Jayaprakash Narayan

About:

• He was born on October 11, 1902, in Bihar’s Sitab Diara.
• He quit college to join the non-cooperation movement, before going to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx.
• He returned to India in 1929 and joined the freedom struggle and the Indian National Congress, upon the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru and drawn by a speech by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
• He is one of the founding members of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP).
• He is credited for galvanising popular opinion against Indira Gandhi government, through his call for Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution). It led to the formation of the first non-Congress government (Janata Party government, 1977) in the country. 
• In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, in recognition of his social service.
• Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1965.

urce : Indian Express

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