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party. His generous offer was politely turned down. Instead, he was requested by Dr. Lohia to manage the Hyderabad office where the party was born.Amalgamated from the three differing streams of Marxism, democratic socialism and Gandhism, the Party was a mixture of several ideologies, each one dominating at one time or the other. Events outside the country like the disturbing accounts of the Soviet dictatorships, the pro-British war effort of the Communists in World War II also caused disturbances in the Socialist Block leading to splits and defections. Differences between pro and anti-Congress members kept surfacing. Swords were crossed over minor issues. They stumbled from one nadir to the next, using socialism as a rhetorical weapon. We must remember that the Indian democracy was a new one and the changes brought out by the general elections - the single ballot, simple majority with universal suffrage %u2013 were considerable. In this first election with universal suffrage, various ideological shifts within the Block can be most clearly seen through the changes that came about in Jayaprakash Narayan himself. Prior to 1940, he was a confirmed Marxist and when he did break with the Communists, the break was severe. The influence of Gandhism on him grew after Gandhi's death. Finally, in 1954, he announced that he was withdrawing from active political work and was going to dedicate his life to Bhoodan and constructive activism. He resigned from the national executive of the PSP and resigned finally from its membership in 1957. Minoo Masani, Sampurnanand, Aruna Asaf Ali, Achyut Patwardhan, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya are among the 117