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ABSTRACT
This article will argue that during the 1950s and 1960s a battle over the meanings of socialism took place in India. Exploring the ways in which the contending conceptions of socialism defended by Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan intersected and drifted apart during these decades, and the ways in which these were shaped in response to the gradual adoption of socialism by the Nehruvian state, it will be shown that during these years socialism emerged at the same time as a central part of the roadmap for socioeconomic development of the national state as well as a central category for doctrines and practices of protest and contestation. For this, it will focus on Narayan’s insistence on a politics of the people, or lok niti, and his equating of socialism and Sarvodaya, as well as on Lohia’s doctrine of equal equidistance and his critique of Third Worldism and the Nehruvian state. Moreover, it will be argued that this battle over meanings crated a space for the emergence of original conceptions of socialism wholly unrelated to anything known elsewhere by that name, and inaugurated a set of political trajectories central to the contemporary political horizon in India.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Swapna Kona Nayudu for her generous enthusiasm and careful reading of early drafts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Daniel Kent-Carrasco is a historian based in Mexico, specializing in the intellectual and political history of South Asia, Latin America and links between regions of the Third World.
Notes
1. Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism, 1.
2. Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba.”
3. Nehru, “Speech at the All India Congress Committee,” in Ghose, Socialism and Communism in India, 206.
4. Chakrabarty, “Legacies of Bandung.”
5. Narayan, “To Students. 1943,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 3, 135.
6. Cited in Scarfe and Scarfe, J.P. His Biography, 52.
7. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Oral History Archives, cited in Jani, “Bihar, California and the US Midwest,” 163.
8. Narayan, “The Task Before Us,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 2, 205.
9. Narayan, “Speech at a meeting of Muslims,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 4, 193.
10. Narayan, “Letter to the General Secretary of the AICC,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 1, 70.
11. Narayan, “Comment on Vallabhbhai Patel’s Speech,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 1, 69.
12. Narayan, “Why Socialism?” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 2, 50–62.
13. Narayan, “In the Lahore Fort,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 3, 195.
14. Narayan, “The A.I.C.C Session.”
15. Narayan, “Annual Report of the General Secretary,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 4, 236.
16. Ibid., 241.
17. Ibid., 240.
18. Narayan, “Reply to the debate,” in, Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 4, 246.
19. Narayan, “The Fast,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 6, 251.
20. Scarfe and Scarfe, J.P. His Biography, 273.
21. JP’s first use of the term is found in “Jeevandan,” published in Janata, 27 June 1954.
22. Narayan, “The Fast,” 251.
23. Ibid., 245.
24. Ibid., 247.
25. Ibid., 251.
26. Anonymous, “Indian Communists. Reports from 21 November 1922 to 10 May 1923” in Zentrum Moderner Orient, Krüger Nachlass Annex, Berlin (ZMO-A): Item 41, in Manjapra, M. N. Roy, 76.
27. Mirza, Welcome Each, xii, in Oesterheld, “Lohia as a Doctoral Student in Berlin,” 86.
28. Scarfe and Scarfe, J.P. His Biography, 59–60.
29. Oesterheld, “Lohia as a Doctoral Student in Berlin,” 86.
30. Narayan, “Cultural Variation,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 1, 1–40.
31. Oesterheld, “Lohia as a Doctoral Student in Berlin.”
32. Kelkar, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, 77.
33. Limaye, Galaxy of the Indian Socialist Leaders, 85. Parenthesis in original.
34. Election Commision of India, “Statistical Report on General Elections.”
35. Lohia was an important figure of the Praja Socialist Party (1952) and the Samyukta Socialist Party (1964). For more on the trajectories of these parties see Fickett Jr., “The Major Socialist Parties of India” and “The Praja Socialist Party of India.”
36. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, 245.
37. Ibid., 16.
38. Ibid., 26.
39. Lohia, Wheel of History, 23.
40. Lohia, Interval During Politics, 94.
41. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, 109.
42. Lohia, “Revolution Arrested,” 53.
43. Ibid., 52.
44. Lohia, “Caste,” 30.
45. Lohia, “Presidential Address at the Pachmarhi Convention,” 479.
46. Lohia, “On Hidden Imperialisms,” 49.
47. Ibid., 114.
48. Narayan, “A Plea for Reconstruction,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 7, 489.
49. Narayan, “Panchayati Raj and Democracy,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 9, 34.
50. Narayan, “A Pea for Reconstruction,” 441.
51. Lohia, Wheel of History, 82.
52. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, iii.
53. Lohia, “Presidential Address at the Pachmarhi Convention,” 475.
54. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, 24.
55. Ibid., 50.
56. Ibid., 204.
57. Basole, “The Technology Question in Lohia” and Tolpadi, “Context, Discourse and Vision.”
58. Narayan, “A Plea for Reconstruction,” 451.
59. Narayan, “From Socialism to Sarvodaya,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 7, 227–9.
60. For more on different narratives of revolution during the second half of the twentieth century, see Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 70.
61. Kumar, “Understanding Lohia’s Political Sociology.”
62. Lohia, The Caste System, in Kumar, “Understanding Lohia’s Political Sociology,” 65.
63. Lohia, Wheel of History, 106.
64. Chakrabarty, “In the Name of Politics.”
65. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, xxv.
66. Lohia, The Caste System, 1–3.
67. Lohia, Wheel of History, 28.
68. Ibid., 42–3.
69. Lohia, The Caste System.
70. Lohia, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism, xxx–xxxx.
71. Lohia, “Revolution Arrested,” 51.
72. Narayan, “From Socialism to Sarvodaya,” 245.
73. Nehru, “Students and Discipline,” in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by Sarvepalli Gopal, Second Series: Vol. 29, 83.
74. Narayan, “Presidential Address at the Second Convention,” in Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, Vol. 4, 200.
75. Nehru, Glimpses of World History, 6.
76. Patel and McMichael, “Third Worldism and the Lineages of Global Fascism.”
77. See, for example, de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South.
78. For a revision of related theoretical and political changes in radical politics after the 1970s, see Moyn, The Last Utopia and Zamora and Behrent, Foucault and Neoliberalism.