Ram Manohar Lohia, who was born on March 23, 1910, and passed away on October 12, 1967, was a socialist political figure and an activist in the Indian independence movement. He collaborated with Congress Radio, which broadcast covertly from various locations throughout Bombay until 1942, during the final years of British administration in India.

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About Ram Manohar Lohia

On March 23, 1910, Ram Manohar Lohia was born into the Bania family in Akbarpur, present-day Uttar Pradesh. He was raised by his father Hiralal, who never remarried after his mother passed away in 1912 when he was only two years old. He was raised and cared for in his early years by a woman who was a member of the Barber community. She worked for his family. In 1918, he moved to Bombay with his father to finish his high school education. After earning the first rank in his school’s matriculation exams in 1927, he went to the Banaras Hindu University to finish his intermediate and work. He then enrolled in the University of Calcutta’s Vidyasagar College, where he graduated with a B.A. in 1929. To express his disdain for British philosophy, he chose to attend Frederick William University (now Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany), selecting it over educational institutions in Britain.

He quickly mastered German, and because of financial aid based on his excellent grades, he was able to study the national economy as a PhD student from 1929 to 1933. In his PhD thesis, Lohia examined the salt taxation system in India with a particular emphasis on Gandhi’s socio-economic theory.

National Movement

Lohia served as editor of Congress Socialist, the Congress Socialist Party’s mouthpiece, and was also one of its founders. He was chosen by Jawaharlal Nehru to serve as the secretary of the All India Congress Committee (A.I.C.C. ), the top body of the Congress Party, in the year 1936. By the time he relinquished that duty in 1938, Lohia had begun to form his own political stance by critically analysing the views of the Gandhian Congress leadership and the Communists who had flooded the CSP. He was detained in June 1940 and given a two-year prison term for making anti-war statements. Lohia, who had been freed by the end of 1941, rose to prominence in the Central Directorate, which worked covertly to plan the Quit India movement, which Gandhi had spurred in August 1942. He was imprisoned and tortured in Lahore Fort after being captured in May 1944. On April 11, 1946, Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan were the last two maximum-security inmates to be freed. He invented the idea of Sapta Kranti.

Later Political Career

Lohia joined the Congress Socialist Party when it left the Indian National Congress. When the Socialist Party and Kisan Majdoor Praja Party merged to establish the Praja Socialist Party in 1952, he stayed a member of the Socialist party. In 1956, Lohia, who was dissatisfied with the new party, spearheaded a breakaway to reorganise the Socialist Party (Lohia). In the Phulpur general election of 1962, he was defeated by Nehru. Following a by-election in Farrukhabad (a Lok Sabha seat), Lohia was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1963. In 1965, he merged the Socialist Party (Lohia) with the Samyukta Socialist Party.

Multiple times, the two socialist factions joined, divided, and then remerged. In 1967, Lohia was a key player in the establishment of Uttar Pradesh’s first non-Congress administration. Lohia and Bharatiya Jan Sangh chief Nanaji Deshmukh established this partnership. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1967 from the Kannauj (Lok Sabha constituency), but he passed away a few months later.

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Writings of Ram Manohar Lohia

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