Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, 1966–74: Before the Rivalry

Abstract

When the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) gave the clarion call of Total Revolution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded heavy-handedly by imposing the Emergency in India in 1974–5. This all-encompassing duel has dominated politics and political scholarship since. Their domestic clash has established many analytical prisms for the contemporary public sphere in India, particularly personality politics versus people’s power, single party versus coalition grouping, electoral democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship, and student/youth movements versus generational status quo. Simultaneously, it has also highlighted their differences in a way that has served to bury their affinities and agreements—not only on obscure matters. This article seeks to soften this dichotomy on the basis of their correspondence, and complemented by other primary material, to sketch their consensus in an earlier period. It shows that before their break, the socialist JP and the statist Indira Gandhi exhibited complementary stands on national issues regarding Nagaland, Kashmir and Bangladesh. This national nearness complicates their later adversarial politics on domestic issues, adds dimension to our understanding of the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, and contributes to contemporary understandings of their respective places in narratives of the state against society in India.