Jagjivan Ram's nationalism was the product of his ardent desire to serve the suppressed and oppressed masses of India.  His political work revolved around his mission as a social reformer bent upon abolishing untouchability and the graded inequalities of the caste system.  During the freedom struggle he was a rallying point for the rights and aspirations of the depressed classes and he conceived the reform of the social order as an integral aspect of the country's struggle for independence.  He believed in the validity of the Gandhian way of a moral revolution in our society and in the Nehruvian method of social and economic change to usher in a socialistic pattern of society.  He believed that the salvation of India lay in a combination of these two methods of approach to the problem of transforming and modernizing Indian society.

Babu Jagjivan Ram had the unique privilege of participating in the heroic saga of the freedom struggle and in the hard and intensely practical task of developing and modernizing India after Independence.  In the latter capacity also he emerged as "the purest gold out of fire", to use Gandhiji's phrase.  He emerged as an outstanding administrator who is acknowledged as one of the builders of modern India.  For nearly three decades he functioned as a Cabinet Minister in independent India holding important portfolios as Ministries of Labour, Communications, Railways, Food and Agriculture and Defence.  It has been said that nobody is a hero to his valet.  There are few Ministers who have had the privilege of being a hero to his civil servants and being genuinely respected and adored by them for his versatile ability and sincere dedication to the task before him. 

In the Labour Ministry he was a symbol of social change and he laid the foundations of social security legislation in India.  He was the moving force behind the Minimum Wages Act, the Coal Mines Labour Welfare Fund and the Employees' State Insurance Corporations.  These progressive legislations emanated from his abiding concern for social justice and social change.  As the Minister for Communications and as the Minister of Railways he spread the network of post offices and rail lines throughout the country bringing the people closer together as citizens of one nation.  It is during his tenure as Minister of Food and Agriculture that for the first time India achieved victory in the battle against hunger.  Jagjivan Ram led the nation through the green revolution demonstrating the possibility of self-reliance in foodgrains in a country as big as India with an exploding population growth.  Jagjivan Ram's finest hour as a Minister was when he was in charge of the Defence Portfolio during the Bangladesh crisis.  He was a co-architect of the military and political victory in that crisis.

Jagjivan Ram's political and social philosophy is as noteworthy as his achievements as freedom fighter, politician and statesman.  We find the philosophy expounded succinctly in his Presidential address to the 73rd session of Indian National Congress held in Bombay in December 1969.  Indulging a bit self-criticism he said:- "It has been our bitter experience that abridgement or denial of internal democracy has inevitably resulted in the emergence of 'bossism' ".  Analysing the political crisis he said that the seeds of it "which were there in the social order, has been accentuated by greater politicalisation of the people and the desire of each segment to maintain or secure the benefits of political power -- a necessary concomitant of implanting of democratic institutions on social framework permeated by cultural backwardness".  He added with his fervent faith in democracy.  "The wayout is not the restriction of democracy but its expansion, and if I may say so, culturalisation.".

On the political and social predicament of India he observed:  "Many of our erstwhile colleagues are afraid of the spectre of communism.  The spectre of casteism is perhaps more dangerous, because it is a widely prevalent malady, inherent in our social order, in our attitudes, beliefs, behaviour.  Inter-caste, inter-regional, inter-religious tensions are fundamentally of the same genre."  He pleaded for a cultural transformation of Indian society and proposed the opening of a section in the AICC which will be wholly non-political, "which will create a forum for social scientists to meet and plan a campaign for the much needed mental revolution.  Revolutions, even social ones after all, begin in the minds of men".  And he added: "I have always maintained that the problems of the Scheduled Castes and Tribals cannot be fully appreciated much less solved except in the framework of a radical reorganization of the socio-economic order".  There is much in this statement of Jagjivan Ram for us to ponder over to-day.

It has been recounted how Babu Jagjivan Ram when a High School student in Bihar in 1922  faced different pitchers of drinking water kept in the school for Hindus, Muslims and untouchables, and how he broke the pitcher meant for untouchables, and insisted upon drinking water out of the other pitcher, and how the Head Master yielded to his insistence.  Is it not an irony of tragic dimensions, that to-day, in a school in India, a Dalit girl student was beaten up and blinded by the teacher because she directly took water from the pitcher and drank it to quench her thirst.   Over 80 years ago Jagjivan Ram got away his rebellion against caste discrimination in his school in contrast to what happened to the Dalit girl in the school to-day.  While installing the statue of Jagjivan Ram in the Parliament House all of us will have to do some soul-searching in regard to this state of affairs, despite the social and economic progress the country has made and is making today. 

Thank you