Jayaprakash Narayan’s Theory

of Total Revolution.
• The germs of the concept of Total Revolution lie deeply embedded in Gandhi’s
teachings to which Jayaprakash Narayan
• Infact, Total Revolution is a further extension of Gandhi’s thought on socio-economic
problems and technique of change in the context of contemporary social, economic
and political reality.
• The journey of Jayaprakash Narayan from Marxism to Gandhism resulted in Total
Revolution
• Jayaprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution is a grand vision of individual, state and
society.
• It is based upon Gandhi’s basic postulates and it envisages non-violent methods of
changing society with non-violent techniques.
• Total Revolution is an all-enveloping process of change in the individual as well as in
the society.
• The primary emphasis is on moral values, decentralisation of economic and political
power and insistence on non-violent means to achieve good ends.
 Concept of Total Revolution
• The most common definitions of revolution have laid emphasis on a structural and
institutional transformation in the existing social relationship and institutional
bases of the society.
• Total Revolution is a further extension of the Gandhian approach to social change.
• Social change in the Gandhian paradigm is a very comprehensive and inclusive
term.
• Gandhi’s primary emphasis was that an individual wanting to change the society
must first of all change himself.
• Gandhi’s revolution was evolutionary and a process of purification.
• Gandhi talked of changing the society, he conceived of far-reaching and novel
changes in the entire social organisation which consisted of the economy, polity,
technique of production, personnel system of both the polity and economy, and,
above all, the means to be adopted for effecting the change.
• Total Revolution, as a concept, was put forward by Jayaprakash Narayan (at
times referred to as JP) in the wake of Bihar Movement in Patna on June 5,
1974.
• In a public meeting at Gandhi Maidan, Jayaprakash Narayan declared that the
struggle was not going to be limited to securing the demands of the students,
including the resignation of the Minister and the dissolution of the Assembly in
Bihar, but would aim at bringing about a Total Revolution or Sampoorna
Kranti, which alone could solve the urgent problems of the country and usher
in a new society.
• Total Revolution signifies a radical transformation not merely of our material
conditions but also of the moral character of the individuals
• JP conceived of a revolutionary in terms of not only commitment to the cause
of revolution but also his own lifestyle and attitudinal structure.
• He was, no doubt, a ‘professional’ revolutionary, but in him both profession
and practice (vichar and aachar) found a happy blending.
• He practised what he preached and preached what he practised.
 The Component of Total Revolution
• There are seven components of Total Revolution – social, economic, political,
cultural, ideological, intellectual, educational, and spiritual.
• For proper analysis these seven components may be rearranged in the
following manner: (a) cultural, which includes spiritual – moral, ideological,
intellectual, and educational; (b) social-economic; and (c) political.
1. Cultural
• It connotes individual and group behaviour.
• At a purely personal or group level, cultural revolution invokes a change in the
moral values held by the individual or the group.
• In any debate of moral values, therefore, ends and means must enter.
The most important variable in the cultural change is education.
• It should be biased in favour of the masses rather than in favour of the upper classes.
It must create a new kind of awareness among the submerged and weaker sections of
our society, so that they feel fully integrated with the society.
He had suggested the following changes in the present system:
(i) One-third to one-half of the working time in all educational institutions at all stages
should be devoted to active participation in the programmes of social service and
national development.
(ii) A large part of non-formal education should be introduced in the system. Part-time
education and correspondence courses must be expanded at the secondary and
university stages.
(iii) A large part of our budget on education benefits the upper classes with the result
that the masses are left out. Such an imbalance must be corrected if social justice is to
be the objective of our educational policies, with this end in view, three programmes
must be given top priority, namely (i) adult education; (ii) a non-formal education of
less than six hours a week to all out-of-school youths in the age-group of 15-26; and
lastly (iii) universalisation of elementary education for all children.
Turning to secondary education, JP’s scheme envisaged a thorough change in the
system.
• First, higher institutions should not be permitted to proliferate leading to a fall in
the standards.
• Secondly, strict criteria should be laid down regarding recognition, affiliation,
and financial assistance to be given to the institutions of higher education.
• Thirdly, adequate fees should be charged in these institutions while making
allowance for liberal grant of free studentships and scholarships to deserving
candidates.
• Fourthly, the emphasis in higher education should be on quality rather than
quantity.
• Fifthly, the entire slant of education should be towards vocationalisation and
diversion of students into work at various stages.
• And, lastly but most importantly, degrees must be delinked from employment.
JP’s recommendations seek to lay the foundation of a more viable, meaningful,
and purposeful system of education.
2. Social-Economical:
• As JP stated, ‘social’ in the Marxian sense also includes ‘economic’. A social
revolution, therefore, is basically an economic revolution in the Marxian
formulation.
• In the Indian context, the term ‘social’ has a distinctive character, due to caste
divisions,
• The task of Total Revolution in this sense is iconoclastic. It has to break the
caste barriers. And, in order to do so, Total Revolution must evolve new norms
and practices replacing those based on caste.
• Inter-caste dining, abolition of dowry system, archaic marriage rules and
regulations – all must enter the area of Total Revolution.
• It is in this sense that the social content of Total Revolution assumes quite an
independent dimension.
• But Total Revolution must go hand in hand with economic revolution.
• JP only carried Gandhi’s thinking further to embrace every detail of economic life.
• ‘Economic relationship’, JP recorded in his Prison Diary, “includes technological,
industrial, and agricultural revolutions, accompanied by a radical change in the pattern
of ownership and management”.
• The model of industrial-technological development that he has in mind consists of a
number of elements.
• They are (a) diversified ownership pattern of the self-employed individual, groups of
families, registered cooperatives, gram sabhas, block samitis, zilla parishads and only in
the end, the state
• (b) labour – intensive small techniques linked largely with agriculture in place of capital
intensive technology with the provision that, where the latter becomes inevitable, it
should be placed under State ownership.
• JP agitated for “land to the tillers”. The primary emphasis in regard to land reform,
therefore, is on the ownership of land by those who cultivate it, adequate wages for the
landless, poor, and effective implementation of existing laws relating to ceiling, eviction,
share-cropping, and homestead land.
3. Political:
• In the sphere of political revolution JP follows Gandhi.
• Gandhi visualised power rising from the grassroots and reaching the top which
remained nothing more than a coordinating body.
• Such a view of polity was different from those in practice either in democratic
systems or the communist countries.
• In other words, if power was shared among different echelons of the social
structure starting from, say, the village upward, the danger of centralisation
could very well be avoided.
• Centralisation, either of political or of economic power, was what Gandhi
dreaded most. He, therefore, laid emphasis on decentralisation
• His vision of a partyless democracy, reorganisation of the power structure from
below, institution of an altogether different mode of election to the new
representative bodies and other suggestions fall under the first.
• In plea for Reconstruction of Indian Polity, JP rejected the western model
of democracy on the ground that it did not give full scope to the people to
participate in the management of their affairs and is based on an atomised
view of society, the state being an inorganic sum of individuals.
• In its place he pleaded for a model of democracy, based on an integrated
concept of society and providing the fullest possible scope to the
individual to participate in the management of his affairs, without the
intermediation of political parties.
• The latter, according to JP, functioned without any control over them by
the people or even by their own numbers and were the source of many
evils.
• It was not, however, the party system that was the main culprit, but
parliamentary democracy, which lay at its back and which could not work
without it.
 Mode of Action
• There are three broad categories of action that JP has underscored.
• First, it should now be clear to everyone that in JP’s scheme, the usual
constitutional devices are not adequate.
• A democratic political system is more likely to degenerate in the interval
between two elections which may necessitate the launching of a direct
non-violent action.
• The regime might become corrupt and inefficient.
• It may increasingly lead to the concentration of power in the hands of one or
a few persons, thereby rendering it more and more authoritarian.
• Its capacity to respond to the needs and aspirations of the people may be
eroded over time.
• In such a situation, JP would not advise people to wait for the next election.
• On the contrary, he would exhort people to resort to nonviolent action.
• Secondly, JP suggested the formation of people’s committees at the grassroots.
These people’s committees were conceived of as organs of people’s power.
• They had, therefore, a two-fold function.
• They were supposed to mobilise the energies of the people into constructive
channels. It is in this constructive role that JP visualised a healthy inter-action
between the power of the people and the state power. In other words, Jan Shakti
and Rajya Shakti (People’s power and State power) are supposed to supplement
each other.
• Another function that JP suggested for the people’s committees is to resist the
injustices and tyrannies of the State, individual, or a group of individuals.
Nonviolence, as an extra-constitutional weapon, was to be involved. He
cautioned against its indiscriminate use. It can be resorted to only when all
channels as prescribed under democratic system are blocked and no other
course is left open
• Thirdly, JP advocated class struggle.
• According to JP, caste and class largely tend to overlap, both sociologically and economically.
• Gandhi said that nonviolence can be used as a weapon to resist every form of injustice and
tyranny in a society. Indian society is a stratified society and nonviolence here assumes the
form of a struggle between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.
• The only difference with the Marxian class-struggle is that by calling upon to resist injustice
and tyranny, the appeal is lifted to a moral plane. It is not an appeal to the economic interests of
the ‘have-nots’ but a more poignant appeal to choose between good and evil, justice and
injustice, truth and untruth.
• Gandhi’s most original and unconventional contribution to the dynamics of social change lies
in this sphere.
• Nonviolence involves self-suffering. Self-suffering blunts anger and aims at arousing the moral
sensibilities in both the parties involved in the dispute.
• Violence as a dynamics of class struggle invariably leads to animosity which, if victorious,
largely perpetuates itself.
• It is only in this sense that JP propounded his theory of class struggle.
• This is one of the many forms of action that JP suggested in order to usher in a Total
Revolution.