The germs of the concept of Total Revolution lie deeply embedded in Gandhi’s teachings to which Jayaprakash Narayan, the leader of Total Revolution turned as a result of his disillusionment with what might be called “conventional wisdom of revolution and conventional technique” of change.
Total Revolution is a further extension of Gandhi’s thought on socio-economic problems and technique of change in the context of contemporary social, economic and political reality.
Total Revolution is a further extension of the Gandhian approach to social change. Social change in the Gandhian paradigm is a very comprehensive and inclusive term. According to Gandhi, a partial change in any one component of the social matrix is likely to produce disequilibrium in society.
Society, therefore, will tend to move towards a state of constant instability. In order to ensure that the social organisation maintains a steady and dynamic homeostatic state, an all-round change is needed. By an all-round change Gandhi did not mean only a change in the social framework but also a qualitative change in the behavioural-attitudinal-valuational and psyche texture of the individual. Gandhi, like Hegel, believed that revolution begins in the minds of men. But Gandhi enlarged the Hegelian concept. Gandhi’s primary emphasis was that an individual wanting to change the society must first of all change himself.
Gandhi’s revolution was evolutionary and a process of purification. Gandhi’s approach was not limited to a change in individual’s lifestyle, thought-structure, and behaviour-pattern only. Thus, together with a revolution in the individual, society must also change. It spans the entire continuum along which values as well as social and institutional structures are ranged. The emphasis is on each one of the elements constituting the continuum.
Gandhi talked of changing the society, he conceived of far-reaching and novel changes in the entire social organisation which consisted of the economy, polity, technique of production, personnel system of both the polity and economy, and, above all, the means to be adopted for effecting the change.
There are seven components of Total Revolution –
Social
Economic
Political
Cultural
Ideological
Intellectual
Educational
These numbers may be increased or decreased. JP himself thought that the cultural revolution could include educational and ideological. Similarly, social revolution, according to him, in the Marxian sense can cover economic and political revolutions and even more than that.