As a close follower of Gandhi he was inspired by his ideals of restoring of
the society and polity around village communities. The J.P movement
reiterated the Gandhian notion of governance in terms of self determination
and self rule and the ideal conception of society and individual in terms of
moral values, self restraint and limited material desire.

2. The two powerful movements due to their political orientations remained

disjoined and charted their separate course independent of each other. The
geographical confinement of the movements also obstructed their inclusiveness.
This had significance consequences for civil society because the waves of
protests in other provinces among students, workers and peasants
remained piecemeal. Their scattered effects notwithstanding, the upheavals in
the civil society sphere threatened the ruling Congress party at the centre. The
forceful suppression of the Naxalite movement was the first step the state
took to capture the civil society space and it culminated in the clamping of
the national emergency.

National Emergency: Historical Shift In the Relationship between

Civil Society and the State

3. National emergency represent a historical shift in the relationship between civil

society and the state in independent India. Clamped on 25th June 1975 against
the backdrop of social and political agitations, the emergency revealed the
hidden potential of a democratic state to become dictatorial. The period of
national emergency witnessed the following oppressive actions
(a) Curtailment of the fundamental rights of people, the power of judiciary,
and the press.
(b) The dissident political leaders were put in the jail.
(c) Power concentrated in the hands of a few who made arbitrary decisions.
The clamping of emergency followed in the wake of some important political
events. On 12th June 1975 the Allahabad High court gave a verdict setting
aside the election of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on grounds of political
corruption and manipulation of electoral practices which meant she would
cease to be the member of Lok Sabha and the prime minister.
(d) She appealed in the Supreme Court against the verdict and the interim
order granted her the right to continue to be as a member of Lok Sabha and as
the prime minister till the case was decided.
(e) Around the same time the Congress party lost election to the Janata Front
in Gujarat. Following Allahabad High Court’s verdict of electoral malpractice
against Indira Gandhi, the Janata Front launched a massive campaign and
demanded her resignation.
(f) Against this backdrop of social upheaval and political instability the
national emergency was declared on the night of 25 th June 1975.
 (g) With the declaration of emergency all laws related to life and personal
liberty were abrogated. Appeal in the court against the violation of
fundamental rights was denied.
(h) Acts granting immunity to the fair reporting of legislative proceedings and
judicial proceedings were suspended. All means of forming and expressing of
public opinion were curtailed.
(i) The amendments made in the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA)
during emergency turned it more authoritative. It vested absolute power in
the hands of the government to arrest without any ground and it was no longer
required to disclose to anyone including the judiciary the reasons of arrests
made under the Act.
(j) The indiscriminate use of preventive detention during emergency led
both ordinary citizens and professionals realise the inadequacies in the
constitutional granting of rights and the power of judiciary to protect them.

4. Emergency broke the complacency of the people who had taken

democracy and its benevolence for granted. More than common people it was
a setback to the educated middle class who realised overnight that the state could
take their rights away. Emergency shattered the myth that the state could do
no wrong.
5. To seek legitimacy during emergency the state took a number of populist
measures to accelerate socio economic upliftment of the poor. The 20- Point
Programme, as it was called included strict implementation of land reform
legislations, liquidation of rural indebtedness, abolition of bonded labour,
participation of workers in management, prevention of tax evasion, special benefit
to the weaker section etc. The Congress, with the confidence of getting people’s
support relaxed emergency and declared fresh elections. But despite its confidence
the Congress received a historical set back in the election. The people restored
democracy by bringing into power the opposition Janata party.

6. Redefining Civil Society Space After Emergency Emergency and the

restoration of democracy not only redefined and extended the boundaries of civil
society; it also by redefining the relationship of the citizens with the state
restructured civil society in a significant way and made it more alert to
transgression of its boundary by the state.
(a) The most important consequence of emergency for civil society was
the question concerning the collapse of state institutions and their inability to
protect the rights of the citizens. The civil rights movement had till then
remained confined to piecemeal addressing of issues such as the suppression
of Naxals.
(b) Emergency galvanised the movement as democracy, citizenship and
constitutional protection of fundamental rights became important issues for
public debate. The People’s Union for Civil Liberty and People’s Union for
Democratic Rights are two such organisation formed in the post -emergency
phase.