2016 Kent Carasco Daniel 1222595 Ethesis
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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Jayaprakash Narayan and lok niti Socialism, Gandhism and political cultures of protest in XX Century India Kent Carrasco, Daniel Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Jayaprakash Narayan and lok niti: Socialism, Gandhism and political cultures of protest in XX Century India. Daniel Kent Carrasco 1222595 PhD Contemporary India Research King´s India Institute King´s College, London Supervisors Christophe Jaffrelot & Jon E. Wilson 1 Abstract This work is devoted to situating the life, ideas and work of Jayaprakash Narayan in the horizon of protest and emancipatory politics in twentieth century India. It intends to show that JP must be taken as one of the main architects and promoters of political cultures of protest in XX century India, an ensemble of practices and forces acting within and outside the realm of institutional state politics, and involving political parties, anti-statist movements and non- governmental organizations. Despite being readily identified as a Gandhian socialist, my general argument in this dissertation is that JP´s life-long political engagement with the politics of protest and emancipation should be decoded through the logic of a political culture of protest he identified with lok niti, a formula that embraces diverse ideals, practices and political strands of opposition to the state brought together by a common aversion to and rejection of “power- politics” or raj niti. I will argue that Gandhi´s Non-Cooperation movement provided the event that created the fidelity that propelled JP into politics and that socialism was the framework through which he conceived of social transformation throughout his life. Indeed, socialism, Marxism and the ideas of Gandhi represented for JP little more than systems of interpretation that should be combined with others for the promotion of a truly revolutionary political practice of protest, which he defined as lok niti. 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................ 3 LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS ....................................................................................................................... 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................ 6 ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................................................................... 7 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 8 1.1 IDEAS, POLITICS AND HISTORY ................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 EMANCIPATORY POLITICS, PROTEST AND POLITICAL CULTURES OF OPPOSITION ............................ 12 1.3 LOK NITI AND THE POLITICS OF PROTEST IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA ................................................... 16 1.4 LOK NITI AND DEMOCRACY: ETHICAL OPPOSITION AND SWARAJ FOR THE COMMON MAN ............ 20 1.5 JP´S LIFE OF PROTEST AND CONTEMPORARY TRAJECTORIES OF POLITICS IN INDIA ........................... 23 1.6 LOK NITI: PROTEST, POPULISM AND ANTIPOLITICS ................................................................................ 26 1.7 CHAPTER LAYOUT ........................................................................................................................................... 34 2. THE COMING OF JP: SWADESHI, NON-COOPERATION AND THE ORIGINS OF LOK NITI ................................................................................................................................................................... 37 2.1 THE BIRTH OF JP´S POLITICAL DEVOTION .................................................................................................. 38 2.2 Before Non-Cooperation: The radicalism of early XX nationalist politics in India ........ 48 2.2.1. The Masses of India and the Anti-Statist Politics of Swadeshi ........................................... 49 2.2.2 National multitude and civilization as conduct ........................................................................ 55 2.3 SWARAJ AND THE TELEOLOGY OF LOK NITI ................................................................................................ 64 2.4. CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................. 69 3. THE YOUNG JP AND SOCIALISM (1929-1947) ....................................................................... 72 3.1 THE 1930S AND THE COMING OF THE CSP ............................................................................................... 73 3.1.1 The 1920s: Jayaprakash in the US: Marxism and youthful impatience .......................... 73 3.1.2 Young Nationalists and Leftist Politics before the 1930s ...................................................... 78 3.1.3 The Congress Socialist Party .............................................................................................................. 83 3.2 THE YOUNG SWADESHI MARXIST: JP AND SOCIALISM, 1934-1947 ................................................... 89 3.2.1 Dennouncing the ugly fissures of society: A socialist revolution for the people .......... 89 3.2.2 1940-1947: Turning Away from Materialism to Fend Off the Forces of Reaction. .... 97 3.3 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 104 4. THE BIRTH OF LOK NITI: ANTI-STATISM, CONSTRUCTIVE WORK AND JP´S PATH FROM SOCIALISM TO SARVODAYA. (1948-1957) .................................................................... 107 4.1 THE TWISTED DREAMS OF HUMANKIND ................................................................................................... 108 4.1.1 Marx, Gandhi and the framework of alienation ..................................................................... 108 4.1.2 “Incentives for Goodness” or the twisted dreams humankind .......................................... 117 4.2 THE BIRTH OF LOK NITI .............................................................................................................................. 124 4.2.1 Jayaprakash and Vinoba´s Bhoodan ........................................................................................... 124 4.2.2 Jayaprakash and Nehru: Lok and Raj Niti in the 1950s ...................................................... 132 4.2.3 The “revolution beautiful”: Socialism, Sarvodaya and self-help ..................................... 139 4.3 AFFINITIES AND CONTRASTS: JP, THE RSS AND THE EMERGENCE OF NEW SPACES OF ANTI-STATIST ACTION .................................................................................................................................................................... 143 4.4 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 150 5. SOCIALISM AND PROTEST IN POSTCOLONIAL INDIA: JAYAPRAKASH, LOHIA AND NEHRU (1952-1967) ........................................................................................................................ 154 3 5.1 THE MEANINGS OF SOCIALISM ................................................................................................................... 155 5.1.1 Three brands of socialism for India ............................................................................................. 155 5.1.2 Jayaprakash and Lohia: contrasting trajectories .................................................................. 160 5.1.3 Lohia´s socialism: doctrinal brilliance and political failure ............................................. 162 5.2 TWO SOCIALIST CRITIQUES OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT OF THE NEHRUVIAN STATE ............. 168 5.2.1 Lohia´s views on alternative development and JP´s village development ................... 168