There is a country within India which is forgotten, wilfully forgotten, and whenever the marginal people of that forgotten land try to announce and assert their existence, they are brutally suppressed and subjugated; this is in crux the substance of Bela Bhatia’s book, ‘India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins’. The book is a compilation of twenty-five articles, divided into five parts ---- ‘A Divided Society’, which deals with social, communal, gender violence; ‘In the Name of Development’ which deals with victims of ‘Development’; ‘The Flaming Fields of Bihar’ which deals with caste oppression and violence in erstwhile central Bihar; ‘Bastar in the Circle of Unreason’ which deals with the plight of the adivasis in Chattisgarh; and finally a chapter which deals with ‘Kashmir and the North-East’. Invariably the book is dotted with the tales of Hirabai Ghanchi, victim of communal conflagration, Harishankar Bairwa, a Dalit rebel against untouchability , Vinod Paswan, a victim of Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre or Ashok, a bonded labour even in this 21st century. Here in this write-up we can discuss some of the salient features of the book.
Caste Discrimination, Violence and Resistance
Poverty and caste oppression was nothing new to Bela Bhatia as she spent her early days in Bihar. The famine in 1967 and political turmoil in Begusarai is still vivid in her mind. Those memories return as she criss-crossed the country in her professional life. She found out that caste oppression was not something exclusive to Bihar but it was omnipresent. However its contradictions play out differently in different parts of the country.
The Case of Rajasthan
Even today untouchability exists in large parts of Rajasthan; untouchability practised by general castes like Jats against the dalits and even untouchability within the dalits. Incidentally this village has a long and tortured history of discrimination and has even been mentioned by Dr.B.R.Ambedkar in his Annihilation of Caste. The incident described by the Doctor in the book is a bizarre one. Evidently an ‘untouchable’ family had served ghee, yes GHEE in a feast and all hell had broken loose. While the dalits were enjoying the food, “the Hindus in their hundreds, armed with lathis, rushed to the scene, despoiled the food and belaboured the untouchables who left the food they were served with and ran for their lives.” This incident happened in 1936 and the author of this book writing seventy years after mentions an incident where the Bairwas, called Chamars elsewhere, were not allowed to use a particular ghat of the village pond. But the response of the dalits is benign, they do not turn violent. May be because the dalits are docile or as the author writes they are “respectful towards the law.” Or probably because there is no political entity in the state which can take up the cudgels on their behalf. Rajasthan is basically a two-party state, BJP and Congress. After the ‘pond’ incident the dalits had given a petition to the VHP, the RSS was also informed. But they remained silent even though some Bairwas had participated in the Kar Seva. The incident exposed the Sangh Parivar’s casteist face. The Congress was no better, as Harishankar Bairwa said, “Wahan bhi andar kuch, bahar kuch”, meaning double-standards.
The author states that caste equations play out more complicatedly during elections. It has been seen that a dalit candidate often goes against his own caste’s interest because without the support of the upper castes it is not possible for him to win the seat. Dr. Ambedkar had apprehended this. “Dalit parliamentarians elected by general constituencies would not be accountable to Dalits but to a larger constituency, which were effectively dominated by the privileged castes,” he had argued.
The Case of Gujarat
The case of Gujarat is similar to Rajasthan. Here too in spite of severe discrimination the lower castes are apparently docile. Gujarat too is a two-party state with no political entity to fight for the lower castes. Here discrimination is starkly reflected in the availability and distribution of ground water. Say for instance the number of borewells owned by different castes. A survey shows that there are 220 bores in eight villages, out of which a whopping 214 is owned by Patels and other privileged castes. In another survey in a village named Bhadresar, number of lower caste families is 380, and privileged castes 160. But the ownership of extraction devices is as follows: all 29 bores are with the privileged castes; 27 out of 34 pump sets and 120 out of 128 electric motors are also with them. Needless to say distribution of land is even more unfair.
The Case of Bihar
Invariably Bela Bhatia wades into naxalite politics (this includes the activities of all the ML groups since late nineties) while writing on casteism in Bihar. She confesses, “the Bihar of my childhood had never left me.” One thing led to another and Bihar became the site of her PhD work, and thus began her tryst with the naxalite movement. She discusses the Laxmanpur-Bathe, Bathani Tola massacres threadbare and she has a whole chapter on ‘The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar’. She has some new insights to offer. Firstly she has countered the argument that naxalite movement is pre-dominantly violent. She has shown that, particularly after 1977, various forms of open and non-violent activities have been taken up ----- bandh, arthik nakebandi, jan adalat, dharna, rallies, chakka-jam, cultural activities etc. She has mentioned how Liberation MLAs and cadres launched an indefinite fast after Bathani Tola massacre in 1996.
Secondly she has argued that though naxalite movement has empowered the labouring and oppressed classes, given them izzat, this empowerment has not translated into better life. Building on this argument she states that due to violence in the countryside development has become a casualty and even stresses that naxalites are not interested in development as they believe that underdevelopment increases the prospects of revolution. This may have been the situation thirty years ago, when the movement was basically underground, but the reality in Bihar today is entirely different. She has herself stated that the movement has resulted in increase in wages, distribution of surplus land and reclaiming of gairmajurwa (common land in villages) land. In recent times there has been an increase in the wages of skill workers due to sustained movement. In education there was the innovative ‘Sadak pe School’ movement. An andolan is also going on to ensure that the government gives Rs two lakhs to the poorest of the poor. Most importantly that old mindset has been abandoned completely.
Her take on ‘revolutionary violence’ is more balanced. She wonders, even though the Left movement has significant practical achievements, whether the same results could have been achieved through non-violent or at least less violent means. However she is not against all violence. In this context she advocates the approach of Bhagat Singh which is to use force as a matter of terrible necessity but non-violence as a policy indispensable for all mass movements. She also highlights the concept of Shantimaita, which commits itself to non-violence but does not rule out violence in situations of severe social and political upheaval. She writes this concept was introduced by Jaiprakash Narayan and practised by Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini in Bodhgaya from 1978 onwards.
Finally she opines in spite of the positive content in the movement, naxalite movement must reinvent itself. Whatever she means is open to everyone’s interpretation.
Gender Violence and Explotation
A chapter named ‘Ekaki: The pain of Lonesome Marginality’, describes the plight of widows and other single women. Widows live tortured lives and they are branded witches and burnt alive. Patriarchal society creates enormous hurdles to deny them land rights and property. The author again refers to Bihar where sexual exploitation had been rampant. She refers to the legend of Mahtin Dai in whose memory a temple stands at Behea, Bhojpur. Those were the days of the atrocious Dola pratha which the jamindars forced upon the poor and landless. This was a practice which compelled every new bride to spend her first night after marriage with the local jamindar. A local Raja Ran Pal Singh compelled Mahtin Dai for Dola. Her husband along with others resisted and died and the lady committed Sati. Resistance to this practice picked up in the 1970s and due to sustained resistance this practice has finally been abolished.
Exploitation of Adivasis
Sexual exploitation of women continues in the jungles of Chattisgarh. Rape and molestation allegedly by security forces have become frighteningly common in Bastar region. Violence against women is not only restricted to areas of Maoist influence but it has been used to suppress people’s movement against eviction. In Lohandiguda, an area dominated by CPI, people protested against a project of Tata Steel Company which involved acquisition of 6000 acres of land. The villagers’ protests were met with indiscriminate arrests and sexual assault. But in spite of the repression Tata Steel had to withdraw from the project in 2016.
In another chapter the author has discussed the pros and cons of the Forest Rights Bill, 2005. But overriding this bill and bypassing the provisions of (PESA), ‘Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas’, which gives special powers to the Gram Sabhas, as many as 42 MOUs were signed for only steel plants in 2006. Digressing from the book it needs to be mentioned that whatever positive was there in that bill has been diluted by the ‘Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023’. This new bill has rendered 27.62% of forest unreserved which means any project coming up in those areas will not require any clearance from the authorities. With the advent of the BJP government so called industrialization is in full swing in the state. All the old MOUs are being opened and implemented. In parliament the central government has blatantly announced that 273000 more trees will be cut in Hasdeo Arand to facilitate coal mining in the area. Protests by the people are being severely suppressed.
Victims of Development
‘Our land, our water, our forests, our rights’, that is the people’s slogan at the Jadugoda mines in Jharkhand. Here the uranium mines have wrecked havoc on people’s lives. Due to mining TB is rampant, many workers suffer from lung cancer and many die premature death. But even in this adverse situation people continue to protest. Many local organizations have come up to resist mining, principal among which is Jharkhandi Organization Against Radiation (JOAR).
The Koel-Karo project in the same state represents a success story. This hydro-electric project was initiated in 1973 and after thirty years of sustained resistance the project was finally scrapped in 2003 thus saving 132 villages and 50000 acres of forest and cultivable land.
Amidst the gloom and tales of repression by the security forces and landed classes, the book has these silver linings of success. Some articles are dated, mainly the ones on Kashmir and Manipur. Regarding Kashmir one would have expected a write-up post the abolition of Article 370, and in case of Manipur an essay on the Meitei-Kuki conflagration that has been going on for more than 400 days. In spite of that this book has a historical value; it is a collection of articles on the life and times of India’s marginalized from the mid-nineties to around 2020. The writer has given voice to those invisible people, the underprivileged who remain anonymous in our daily lives.
Book:
India's Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins
Year of Publication: 2024
Author: Bela Bhatia; Publisher: Penguin
