Jayaprakash Narayan, 20, sailed aboard the cargo ship Janus while Prabhavati remained at Sabarmati. He reached California on 8 October, 1922 and was admitted to Berkeley in January 1923.
In Wisconsin, he was introduced to Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He returned from the US to India in 1929 as a Marxist. He joined the Indian National Congress on the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru and joined the Indian independence movement.
He was jailed and tortured several times by the British.
In 1932, when Jayaprakash Narayan was imprisoned in Nasik Jail for civil disobedience against British rule, he met Ram Manohar Lohia, Minoo Masani, Achyut Patwardhan, Ashok Mehta, Yusuf Desai and other national leaders.