Module 3: The JP Movement and Sampurna Kranti

Subtopic 3.1: From the 1974 student protest to Total Revolution

• Early 1974 brought inflation, food shortage, unemployment and corruption. Students organised under the Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti and asked the socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) to lead them. He agreed only if the movement stayed peaceful and non-violent.
• JP turned the student protest into a mass agitation, the Bihar Movement. On 5 June 1974, at a gathering on Gandhi Maidan in Patna, he called for Sampurna Kranti, Total Revolution, covering political, social, economic, cultural and educational life. He gave the 1974 student movement that name.
• Sampurna Kranti became the largest mass movement of independent India. People called it Doosri Jang-e-Azadi and called JP a second Mahatma. It began in Patna and is identified with Bihar.
• The movement stood against the ruling Congress and did not have Congress support. The political shock it created was a primary reason for the nationwide Emergency in June 1975.
• It trained a generation of leaders who later dominated Bihar and national politics, among them Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Sushil Kumar Modi and Ravi Shankar Prasad.