Rammanohar

Lohia wrote of three kinds of Gandhians — priestly, governmental, heretic. (Illustration: Manali Ghosh) Rammanohar Lohia was primarily a man of ideas. This is not to say that his short life (1910-1967) was bereft of action: there was his underground work during the Quit India Movement, in the Goa liberation, the movement for democracy in Nepal, and so on. But his goal of building a strong socialist movement in India was never realised, the Socialist Party he was part of has splintered and lost its character. However, his ideas and formulations have survived the debris of the parties and movements he was associated with. In fact, they have changed the grammar of Indian politics, and offer a new lexicon to understand and describe the currents that shape power equations, especially in northern India. Exactly fifty years since he passed away in New Delhi’s Willingdon Hospital, now named after him, at the relatively young age of 57, Lohia, to paraphrase W H Auden, appears no more a person, but a whole climate of opinion. The Lohiaite is today a political animal like the Gandhian, Nehruvian, Ambedkarite, Communist, Maoist and so on, even though he has mutated beyond recognition after gaining office in some of India’s largest states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka. Two current Chief Ministers, Siddaramaiah and Nitish Kumar, are sure to acknowledge their intellectual debt to Lohia, as would a host of others, including Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad. The Mandal revolution...

Throughout his life, Ram Manohar Lohia fought an uncompromising battle for social equality. Central to this fight was the issue of equality between men and women. At a time when few of his contemporaries engaged with issues of gender, Lohia offered hope. He raised the issue of gender justice consistently and forcefully – thereby redefining the socialist agenda. He considered the “segregation of caste and sex” to be the worst form of discrimination. He recognised women as one of the most exploited sections of society. Gender discrimination, affecting half of the world’s population, is as distinct as it is pervasive – across castes, classes, cultures, countries and civilisations. Lohia asserted that class and caste oppression may be specific to countries, but the oppression of women is ubiquitous. Lohia claimed that the modern economy and class equality would not eradicate caste and gender inequality. He recognised these to be specific and autonomous forms of discrimination which needed to be addressed independently. He, however, did not view them in totally exclusive terms. “All war on poverty is a sham, unless it is, at the same time, a conscious and sustained war on these two segregations,” he said. If democracy and socialism are battles for equality, then the issue of gender should be placed at the core of such agendas. Charting out “seven revolutions” to realise social equality in the world, he considered gender equality to be at par with caste and class equality, natio...