The return of Lohia as every party’s idea of socialism

Samajwadi Party leaders at a function in Lucknow to mark Lohia’s birth anniversary. (Source: File Photo)

At a time when the modern descendants of the Socialist Party are looking at a reunified Janata Parivar before the Bihar elections, Ram Manohar Lohia is the name each one invokes.

After Sharad Yadav of the JD(U) meandered from a discussion of legislative business to remarks on the dark complexion of south Indian women, he sought to fight off criticism by noting that Lohia too had things to say about women, complexion and “beauty”. He was possibly referring to Lohia’s March 1960 article, “Beauty and Skin Colour”, where caste, sexuality, women, fair skin and south Indian women find mention.

The BJP too has gone back to Lohia to taunt socialists and remind them to focus their anger on the Nehru-Gandhi family as, in their view, Lohia used to. In his Patna rally in 2013, Narendra Modi spoke of how Lohia would not forgive the “betrayal” by Nitish Kumar. Hukmdev Narayan Yadav, MP, thanked Modi for fulfilling Lohia’s dreams during a colourful speech in the Lok Sabha earlier this month.

Even in the AAP, Ashutosh described Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan as remnants of the “Lohia-ite” form of politics, a reference to the socialist trend of repeated splits.

The time for Lohia as an idea appears to have come once again.

The evolving socialist

Politician, journalist and activist, an MP the last time from Kannauj, Lohia died at just 57 in 1967 — an important year for non-Congress parties that burst upon the scene three years after Nehru’s death. But Lohia had made his mark before that, besides Nehru and under his shadow. His Socialist Party laid the ground for fighting the dominant Congress, using the lens of caste to address backwardness and forming a wide arc of groups.

Born in Akbarpur, UP, into a wealthy Marwari family, he lost his mother early and was brought up by his father and paternal grandmother. He went to Humboldt University in 1929 and returned a PhD in 1932. Even on that campus, he organised Indian students. On return, he became part of the team that formed the Congress Socialist Party within the Congress in 1934. He joined the UPCC and the party’s foreign affairs cell and came close to Gandhi between 1937 and 1948 and also to Nehru.

He was jailed many times, starting in 1939. He worked on clandestine publications after 1942, and tried organising people in the Goa liberation movement. And after his release from jail in 1946, Lohia went to Chittagong on August 16, the bloody Direct Action Day, and made a case against Partition, angering the Muslim League.

In March 1948, after Gandhi’s assassination, Lohia and friends pulled the CSP out of the Congress and started opposing Nehru’s government. At least three arrests followed, for opposing a princely state in MP, trying to organise Karnataka peasants and protesting “Nepal Day”.

Lohia contested the first parliamentary elections in 1952 with his Socialist Party but lost heavily. Later that year, Acharya Kripalani’s party the KMPP merged with the SP and the Praja Socialist Party came about, with Lohia as general secretary.

In 1954, after firing under the PSP government of Travancore-Kochi killed some people, Lohia urged CM

P T Pillai to step down. Pillai refused, and Lohia quit his party post instead.

When the Congress, in its Avadi session of 1955, appeared to be moving closer to socialist ideals, some PSP leaders such as Asoka Mehta argued they should support the government. Differences over this led to Lohia being suspended and he decided to revive the SP.

So, while forming a “grand alliance” against the Congress has been the always stated socialist objective, the socialist parties have since their early days been characterised by endless splits rather than that idea of a grand alliance.

Writer, speaker, thinker

Lohia is remembered for his debates in the House, his prolific writings, opposition to many of Nehru’s policies, openly mocking Indira Gandhi as “goongi gudiya”, and the many party journals he edited.

He advocated reservation up to 60 per cent for backward and depressed castes, irrespective of “merit”. His dislike for English as an instrument of oppression influenced most north Indian socialist parties, shaping their long-standing stance on that language.

Jayaprakash Narayan or JP, who stayed out of politics for decades, is said to have been persuaded by Lohia to intervene in politics. Little is known of those conversations, one of Lohia’s last major engagements, but JP eventually became the fulcrum for the “grand coalition” against Indira and the call for “Total Revolution”.

Source:: Indian Express