BJP vs Opposition over JP’s legacy

On Tuesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, targeting Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, said those who call themselves the disciples of socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) have betrayed his socialist ideals by sitting in the lap of the Congress.

Opposition leaders and experts on socialist politics pointed to Shah’s poor grasp of history. Nitish Kumar asked where Shah was during the anti-Emergency struggle.

The occasion was JP’s 120th birth anniversary. Shah unveiled a 15-feet statue of the freedom fighter at his birthplace in Sitab Diara, a village in Bihar’s Saran district.

Shah recalled JP’s slogan of ‘total revolution’. Without mentioning Nitish Kumar’s name, Shah said he has changed sides five times for power and sitting in the lap of the same Congress against which JP fought all his life.

Nitish Kumar paid his respects to JP in Patna and Nagaland. “JP had spent three years in the northeast from 1964, and people still remember him there,” Kumar said, dismissing questions that BJP was trying to appropriate JP’s legacy. “Where was Amit Shah during the anti-Emergency struggle,” the Bihar CM asked.

In a tweet, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh pointed out that JP was a key founder of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934. “Once attracted to Marxism and critical of Gandhi, he became a stalwart Gandhian. He shared a very warm relationship with Nehru, whom he addressed as Bhai,” Ramesh said.

Alluding to when Nehru had requested JP to return to the Congress, Ramesh said, “Nehru saw him as his successor in the 1950s, but that was not to be.” “All this is important to recall since it is only JP’s confrontation with Indira Gandhi (Indu to him) that gets highlighted by the PM,” Ramesh said.

Former JNU professor Anand Kumar said the socialist leader would have launched his ‘total revolution’ to fight to protect individual freedom and freedom to dissent, just as he did in 1974. Anand Kumar said JP was beyond party politics, believed in nation-building, and mentored people from all ideological hues, including EMS Namboodiripad, Chandra Shekhar and those from the Sangh Parivar.

A JDU leader said 2015 was the last time BJP top leadership marked JP’s birth anniversary with fanfare at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan as it was nervous about the Bihar Assembly polls against the united might of JDU, RJD and Congress.

“It is again nervous with these forces coming together, which is why Shah went to JP’s village to unveil the statue,” he said.