By Amitabh Ranjan
For a barber’s son and his family in nondescript Pitaunjhia, 1940 was a landmark. The year saw him clearing matriculation, a first for his family, and a rarity for a student from his caste. Excited, his father took him to the village landlord to receive appreciation. Hearing the news, the landlord said ‘good’ and in a show of obvious disdain asked the boy to massage his legs. Without a hint of protest, the boy obliged. For, he would rather pay heed to his calling than to react to a landlord who basked in a misplaced sense of entitlement.
He would step into a college, walking 16 km every day one way to pursue higher study. The boy, a young man now, would walk out of the college only to step into the freedom movement. And, in course of time, would leave indelible footprints on the political sands of Bihar, which others would follow.
This is the crux of the story of Karpoori Thakur, the people’s leader, whose life and times Santosh Singh (with co-author Aditya Anmol) chronicles in his latest book. The anecdote catches the essence of, Karpoori’s politics, which Singh has built upon with a painstaking research. His was a version of socialism that was assimilative rather than confrontational. And this defines why after decades it still lives on.
While Karpoori cut his teeth on politics as a member of the Congress Socialist Party, his days in Bhagalpur jail added sheen to it. By the time he walked free after 25 months, during which he came in contact with the likes of Jayaprakash Narayan, Ramnandan Mishra, Basavan Singh, Ramvriksha Benipuri, among others, he was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist ready to write an all-new heartland political script.
He was a pioneer in many ways. At a time when Dalit assertions would be a political taboo, he spoke openly about them. Decades before the food security law, he, as deputy chief minister in the first non-Congress government in Bihar under Mahamaya Prasad, had the vision of making the state hunger-free. The current discourse on quota within quota is also part of his legacy, which insisted that lower OBCs have to be empowered as well. He encouraged the khadi village industry, set up a book bank for poor students and took the initiative of providing livelihood to agricultural labourers.
Singh draws from rich archival materials, speeches, anecdotes and quotes from a range of scholars and politicians to build a persona that he believes deserves to be understood. Even as Karpoori’s political heft rose, he remained grounded to his tradition, a very modest living and a rare sense of uprightness. The author takes you to Pitaunjhia a good number of times even as he navigates the reader to a new socio-political landscape. However, conscious that his book does not read as a mere panegyric of the socialist stalwart, Singh also brings in evidence to make the point that in course of time Karpoori did evolve as a politician and was no less astute than others when it came to power.
At another level the book traces the journey of many phases of Indian politics, its alignments and transformation. So you get to read about farmers’ movement, socialism’s fledgling days, its myriad strands, the dramatis personae, Emergency and its fallout. The language is simple and direct, which comes as relic of the author’s years of reportage.
To Karpoori goes the credit of bringing socialist politics to the centrestage of Bihar. But events would suggest that even for this grassroots-bred politician, Bihar’s castes and classes presented a phantasmagoria difficult to decipher. It explains why despite being a hugely popular leader, Karpoori could only briefly hold onto the deputy chief minister’s and the chief minister’s posts. It is only when two of his disciples—first Lalu Prasad and then Nitish Kumar—would take the throne of Bihar that socialism would come to fruition in the true sense. In their own inimitable ways, the two gave credence to Karpoori’s ideology in thought and practice. The Bharat Ratna, conferred on him by a government led by the BJP, a progeny of the BJS, is an indication of how he could be co-opted by even those who would rather have him at an arm’s length.
If you want to be up, close and personal with that churn, pick up the book and read through at ease.
The author is a former journalist who teaches at Patna Women’s College.
