Importance of NGOs (New Delhi, April/May 1969) JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN (1902–1979)

Importance of NGOs (New Delhi, April/May 1969)
JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN (1902–1979)

Jayaprakash Narayan was a close disciple of Gandhi and an ardent socialist.
In the sixties, he moved away from active politics and immersed himself in
social work. He devoted himself to reviving Gandhi’s ideas about sarvodaya
and to building a society that would be free of inequalities and exploitation;
a society, as J.P.—as he was popularly known—says in this speech, ‘in which
people would largely look after themselves.’ In J.P.’s view, these were the
objectives of independence as Gandhi saw them. In this speech J.P. draws
attention to social work carried out by agencies that are independent of the
government. J.P. was arguing for the expansion of voluntary activity outside
the ambit of the state. e vision and the relevance of this speech is more
marked today when the role of non-governmental organizations in
development and welfare is being increasingly recognized in India.

MAIN SPEECH

Gandhiji was an incarnation of voluntarism. His whole political, social and

moral philosophy was based on the individual performing his duty in the

best manner possible individually and also combining with other individuals

towards solving the problems of the community, of society and the nation.

roughout his life, he established voluntary organizations and conducted

them with the greatest possible interest in every detail of their activities.

He had a very clear picture in his mind as to what he wanted. He wanted to

create a new India. He wanted to change the system and the existing social

order in India so as to bring about a social revolution. e word ‘revolution’

in this context only means that society has to change from its roots and its

foundations, not merely outwardly but in a fundamental way. He wanted to

construct a new society, which he called ‘Sarvodaya Society’. From time to

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time during his own life, Gandhiji had himself elaborated on this word,

Sarvodaya. is was a society fundamentally different from the one we

have, even after twenty-two years of independence. is was a society in

which there would be equality—economic, social and political, a society in

which there would be no exploitation; a society in which people would

manage their own affairs; a society in which people would largely look after

themselves. It would be a self-regulated society. ese were the objectives of

independence as Gandhiji saw them. He said in Calcutta on 15 August

1947 that the independence or Swaraj that had come was not the Swaraj for

which he had fought. at Swaraj was yet to be achieved.

How are we going to do all this? How can we bring about a social

revolution and the reconstruction of society? e two processes go side by

side, and how can one do this in a non-violent manner? Gandhiji’s answer

was: voluntary action.

Gandhiji paid small attention to the proceedings of the Constituent

Assembly. Somebody wrote to him that though the Constitution of India

was being written, there was no mention in it of Ram Rajya which he

always preached as the foundation of Swaraj. He wrote in e Harijan just

forty days before he was assassinated that if this was so, it was deplorable.

He well knew that it was not the Constituent Assembly which could build

the country from the bottom, but that this would have to be done by the

people themselves. is could not be done by legislation or by a planning

commission.

Now, many of us are engaged in numerous kinds of useful activities. If this

work is multiplied a hundredfold, a thousandfold or even a hundredthousand

fold, what will happen? Would a new society be created? No. But

that does not mean that Gandhiji was not thinking of activities such as

those engaged in, by the various organizations represented here. Gandhiji

considered constructive work to be a preparation for social revolution and

for social change. He considered constructive work as a discipline for

nonviolent mass action. He had written at a number of places on the

objectives of constructive organizations like the All India Village Industries

Organization and others, which he had himself set up. e objective of

constructive organizations and constructive work is not to give employment

to people. It is not to add a few paise to the pockets of the poor. ese are

incidental. e real objective is to create a non-violent society. All the

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activities that we are engaged in, are essential from the point of view of

mass contact in society. ey are essential for something that has to be done

on the basis of the work that all of you have been doing. As I have

understood it, Gandhiji’s technique had two main parts.

It had a third part also, which many of you might consider the most

important part. I do not think it is the most important part. However, this

part in itself is very important, and like a Brahmastra, is to be used when all

other moral means have failed. If you read the Mahabharata, you will find

that it is not every time a soldier goes to battle that he uses the Brahmastra,

it has to be used in the most exceptional conditions.

What are the two important parts of Gandhiji’s method of social change

and social reconstruction? One is what we are doing by setting up social

service organizations, which Gandhiji called constructive work

organizations, manned by people who are motivated by the spirit of service,

idealism and the love of humanity. If we have constructive social service

organizations with a view to achieving Gandhian results, then these

constructive workers or social workers would also believe in the philosophy

of non-violence. But not non-violence as a matter of expediency as Pandit

Jawaharlal Nehru or Rajen Babu [Rajendra Prasad] or Maulana Azad or

Sardar Patel saw and used, as a weapon to fight the British Empire. After

that objective had been gained, they had no use for non-violence as a

revolutionary philosophy of life.

e modern structure of society is very unjust. In the name of law and

order, so much injustice is being perpetuated. e rule of law and

government by law, are all very fine phrases. What do we find after twentytwo

years of independence? Human beings by the million are living as pigs.

In the great cities of Calcutta and Bombay people literally pick up food

from the gutter. Law and order has to be maintained so that these people

do not break a few shop windows and seize the food displayed there. is is

not the conception of a non-violent order of society. If all talk of

nonviolence and peace is in support of the status quo, if the Gandhian

philosophy is always used to support the status quo, I cannot imagine a

greater injustice to Gandhiji. erefore it becomes very necessary to see that

hundreds and thousands of people who have faith in this revolutionary

vision and philosophy are organized in constructive, social service

organizations. eir activities are to be coordinated. is was the first part

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of Gandhiji’s method. Let us go to the people. It is not by sitting in

Parliament here and by legislating there that you will create a new India.

e new India will have to be created by the bare hands of the people.

erefore, Gandhiji wanted hundreds of people to take up this work.

Gandhiji said that he wanted that every individual should have all his

primary needs fulfilled—enough clothing, a decent house to live in,

education for his children, medical care for the sick and disabled in the

family, and equal opportunity for employment. ese five primary needs of

every man should be met in whichever community he lives. Even in the

United States of America no one can say whether these five basic

requirements have been met so far as the individual is concerned, though it

is the richest society in the world today. You go and see how people live in

ghettoes in the USA, in the bustees around Calcutta, in the jhuggis and

jhompdis around Delhi and the jhompdis in Bombay. Recently I visited

jhompdis around Bombay and I was shocked to see the conditions in which

the people live there. It is terrible. Gandhiji did not want everyone to go

about in a loin cloth. He wanted everyone to have a full life. He also wanted

that as a moral virtue, as a social duty, everyone should voluntarily place a

limit on his own wants. Otherwise, if unlimited wants are to be pursued,

human society will be destroyed; we will land ourselves in disaster.

You have established individual contact; you have won the confidence of the

people. en, at that moment, it is necessary to place before the people a

programme for non-violent mass action. Society cannot change in bits.

ere has to be a mass revolution, mass movement and massive change.

Many people ask: why don’t you show us an example or model of Gramdan

village or a Sarvodaya village? We say it is just impossible. is is not what

we are after. is cannot be done. Why do you not ask the Socialists to give

us a model? Why do you not ask the Communists to give us a model? ey

tell you ‘unless we capture the state, we will not be able to build up society’,

and that appeals to you. We say that by creating models we will never

succeed in changing society. One farmer may learn from another and grow

twice, thrice or four times as much as he is growing, and if somebody

underwrites the risks involved or assures him that there are no risks

involved, he will undoubtedly follow the other man. But if we have a colony

in which people are leading a new way of life, have given up proprietary

rights, follow the principle of trusteeship and treat their property as a trust,

develop a shared way of life with everybody contributing something to the

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community for the good of the whole, then you will seldom find that the

community next to it will accept it as an example. ough many things are

contagious and spontaneous, sometimes, somehow goodness is not equally

contagious.

e third part of the Gandhian technique—if that word could be used—

was the most effective weapon Gandhiji had. It was his unfailing weapon. It

was the Brahmastra. He did not call it that. I am calling it so. is was

Satyagraha which includes both non-violent resistance and non-violent

non-cooperation. is Brahmastra is not to be used as our political parties

are using and vulgarizing it for everything on earth, without creating a

climate for it, without moral justification behind it and without creating the

spiritual background for it.

If we are thinking of voluntary action in terms of celebrating the Gandhian

spirit then we must understand how Gandhiji himself looked upon

voluntarism and voluntary organizations, and how he wanted that all these

voluntary activities and the force, the spirit and strength created by them

must converge on the point where there is mass action. If Gandhiji had

thought from the very beginning that the kind of community he wanted to

create should be evolved by the traditional methods of democratic politics

and if he had thought of it consistently, nobody would have been able to

prevent him from becoming the Prime Minister. e country would have

given him support in full measure.

What I am trying to drive at is this: whether we are doing our work as

Gandhian constructive workers or as other social workers, we are all

voluntary workers. We are leaving to the politicians, to the state and to the

government, the main task of building up this country and of changing it. It

is there that we go wrong. I have almost come to the conclusion that it is

not possible to bring about a social revolution changing society from its

roots—by democratic means. e democratic socialists have been in power

in some countries in the West for quite some years. e longest period that

they have been in power is in Sweden. Yet in spite of the fact that the

socialists have been in power continuously for years and years, basically

Swedish society continues to be a capitalist society and will remain so.

What are the revolutionary changes that have taken place in India since

independence? Only two changes have seeped down to the roots of the

Indian society. One is the abolition of princedom and the other the

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abolition of the zamindari system. Zamindari has been destroyed from the

roots. But for the rest, feudalism has firmly entrenched itself especially in

ex-zamindari areas and a capitalist society has come into being, in spite of

all the talk of socialism and communism. ough the roots of feudalism

have been destroyed with the destruction of the princely order and the

zamindari order, no socialist society has come into being during the past

twenty-two years. Feudalism is entrenched in the rural society. It is

everywhere—in U.P., in Bihar—except, perhaps, in the ryotwari areas where

it takes a different form. But it does exist there too, though not in the same

virulent form or elsewhere. Even if you nationalize, capitalism is there. In

nationalizing, what do we do? Is there any basic fundamental change in the

public sector except the change in ownership and, therefore, in the

distribution of surplus or profit? Except for that, what is the status of

labour? What about industrial relations? is is not socialism. is is

bureaucratism. ere is no fundamental change. I have begun to doubt very

seriously whether any government is going to bring about a radical social

revolution in India through democratic means. When the first non-

Congress Government came to power in Bihar, I made some proposals to

those people. During those ten months, not an inch of progress was made

towards any of these things.

And let me give you just one little example to show how this democratic

method is defeated. A law was passed by the Bihar Legislative Assembly

and later on by the Council in 1950. at law was called the Privileged

Person Homestead Tenancy Act. is Act created a new kind of tenancy—

homestead tenancy. If a Harijan had his little hut, mud-hut or even leaf-hut

or straw-hut on a plot of land, then this legislation gave him occupancy

rights in that little plot of land and a little area around it. If he was paying

his landowner any rent he continued to pay rent. He would not become the

proprietor, but would become a homestead tenant and would be secure in

the enjoyment of that little hut of his.

Now you go to Bihar. Everyday evictions are taking place. If the landowner

becomes angry with his labourer, the first thing he does is to drive him out

of his hut. It takes him no time to destroy the hut and then he has the field

ploughed over so that there is no sign of the hut left on the field. is is

happening every day in Bihar though the law has existed for the last twenty

years. During the tenure of the non-Congress Government, I told them:

‘Please do something about this, for heaven’s sake.’ Formerly, the law

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required that the man occupying the hut would have to make an

application. Later, the rules were amended and did not have to apply. e

officer concerned could suo motu put on record that plot so and so with its

particular measurements was in the name of such and such a man. Once it

is in the revenue records it would be secure. Many people are not aware of

this. If this kind of injustice has not been corrected in twenty years in spite

of this legislation, what do you expect to happen?

Take the case of share-croppers. We hear about the Naxalites. I have every

sympathy with the Naxalbari people. ey are violent people. But I have

every sympathy with them because they are doing something for the poor.

ere is some limit to the patience of the people. Why cannot the question

of sharecroppers be settled? e law gives them certain rights. After they

cultivate a piece of land for so many years, they get occupancy rights and

they cannot be evicted. But in Bihar and Bengal the landowner is free to

evict them, and he does evict them. What do you think is happening in

Purnea and other areas? ousands of share-croppers are being evicted

because the landowners have the right to resume the land; because these

poor people do not have even a chit to prove that the land was in their

cultivating possession. ey cannot prove it in a court of law. ese things

are happening today and the law is absolutely impotent to help these poor

people.

If the law is unable to give to the people a modicum of social and economic

justice, if even whatever is on paper is not implemented, what do you think

will happen if not violence erupting all over? Do you think that mere

mantras of shanti are going to save the situation of the political parties

which are responsible for this legislation? e very people who pass these

laws have seen to it that the laws are not implemented.

In the Bihar ministry (1967), in the first place, there was the Jan Sangh

which, apart from other aspects of its politics, is conservative in social and

economic matters. I was Chairman of a Committee set up by the Bihar

Government to implement the things which I had suggested to them. In

that Committee, both the Jan Sangh and Raja Bahadur Kamakhya Narain

Singh said: ‘e contract between the share-croppers and the others

sometimes is a private contract; it is a sacred contract and the state has no

right to interfere.’ is is the plea they put forth in that Committee. ere

are all kinds of laws regarding contracts. I don’t know from where these

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people got this idea about a contract between an elephant and a mouse. Is it

such a sacred contract that the community has no right to protect the

mouse? e Congress party is in power in many states. e Congress also

swears by some kind of socialism. I have not been able to understand the

socialism of the Congress yet. But, whatever it is, it has to be shown at the

ground level; some result has to be shown.

In Bihar, the Gandhi Centenary Seminar recommended only two

programmes. One programme was that homestead land should be made

secure during the Gandhi Centenary Year, by 31 March 1970. e other

was that drinking water facilities should be created where they do not exist.

Is this asking for the moon? I find that the people are losing hope and they

feel that nothing will come out of any government. When I see the

situation of Bihar I also begin to share their feelings. One after the other

changes in the government have taken place but nothing has changed. With

all the programmes and activities in this Gandhi Centenary Year, if the

problems of the people are not solved democratically, what other recourse

will the people have except violence? erefore I say, what India needs today

on her political agenda is non-violent social revolution. Not only from the

moral point of view but also from the practical point of view, this is one of

the essential items on the political agenda of India today. Otherwise,

violence will grow. I don’t care about the Naxalite movement. is is going

to grow. If Gandhiji had not been born, then perhaps we might not know

how else we could do this. My Sarvodaya friends and my Gandhian friends

will be surprised to read what I publicly say now. I say with a due sense of

responsibility that if convinced that there is no deliverance for the people

except through violence, Jayaprakash Narayan will also take to violence. If

the problems of the people cannot be solved democratically I will also take

to violence. I am raising these fundamental questions because, otherwise

observation of Gandhi Centenary is meaningless. I am not interested in it

unless we do something to change the social order. All the work that we are

doing now should be looked upon as preparatory work.

I have been a student of revolutions because I was a Marxist myself. My

interest in the history of revolutions is as keen today as it ever was. My

conclusion after a study of violent revolution is that a violent revolution

does bring about a revolution in the sense that it uproots the old social order

and destroys it from its foundation. erefore it is looked upon as a

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successful revolution. But it fails in achieving the objectives for which the

revolution is made. e French Revolution was a great revolution. After

that many revolutions have taken place. ere was the American

Revolution. Undoubtedly the feudal system was destroyed from its roots.

But what came out of these revolutions? After the revolutions, the power

still was not with the people. e power did not go to the people; to the

dispossessed. In Russia the revolution took place on November 7, 1917.

Undoubtedly the foundation of Czarist feudalism was destroyed, Lenin

said: ‘All power to the people, to the Soviets, to the workers, to the soldiers

and peasants.’ Soviet Russia is a great power, but there power is not in the

hands of the Soviets. e power is in the hands of a small number of

people. e Chinese Revolution took place in 1949. I think Mao Tse-tung

did not want to bluff anybody. He openly said that power grows out of the

barrel of the gun. It is absolutely true. But in China who holds the gun

today? e people do not.

I find man is enslaved everywhere in society wherever violent revolution has

taken place. Last year in Paris (1968) a revolution took place and it was led

by the students and some teachers, and later joined by some of the working

class. What did they seek? All of them were students and they were not

tools of any organized political parties. ey said: ‘We have been completely

disillusioned with every kind of delegated authority. We have no faith in

any deputy. We have no faith in any of the institutions which are supposed

to govern in the name of the people.’ en, what did they want? ey said:

‘We want power at the work place (an echo of Gandhism); in the

universities, power with the students and faculty; in the factories, power

with the workers, the technicians, the engineers, the managers and the rest

of them; in the villages power with the people in the farms.’ ey want

power at the work place. If these French revolutionaries use the means of

violence, they will never be able to establish power at the work place. ey

will only be able to destroy the power structure that exists today in the field

of economics, politics, etc. If they use violence, in France or elsewhere,

something else will take its place, which will not be power at the work

place. is is my fear.

Now, why do I say all this? As a result of the experience of democratic

societies in other parts of the world and of democratic government in our

own country, I have begun to doubt on the one hand whether social

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revolution can be brought about by democratic means and, on the other, I

reject violence as only half the revolution. e more important half of it is

the betrayal of the people.

I don’t want power for myself; I want power for the people. erefore, I

cannot support the Naxalites and I hope to persuade them at some point of

time or the other. If they want power for themselves and/or the Communist

Party, Marxist-Leninist, then it is all right and let them do what they wish.

But I would not agree with this. Shri Jyoti Basu said at a recent workers’

meeting in Calcutta: ‘I want factories to be given to the workers.’ I would

like to know in which Communist country the factories belong to the

workers. Not a single factory belongs to the workers in any Communist

country except, in some respects, in Yugoslavia which the other

Communists do not accept as a proper Communist country. e factories

belong to the state. ey dupe the workers. ey say, ‘the state belongs to

you’, as if the workers can do anything with the state. is is the kind of

dictatorial set-up that we find in the Communist countries. Where do we

go? It is here that Gandhi had something to say.

Nowadays in India there is a conscious effort to denigrate Gandhiji and his

ideals. ere is an organized effort to say, ‘What is all this talk of

Satyagraha, what is Gandhiji’s contribution in bringing freedom to India,

how is he responsible for that’, etc. As one who had participated in the

struggle, I make bold to say that if Gandhiji had not created a mass

awakening and sustained it over a period of twenty-seven years, I don’t

think it would have been possible to raise the Azad Hind Fauj under the

leadership of Netaji. Today, we hear that in Ludhiana or somewhere a

statue of Gandhiji was blackened. After all, Gandhi was murdered in this

capital of India.

Gandhiji was asked: ‘You do this constructive social work. You take up a

programme and make a countrywide propaganda and campaign for the

purpose of converting the people to your scheme. If some people refuse to

be converted what will you do? Will you go on trying to convert everyone

till doomsday?’ Gandhiji said: ‘Certainly not.’ He explained: ‘If I am

convinced that I have done enough and there are still some people who

refuse to be persuaded then I will use my unfailing weapon of non-violent

non-cooperation.’ is Brahmastra is to be used as a part of the strategy of a

vast movement of change and reconstruction. erefore, I say that we

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should give some thought to this—how all of us can join hands together in

fashioning one simple programme like the Salt Satyagraha?

ere should be one simple programme of mass action which we can place

before the people from today and then go on converting and persuading the

people to launch a mass movement of change in a non-violent way. A nonviolent

revolution, unlike a violent revolution, cannot take place just in ten

days. John Reed wrote a famous book: Ten Days at Shook the World. It is

not like that. A non-violent movement develops step by step and it,

therefore, takes time.

I think it was given to Vinobaji’s genius to find out that the constructive

organizations in the field were losing the spirit and losing their perspective

and were slowly getting tied to the chariot wheels of this big Juggernaut, the

State of India, because one has to go for this subsidy or that grant-in-aid. In

that case, we will end up by merely becoming good people who perform

some kind of service without being able to change society. I do not think

that any political party can do it by winning elections alone. Vinobaji,

instead, laid emphasis on constructive work organizations already in the

field set up by Gandhiji. He also launched a programme of Bhoodan to

which people responded. In a country like India redistribution of land is

absolutely essential as a measure of social and economic justice. e

problem of fragmentation is not difficult to solve. It could be solved by

consolidation of holdings. It could be solved by cooperative agriculture.

When you have a society in which there is scarcity of land and many people,

with 85 or 90 percent of the people living in the villages and depending on

agriculture; if you have a situation where a few people own hundreds of

thousands of acres and the rest, millions of them, are landless, then truly it

is an explosive situation. You have an unjust situation. Many people laughed

at Bhoodan and said it was a failure. I do not think you are aware of the

programme in all its aspects. You may not have taken the trouble to find out

the facts about Bhoodan. It has been a failure in the sense that it has failed

to solve the problem of landlessness. But let me tell you frankly that the

problem of landlessness is insoluble in India. Nobody can solve it because

our population is too vast. erefore, along with khadi and village

industries, there should be a widespread network of small rural industries.

But to the extent to which land redistribution has been effected in India,

many times more acreage of land has been redistributed by Bhoodan than

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by legislation. is is true of almost every state except West Bengal from

whose Secretariat I do not have the figures.

Jawaharlal Nehru always laid emphasis on questions of land reform,

redistribution of land and security for tenants. ese three things always

figured in his letters to chief ministers and also in his speeches. In spite of

that, in my state (Bihar), even though the ceiling law was passed, not one

acre of land was redistributed as a result of surplus being declared over the

ceiling. Not one acre was redistributed, whereas we have been able to

distribute 3,65,000 acres of land which are fit for cultivation. We have

rejected as unfit for cultivation about sixteen lakhs of acres in Bihar. In UP

not more than 10,000 to 12,000 acres of land have been redistributed

through legislation; but 3,10,000 acres through Bhoodan. Recently I went

to Bombay. is is a ryotwari area and I wanted to know the position. I got

the figures from the Secretariat. e Revenue Department wrote to me a

letter saying that as a result of the Ceiling Act they were expected to get

surplus land totalling 1,29,000 acres. But in Maharashtra we have

redistributed 1,06,000 acres of land. is is the social and economic change

brought about by Bhoodan. No amount of khadi work, no amount of work

among the delinquent or among handicapped children or nutrition

programmes is going to bring about social change.

Now we have launched Gramdan. We should look upon ourselves as a

voluntary organization, and Gandhiji was an incarnation of voluntarism.

But this is where he wanted his voluntarism to begin. You see now the

French Revolutionaries are talking of decentralization. But when a

Gandhian talks of decentralization, immediately our learned people in

Delhi University, in the Planning Commission and in the Government of

India turn round and say: ‘In this age of technology, Mr Jayaprakash

Narayan, do you think that decentralization is possible?’ France is one of the

two most highly technologically-developed countries of western Europe,

next only to West Germany. Yet the French are talking of decentralization.

If the dimensions of our social, economic and political institutions are

beyond human scope, then man is going to be crushed under the Juggernaut

organizations, under over-mechanization. e students in western Europe

are revolting against exactly this very corruption of civilization in which the

autonomy of the individual is being completely suppressed. Gandhiji has

said that man is the supreme consideration for him. He wanted the highest

possible moral, material and physical development of the individual human

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being. He begins from there. If we don’t believe in the machine, if we don’t

believe in organization, but if we believe in man and in the dignity of man,

then let us take a second look at Gandhiji and during the Gandhi

Centenary Year let us take up projects for understanding man better. In this

Centenary Year, we have to snatch the initiative from the hands of

politicians, from the Parliament and the legislatures and give it back to the

people. is is our job.