Acharya J B Kripalani
(1888-1982)
President - Meerut, 1946

J. B. Kripalani was born at Hyderabad (Sind) in 1888 in an upper middle class Hindu family.

Those were days of the Bengal partition when there was a ferment among students. Kripalani also caught the spirit and raised enough trouble for the authorities of the Wilson College to be forced to migrate to the quieter atmosphere of the D.J. Sind College at Karachi. Here too he got himself involved in trouble. When the Principal of the College made an indiscreet remark about Indians being liars. Immediately there was a strike in which Kripalani and his fellow students got their first lesson in political agitation.

From 1912 to 1917 he worked as a Professor of English and History at Muzaffarpur College in Bihar. For a short period, he taught at the Benares Hindu University (1919-20) and from 1920 to 1927 he served as the Principal of the Gujarat Vidyapeeth founded by Mahatma Gandhi. From 1927 he became fully engrossed in the Ashram work and in the political movements of the Indian National Congress. It was during his days at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth that he came to be called Acharya.

Kripalani first came into contact with Gandhiji in 1917 during the Champaran Satyagraha and that proved to be a turning point in his life. Another turning point in his life was his marriage with Sucheta in 1936. It turned out to be the happiest partnership in life. For nearly four decades there has been the closest understanding between the husband and the wife.

From the late twenties Kripalani devoted himself wholly to Congress work. He steadily built up his position in the organisation, and from 1934 to 1945 he served as the General Secretary. Content with being a silent worker, during the Congress rift in 1938 over the election of Subhas Chandra Bose as President, Kripalani sided with Gandhi. He took part in all the Congress movements since 1921. During the Quit India movement in 1942 he was arrested and was released along with the other Congress leaders in 1945. He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in November 1946 and steered the organisation through the critical days of the transfer of power. In November 1947 he presided over a very crucial meeting of the AICC where he differed sharply from many of his former colleagues. Kripalani insisted on retaining the supremacy of the organisational wing of the Congress over the parliamentary wing, which was resisted by Nehru, Patel and others who were now in the Government. To prevent disharmony and rift within the Congress Kripalani finally tendered his resignation as President, being succeeded by Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Though he remained a member of the Constituent Assembly, Kripalani gradually drifted away from his old comrades until he resigned from the Congress Party itself in 1951. He then started a weekly called the Vigil and a new political party known as the Krishak Mazdoor Praja Party which subsequently merged into the Praja Socialist Party. But in 1954 he resigned from the P.S.P. and became an independent for the rest of his parliamentary life. He helped the Janata Party to victory in 1977 and died soon thereafter, leaving a distinct mark on India's public life.

Kripalani has written a number of books on Gandhian philosophy.

- N. R. Malkani

For an unarmed people to fight Great Britain at a time when all its armed might was mobilised, when the inexhaustible resources of America were at its disposal, appeared sheer folly. But then these men forgot that when the Congress under Gandhiji's lead took to revolutionary politics, it abandoned conventional political wisdom. It dared to risk and achieve. Was the Congress wise when it made the Khilafat issue, which it scarcely understood, its own? Was it again wise to resort to Salt Satyagraha to achieve independence? There was apparently no connection between salt and Independence. And what wisdom could there have been in Gandhiji walking with a flock of unarmed followers for 21 days to pick up a pinch of salt on the sea-shore? What political or any other wisdom could there be in Pandit Motilal Nehru manufacturing salt in his study in a laboratory test tube on a spirit lamp from a lamp of clay? What wisdom was there in selecting individual satyagrahis to walk from place to place shouting anti-war slogans till they were arrested? The fact is, the Congress under Gandhiji's lead has never done the conventionally obvious thing, and if it does so before the freedom fight is over and complete independence won, it will have missed its revolutionary role.

From the Presidential Address - J.B. Kripalani
I.N.C. Session, 1946, Meerut