Baran

I write this article with two things in mind, first that it will be not be treated as a sensational news item and discussed and forgotten over the dinner table, no I want more than that,
Second I write this article with the hope that it strikes a chord with at least a few of us, that some of you understand and feel what I felt.

I went to a village mamoni, which is 60 km away from baran that is the district headquarter, state in rajas than.We were on an exposure trip through a Delhi based ngo pravah, in collaboration with sank alp another ngo based in mamoni, working with the sehariyas, adivasis.The word sehariya was introduced to me in a food for work camp in a seminar held in Delhi .I learned about these people who had nothing to eat and were dying because they were starving. Newspaper reports told me half tales of a man whose entire family perished after consuming sama (grass seeds made into chapattis).

As the media brought in more and more gory stories, my curiosity rose needless to say I grew more restless, however to my dismay there seemed to be less of a follow up of events, for many days I looked and searched even over the net but found nothing.I was oblivious for what we were to see and experience - how these people were to change my life.

With a lot of cash in our hand, help for the starved and very little on our minds we started on our journey, Delhi to kota, and then the bus to shahabad, it was all very exciting and new, beautiful countryside, men, women children wearing the most amazing bright colours, I have ever seen, how colourful must their lives be??

Sitting under the mahua tree, we heard the story of a civilization, rather the breakdown of it,I sit to pen what I had heard and then add to it what I have seen.The sehariyas are adivasis literally meaning natives. They were forest-dwellers, the forest supplied them with mahua, jaggery etc which they sold in the market or exchanged for other essential commodities. It was a fairy tale existence, segregated and aloof from the world the lived in their den of simplicity. They had a culture, a community existence; unmindful of the rest of the populace they lived.

Post –independence the equation changed, act one was over, act two was to begin.Centralization and reforms, a policy of 5-years plans and the idea that welfare will trickle down from the decision makers to the decision takers also arranged in a hierarchy.Land was now marked as forest –land and revenue land. The forestland recognized as the property of the govt. and the rest of the people. The sehariyas were pushed out of their homes, their forests taken away from; independence certainly meant different things for different people.

Act three, sehariyas out in the open, and the worm rudely woken up and dragged out of its shell. Pushed into the fringes of the caste system that believes in the ranking of all people- Brahmins, Kshatriya, banias………. Chamars and the sehariyas.

They remain now socially ostracized, culturally hegemonised at the lowest rung of the Hindu system.The chapter on fundamental rights in the Indian constitution proclaims that all people citizens of India can follow their own culture and faith. The chapter on scheduled castes and tribes recognizes that the fact that they have been socially and culturally ostracized and humiliated. They have been denied education and therefore remained backward. The protection of civil rights act 1976 along with a number of other articles such as 15(4), 225,275,164(1) also talks about the welfare and upkeep of the sc and the st’s.

At this juncture I need to come back to my original narration, for a writer usually gets frivolous while writing on a issue and tends to go on different tangents, I shall restrain myself here..The sehariyas were given land but they did not know how to cultivate it consequently they became casual laborers working on others land. The Sikh farmers from Punjab capitalized, several of them away their land on the pretext of marrying their women keeping them either as concubines or as bonded labourers.

Our guides show us vast tracts of green cultivated land, presumably belonging to the affluent sikh families.They were provided subsidies by the govt (and they are still) but the banias and the patwaris still operate as middlemen, goons who rob the poor and the weak.They are regarded as jungli, in their hearts the forest is their home, alas not much of it is left, the severe drought covering the last five years and marwari businessmen have left few trees standing. Cornered, marginalized, pessimist to the core they remain as stoic memories of the past.

No more act now only glimpses of reality. The knowledge that these people are dying, that more than 70(officially- they have been termed as food poisoning and not starvation deaths) of them are already dead and that some 100 more on the verge of death, yet this remains a third page news in leading newsdailies of this country.

Politicians squabbling, playing blame games, whose responsibility are these deaths? The conclusion derived “that these people” eat grass and that it is a part of their staple diet.I have a question to ask all my readers, why would a person, say you or me, eat grass when we have two square meals a days, consequently what would a person do (again say you or me) if he hasn’t eaten anything for days at end?

I am angry very angry, not because of the govt failure to feed its own people, not because sacks of grains are rotting in ours country’s godowns, not because a few people make a mockery of journalism, but because I am helpless, I made a promise that I would help them, I gave them hope, yet now I see its beyond me.

I have to just stand on one side eat popcorn, pretend to be normal and happy, relate my escapade to people and feel good and worthwhile.I am also disappointed with the media, the voice of the people, of the masses. I am afraid the have all been sold out. They remain now only as propaganda machinery, sensationalizing news and making a mockery of people and their emotions.They sit discussing modi’s laurels and the possible war with Pakistan. News of urban affluent young women committing suicide is news but desperate starving; dying civilizations are not talked about.

This is the story of one society; I am sure that many such people exist in many such fringes of our country. As moti said in a seharana gathering (yehe log dilli se aaiye hain humare saath kaam karne jab yeh dilli jayenge to kachu kachu hogo),these people have come from Delhi to work with us, when they go back surely something will happen.They live with that hope and so do I