Jai Prakash (JP) movement/total revolution
The JP movement was one of the significant movements in India’s political life after independence. Jayprakash Narayan drew on the enormous discontent prevalent in the country to force a movement.
Jay Prakash Narayan, popularly known as JP or ‘Loknayak’ was an eminent personality in India’s Freedom Movement.
JP launched the ‘Bihar Movement’, started by the students in Bihar in 1974, where he provided perfect leadership to these students. This agitation was inspired by the student protest in Gujarat.
On 5th June 1974, addressing a mammoth gathering of 5 lakh people in Gandhi Maidan at Patna, he launched the revolutionary programme called Total Revolution (Sampoorna Kranti) against immense corruption, economic crisis and inflation.
During the JP Movement, people set up parallel governments all over the state, didn’t pay the taxes etc.
The JP Movement attracted wide support from students, middle classes, traders, and a section of the intelligentsia.
The JP Movement also got the backing of nearly all the non-left political parties. The movement attracted wide support from students, middle classes, traders, and a section of the intelligentsia.
The JP movement quickly spread to other parts of the country – this was mainly because it drew upon the widely held feeling that only a shift in power and a new beginning to India’s political life could save India’s democracy.
However, by the end of 1974, The JP Movements’ fervour got down because of the absence of organizational structures in the movement. Most of his student followers resumed their classes. The movement had failed to attract the rural and urban poor, both in Gujarat and Bihar.
The leadership of JP gave credence to the agitation against the government of the day when the emergency was imposed and even after that it became a key factor in galvanising the opposition parties in forming a joint front, culminating in the formation of the Janata Party.
Declaration of emergency
Following the Allahabad High Court ruling and the partial stay from the Supreme Court, political parties, led by Jayaprakash Narayan, demanded Indira Gandhi’s resignation on moral grounds.
Indira Gandhi, however, resisted these demands and, in response, declared a state of emergency on June 26, 1975, citing the threat of internal disturbances and invoking Article 352 of the Constitution.
Once the emergency was declared, the federal distribution of powers was suspended, consolidating authority in the Union government. Fundamental rights were also curtailed, with press censorship and the arrest of opposition leaders becoming common during this period.