Total Revolution

Origin of the concept of Total Revolution lie deeply embedded in Gandhi’s teachings and is a further extension of Gandhi’s thought on socio-economic problems and technique of change in the context of modern reality. Jayaprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution is a grand vision of individual, state and society. Behind this vision lies an understanding of our entire experience of more than two hundred years of industrial development.

The most common definitions of revolution have laid emphasis on a structural and institutional transformation in the existing social relationship and institutional bases of the society. The other definitions of revolution include change in the leadership (elite) component of the government, changes brought about by legal/constitutional means, and finally violent acts. This analysis clearly spells out that any one dimension of change may mean a revolutionary change – be it a change in the dominant values of the community or its social structure, institutional, leadership or elite component, or legal or violent change.

Social change in the Gandhian paradigm is a very comprehensive and inclusive term. According to Gandhi, a partial change in any one component of the social matrix is likely to produce disequilibrium in society. Society, therefore, will tend to move towards a state of constant instability. To avoid that an all-round change is needed. By an all-round change Gandhi did not mean only a change in the social framework but also a qualitative change in the behavior-attitude-values of the individual. Gandhi’s primary emphasis was that an individual wanting to change the society must first of all change self. But his revolution was not limited to a change in individual’s lifestyle, thought-structure, and behavior-pattern only. Thus, together with a revolution in the individual, society must also change.

Total Revolution, as a concept, was formally put forward by Jayaprakash Narayan for the first time in Patna on June 5, 1974, in the wake of Bihar Movement. In a public meeting at Gandhi Maidan, Jayaprakash Narayan declared that the struggle was not going to be limited to securing the demands of the students, including the resignation of the Minister and the dissolution of the Assembly in Bihar, but would aim at bringing about a Total Revolution or Sampoorna Kranti, which alone could solve the urgent problems of the country and usher in a new society.

However, the idea was implicit in many of Gandhi’s writings and speeches. Vinoba expanded the idea further. As early as 1951, he declared: “My aim is to bring about a three-fold revolution. First, I want a change in people’s hearts; secondly, I want to create a change in their lives; and thirdly, I want to change the social structure.” It has been aptly observed in a recent study that JP’s movement for Total Revolution was a ‘continuation of the preceding movement for non-violent revolution through Bhoodan and Gramdan’. JP himself justified it: “There is hardly any difference between Sarvodaya and Total Revolution. If there is any, then Sarvodaya is the goal and Total Revolution the means. Total Revolution is basic change in all aspects of life. There cannot be Sarvodaya without this”.

Like Gandhi, JP also stressed that individual change cannot be regarded as the be-all and end-all. On the other hand, it is the morally transformed individuals who would activate the process of change. To put it differently, societal change is not to wait until all individuals in the society change. On the contrary, the transformed individual and the social framework are to interact so that it can lead to an all-round change. A process of simultaneous change is therefore the prerequisite for a society expecting a revolution.

The Component of Total Revolution

There are seven components of Total Revolution – social, economic, political, cultural, ideological/ intellectual, educational, and spiritual. These numbers may be increased or decreased. JP himself thought that the cultural revolution could include educational and ideological. Similarly, social revolution, according to him, in the Marxian sense can cover economic and political revolutions and even more than that.

Cultural: JP used the term culture in a very comprehensive sense. It connotes individual and group behaviour. At a purely personal or group level, cultural revolution invokes a change in the moral values held by the individual or the group. In any debate of moral values, therefore, ends and means must enter. It is in regard to the ends – means problem that JP, following Gandhi, has been very insistent.

A change in regard to the ends – means relationship both in the individual and group life is bound to produce a corresponding change in the belief system, that is, the ideology of either the individual or the group. A new ideological revolution, therefore, is bound to ensure if the organic relationship between ends and means is accepted. As a natural corollary to this, an intellectual revolution cannot be avoided; for the entire ends-and- means approach in the context of Gandhian thought must give a new outlook to the individual or the group to view things around them. And this is what JP means by intellectual revolution.

The most important variable in the cultural change is education. According to JP, education must be a powerful element of social change and it should be closely linked to national development. It should be biased in favour of the masses rather than in favour of the upper classes. It must create a new kind of awareness among the submerged and weaker sections of our society, so that they feel fully integrated with the society.

Social-Economical: Unlike rest of the world, in the Indian context, the term ‘social’ has a distinctive character. Due to caste divisions, rituals, hierarchy, modes of inter-caste communication, sense of pollution, marriage norms and practices, social distance, and informal rules of behaviour have grown over thousands of years. The task of Total Revolution in this sense has to break the caste barriers. And, in order to do so, Total Revolution must evolve new norms and practices replacing those based on caste. Inter-caste dining, abolition of dowry system, archaic marriage rules and regulations – all must enter the area of Total Revolution. It is in this sense that the social content of Total Revolution assumes quite an independent dimension.

But Total Revolution must go hand in hand with economic revolution. JP only carried Gandhi’s thinking further to embrace every detail of economic life. ‘Economic relationship’, JP recorded in his Prison Diary, “includes technological, industrial, and agricultural revolutions, accompanied by a radical change in the pattern of ownership and management”. The industrial-technological structure of the economy has two major facets, namely (i) the ownership pattern, and (ii) the size of technology. The model of industrial-technological development has (a) diversified ownership pattern of the self-employed individual, groups of families, registered cooperatives, gram sabhas, block samitis, zilla parishads and only in the end, the state (b) labour – intensive small techniques linked largely with agriculture in place of capital intensive technology with the provision that, where the latter becomes inevitable, it should be placed under State ownership. Such large-scale industries are conceived only as feeders to small units so that they do not devour the former as has happened in the wake of technological revolution.

Political: In the sphere of political revolution JP follows Gandhi. Gandhi visualized power rising from the grassroots and reaching the top which remained nothing more than a coordinating body. Such a view of polity was different from those in practice either in democratic systems or the communist countries. In other words, if power was shared among different echelons of the social structure starting from, say, the village upward, the danger of centralization could very well be avoided. Emphasis is always on decentralization.

JP followed the same line of thinking in his approach to the reconstitution of power from the base. His thinking on polity in the present context had two distinctive features. Firstly, he raised substantive issues in regard to the whole polity as is prevalent today; and secondly, pending the reorganization of the polity along his substantive formulations, he advocated reform in the present political system.

His vision of a party less democracy, reorganization of the power structure from below, institution of an altogether different mode of election to the new representative bodies and other suggestions fall under the first. In the second category, he visualized reforms in the parliamentary system.

As a Conclusion one can say that Total Revolution is a combination of seven revolutions – social, economic, political, cultural, ideological or intellectual, educational and spiritual. This Revolution will always go on and keep on changing both our personal and social lives. It knows no respite, no halt, certainly not a complete halt. It is a permanent revolution and is expected to move on towards higher and higher goals.