Jayaprakash Narayan - Early Life

Early Life

Jayprakash (J.P.) Narayan was born on 11 October 1902 in the village of Sitabdiara, Saran Chhapra, Bihar, India. He came from a middle-class Kayastha family. He was Harsu Dayal and Phul Rani Devi’s fourth child. His father had boasted about J.P., “My son will be a great man, some day.” When J.P. was 9 years old he left his village to enroll in 7th class of the collegiate school at Patna. He was a serious student and by 1918 completed school and undertook the ‘State Public Matriculation Examination’ and won a District merit scholarship to Patna college. J.P. was not very religious but he began to read regularly some of the most basic Hindu scriptures starting with Bhagavada Gita, deriving heroic inspiration from the great battle of the Mahabharata described in the book which enlightens the concept that the essence of man is immortal. J.P. then also acquired a "Swadeshi” (indigenous) attitude, using handmade village shoes instead of the British manufactured ones and cleaning them with Indian mustard oil instead of with British shoe polish. He dressed himself in a Kurta, a home-spun, hand-woven material and an ascetically short dhoti. At 18, J.P. was married to Braj Kishore Prasad’s daughter Prabhavati,14 in October 1920. Then Braj Kishore sent Prabhavati to live with Kasturba Gandhi as a daughter in Gandhi’s ashram at Amdavad. J.P. wanted to appear for his second year science examination at Patna college. However J.P.’s being part of the nationalist movement against the British rule in India left the college being funded by the British Government and joined the Bihar Vidyapith, a tertiary institution set up by Bihar Congress for all non-co-operation students. In the meanwhile, Gandhi called off the non-co-operation movement in horror because the violent mob had killed twenty-two policemen in Uttar Pradesh at Chauri Chaura. The Indian National Congress was outlawed and the non-co-operation subsided. J.P. felt completely crushed.