J. B. Kripalani

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Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani
Indian Independence Movement
SpouseSucheta Kripalani

Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani (11 November 1888 – 19 March 1982), popularly known as Acharya Kripalani, was an Indian politician, noted particularly for holding the presidency of the Indian National Congress during the transfer of power in 1947 and the husband of Sucheta Kripalani. Kripalani was an environmentalist,

Gandhian socialist, before joining the economically right wing Swatantra Party
later in life.

He grew close to

Emergency
of the 1970s.

Early life

Jivatram (also spelled Jiwatram) Bhagwandas Kripalani was born in

Gandhi's return from South Africa
. From 1912 to 1917 Kripalani worked as a lecturer of English and history at L.S. College (then known as Grier BB College), Muzaffarpur, Bihar.[1] Kripalani was involved in the
Civil Disobedience movements and smaller occasions of organising protests and publishing seditious material against the British Raj.[2]

Congress leader

Kripalani joined the All India Congress Committee and became its general secretary in 1928–29.

Kripalani was prominently involved over a decade in top Congress party affairs, and in the organisation of the

the Punjab.[3][4]

He had served as the General Secretary of the INC for 12 years. He had experience working in the field of education and was made the president to rebuild the INC. Disputes between the party and the Government over procedural matters affected his relationship with the colleagues in the Government.[5][6]

As Congress President and the election of 1950

In spite of being ideologically at odds with both

Congress President for the crucial years around Indian independence in 1947. After Gandhi's assassination in January 1948, Nehru rejected his demand that the party's views should be sought in all decisions. Nehru, with the support of Patel, told Kripalani that while the party was entitled to lay down the broad principles and guidelines, it could not be granted a say in the government's day-to-day affairs.[6]
This precedent became central to the relationship between government and the ruling party in subsequent decades.

Nehru, however, supported Kripalani in the election of the Congress President in 1950. Kripalani, supported by Nehru, was defeated by Patel's candidate

Socialist Party of India to form the Praja Socialist Party
.

For a while it was even believed that Nehru, stung by the defeat, was considering abandoning the Congress as well; his several offers of resignation at the time were all, however, shouted down.[citation needed] A great many of the more progressive elements of the party left in the months following the election. Congress's subsequent bias to the right was only balanced when Nehru obtained the resignation of Tandon in the run-up to the general elections of 1951.

1961 Candidacy

In October 1961, Kripalani contested the Lok Sabha seat of

foreign policy
, devoted himself to attacking his vituperative opponent's personality, but ultimately lost the race, with Menon winning in a landslide.

Socialist Party

Kripalani remained in opposition for the rest of his life and was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952 (lost General Election in February 1952 from

Bhagalpur
), 1957 (from Sitamarhi, Bihar as PSP candidate), 1963, and 1967 (by-poll in Guna in MP as Swatantra Party candidate). His wife since 1938,
Chief Minister, in Uttar Pradesh. When Congress split in 1969, Sucheta Kripalani became part of Congress (Org), led by Nijalingappa and Morarji Desai
.

The Kripalanis were frequently at loggerheads in Parliament.

One matter they agreed on was the undesirability of vast parts of the

Hindu Marriage Act, particularly the controversial 'Restitution of Conjugal Rights' clause. By this clause, a partner who had survived an unsuccessful filing for divorce could move the courts to return to the status quo ante in terms of conjugal interaction. Kripalani, horrified, made one of his most memorable speeches, saying "this provision is physically undesirable, morally unwanted and aesthetically disgusting."[citation needed
]

Kripalani was also concerned with the privilege of parliament over the press. During Nehru's premiership, the Lok Sabha called the Chief Editor of the weekly Blitz, the well-known Russi Karanjia to the bar and admonished him for "denigration and defamation of a member of parliament" for calling Kripalani, "Cripple-loony". This was despite Karanjia's closeness to and Kripalani's estrangement from, Nehru.

Kripalani moved the first-ever

India-China War
.

Later life

Kripalani remained a critic of

Nehru
's policies and administration while working for social and environmental causes.

While remaining active in electoral politics, Kripalani gradually became more of a spiritual leader of the socialists than anything else; in particular, he was generally considered to be, along with Vinoba Bhave, the leader of what remained of the Gandhian faction. He was active, along with Bhave, in preservation and conservation activities throughout the 1970s.

In 1972-'73, he agitated against the increasingly authoritarian rule of Nehru's daughter

Emergency was declared as a result of the vocal dissent he helped stir up, the octogenarian Kripalani was among the first of the Opposition leaders to be arrested on the night of 26 June 1975. He lived long enough to survive the Emergency and see the first non-Congress government since Independence following the Janata Party victory in the 1977 polls. He and Jayaprakash Narayan, two senior guiding lights, were requested to choose the parliamentary leader of the new party who would be the prime minister, and they choose Morarji Desai. Jayaprakash Narayan, in wheel-chair, administered a pledge at Raj Ghat to new members of parliament that they will honour the mandate and remain united.[7]

Acharya Kripalani died on 19 March 1982 at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad,[8] at the age of 93.

In the 1982 film Gandhi by Richard Attenborough, J.B. Kripalani was played by Indian actor Anang Desai.

His autobiography My Times was released 22 years after his death by Rupa publishers in 2004. In the book, he accused his fellow members of Congress (except Ram Manohar Lohia, Mahatma Gandhi, and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan) of "moral cowardice" for accepting or submitting to plan to partition India.

A stamp was issued on 11 November 1989 by the

Indian Postal Department to commemorate the 101st anniversary of his birth.[9]

Trivia

Acharya Kripalani was born on the same day as Maulana Azad, who also was a prominent freedom fighter. Kripalani succeeded the latter as the President of the Indian National Congress at the Meerut session in 1946.

See also

  • Indian Independence Movement
  • Indian Emergency

Biography

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Acharya Kripalani.
  1. ^ "J. B. Kripalani". Constitution of India. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
  2. ^ "The purest kind". www.telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
  3. ^ Kabir, Nurul (1 September 2013). "Colonialism, politics of language and partition of Bengal PART XVI". The New Age. The New Age. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
  4. ^ Bose, Sugata (1987). Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics: 1919–1947. Hyderabad: Cambridge University Press, First Indian Edition in association with Orient Longman. pp. 230–231.
  5. ISBN 978-1-4008-7576-4
    . Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-67310-1
    .
  7. ISBN 9788131742822
    .
  8. ISBN 81-7011-842-5
    .
  9. ^ "J. B. Kripalani". Indianpost.com. 19 March 1982. Retrieved 21 January 2012.
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