Asoka Mehta

Asoka (Ashoka) Mehta ( Hindi अशोक मेहता ; born October 24, 1911 in Bhavnagar , Princely State of Bhavnagar , British India ; † December 10, 1984 in New Delhi ) was an Indian politician of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), the Socialist Party India (SPI), the People's Socialist Party (PSP) and the Indian National Congress (INC), which held various ministerial offices between 1966 and 1968 and was arrested during the state of emergency between 1975 and 1977 .

Life

Engagement in Gandhi's struggle for independence and imprisonment

Asoka Mehta, son of Ranjitram Mehta, completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Bombay after attending Wilson College, founded in Bombay in 1832 , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). A subsequent postgraduate study at the local economics faculty, he interrupted for his beginning political commitment. He supported the Swadeshi campaign promoted by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi for the exclusive use of domestic products, as well as Gandhi's continued struggle for India's independence, and was arrested for participating in the acts of civil disobedience and sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 1932. After his release from prison in 1934 he was a founding member of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and was a member of its National Executive Committee between 1934 and 1948.

Due to further actions as part of Gandhi's Satyagraha actions, Mehta was again sentenced to one and a half years in prison in 1940. In August 1942 he was arrested again for his involvement in the Quit India movement and was subsequently imprisoned for three years.

Foundation of socialist parties and Lok Sabha member

After India gained independence from the United Kingdom on August 15, 1947, Mehta initially continued his political engagement in the Congress Socialist Party and was a member of the board of directors of the port company of Bombay between 1947 and 1948. In 1948 he founded the Socialist Party of India (SPI) together with Jayaprakash Narayan , Acharya Narendra Dev , MR "Minoo" Masani , Achyut Patwardhan and Ram Manohar Lohia and in 1950 became its general secretary. At the same time he founded the Hind Mazdoor Sabha union in 1949 and also became its general secretary. As such, he became a member of the Committee for Fair Wages in 1940, the Committee for the Distribution of Profits in 1950 and a member of the Working Committee for the Cotton Textile Industry in 1952.

On June 1, 1952, a few months after the first election to Lok Sabha and after several meetings between Jivatram Kripalani , Jayaprakash Narayan and Asoka Mehta, a joint declaration was announced, in which the aim was to form a unified parliamentary party from the previous Socialist Party and the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) was proclaimed. The joint program called for an egalitarian socialist order, the nationalization of key industries, a civil rights program and the principle of Swadeshi, ie economic self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency. A founding party congress with delegates from both parties took place on 26./27. September 1952 in Bombay. The new party was named People's Socialist Party (PSP). Mehta then acted as general secretary of the PSP from 1952 to 1953.

In a by-election in 1954, Mehta was elected for the first time as a member of the Lok Sabha , the lower house of the Indian parliament (Bhāratīya saṃsa) , and represented in this after his re-election in the elections between February 24 and March 15, 1957 until the election of 19 until February 25, 1962 the constituency of Bhandara . During his membership in parliament he acted as deputy chairman of the PSP parliamentary group in the Lok Sabha and was also chairman of the PSP between June 1959 and June 1963.

Change to INC, Minister and Rajya Sabha member

After Mehta resigned from the PSP in June 1963, he became a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) and served as India's representative in the General Assembly of the United Nations between September and December 1963 . In December 1963 he became vice-chairman of the planning commission and was subsequently head of the delegation of the planning commission during a visit to the Soviet Union (May 1965).

On January 24, 1966, Asoka Mehta was appointed Minister of Planning in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and held this office until September 5, 1967, after which Indira Gandhi took over this office herself. In February 1966 he also took over the post of Minister for Social Welfare and held this office until August 23, 1968. On April 3, 1966 he became a member of the Rajya Sabha , the upper house of parliament, and represented in this until February 26, 1967 the interests of the state of Maharashtra . As Minister of Planning, he was also head of delegations on visits to the USA (April to May 1966) and again in the Soviet Union (June to July 1966). On March 13, 1967, he was also Minister for Petroleum and Chemicals and held this ministerial office until August 23, 1968.

In 1967 he also acted as chairman of a commission that consisted of the conflicts in the state of Assam . exhibited extraordinary ethnic heterogeneity. The Assamese in the narrower sense, who populated the relatively densely populated Brahmaputra plain (plains people) , only made up about 60 percent of the total population. In addition, there was a Bengali- speaking minority and numerous small, mostly Tibeto-Burmese peoples in the mountain regions (hills people) or the tribal areas. The fathers of the Indian constitution , which came into force in 1950, took this into account by granting the tribal areas special rights and limited self-government. The dispute over the state language of Assam was led in particular by the All Party Hill Leaders' Conference (APHLC), founded in 1960 . The APHLC increased its public agitation. The question polarized the Indian political landscape. Parties in opposition to the Congress Party, such as Swatantra and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam , sided with the APHLC's positions. On September 11, 1968, the Indian government under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared its intention to create a separate hill state from the tribal areas of Assam. The geographer SP Chatterjee suggested the name Meghalaya for the new state.

Re-elected to the Lok Sabha and imprisoned between 1975 and 1977

Front page of the Indian Herald dated June 26, 1975 with the news of the arrests of prominent politicians such as Jayaprakash Narayan , Morarji Desai , AB Vajpayee , LK Advani and Asoka Mehta

In the election from February 15 to 21, 1967 , Mehta was re-elected as a member of the Lok Sabha for the INC. After an internal party dispute between Indira Gandhi and the so-called "Syndicate" around K. Kamaraj , the former Chief Minister of Madras , Neelam Sanjiva Reddy , Congress Party leader and Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh , S. Nijalingappa , the Chief Minister of Mysore , the former Railway Minister S. K. Patil and Atulya Ghosh , leader of the Congress in West Bengal , the new Indian National Congress (Organization) (INC (O)) party had been founded, Mehta joined them. In the election from March 1 to 10, 1971 , however, he was no longer elected a member of the Lok Sabha.

His opposition to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led to the fact that, after the declaration of the state of emergency on June 25, 1975 , he joined other former top politicians such as Jayaprakash Narayan , Morarji Desai , Charan Singh , Jivatram Kripalani , George Fernandes , Atal Bihari Vajpayee , Lal Krishna Advani and many officials of the communist parties were arrested. Few politicians from Indira's Congress Party opposed the state of emergency, including Chandra Shekhar , Ram Dhan , Krishna Kant and Mohan Dharia . They were also arrested. During the state of emergency he was in Rohtak Prison in Haryana until his release on March 21, 1977 .

After his release from prison, Mehta was appointed chairman of the Ashok Mehta Committee named after him by the new government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai . This dealt with the development of reform proposals for the system of village self-government ( Panchayati Raj ) and presented a final report on this in August 1978 with 132 reform proposals, some of which led to a change in the law in the states of Andhra Pradesh , Karnataka and West Bengal .

Publications

• Indian Shipping (1940)
• Communal Triangle in India (1942)
• Great Rebellion (1946)
• Who Owns India? (1950)
• Democratic Socialism (1951)
• The Political Mind of India (1952)
• Socialism and Peasantry (1953)
• Politics of Planned Economy (1953)
• Studies in Socialism (1956)

Web links

• Entry on the Lok Sabha homepage
• Entry on the homepage of the Rajya Sabha
• Entry in prabook.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://books.google.de/books?id=bVVPAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Asoka+Mehta%22+passes+away+1984&dq=%22Asoka+Mehta%22+passes+away+1984&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCr9QAAaIKajAhW6
2. ↑ COUNCIL OF MINISTERS GANDHI January 24, 1966 - March 13, 1967
3. ↑ COUNCIL OF MINISTERS GANDHI 2 March 13, 1967 - March 18, 1971
4. ↑ Sixth Schedule Article 244 (2) and 275 (1): Provisions as to the Administration of Tribal Areas in the States of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Indian Ministry of Human Resources Development, accessed April 7, 2018 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Lyngdoh Nongbri, Radhon Singh: Government and politics in Meghalaya . Ed .: Gauhati University. June 30, 1976, Chapter 18: The Search for Alternative Formulas (English, online - Dissertation).
6. ^ Ex-Congress leader Mohan Dharia, who opposed 1975 Emergency, dead. (No longer available online.) Hindustantimes.com, October 14, 2013, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; accessed on July 4, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.