June 5 Sampoorn Kranti Diwas

 June 5 is  observed as Sampoorn Kranti Diwas (the day of Total Revolution) coinciding with Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for total revolution in a massive rally at Gandhi Maidan Patna on June 5, 1974.  In 1974 the students in Bihar revolted againstwith hike in fee, mess-charges, corruption, inflation and unemployment. Many students got injured due to police firing while taking out a procession in Patna on March 18, 1974. The student-leaders approached the Gandhian leader Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), and requested him to lead and guide the movement. JP  took the leadership  and  converted a campus movement into a mass movement with an ultimate goal of total transformation of the society including the existing socio-economic-political system In fact he took the term from Karl Marx’s work The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). He was convinced that merely securing the students’ demands and resignations of Ministers were not adequate to solve the multifaceted problems faced by the country those days. Total Revolution was basically meant to achieve Gandhian ideal of Sarvodaya. JP wrote “There is hardly any difference between Sarvodaya and Total Revolution. If there is any, then Sarvodayais the goal and Total Revolution the means. Total Revolution is basic change in all aspects of life. There cannot be Sarvodayawithout this”. He envisaged seven components in his concept of Total Revolution viz. social, economic, political, cultural, ideological/intellectual, educational, and spiritual. He further visualized the four key aspects in the process of achieving Total Revolution viz. struggle, construction, propaganda, and organization. According to him these seven categories can be further split up into sub-categories and these numbers may be increased or decreased. In his Letter to People of Bihar (1975) he wrote, “Total revolution is permanent evolution. It will always go on and keep on changing both our personal and social lives. This revolution knows no respite, no halt, certainly not a complete halt. Of course, according to the needs of the situation its form will change, its programme will change, its processes will change.”