Description

Triveni Sangh’s activities were primarily confined to Bihar, parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, adjoining Bihar, were also influenced by it. At the political level, the Triveni Sangh’s mission was carried forward by the Shoshit Dal, founded by Jagdev Prasad in 1967 in Bihar. The Dal formed its government in the state in 1968 with B.P. Mandal as the chief minister – the same B.P. Mandal who was to later become the chairman of the famous “Mandal Commission”. Some people mistakenly believe that the “Picchda Pawe Sau Mein Saath” (Backwards should get sixty from the hundred) movement, launched many years after Independence by Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, was a revival of the movement of Triveni Sangh. In their study of the Triveni Sangh, Prassana Kumar Chaudhary and Shrikant have described Lohia as the person “who developed a more mature ideological and political philosophy of social revolution of the Backwards” . Though Lohia was influenced by Triveni Sangh, his thoughts, in fact, came in the way of the flourishing of the basic spirit of Triveni Sangh. “Dr Lohia’s personality was so full of contradictions that even today it is difficult to guess what he exactly wanted. To strengthen his politics, he raised the slogan of ‘Picchda Pawe Sau Mein Sath’ and did manage to garner support for his party but he did not launch a systematic attack on Brahmanical thinking. What Lohia propounded and propagated could help form a government but it could not build a movement.” That is why Ramswaroop Verma and Jagdev Prasad had to part ways with Dr Lohia and create their distinct base.