Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 201
the new system and how to enable people "to participate
in the management of their affairs as far as possible."64 This
in turn entailed a criticism of the actually existing panchayati
raj-yes, it was decentralized, but it would not be a
truly participatory democracy until people were educated,
competitive elections were abolished so that no one could
use the panchayat as a launching pad for power, and all
adults had a voice in the gram sabha, with the panchayat
functioning as no more than an implementer of decisions.
He spent the 1950s and 1960s on speaking tours,
writing, and taking stands on sometimes controversial or
apparently hopeless causes. He took the unpopular position
of advocating for Kashmiri and Naga efforts at greater autonomy
from Indian central government. Then in the early
1970s, he began to move back toward conventional political
engagement, sensing that Bhoodan-Gramdan was not
proving sufficient to bring about the social revolution. In
1970, he threw himself into the mobilization led by leftists
in Bihar to peacefully occupy land exceeding the legal ownership
allotment ceiling. He also got involved in the Bihari
youth movement, supporting students' demands to disband
the Bihar ministry and legislative assembly, while urging
the dismantling of the caste-based hierarchical structures
utilized to maintain the feudal landholding regime.65
By 1974, aged seventy-two and in fragile health, JP
was again facing assaults, lathi blows, and solitary confinement
as in his early days of radicalization. He was released
from prison in 1975, with failing kidneys, just in time for
the Emergency period of authoritarian rule Indira Gandhi
imposed from 1975-77.