SOCIALIST movement in India turned 75 this year.
In 1934, the then youths like Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Deva, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Ashok Mehta, Yusuf Meherally and others started this movement and named the movement as Congress Socialist Party, because then the Congress was the password to initiate any movement in the country, which was struck with freedom movement and Congress under the Mahatma was spearheading it. And, 2009 is the 60th year of the formation of Socialist Party as an independent political group in India. Incidentally, the birth centenary of Ram Manohar Lohia also falls next year. He was born in March 1910.
Karnataka contributed significantly to strengthen the Socialist movement in the country, particularly through Kagodu Movement in 1951, the first peasant movement of independent India. Kagodu was a small, sleepy village mostly populated with Ediga community families, who were the tenants of the absentee landlords settled in the nearby town Sagar.
These families used to drudge all through the year in the land which was not registered in their names, harvest paddy and give it to the landlords against a small quantity of paddy in return as their annual wages.
But these landlords had two different sized vessels to measure the paddy. The one used to receive the paddy was larger and the one used to give the wages was smaller.
Ganapathiyappa, then a hot-blooded youth, objected the discrimination.
Soon socialists took over the issue and led a national debate on tenancy and its evils.
Though the movement did not reach a logical conclusion immediately, it had a far-fetching impact on farming system in Karnataka and helped the socialist movement to have its firm footing in the state. Ram Manohar Lohia, Shanthaveri Gopala Gowda, Shankaranarayana Bhat, Sadashivarao and others gave proper direction to the movement then.
The people involved in socialist movement appeared like iconoclasts for some, since they continued to elucidate and condemn some of the customs and equations rooted deep in the society.
For instance, they broke the myth that only the s t rong communities should rule the society by ensuring victory to Ediga youths like Kagodu Thimmappa and S Bangarappa in the Assembly elections.
With the changing times the socialist movement lost its steam and its leaders had gone scattered into different political groups. However, the socialist principles they had practised c o n t i nue to guide them all along.
Socialist movement contribute d f o u r chief ministers to Karnataka – Devaraj Urs, S Bangarappa, J H Patel and S M Krishna. These four chief ministers had contributed in their own right to the improvement of Karnataka.
Devaraj Urs introduced land reforms and renamed the state as Karnataka apart from giving power to the backward communities.
Bangarappa introduced the Ashraya, Viswa and Aradhana schemes for the welfare of the oppressed communities.
J H Patel brought in a democratic system within the cabinet and S M Krishna helped Bangalore reach the top in the world as IT city. That is, the socialistic ideologies have been flowing at subterranean level in the society though they have never showed up explicitly.
The socialist ideals have helped in maintaining the democracy intact.
But the recent trends of growing religious fanaticism and capitalism appear to have been posing a threat to democratic principles.
Undue importance given to religious institutions and the people’s representatives queuing up to felicitate and praise contractors and builders will surely subvert the democracy some day, if not immediately.
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