In the Ohio Union hall of Ohio State University hangs a photograph of the young Jayaprakash Narayan in a gallery titled ‘Buckeye Brilliance’. The gallery celebrates alumni of the US university who demonstrated brilliance not just in academic programmes, but ‘whose innovations and achievements have changed the world’.

For the unfamiliar many, Buckeye is the nickname for people from Ohio. Buckeye (Aesculus glabra) is the state tree of Ohio, and brilliant alumni like Jayaprakash Narayan, from all over the world, are also acknowledged as ‘Buckeye’. In the midst of photographs of chemists, educators, artists and economists, visitors come face to face with this Indian political leader ~ popularly and widely known as JP ~ a son of the soil from the interiors of Bihar. The journey of JP, hailing from a privileged Bihari family to being included in the ‘Buckeye Brilliance’ gallery, is fascinating.

It could be read as the ‘making of JP’, who with every passing year and decade, evolved as a political activist, writer-philosopher, leader-mentor and a die-hard revolutionary who in fact defied all these categories. Being included in the ‘Buckeye Brilliance’ gallery seems like an honour at first glance, and then, it seems too pale and watered down for JP’s incomparable brilliance. Pranav Jani, associate professor of English at Ohio State University, expressed his surprise on seeing JP’s photograph as part of the Ohio Union Hall.

Writing in ‘Bihar, California, and the US Midwest: the early radicalization of Jayaprakash Narayan’, the professor felt, “images of a simply dressed man preaching self-reliance and nonviolence lie in tension with the highly corporatized, mall-like atmosphere of this building, the public face of a university entrenched in Big Ten college athletics.

Digging deeper, we find greater degrees of irony. It is not just that ‘Buckeye Brilliance’ portrays JP as a mere acolyte of M K Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, or that in emphasizing a linear transition in JP’s thought from ‘violence’ to ‘nonviolence’ it tames his radicalism and complexity.” When pursuing his graduation studies in the US, the young Jayaprakash Narayan demonstrated similar academic twists and turns, hop-skipping his way through four Universities across the breadth of North America. In 1922, when he landed at the University of California, Berkeley, he enrolled for mathematics, chemical engineering, and biology. After two academic terms, he moved to State University of Iowa to further the science curriculum.

He then opted to study sociology, biology and calculus at University of Wisconsin in Madison. By the time he completed his undergraduate programme from Ohio State University, he was studying sociology and economic thought! This was a far cry from 1919 when JP, as a meritorious student, pursued science at Patna College, being a scholarship holder of Rs 15 per month for distinction in matriculation.

The seven years in US universities shaped JP’s thoughts, intentions, and actions; as the saying goes in the Hindi-heartland, “Ram vann gaye/ Ram bann gaye”, meaning that Prince Ram went into ‘vanvaas’ into the forest and that is where he became Lord Ram. The play is on Hindi words: ‘vann’ meaning forest, ‘bann’ meaning becoming. JP emerged from his US sojourn as a radical thinker, an atheist, immersed in Marxist thought and dreaming of a “socialist revolution in India, comparable to the events of October 1917 in Russia,” narrates Sujata Prasad in ‘The Formative Years’, a chapter in the biography of JP titled ‘The Dream of Revolution’. Sujata completed the biography begun by her venerable father Dr Bimal Prasad, a confidante of JP and distinguished academician. When Jayaprakash Narayan submitted his thesis at Iowa State University, its theme was ‘cultural variation’. The visionary in him was now addressing issues of the future while emphasizing roots of social processes and social change. “The primary function of the sociologist is the study of social or cultural change. Without it, one may be predisposed to become a social quack but never a social scientist,” to quote from the Bimal PrasadSujata Prasad biography.

From science to social science is indeed a long academic, intellectual bridge for young JP to have traversed. It is indicative of a mind that was explorative, creative, and recognized no intellectual boundaries or domains. The word ‘brilliance’ now seems to lose its luminosity, becoming almost commonplace. It was Margaret Bourke-White, the celebrated photographer of Life magazine, whose photographs captured poignant, outstanding moments of Indian history between 1946 and 1948.

Jayaprakash Narayan emerges from her creative output: his austerity, simplicity and clean good looks captured for posterity, in black and white photographs aptly described as luminous. In ‘Revolutionary Lives in South Asia’, edited by Kama Maclean and J. Daniel Elam, the term revolutionary is debated. The editors raise obvious questions: “Who qualifies as a revolutionary? And who decides? For anyone familiar with historical and contemporary usages of the word in India, it is clear there are several revolutionary registers simultaneously in use.”

Like Jayaprakash Narayan’s academic life, and later his political career, there are series of twists and travails of the revolutionary that often confuse the historian of contemporary India. With JP, once he is involved with political work in India, it can be discerned what was revolutionary about his thought; which of his works were revolutionary in nature, and which had the greatest impact over time and geography. Is it JP’s legacy that he attempted to synthesize Gandhi and Marx?

Will he be remembered, often simplistically, as the Gandhian Socialist? In 1936, not too long after the US sojourn, JP wrote a slim book titled ‘Why Socialism?’ It was published by the All India Congress Socialist Party, indicating the split in Congress Party. “In Chapter II, I have tried, in the light of the basic theory of Socialism to explain the items of the Programme of the Congress Socialist Party. Chapter III seeks to analyse certain alternatives that have been suggested to Socialism in India.

Particular attention has been given to Gandhiji’s ideas and to Dr Bhagavan Das’ ancient scientific socialism,” wrote JP, as he put into perspective current ideologies, ideas with characteristic candour and respect. JP referred to “a now littleremembered resolution of the All India Congress Committee in 1929 declaring that ‘the great poverty and misery of the Indian people are due not only to foreign exploitation in India but also to the economic structure of society which the alien rulers support so that their exploitation may continue…it is essential to make revolutionary changes in the present economic and social structure of society and to remove the gross inequalities’.” JP continued, “the difference arises because the Congress after talking of ‘revolutionary changes’ buries its head in the sand.”

JP and the Mahatma had great respect for each other, but in ‘Why Socialism?’ he wrote, “Gandhism is true Socialism for India is a remark which one hears not infrequently. It is for this reason that I propose to examine those views of Gandhiji.” JP quoted Gandhiji’s views in an interview given to zamindars of UP at Cawnpore; it was published by Mahadev Desai in The Leader, 3 August 1934. Gandhiji said, “let me assure you that I shall be no party to dispossessing the propertied classes of their private property without just cause. My objective is to reach your hearts and convert you so that you may hold all your private property in trust for your tenants and use it primarily for their welfare. I am aware of the fact that within the ranks of the Congress, a new party called the Socialist Party is coming into being, and I cannot say what would happen if that party succeeds in carrying the Congress with it.

But I am quite clear that if a strictly honest and unchallengable referendum of our millions were to be taken, they would not vote for a wholesale expropriation of the propertied classes. I am working for the cooperation and coordination of capital and labour and of the landlord and tenant…” JP explained Gandhiji’s views as “essentially what in socialist history is known as reformism. Its language is Indian but its substance is international.

The chief interest of reformism lies in maintaining the established order of society. All that Gandhiji tells the landlord and the capitalist is that they should improve their relations with their tenants and labourers. All will be well then ~ no dreaded classwar, no discontent, no revolts and upsettings. Reformism is interested not in securing social justice, but in covering up the ugly fissures of society.”

The enduring brilliance of Jayaprakash Narayan’s thoughts, writings and speeches is preserved in ten volumes of his Selected Works (edited by Dr Bimal Prasad). Ohio State University included him in ‘Buckeye Brilliance’, but for Indians he provided eyes unafraid to look at the country’s past, present, and future.

(The writer is a writer-researcher on history and heritage issues, and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalay)