Name: Kundan Kumar , Punil Kumar
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume-10, Issue-2 (July-December)
Page Number: 467-474
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22746700

Karpoori Thakur occupies an important place in the history of Indian socialism and the politics of social justice. His political career was closely associated with Bihar, where he emerged as an influential voice for socially and politically marginalised communities and became particularly associated with backward-class representation, social equality and democratic participation. For much of the post-independence period, however, his political significance remained closely connected to Bihar's socialist and social-justice politics. The conferment of the Bharat Ratna in 2024 marked a significant change in the public recognition of his legacy and brought him more prominently into the national political imagination. This paper examines this transition from a predominantly regional political memory to the making of Karpoori Thakur as a national political icon. It develops the idea of the "nationalisation of a socialist legacy" to describe the process through which a political legacy rooted in a particular regional and social context is incorporated into a wider national narrative through state recognition, public commemoration and contemporary political discourse. The paper argues that this process involves both recognition and reinterpretation. National recognition has expanded the visibility of Thakur's contribution to social justice and democratic representation, but it has also created possibilities for selectively presenting aspects of his political legacy that are more easily accommodated within contemporary political narratives. Thakur's case therefore provides an important opportunity to examine the relationship between political memory, national icon-making and the contemporary appropriation of historical legacies in India.

Keywords: Karpoori Thakur; political memory; socialist legacy; nationalisation of political legacy; social justice; national icon; Bharat Ratna; political appropriation