Ram Manohar
Lohia: An Appreciation
by
Gopal Krishna (An Extract)
In Indian political life Lohia belonged to a
lost generation – the generation that came into the national movement in the
early thirties. These men played a creditable role in the movement but were too
young to claim a share in power immediately after Independence, and by the time
conditions were propitious for change of leadership they were too old.
During the last years of his life Lohia’s
non-conformism received greater notice than his many insights into the processes
of history and politics.
To be a non-conformist is a rare enough virtue
in a conformist society such as ours, but there was a great deal more to
Rammanohar Lohia; he embodied some noble aspirations for his country and
represented an important strand of opinion in Indian political life. And in the
socialist movement, his was the decisive influence at many critical turning
points.
CONSCIENCE–KEEPER OF
SOCIALISM
Rammanohar Lohia was one of the founders of
the Indian socialist movement and was acknowledged as the most lively and
thoughtful among its leaders. I did not know him well and was not among his
ardent followers. But those of us who were drawn to the socialist movement
after Independence were impressed by the quality of his intelligence, his
imagination, his passion for equality and hatred of the inequities of Indian society....He
laboured under a strong sense that the cause of Indian unity and of socialism
had been betrayed by the leadership and he took on himself the heroic, if
unpleasant, role of a conscience-keeper of public life, on the alert to
denounce corruption and deviations.
Lohia saw himself as an upright and
uncompromising non-conformist, sensitive to human distress, and playing the
role of an accusing prophet in an unjust society. This was his estimate of
himself, and the basis on which he wished to be accepted by his contemporaries.
COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY
In converting the pre-Independence
revolutionary outlook of Indian socialism into a democratic commitment which
abjured violence in domestic affairs Lohia made a substantial contribution.
He argued that plural societies could not
afford to rely on violence in handling internal conflicts without risking their
own, dissolution, while democratic rights opened up the channels of
participation to the hitherto dis-enfranchised strata of the population.
Lohia’s attitude to the West, especially to
Europe, was mixed. He admired much in the European achievement, especially the
European’s sense of order, freedom and dignity; and he had no use for vulgar
denunciations of Europe. He shared the socialist aspiration for a world order
based on the principle of international brotherhood. But at the same time he
saw recent history as a struggle for supremacy between nations, continents and
civilisations in which Europe had always been the oppressor.
On Indian foreign policy Lohia’s ideas were
grounded in his assessment of the interests of the country, the threats it
faced and the possibilities open to it. He saw its principal objectives as
preserving the freedom of the newly-independent countries, establishing
channels of co-operation between them and securing an effective voice for them
in world affairs. Nearer home this meant creating closer relations with India’s
neighbours and taking steps towards linking India and Pakistan in a new
association. The emergence of communist China as an aggressive power on the
frontiers of India led him to demand a properly-conceived Himalayan policy to
preserve the independence of India’s neighbours long before the Indian
government acknowledged the new danger. Lohia’s passionate devotion to Asia did
not lead him into the error of overlooking the threat that communist China
could present to the non-communist countries of South and South-East Asia. I
have the impression that when he talked of Asia Lohia thought mainly of that
part of it which had been influenced by Indian civilisation; it was ‘Greater
India’ that was central to his idea of Asia.
India-Pakistan relations occupied his mind
throughout the two decades between Partition and his death last year. He had
opposed partition and despite the mounting hostility between India and Pakistan
he believed that the separation of 1947 was not irrevocable and remained firmly
committed to the goal of a confederation.
The defeat of the Socialist Party was due to
its failure to organise mass support. Lohia proposed to remove this deficiency
by organising the disinherited strata of Indian society – women, Sudras,
Harijans, Muslims and Adivasis, who between them constituted the great majority
of the population – to constitute the basis of his Party’s support. This was a
long-term plan and required patient effort.
He was deeply committed to freedom everywhere
and his interventions in the freedom struggle in Goa and in the democratic
movement in Nepal were characteristic evidence of his concern.
The source of his inspiration were diverse,
but the deepest of them must have been the culture and history of India.
Rammanohar Lohia’s political life had a basic
consistency. All his endeavours were marked by a passion to build up the
people’s capacity to compel accountability from those in authority. In his
unrelenting campaign against complacency and hypocrisy, he upheld the tradition
of dissent in a climate of conformity.
