8th November 2021
When it arrived on my desk, the first question to unravel was about the authors of the book The Dream of Revolution: A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan. Bimal Prasad’s name on the cover was somewhat perplexing. The retired academic and India’s Ambassador to Nepal in the early 1990s had passed away several years ago. It couldn’t have been an unknown namesake because the co-author was his daughter, Sujata Prasad, retired civil servant and author of other books.
It then emerged that she was drawn into the work after her father’s death in November 2015. He had begun working on JP’s biography after compiling 10 volumes of his selected works. In Sujata’s words, he left behind a comprehensive blueprint and the book is the fulfilment of a promise made by a daughter to her dying father.
The late academic, and consequently his daughter too, had personal association for decades with JP. Unsurprisingly, the book is a treasure trove of micro-details from the life of one of India’s most significant leaders of the 20th century. This proximity certainly results in an unambiguously sympathetic account of a leader whose career and postures merit admiration as well as criticism. The book falls short of the latter although after a few pages, readers would realise that it is not a critique, and JP is cast in a Napoleonic hue.