CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 49 of 120

Correct — A, Ram Manohar Lohia. Lohia set out the doctrine of Sapta Kranti in 1963, arguing that humanity was in revolt on seven fronts at once: for equality between men and women; against inequality founded on colour; against caste and inherited hierarchy; for national independence from foreign domination; for economic parity through greater production; for the privacy of the individual against unjust encroachment by the collective; and against weapons, in favour of settling disputes without them. The list is characteristic of him — he refused to treat economic exploitation as the single axis of politics and put caste, sex and colour alongside it, which is what separates his socialism from the orthodox Marxist kind.

• (b)Jawaharlal Nehru — A democratic socialist in his own terms, but his framework was planning, industrialisation and a mixed economy, expressed through the Five Year Plans and the Avadi resolution. Sapta Kranti is not his formulation, and Lohia was one of his sharpest critics.
• (c)M. G. Ranade — A nineteenth-century reformer and economist from Maharashtra who died in 1901, decades before Indian socialism took organised shape. Wrong century for the idea.
• (d)Jayaprakash Narayan — The strongest distractor, because he did give India a famous revolutionary slogan — Sampoorna Kranti, Total Revolution, in 1974. That is a different doctrine from a different decade; the seven revolutions are Lohia's.

Lohia belonged to the socialist stream that grew inside the Congress and then broke away. The Congress Socialist Party was founded in 1934; after independence its successors went through the Praja Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of India of 1955 and the Samyukta Socialist Party. Lohia's distinctive contributions were his insistence that caste and sex are axes of inequality in their own right, his campaign to reduce the dominance of English in public life, and his slogan of roti and beti — inter-dining and inter-marriage — as the practical dissolution of caste.

The whole question is a name-to-slogan pairing, and the trap is the near-rhyme. Sapta Kranti belongs to Lohia in 1963; Sampoorna Kranti belongs to Jayaprakash Narayan in 1974 and to the movement that led to the Emergency. Store the two with their dates and the item takes seconds. Lohia lived from 1910 to 1967, took his doctorate at Berlin on the economics of salt taxation, and sat in the Lok Sabha for Farrukhabad and then Kannauj.

• Ram Manohar Lohia lived from 23 March 1910 to 12 October 1967.
• He proposed the Sapta Kranti, or seven revolutions, in 1963.
• The seven cover equality of the sexes, colour, caste, national independence, economic parity, individual privacy and restraint on weapons.
• He was associated with the Congress Socialist Party of 1934, the Praja Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of India and the Samyukta Socialist Party.
• Jayaprakash Narayan's Sampoorna Kranti, Total Revolution, dates from 1974 and is a separate doctrine.

• Swapping Sapta Kranti with Sampoorna Kranti — different men, different decades.
• Assuming any socialist idea in the options must be Nehru's because he is the most familiar name.
• Placing Lohia inside the Communist tradition; he was an opponent of it as well as of the Congress.

As a doctrine-to-thinker pick, as a slogan identification, or inside a matching item on leaders and the parties they founded.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The call for 'Sampoorna Kranti', or Total Revolution, was given in 1974 by

  • (a)Ram Manohar Lohia
  • (b)Jayaprakash Narayan
  • (c)Acharya Narendra Dev
  • (d)Vinoba Bhave

  Answer(b) Jayaprakash Narayan — the Bihar movement of 1974, distinct from Lohia's seven revolutions of 1963.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Congress Socialist Party was founded in which year?

  • (a)1929
  • (b)1934
  • (c)1942
  • (d)1948

  Answer(b) 1934 — formed within the Congress by Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev, Minoo Masani and others.