The Biography of Famous Personalities of India will tell you about the controversies, the dark sides of a person that you may have never heard of.
Jai Prakash Narayan Arrested Again and Released from Jail
Arrested Again
Your success depends on scrupulous-adherence to peaceful means. The other side is ready to commit a hundred acts oF violence if you commit one.
By the end of 1943, a pall of gloom had begun to settle on the nationalist agitation. The Freedom Brigade had been disbanded. Fifty thousand people languished in jails in different parts of the country. Every week the roster of fresh arrests grew larger. Slowly the police cordon was tightening around the few leaders who remained at large.
Jai Prakash Narayan was advised by his associates to leave the country for a while, or else to lie low somewhere until the police had given up the search, or at least until a fresh agitation preoccupied the attention of the Government. But although his health was poor and the damp weather had started, Jai Prakash Narayan’s relentless travelling continued without let up.
The Punjab had not been a major participant in the 1942 movement, Jai Prakash decided that this was one area that needed a transfusion of nationalist feeling, and he went to Delhi enroute to Lahore in September 1944.
Somehow, the Delhi police learnt of JP’s intentions and searched a number of apartments in Delhi, but he had already left Delhi by the Frontier Mail. However he was arrested in the train itself near Amritsar. When the train stopped at Mughalpura station JP was escorted off the train into a waiting police car that took him to Lahore Fort.
On the 14th December, 1943, Jai Prakash Narayan was declared a state prisoner, and his interrogation began. The Government did not want it to be known that Jai Prakash Narayan was imprisoned at Lahore Fort.
For 16 months Jai Prakash Narayan remained at Lahore Fort. Not only was he cut off from the world outside, he did not have access to the other prisoners in the fort. It took him some time to realise that Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia too was detained in the same compound.
And then in 1945 Jai Prakash and Lohia were shifted to Agra jail on an indefinite sentence. The chief of a British Parliamentary delegation met Jai Prakash and Lohia in Agra jail.
Soon after rumours began to spread that Jai Prakash Narayan would be pardoned and released, though this was clearly not possible until the British Cabinet Mission came to India. It was also said that Mahatma Gandhi had demanded Jai Prakash’s release as a proof of the sincerity of the British Government.
The Home member of the Indian Government met Jai Prakash in Agra jail. After a long discussion, Jai Prakash was asked whether he would resort to violence to win Independence. He answered, “We want independence—if we can achieve that through ahimsa, then that will be good. But if necessary, we will not shrink from using violence to attain our ends”.
Released from Jail
The only true antidote to the perversions of politics is more politics and better politics. Not negation of politics.
On the 11th April 1946, the whole country was electrified at the news that Jai Prakash Narayan and Dr. Lohia had ; been released from Agra jail. The two men were given a tumultuous welcome. From Agra, Jai Prakash Narayan went to Delhi, where he met and conferred with members of the British cabinet mission, From Delhi he was due to go to Patna, but the huge welcome which residents of that city had planned for Jai Prakash Narayan was not yet ready, and it was contrived to delay Jai Prakash Narayan at Benares to allow a few more days for the preperations.
When Jai Prakash Narayan finally arrived at Patna, he was overwhelmed by the massive crowds, the festooned streets and cries of “Jai Prakash Narayan zindabad”, “Inquilab zindabad”, “August Kranti Zindabad”. Ramdhari Singh Dinakar read out a poem to the assembled people, and Jai Prakash Narayan was pressed to make a speech.
He said, “During the August Revolt, the Indian sepoys at Jamshedpur went on strike in sympathy with our cause, and the Government had to call in English reserves. The Congress leaders point to realise the extent of our success. Nearly 40,000 men laid down their lives in this revolution, and we are chastised for not adopting non-voilence”.
Meanwhile the Cabinet Mission concluded its talks with Maulana Azad, MA Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi and the representatives of all the parties and communities. Jinnah began the negotiations with his emphatic demand for Pakistan consisting of the six ‘Muslim provinces’. The alternative which the mission put before Zinnah were either to accept a small Pakistan with full sovereign status or a large Pakistan within an Indian Union and with less sovereign powers.
As the position of the League and the Congress began to harden (Jinnah was clamouring against the conception of a “mouth-eaten” Pakistan) the cabinet mission began to workout a constitution which struck a balance between a strong, United India and an Independent Rakisthan—if that was possible. The ministers were faced with the Congress- League disagreement on almost every point of detail.