1962 - 1970
Musahari Experiment & Bangladesh

• Musahari Experiment
• Bangladesh

On 31May 1070, JP went to Pauri in Uttarakhand. The Naxalites were active in the district of Muzaffarpur in Bihar. The Naxalites had served two of his colleagues Shri Badri Narayan Sinha and Shri Gopalji Mishra, President and Secretary respectively of the District Sarvodaya Mandal with notice of death on 5 and 7 June.

JP decided that he would demonstrate through positive action how the challenge could be used to speed up the process f “non-violent social change”. On 6th June, is a press statement he said: “Naxalism is primarily a social, economic, political and administrative problem and only secondarily a law-and-order question”. He was against “arrest, imprisonments and shootings of Naxalites. On the contrary he said that “The failure to implement the existing reform laws for such a protracted period of time has inevitably led to the growth of the rural violence….It is not the so-called Naxalites who have fathered this violence, but those who have persistently defiled and defeated the reform laws for the past so many years….”

The press and radio dramatized the development and said that JP had accepted the challenge of the Naxalites and decided to fight them. Press was so keen on the drama that when three days after JP’s arrival at Muzaffarpur, a murder took place in the Musahari village, the press called it “an answer to Jayprakash Narayan” and at least one report discovered in the dead man a Sarvodaya worker. Once when JP’s car met with an ordinary road accident the press saw it as a deliberate attempt on his life.

JP has written himself that this for him was in no way a challenge, and that this was no fight against any one. If at all it was a fight for social and economic justice. He went on to say that as claimed by many Sarvodaya journals, this was also not any revolutionary program. If the attempt to release these workers was to succeed it would merely prove to be a humble step towards peaceful and constructive social revolution.

For JP wrote, “..such danger to our lives appeared to me as God-send.” For some time he was feeling that the movement was loosing its fire, and that the workers were becoming stale and flabby in spirit. Work had turned bland and it involved no personal danger, nor did it demand any great sacrifice. In early May, in reply to a letter written by Shri Ayub Khan of the Gandhi Peace Foundation Centre of Jamshedpur, mentioning a crude bomb on Gandhiji’s picture he said, “..we should rather feel happy that the advocates of bloody revolution should find such power in Gandhiji’s ideas and fear them so much that they should want to erase his very memory. Indeed the more it is attempted to destroy it, the brighter and purer it shines forth….when we have to work at the risk of our lives, we shall be purified, water and milk shall be separated and our mettle shall shine brightly.”

It was this though process that urged JP in an immediate action and he joined the threatened men and shared their danger. His mind insisted that the Naxalite threat was an urgent call to demonstrate through positive action how the challenge of violence could be used to speed up the process of non-violent social change and reconstruction that Vinoba ji had initiated through his Gramdan- Gram Swaraj movement.

JP firmly believed that as far as law and order aspect of Naxalism was concerned, it is solely the concern of solely the government, which has authority, duty and resources to protect the lives and property of the citizens. And that any encouragement to organized private armed resistance to Naxalism, especially in the context of a weak government, is fraught with the danger of eventual escalation into civil war. And yet he continued to emphasize again and again that no amount of arrests, imprisonments and shootings can put down Naxalism or any kind of revolutionary violence, unless at the same time the remedy is applied to the roots. And he believed that to do this latter effort, the government, political parties, social and Gandhian workers can all make a significant contribution.

Then, Musahari was one of the 40 CD Blocks in Muzaffarpur. There were 17 village Panchayats in the block and 121 revenue villages. Musahari had a relatively high percentage of agricultural labour population. The agricultural labourer families were 39.2 per cent of the total rural population in this bloc compared to only 33.3 per cent for the whole district. Proportion of other landless labourers and their families to the total rural population was estimated to be no less than 45 per cent. Other facts like poor land-man ratio, uncommon dominance of the landowning families, exceptionally low wages, especially of the “attached” labourers, high unemployment, extreme poverty resulted in general climate of discontent. This was also the cause of general backwardness, lack of education and agriculture development, or political consciousness. Proximity of the town had all its negative influences like litigation, liquor, decay of community life etc. After four month of stay in this Block, these recordings were made by JP himself.

JP started intensive work in the block along with his Sarvoday workers. This involved house-to-house visit, often more than once. He would address small gatherings, either in the small hamlets or in some private homes of the villages. He would also address the youth in the youth camps organized by the workers. The local administration was co-operative. While he had done intensive village level work before, but this time was different. It was intensive in limited area and for indefinite period. While he loved the village life but he also accepted that “the socio-economic reality in the village is, on close examination, ugly and distressing in the extreme.” He realized that how unreal and remote the pronouncements made from Delhi and Patna were from the ground level realities. All or most of them remained suspended somewhere is mid-air. He wrote that , .. “one only has to look closely to discover to what extent these laws obstinately continue to remain on paper and how some of them, like those relating to share-cropping, minimum wages, money lending etc, are likely to remain there irrespective of whatever the administration might do. The benefit of these laws will not accrue to those for whom they are meant unless there is a change brought about in the people’s attitude of mind and in their values of life, and unless the village community comes to be organized and run more democratically, so that the balance of power in the community, which tilts deeply at present to the side of the landed and moneyed interest, comes to be held evenly by all the interests in the village.

He noted that the growth of politically motivated rural violence was worrisome and that at least a part of this violence was artificially created in pursuance of a political ideology. And yet he did not lose the sight that this violence would never have taken root had not the ground been prepared for it by persistence of poverty, unemployment and myriad of socio-economic injustices. He categorically said that, “It is not the so called Naxalites who have fathered this violence, but those who have persistently defied and defeated the reform laws for the past many years- be they politicians, administrators, land-owners, or money-lenders….Also responsible are the courts of law where the procedures and costs of justice have conspired to deny a fair deal to the weaker sections of our society. Responsible again is the system of education …that is producing an ever-expanding army of ill-educated, frustrated, and unemployed youth, and which accentuates economic disparities and leads to further polarization of classes.” Hence, he said it was understandable that some minds turned towards violence as the only possible savior.

Going forward he explained such minds the futility of violent reaction to such situation. He gave example of numerous violent movements whole sheen had come off and eventually led to disenchantment to its participants. He pointed out that it was not necessary that a violent revolutionary movement will always lead to social revolution. There was a very real chance that such movements turn reactionary and end up in a fascist dictatorship, or in a chaos, mass misery, disintegration and enslavement of the nation.

Thus, he makes a case that when democracy is found wanting and violence offers no solution then the only way is to go back to Gandhi ji. Gandhiji was already aware of the futility of violence and inherent limitations of democratic State. He was clear in his mind that the state could never be the sole instrument for creating the India of his dreams. While he wanted the State to be in the best hands available, he saw clearly that even with the best of policies and the best of men in command, the State by itself cannot deliver the goods. And hence he envisioned the power of people alongside the power of the State. Accordingly, he was preparing to go back to the people along with a large band of revolutionary workers, to serve the people, to educate and change them, to organize them, and set them up on their feet, to involve them directly in the process of social change and reconstruction. Gandhiji did not live to carry out his plan. After him had his erstwhile colleagues divided their force between the State and the people, as Gandhiji wanted, the history of post-independent India would have been very different. Unfortunately, Gandhiji’s prescription was so radically different from the traditional way that it made no sense or has any appeal to the leaders of Independent India. It was unthinkable for the successful revolutionaries to denounce power and attempt to realize the aims of their revolution !