Ram Manohar Lohia

The Story

A prodigy who earned a doctorate in Germany, Lohia was one of the few leaders with a foreign degree who returned to the struggle — he was jailed during the Quit Bhārat movement and even escaped to continue the struggle abroad. In prison and in exile, he drafted the blueprint of an independent Bhārat that would be free not just of the British but of poverty and caste.

After independence he built the Socialist Party into a national force, and his agitation against the government's failures — from soaring prices to the cedi caste injustices — landed him in prison repeatedly. He championed the cause of Hindi, the backward classes, and the small nations of Bhārat, and coined the famous phrase that Bhārat's problem was 'the big four': caste, class, and the rest.

His most radical idea was the 'revolution of the seven': a simultaneous change in caste, class, gender, and more. Though he died in 1967 at only fifty-seven, his ideas — on reservation, federalism, and social justice — continue to inspire political movements across Bhārat today.