PRELUDE TO THE BIHAR MOVEMENT  ;  SARVODAYA AND THE SEARCH FOR NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION IN INDIA
by
GEOFFREY OSTERGAARD
In March 197^» following a student demonstration in Patna against the Bihar Government and Assembly which had resulted in widespread arson and looting and several deaths, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) accepted an invitation from the student leaders to give guidance and direction to their movement. His immediate purpose was to -ensure that the developing agitation would be peaceful and nonviolent but, in accepting the invitation^ he set in motion a train of even-bs which included not merely splitting the Sarvodaya movement of which he was the most prominent; leader after Vinoba Bhave but also, and more importantly, polarising all the major political parties and forces in India. Fifteen months later, this        :. polarisation led to a head-on confrontation between the Opposition! parties and the Central Congress Government (supported by the Communist Party of India), the outcome of which was the declaration of a state of emergency on 26th June J975« .
m this paper I seek to describe how, and in part to explain why, JP and.a large majority of his colleagues in the Sarvodaya movement came to engage in a 'course of action which led to such spectacular, surprising and, for them, ill-fated results.
Tb understand their motives, it is necessary to appreciate that the Sanrodaya movement sees itself as the movement for bringing about a nonviolent revolution in Indiav^ ' Its ideas in this respect derive from the social and political philosophy •orf Mahatma Gandhi; and its main organisation, the Sarva Seva Sangh; (Association for the Service of All), is the direct descendant of the organisations set up by Gandhi to cai^y out what he called his Constructive Programme. The Sangh, numbering in
- 1975 about 5,000 activists, is not a conventional political organisation -.its members, indeed, nledge themselves-, not to engage in party and power politics but to work with all people and all parties. Rather, it sees itself as a band of nonviolent revolutionaries who, by serving and working with the people, involve them.in the task of social change and reconstruction which will lead, eventually, to a nonviolent social order. In outline, this order resembles that envisaged by 19th century anarchist-communists. That is, it would be stateless, oasteless, classless and highly, decentralised. In structural terms, it would consist of a network of small,
. largely self-sufficient, self-governing agro-industrial communities linked together for purposes of mutual aid - in the Indian context, a union of village republics.
For Sarvodaya workers, as for Gandhi, however, what is important is.not tha ultimate grand objective but the next practical steps towards it. In 1951, Vinoba^ sensing that in India as in other peasant societies, land was the key to any social revolution^ hit upon the idea of Bhoodan. or land-gift, a programme which involved walking from village to village persuading landowners voluntarily to donate a portion of their lands for redistribution to the landless peasants who, then, constituted about 2%  of the rural population^ Out of Bhoodan; developed, in 1957, the campaign for Gramdan, literally 'gift of village', or voluntary villagisation of land, GTamdan, however, proved to be too radical am idea to attract widespread support and by the early 19606 the movement appeared to be grinding to a halt* In this situation], the concept of GTamdan was revised to enhance its appeal* Tlhe idea of villagisation of land was retained, but the donees were allowed to keep possession (as distinct from ownership) of 95$ of the donated land for their own use, the remaining portion being distributed for the use of the landless. At the same time, stages were clearly distinguished in Gramdan considered as a process of social change. In the first stage a majority of villagers were persuaded to sign a declaration in

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favour of the idea; in the second, the idea was implemented and a Gram Sabha or
village assembly, comprising all adult residents, set up to administer the communal
land; and in the chird and final stage, through the village assembly, resources
were mobilised for the task of social reconstruction and development. Neither
Bhoodan nor Gramdan, it should be emphasised, were conceived as items in a programme
of land reform. Rather, they were seen as symbols and practical steps towards a
nonviolent revolution." Underlying these and other items in the movement's programme
was the idea of generating people's power which would expresa itself in a new kind
of politics - 'people's politics1 as distinct from 'State politics^.... In this new
politics, decisions would be taken by unanimity or consensus - a procedural principle
employed in Sarva Seva Sangh. In more familiar Western terms, the movement soughit
to achieve, by nonviolent means, communitarian' socialism combined with a radical,'
participatory democracy.	••-:
Armed with the revised concept of Gramdan, Vinoba in- the autumn of 1965 launched
a whirlwind campaign which was concentrated mainly but-not exclusively in the populous
but poverty-stricken northern state of" Bihar. To all appearanxres, the campaign was
remarkably successful. By the end of the Gandhi Centenary Tear, October 1969f no
less than 1^0,000 villages - approximately one-quarter of the total number in India -•
were reported to have- declared for Gramdan.'2' Of Bihar Js 67,000 villages,. 60,000
had "apparently opted to enter the Gramdan fold and Bihar was, therefore,.proclaimed
<~ "by the ;mqvement the first 'Statedan/.	■ .  ; '• ;..	, .
1
The very success of the campaign, however, confronted the movement with new
•problems. And at the 'Sarvodaya workers' conference, October 1969t when the above figures were announced, it was possible ta detect beneath the surface mood of enthusiasm-resulting from the achievement of Fihardan an underlying sense of anxiety.-The - mai n propaganda phase af the movement had clearly, ended: ahead lay the more taxing phase in which the idea of Gramdan had to be translated into reality* • ^Ji practical terras,: this involved redeeming the Gramdan pledges, transferring land • titles,-distributing the land reserved for the landless, setting up village assemblies and village funds, and then proceeding to plan and carry out-.schemes of development. The movement had been promising much and large expectations had been aroused. In this situation^ if■ the new Gramdans were not consolidated and the
"thousands Of,'declarations of intent.' were not followed1 up by observable social ,. changes, disillusionment with, the whole concept of Gram dam might become widespread; and, thein, as a consequence, the movement; for nonviolent revolution might experience r a severe-, and possibly irreversible, set-back0
i Anxieties on this, score were heightened by awareness that, although thousands of new people, including Government officials, had been drawn into the whirlwind campaigm, the movement still remained a,movement of workers for the people amd had r not yet reached the take-off stage of. becoming a mass movement of and bjr the people. But the task of implementing thousands of Gramdan pledges was, clearly too great to be tackled without the active participation of the people.
'Adding further to the anxieties was a sense of urgency provoked by the emergence ;in I967 of a rival, but violenir, revolutionary movement in India's countryside -similar to the one which had inspired the original Bhoodan campaign. This new rival was the Maoist Naxalite movement with its programme of forcible seizure of land and crops and the exefflplary murder of selected landlords and officials - 'enemies of the people'. These were tactics designed to mobilise the landless and small peasants in a class war directed against India's burgeoning kulak class, enriched by the fruits of the so-called Green Revolution which, by introducing new crops and 1 methods of cultivation, had resulted in a substantial increase in agricultural production but had.not alleviated the plight of the mass of the rural population.

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By July 1972 the Naxalites had been effectively, if only temporarily, suppressed by Government forces, but not before they had helped to expose serious weaknesses in the Sarvodaya movement's strategy. In June 1970, in response to the Naxalite threat, JP made a determined effort to implement Gram dan in the limited area of the Musahari block covering some: 120 villages.'^ Other worker's on. the advice of Vinoba, who after 19&9 ha'd -retired-.-to. his ashram and was therefore no longer actively involved'in the day-to-day direction of the movement, concentrated their . efforta in. a larger area, the Saharsha .District of Bihar. The' idea behind both moves appears to have been to create models of Gramswaraj (village self-government) on a scale sufficiently large to have a visible impact on the politics and society of the first so-called Statedan.
In the process, the Sarvodaya workers involved came, in JP's phrase 'face to
face* with the harsh realities of Indian rural life. In the Musahari block it was
found that a large proportion of the villages had been improperly declared Gramdan:
they were 'bogus Gramdans * in which work had to begin again from, scratch. Similar
findings were reported from other areas and, although some progress was made in
implementing Gramdan and, beyond that, in engaging in a few hundred villages in the
task of development, the overall results.of all the efforts were extremely
disappointing*. Qramdan, it seemed, Was revealing itself, to be the 'hoax' its eritiea
had claimed it to be.	.  .J
The response of the Sarvodaya workers to finding that,, as the President or* the
Sangh put it, 'We are working hard at our oars but the boat is not moving't'4-' was
various. SOme, as might be expected, quietly dropped out of the movement altogether,
while some sought to revive interest in other items of Gandhi's Constructive Programme,
notably prohibition. , Vinoba himself by 1972 appeared to be losing interest in Gramdan
or, at least, reconciling himself to the fact that nothing spectacular could be expected
from it in the foreseeable future. In his speeches he began to dwell more on his
other concerns, particularly the need to synthesize scientific and spiritual knowledge,
and also to suggest other programmes. Among the latter were the generation of women's
power, the organisation of acharyas or teachers as a non-partisan, source of social
wisdom,| and the promotion, of Devanagari as a common script for all the Indian
languages. ^'-   But other Sarvodaya workers, including most of the leaders of Sarva
Seva Sangh, responded to the new situation by questioning the movement's approach to
the task of mobilising the people for nonviolent revolution.	_ ... ,
Tb understand the latter response, it is necessary to appreciate that, under Vinoba's leadership the movement had, by and large, eschewed the kind of satyagrahaj which Gandhi had employed in the struggle for independence. Vinoba draws an important distinction between 'negative! and 'positive' satyagraha, favouring the latter with its idea of nonviolent assistance in right thinking and action rather than the former with its more familiar idea of nonviolent resistance to wrong doers. True nonviolence, Vinoba argues, proceeds in the opposite direction to violenoe, not from 'harsh to harsher to harshest %  but from 'gentle to gentler to gentlest'. Accepting this distinction, the movement's basic approach had emphasised.peaceful persuasion, change of heart, the search for consensus, the resolution of social conflicts, and the quiet construction -of alternative institutions.
There is evidence that a large proportion of the movement's activists had never been fully convinced of the validity of Vinoba's 'gentle' approach.(6) SO it i6 not surprising that, faced with the difficulties of implementing Gramdan pledges,,. some workers raised the question whether the time had not now come for the movement to organise the landless and small peasants in a massive nonviolent confrontation with the large landowners and power-holders in Indian rural society.w) Behind this question Was the suspicion that,.in the earlier propagandist phase of the movement, the privileged and powerful groups in the villages might well be prepared to cooperate,

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at least up to a point. Limited donations of land might represent for them a far-sighted investment to preserve the essentials of the status quo. But, beyond that point, could they really be expected to cooperate in the euthanasia of their own class? The general problem presented itself most acutely1in the context of establishing the basic institutions of people's power - the Gram Sabhas or village assemblies «* which were expected to operate by consensus. As one group of Sarvodaya workers saw the problem: 'The reason why the Gram Sabhas were not the kind of institution they should be was the caste and class forces of the village society together with party factions operating there, paralysed the Gram Sabhas and made them inoperative. The movement seems to want to derive its strength and respectability (from) and get the sanction of those very forces it hoped to destroy* This was the inherent contradiction it found itself in. There was a vicious circle: unless the caste forces and party factions are broken, the Gram Sabha cannot become active and unless it becomes active these forces cannot be broken. The real task of the workers (is) to find a nonviolent way to break (out of) this vicious circle.'(*'
In April 1972 when this statement Was made the Sarvodaya movement was not ready for the radical revision of its strategy implied by the advocates of confrontation. The debate on the question ended inconclusively, but it- had served to deepen the impression of many activists that an agitational, struggle component needed to be injected into the movement's approach if the nonviolent revolution was to avoid running into the sands. Shortly afterwards, such activists did organise several satyagrahas in the southern state of Tamilnad, but these were essentially localised affairs- ™' Perhaps a clearer indication that a more militant attitude was developing in the movement as a whole was the Sangh's support early in 1973 of the state-wide agitation for prohibition in Rajasthan.(1°)
Associated with the militant attitude of the proposers of confrontation was a questioning of the movement's relations with Government. These relations had always been ambivalent. Ideologically, the movement is committed to voluntary action; people's politics and people's power are juxtaposed to State politics and State power; and the ultimate objective is a Stateless society. But its policy of seeking the cooperation of all and its programmes of Bhoodan and Gramdan have in practice led to close involvement of the movement with Government. On its side, Government, mostly of course Congress governments avowedly sympathetic to Gandhian ideas, has encouraged and supported the movement. The more militant Sarvodaya workers had long been uneasy about the apparently contradictory stance of the movement but they became increasingly uneasy as the movement proceeded from propagating the Gramdan idea to trying to implement it. At a Gramswaraj workers' conference in the summer of 1972 there was a. lively and heated debate on the subject of 'relations with the government in reconstruction work'.'  ' frirmala Deshpande, who was later to emerge as one of Vinoba's closest confidantes, wanted'no conflict with the Government and pleaded for effective coordination betweem the movement's and the.Government's programmes for rural development, even if this involved making compromises.  In sharp contrast, Krishnaswamy of the Voluntary Action Cell wanted 'no surrender of constructive work to the government' and 'to keep the government at arm's length, if not completely outside the sphere of such work'. The conference rejected the latter view as unrealistic, but the debate was symptomatic of increasing militancy and the crystallisation of two distinct attitudes among the workers.
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Having shrunk back from adopting a general confrontation strategy in the countryside and with the question of the movement's ambivalent relations with Government still unresolved, the'leadership at this point in time began to take a close interest in the political and economic situation of the nation at large. The Sarva Seva Sangh had always shown" an interest in national policy and from time to time, especially under JP's guidance, had issued statements calling for a Gandhian; approach to solving the nation's current problems. But from mid-1972 onwards a new

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sense of urgency began'to manifest itself in such pronouncements. The main reason for this was, undoubtedly, the proliferation and vexing nature of such problems. After splitting the Congress in 1969i Mrs, Gandhi had gone on to win a sweeping victory in the general election of 1971• But the GovernmentTs programme of radical reforms and its promise to 'abolish poverty1 soon began to look hollow as the economy began to stagger from one crisis to another and unemployment and the rate of inflation both escalated. As a consequence, there was a noticeable rising tide of popular unrest throughout the country from 1972 onwards.
The Sarva Seva Sangh's increased concern with the.national situation was;not, however, unrelated to tendencies developing'within the movement itself. For a decade or more there had been an intermittent debate over whether or not Sarvodaya workers should take up current problems, such as rising prices and eviction, of tenants, as a way of mobilising'the masses. In 1965 a large proportion of activists favoured such a strategy, although Vinoba himself was opposed to it.'''2) Advocacy of the strategy was associated with militancy and with1 the view that single-minded concentration on Gramdan Was not sufficient to generate popular support. Perhaps not so obviously, it was also associated with a latent feeling that the movement would make more progress by adopting an approach closer to that of conventional parties whose stock in trade is, of course, the taking up and promising to solve current problems. In 1972, with the Gramdan campaign running into difficulties and with JP, a former politician, coming to the front as Vinoba retired to the background, it was natural for the movement to sh©w a renewed interest in this kind of strategy.
JP, it should be appreciated, had earned for himself a status as a national leader which was largely independent of his role in the Sarvodaya movement. In quitting the Socialist Party leadership and joining the movement in 195^ - at which time he was widely regarded as Nehru's most likely successor - he had renounced party and power politics but not, as he explained, a concern for politics in a' wider sense. In the intervening years, from the vantage point provided by Sarvodaya, he had fashioned a role for himself as the conscience-keeper of the nation whose pronouncements on national issues, even when unpopular, merited attention.  In July 1972 at a conference of Sarvodaya workers he had made a speech on partyless democracy which was widely interpreted in the Press as a call to his colleagues to return to the mainstream of India's political life.' '3) At the same conference, plans were laid to launch a new journal devoted to political commentary - plans which led to the publication, beginning July 1973| of Everyman's Weekly, later to become the main organ of the Bihar movement•t ") In August 1972, in a widely publicised article, 'Can a nation survive without moral fibre?', JP reviewed the country's progress, or rather lack of it, since independence and drew attention to what he perceived as a steady deterioration of Indian democracy as a consequence of Mrs. Gandhi's style of leadership and the drive towards bureaucratic, rather than democratic, socialism.  Introducing what was to become a major theme of the Bihar movement, he was concerned particularly to expose what he described as 'the galloping political corruption' that was 'affecting and degrading ...the entire gamut of national life.'^1^
JP's emergence as a critic of what he later called 'the national malady' was, as might be expected, welcomed by political parties opposed to the ruling Congress and led, in March 1973, to his being- invited by Biju Patnaik, an Opposition leader from Orissa, to take the lead in new efforts to unite the Opposition parties.  In a public statement,^1") JP declined the invitation, although he added that he would lend.his 'moral support and be available for consultation and advice' to those prepared to work for such a goal. A strong opposition party, capable of displacing the party in power, was, he thought, necessary for the successful working of parliamentary democracy; but he doubted whether it would be possible to bind together in any viable manner 'the scattered political fragments of the Opposition with their fierce controversies, their widely differing and often contradictory ideologies, (and) the personal ambitions and

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interests of (their) leaders.' The invitation, he pointed out, disregarded the position and political convictions he had held since 195^.  'I have no desire1, he said 'to change that position now or later.' But he would, of course, continue not merely to write and speak on political affairs but also to promote political causes and political and social action,
The kind' of action consistent with his position that JP had in mind was indicated in a resolution on the National Situation passed by the Executive of Sarva Seva Sangh in July 1973.(17) The resolution listed as subjects giving rise to serious concern: famine, poverty, unemployment, miseducation, sky-rocketing prices, the feeling of the constitutional directives ... being flouted, violation of constitutional provisions such as the imposition of the President's rule im the: states, increasing concentration of power, widespread corruption.'  Fundamentally, the resolution continued, the present-state of affairs was 'the consequence of the wrong socio-economic and political policies followed by the government over a long period of time. A lasting solution to these-problems solely r«sts with the people's vigilance and organised strength? which the Sarvodaya movement was trying to develop.  'Our efforts should be to help people take their own steps to tackle these problems om the basis of their owm strength and initiative. Looked at from this point of view, we shall find our action in this direction will no.tt impede but only promote our fundamental work for Oram Swaraj*1 Tb illustrate what they had in mind, the Executive criticised the Government's recent take-over (subsequently rescinded) of. the wholesale trade in wheat which 'gives rise to black-marketing, puts a premium on corruption, infringes on citizens' liberties, increases bureaucratic bungling, and puts the general distribution system completely out of gear.' The Executive believed that 'there is a third way besides government take-over and private trade. This is the way of people's direct take-over.1 The resolution concluded by calling for a national campaign to secure the proper distribution of foodgrains and other necessities, enlisting the people's active cooperation in it by forming Gram Sabhas in villages and Ward Sabhas in towns and cities.
The terms of this resolution indicate a significant shift im the Sanghfs thinking, and strategy. The concern is with a wide range of problems rather than with the one major problem of land; there is an explicit identification of the Government as the source of the problems; there is an attempt to extend the idea of popular assemblies to the urban areas; and there is a strong suggestion that the people should exert .their power through nonviolent direct action. The passage of the resolution marked a long step towards what later came to be called the ''politicalisation1 of the Sangh.
A further step in this direction was taken when in: September 1973 the Sangh convened a national conference to consider the situation im the country.^"^ Qne-hundred-and-fifty leading citizens, including, politicians but not political parties? as sucm, were invited to attend. The Sangh's President defined the issues for consideration .as: the land problem; educational reform; the food situation; unemployment; and corruption in relation to elections. The conference adopted am eight-point programme of action covering these issues, of which the first item was organisation of 'the primary units of peopleTs power' - popular assemblies in villages, towns and cities. The question of politicalisation of the Sangh was sharply raised in the discussions by the veteran Gandhian socialist, J.. B. Kripalani, who blamed the Sarvodaya movement with its apolitical approach for' impeding the growth of people's power.  'Resistance to evil', he insisted, 'was the only way to generate people's power.'019/
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The national conference was followed immediately by the half-yearly meeting of the Sangh itself. Xn the opinion of some of the more prominent leaders, it was this particular meeting which marked the real turning point in the Sarvodaya movement. In answer to a question, Vinoba expressed the view that the Sarva Seva Sangh was

already in effect the Lok ,Sevak Sangh that Gandhi had envisaged when, on the eve of his assassination, he had proposed the dissolution of Congress as a political party. Commenting on Vinoba's view, Radhakrishna, the Secretary of the Gandhi Peace Foundation who had prompted the question, declared: 'In its new rqle the Sangh sees a new opportunity to enlarge itself and become an instrument of creating a massive public opinion for the realisation of a society of Gandhiji's vision.'(2*) It seems clear, however, that Vinoba had not intended to endorse the politicalisation of the Sangh. At the same conference, he reiterated his long-standing opinion that there was 'only one royal road to the solution of the many problems' facing the people: the solution of the land problem. And when the word 'politicalisation' was openly used by the Secretary of the Sangh, some of Vinoba's closest associates, including Nirmala Deshpande, insisted vehemently that the movement stood f.or 'the spiritualisation of polities' not its politicalisation.
By .the autumn Of 1973» it is apparent that the Sangh, partly in response to the difficulties encountered in implementing its Gramdan programme and partly in response to a variety .of problems developing in the national economy and polity, was groping its way towards a new strategy. But, as things stood, there was an obvious weakness in this strategy: the few thousand Sarvodaya workers could not by themselves provide the motive force for a national campaign to generate people 's power that embraced the towns and cities as well as the villages. The movement had to .tap new sources of strength. One such source was seen as the concerned but politically uncommitted citizens. In an effort to mobilise these, and apparently inspired by JP's article referred to above, the League of Democrats was founded in September 1972 at a meeting held in the Gandhi Peaoe Foundation, New Delhi.>21' The new organisation, however, made little or no headway until it was re-launched as Citizens for Democracy in April 197^ - shortly after the Bihar movement had begun.
The difficulties in establishing Citizens for Democracy may have suggested that a non-partisan pressure group appealing mainly to middle class intellectuals and professional people could not provide the dynamic force required to carry forward a revolutionary, movement. For this purpose, it was necessary to tap another source: the youth of .the country.  In an article entitled 'Winning friends and influencing people', published in the Sangh's journal, People's Action, lebruary 1973f it was pointed out that a movement aiming at social revolution needed to attract more young people. The author lamented the fact that the existing programmes of the Sarvodaya movement did not appeal to the young mind which, mistakenly, identified nonviolence with 'goody-goody idealism'. A few months later an opportunity arose to change this situation and to project a more exciting image of the movement to upwards of a 100,000 young people. The opportunity was provided by the Youth Against Famine Campaign, jointly sponsored by the Union Government, several state governments, and a number of voluntary agencies and universities. In the course of the campaign, 750 summer camps were organised^ including 73 in Gujarat and 51 in Bihar. The Tarun Shanti Sena or Youth Peace Corps, the movement's youth organisation which had been set up in 1969, was a major partner in the campaign and Sarvodaya workers figured prominently as speakers in the educational programmes of the camps. For the movement the campaign was a great opportunity to engage with youth in a dialogue on national problems. The problems most frequently discussed in the camps were unemployment, educational reform, economic reform, and corruption - four matters which were to loom large as issues in the Bihar agitation. Impressed by the success of the campaign, Radhakrishna, in the August issue of People 's Action devoted to the theme of 'Youth for Peace and Social Revolution', made an impassioned plea to TJnleash Youth Power in the Service of the Country'• In the same issue,- it was reported that Marayan Desai, secretary of the Shanti Sena, the movement's adult Peace Corps, had suggested as follow-ups two further campaigns., which would be independent of Government support: a Clean India Campaign against filthy habits, unhygienic conditions in slums and villages, industrial pollution, and destruction

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of the eco-system; and a Youth Against Corruption Campaign*  With regard to the latter, the author of the report stated that students in the capital whom he had interviewed 'had expressed their strong desire to join such a campaign if started by "someone". It is a question of someone taking a lead in this.'
Ill-health had prevented JP taking an active part in the Youth Against Famine Campaign, but he was clearly the kind of 'someone' who could give a lead in fJZW campaign. This he did-in December; 1973 W issuing An Appeal to Youth Power.■ Ironically enough, he took as his text a statement from Mrs. Gandhi's message to the World Union Parliament 'of Youth: '... -a new force has come into being - Youth Power. All over the world young people are restless and engaged in one form of protest or another ... there is much to be restless about and tp pratest against ...'  'Youth in our country, too, ' wrote JP, 'has much to protest against. The question of a revolutionary change in education is, no doubt, of prime importance, but the issue to which I, am drawing attention is of even deeper and fundamental importance. It is the issue of democracy .... Corruption of the electoral machinery, commonly manifested in intimidation and buying up of presiding officers, have been growing apace alongside corruption in other fields ±.»-- Students in several parts of.the world have played a decisive role in shaping the political destiny of their country. Thailand is the most recent example. It is time for YOUTH POWER in India to enter the national arena and play a decisive role in establishing the primacy of the people and securing their victory over the power of money., falsehood and brute force. '
(23) „;
Later in the same month, in an address to the Radical Humanists,    JP put
forward 'a programme of immediate socio-political action' to build an alternative
type of structure of democracy to the present Party Democracy 'based on and
manipulated by political parties.' The alternative was People's Democracy, the
foundations of which would be gram sabhas in the countryside and neighbourhood and
ward councils in the cities and towns. These primary bodies would be face-to-face
organs of direct democracy, not made up of representatives but comprising all adult
residents. Similar bodies, which he called 'communities of work1, should be founded
in factories, offices, educational institutions and other work places. These primary
bodies of People's Democracy had to be active bodies, meeting regularly, discussing
common problems and evolving -cooperative ,-and collective forms of action to manage
their affairs.	v
Having functioned for some time, the stage.would then come for the primary bodies to be grouped together horizontally and vertically to form the secondary institutions of People's Democracy,, As, an illustration of what he had in mind, JP envisaged, in the context of state elections in a rural constituency, the gram-sabhas in about 100 villages each sending a delegate or delegates to a Gram Sabha Delegates' Council. This Council would nominate, unanimously or by consensus, the people's candidate and it would then 'be for the people to vote for him and have him elected'. An important requirement, emphasised by JP, was that no one who" belonged to a political party should be elected by the gram sabhas or primary democracies- to any office, since a member of a political party was/-by definition, controlled by his party hierarchy. The Delegates' Council would continue to .function until the next"election. On the one side, it would maintain, contact with the' gram sabhas, reporting to them and receiving their advice, while, on the other side, it would keep in touch with the elected representative, ■ giving him advice arid instructions.'    .
JP concluded his address with these words: 'The.people's disenchantment with the extant Party Democracy on the»one hand, and the. Sarvodaya movement's apprenticeship in the working out of Gram Swarajya at the ground level, on the other, are the two favourable conditions/created,from opposite Sides,'but converging to prepare the ground and the climate.for-a leap forward-to a real People's Democracy. My call to the country's youth1 is to seize this favourable opportunity to play the revolutionary

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role that the present age demands of them. Young Men and Women, pick up this torch, and march now. Destiny beckons you. Success awaits you.•
In the same issue-of People 's Action which published JP's programme above, Manmohan Choudhuri, another prominent member of the Sangh!s Executive, reviewed the use of 'satyagraha in India after Gandhi1. While carefully explaining Vinoba's views on this subject, he nevertheless concluded, 'Only a serious harking back to the basic norms of saty^grahjk candeliver -the goods. ' In another' article, Ramamurthi, a Sarvodaya leader from Bihar, posed the question, 'Whither the Indian Revolution?1 The need for total revolution, he wrote, is urgent. Since independence the country had tried to live without Gandhi, Fut where had the Western road led? Shall we, he asked, continue to walk the sterile constitutional path; shall we choose class "war? Both were unacceptable.  *What we really need is a people's revolution, not.only for the people, but of the people and by the people ... (this) cannot but be open, peaceful, non-party, non-class.'  'One may well ask', he continued, •Where are the revolutionary pioneers? They are there, though scattered and unorganised. They can be mobilised ... With its non-party appeal, the Sarva Seva Sangh has the promise to lead an all-India workers' brotherhood dedicated to the cause of revolution with a human face. A people's revolution is our-destiny.' Andt as if to underline the  . , point of these various messages to the readers, the editor, Radhakrishna, changed the sub-title of People 's Action from 'Journal of the Sarva Seva Sangh.'.to 'Journal of Sarvodaya Revolution*.
Irom this brief review of Sarvodaya thinking in the period since 1969» i* seems evident that, despite the relative failure of the campaign to implement Gramdan, some of the more prominent leaders of the movement, notably JP but not including Vinoba, had become convinced by the beginning of January 197*+ that a revolutionary situation was developing in India, The date by which they had reached this conclusion is of some significance since it preceded the student-led popular agitation which began in Gujarat in January 197^ and which helped to spark off the similar agitation in Bihar a few months later. There is no evidence that the Gujarat students were directly inspired by Sarvodaya calls for 'a people's revolution' - JP's Appeal to Youth Power had not in fact been very widely reported in the national Press - but the events in Gujarat seemed to confirm their analysis of the situation. By way of searching for a new strategy for the Sarvodaya movement, JP and his colleagues had, by early 197^» reached a point when they were psychologically prepared to welcome a-popular agitation, initiated by students, as an unparalleled opportunity whereby the nonviolent revolution could take a great leap forward. What they did not foresee in January 197*f was where their new strategy would eventually lead - to a splitting of their own movement and a head-on confrontation at the national level between the Opposition and the Government.
Notes
1.	" See <£. Ostergaard & M. CUrrell, The Gentle Anarchists, 1971.
 2.	By July 1971 the total figure of villages declared Gramdan had reached 168,000,
 3.	See his report, 'Face to Face', Interdiscipline, Vol.? NO.h,   1970. *f. People's Action, Dec. 1969.

- -10 -
 5.	People's Action, Nov. 1972.
 6.	In 1965, 66$ of the Sangh»s office holders favoured the organisation of satyagraha campaigns' as a means of abolishing landlessness. - Ostergaard & Currell, op.cit., p.271;
 7.	The issue was raised at the Sarvodaya conference at Bhopal, Oct. 1971t by one of the movement's leading intellectuals. See People's Action, Nov. 19711
' Dec. 1971 & Jan. 1972 for details of the debate.
 8.	People's Action, April 1972,
 9.	People's Action, Sept. 1972,

 10.	People's Action, Feb. 1973- .
 11.	People's Action, July 1972.
 12.	Ostergaard & Currell, op.cit., pp.236-9*
 13.	Indian Express., 7»7«72.  'This is good news', commented the editor who then went on to criticise JP's concept of partyless democracy and to warn him that he should 'set his sights accurately before venturing into the jungle of Indian politics
where more maneaters abound than in the terrai along India's foothills.'
1^f.	Interview with Radhakrishna.
 15.	People's Action, Aug. "1972.
 16.	People's Action, March 1973.
 17.	People's Action, Aug. 1973.
 18.	People's Action, Sept. 1973.
 19.	People's Action, Oct. 1973.
 20.	ibid. In fact as early as January 1970 Vinoba had suggested that the Sarva Seva Sangh could now function as a Lok Sevak Sangh. At that time he appears to have been toying with the idea that the Sangh might exercise 'negative' pressure on the administration.
 21.	People's Action, Nov. 1972. The Gandhi Peace Foundation appears to have played
a central role in Sarvodaya 'new thinking' and its secretary, Radhakrishna, later became the secretary of the National Co-ordination Committee of the Political Parties supporting the Hihar movement.
 22.	People's Action, Dec. 1973.
 23.	People's Action, Jan. 197^» Tlhe Radical Humanists are a group inspired by the ideas of M. N, Roy, a former Communist who later developed the concept of partyless democracy and influenced JP.