10th October 2021
Lampooning Indira (Gandhi) for “living in a fool’s paradise”, 72-year-old Jayaprakash led a silent procession (through Patna) on April 8 (1974 to protest police excesses… Men and women, their lips taped and hands locked behind their backs, walked from the historic Congress Maidan to Fraser Road, Ashok Rajpath, Govind Mitra Road and Ram Krishna Avenue… Their placards had a uniform text: Hamla chahe jo bhi ho, hath hamara nahin uthega. (Whatever be the provocation, we shall not raise our hands in retaliation.) Prominent writers like Phanishwarnath Renu, Ramvachan Rai, Nagarjun (Vaidyanath Mishra), Ravindra Rajhans and Gopi Vallabh Sahay joined the procession and gave a new voice to the movement. When the procession crossed the city jail, hordes of detained students crammed the balconies, shouting slogans in support.
The next day, Jayaprakash addressed a large public meeting in (Patna’s) Gandhi Maidan. “For 27 years, I have watched events unfold, but I can stand on the sidelines no longer. I have vowed not to allow the state of things to continue.”
The sense that a revolution was brewing may have been naïve, but it was palpable. Twenty-six-year-old Lalu Yadav created a resonant moment when he proposed the title of “Loknayak” for Jayaprakash. The maidan reverberated with cries of “Loknayak Zindabad!” and “Inquilab Zindabad!”
A five-week long people’s struggle to bring down the government was launched on April 9. In Gaya, the struggle took an untoward turn on April 12 when the police opened fire on a restive mob. Eight persons lost their lives and several were seriously injured. There were reports of lathicharges on peaceful congregations of agitating students in many other districts. But, by then, the struggle had assumed the texture of a mass movement that was unstoppable. Women and young girls formed human barricades along the national highway. Several lawyers, teachers and other professionals joined relay fasts near the secretariat and other government buildings. Work remained paralysed in most offices.