Draupadi’s Dead Sons...

Santhi could not control her excitement any longer. She had been made to wait a long time for this day. The tall walls of the temple, painted in alternating red and white bands did not look forbidding anymore. Another fight was coming to an end for her people. It had taken them long to realize that no god or temple was beyond their beck and call. And when they did, it had taken them only 20 years to force their way in. The last leg of Kali had begun to totter. Or to put it better, two millennia of discrimination was on its last legs. Their fight was no longer against the B’s or T’s. The Dalits had come face to face with the last of their oppressors. The V’s. The V’s - a people who had suffered the humiliation and shame inflicted by the caste system, like the Dalits, had now risen up the social ladder. The change had begun 20 years back. Today they dressed, walked, talked and behaved like the T’s and in the Dalits they had found a docile race to stamp their authority on. But times had changed.

The sun rose higher and higher into the sky. The huge posse of policemen posted in and around the temple began to wilt in the heat. They cursed and swore under their breaths. Her people also struggled for breath – their hearts were pounding wildly. Several of the older men and women kept muttering prayers while the younger ones waited impatiently for the temple doors to open up. Within the temple walls, a commotion was frothing. The regular priests were refusing to do the poojas. It was too late to find someone else to step in. Officials from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Board who had taken the initiative to open the temple to the Dalits debated on the course to take. This occasion could not be put off. Tensions were running high in the village. The V’s dominated the village and life in it. In protest, they had deserted their homes and lands and taken refuge on a nearby hillock. Before they decided on a more drastic course of action, the temple entry had to be initiated and committed to practice. Finally, an official of the HRECB, familiar with the rites volunteered for the Poojari role.

The door opened at 10 am and tepidly, they moved slowly into the unfamiliar grounds of the temple. Santhi clasped her hands in prayer; her watchful eyes following her son, Guna, whose youthful enthusiasm had lead him to the head of the slow procession. Guna had begun college this year, the only Dalit youth from the village to get this far. Santhi worried endlessly about harm coming his way. Activists of the Dalit political movement unfurled party flags and shouted slogans, honoring their leader, who had wisely chosen to absent himself from today’s momentous victory. The sanctum sanctorum opened and the people strained their necks to get their first look of the deity. One man, Ganesan, their chief, was allowed to move forward and garland Draupadi Amman. Tears streamed down Ganesan’s face as he came out. Santhi felt nothing. She had no use for a temple after living 40 years outside its walls. Seeing the deity evoked nothing.

People had begun to leave. No one would work today at the village. They would all celebrate, drink, dance and go to sleep happily. Except for Santhi and Guna. Santhi’s husband had died last year and Guna was forced to pitch in with his labour. Their family made firecrackers for a living. The authorities had permitted them to explode crackers on the temple grounds tonight at 8pm. Guna and Santhi started for home together. Both mother and son had been each other’s best friends for a long time. Guna never found himself getting distant from Santhi even when the fancies of the teenage years or the manliness of adolescence, made its presence felt within and without him. He had seen in Santhi the toughness to withstand his father’s wild ways after drinking and the wisdom to shield Guna from the boys of his age and keep him focused on his studies. When her husband died, how quickly she took over the firecracker work and kept the finances and his studies afloat! Often, Guna would wonder, what Santhi would have become, if education had not been denied to her.

“I was watching you earlier. I got afraid seeing your enthusiasm.” Santhi could not hold back her worries.
“Amma, how many times have I told you, that whatever I do is well thought out!” Guna said, not making the effort to hide his annoyance.
“I have only you left in this world. Even the goddess doesn’t speak to me.”
“What we did today will be seen, heard and read about, all over this country. I had to be at the front. Some day I will lead our people.” A sigh escaped Santhi at Guna’s words. She didn’t have the right to dream for this child, she thought. He belonged to the people.

Outside their one room hut, Guna began sorting out the crackers they had worked hard on all month, to ready for this night. Only he and Santhi would be allowed back into the temple at night. Placing each cracker delicately into a sack, he tied the sack around the edges with a rope, heaved it over his head and started walking.
“Have your lunch before you go. It will take me only half an hour to get it ready,” Santhi called after him, but to no avail.
“I will see you at the temple in the evening,” Guna shouted back as he kept walking.
She went back into the house and noticed that Guna had forgotten to take the box of gunpowder to be used for one of the crackers. Making a mental note to take it with her, she crumpled on the floor and closed her eyes, beckoning sleep to come, and carry away her worries. She had forgotten everything about lunch.

Night had cast its dark shroud on the temple making it almost invisible. Santhi entered the temple road, a strange sense of foreboding following her like a shadow. A woman sat under a tree on the roadside, digging at the ground with a stick.
“Are you not Santhi,” she asked, as Santhi passed by.
“Yes,” Santhi replied, her thoughts elsewhere.
“You seem troubled.”
“That I am. But who are you?” Santhi paid closer attention to the woman now. They were about the same age, Santhi guessed. She could make nothing more out of the woman. Santhi had never seen her in the village before. There was something exceedingly powerful and stately about her.
“It doesn’t matter. You will have to do something that requires great courage.”
“I don’t understand anything. What are you trying to say?” Santhi persisted.
“Ah, nothing at all. I don’t want another fight in my name. Or is a fight a good thing? Time will tell, I guess…” Her voice began to fade but she kept rambling to herself.
Santhi quietly withdrew, wondering whether the woman was mad. The woman didn’t seem to notice.

A dozen policemen stood guard to the temple and the deity. The others must be out patrolling the streets. Leaving the gunpowder box near their other accessories like an empty sack, kerosene, candles, conical racks for placing the gunpowder, etc she went around looking for Guna.
“Have you seen my son?”
“Is he the kid who is exploding the firecrackers?”
“He just went down that way to the village well to get water,” one of the policemen replied.
“My god. Why would he do that? That well belongs to the V’s. Maybe he went because they have deserted the village,” Santhi kept her thoughts to herself. But unable to contain the fear that had accompanied her all through the day, she ran, hoping to catch up with him.

As she neared the well, she heard shouts and then a piercing cry. A steady moan rent the air. She slowed down, knowing very well, who the person in pain was. With heavy steps she approached the limp body of her son. He was silent now. The pitiful groans had stopped and his face radiated a serenity of a person in deep meditation - as though, he had completed his life’s calling. The calling he had talked of, earlier in the day. The tears that had streaked down Santhi’s face a few seconds earlier had dried up. Her face began to light up in a rage that thirsted for revenge. I am nothing but a weak, old, Dalit woman, she thought. Her powerlessness to do anything shamed her. The policemen. I want my boy’s murderers brought to justice, she said to herself. She ran. Past the tree where the woman had sat.

“My son! My son! Over there. Please help me.”
“What happened to him?” the cops tried to calm her down but to no avail.
“They killed him. Please catch them. Please.”
The cops deliberated on what to do, within her earshot.
“We can’t go after the culprits now. It is too dark,” one said.
“We have to recover the body first,” another said.
“The situation will go out of hand. We will need more bandobust,” a third added.
The policemen went down to the village well.

Santhi was left all alone. She knew she could expect no justice. Her eyes fell on the wretched temple. It was all for a god to pray to. If I don’t have my son, you people don’t need a god. She moved with purpose towards the crackers. A manic rage had overcome her. Lifting the kerosene can, she waved it around, pouring the fluid on the walls of the temple. Next she gathered the gun powder and sprinkled it frantically. She looked around for a moment. The policemen had not returned. A sudden calm came over her.
“Should I do this? Am I lighting the spark to a caste war? How many people will have to die for my act? Or will I spark peace instead? Will the fire I start burn or purify?” she had no answers to the doubts that crept in.
She remembered the woman under the tree. It was time to act. With steady fingers, she lit the match.

P.S - A short story I wrote at the insistence of a faculty member here, based on a news story in TN. Had to labour hard on this; probably the most uneven of my fictional exertions, but treasured because of its political theme and the reality of caste which we, the the urban elite choose to brush aside. Censored a little as you would have noticed, am ashamed about it, but am scared of violent reactions!

Will Singur force rethink on blatant SEZisation?

The CPI(M) have for long claimed the leadership of the left movement in India. But Singur and Nandigram, have today openly questioned the left establishment in India. While they wax eloquent on imperialism, globalization and workers rights, even in these niche areas of protest where they enjoy complete domination of the political spectrum, they have had to helplessly watch India move towards a capitalist economy. Singur has also opened up a can of worms around the rapid development we are trying to incubate cloning the Chinese model, raising in its wake the issue of SEZs, farm land acquisition, violent suppression of an essentially political opposition and extra-judicial killings.

The background of the Singur struggle has to be seen in the transition CPI(M) has witnessed from a proletarian party to incorporating petit-bourgeoisie and later bourgeoisie elements. In the two states where they enjoy a commanding position, West Bengal and Kerala, they have been blamed for the lack of industrial growth and exodus of a huge talent pool because their policies were seen as anathema to development. A new generation of CPI(M) leaders emerged who pay lip service to socialism but saw in the 1991 reforms - an easier and less complicated path to rapid economic development, rather than the tried and tested but faultily implemented and hence-failed socialist model of progress. When Buddhadeb Bhattacharya replaced Jyoti Basu as West Bengal Chief Minister in 1999 and made all the right noises about development, the national media took notice, hailed him as Bengal's saviour, and even gave him top billing in surveys as India's top chief minister. Buddha, the wise one, went on an overdrive inviting corporates of all hues and colours to invest in his investment starved state, and for a while he actually seemed to be winning his fight with CPI(M) hardliners.

When the Tatas announced the Nano project, Bengal went all out to invite them to the state and even gave Tata the freedom to choose the land needed for the SEZ. Tata conveniently chose Singur, a district near Kolkatta, which already had basic infrastructure in place like highways, water supply, etc. Singur had very fertile soil and was home to one of the most productive agricultural areas in the country and the area of 400 acres chosen was home to around 2000 farming families. Despite being offered compensation, a majority of them were unwilling to move out of their land but in the face of an enthusiastic state for whom the project had become a major prestige issues, their options were severely limited.

The irony of the matter was that CPI(M) which had the foresight to pioneer legislation to ban conversion of agricultural land for other economic activities, took an ideological u-turn and went against their rural vote banks and mass base to set up Special Economic Zones. In the past, left leaders have been critical of SEZ's for being a capitalist construct, for gross violation and undermining of labour laws and the labour movement in the country and for companies inside SEZ's becoming a veritable law unto themselves. The democratic culture of the CPI(M) also came into question for their browbeating of political opposition and the resort to arms, violence, molestations and rapes to cow down what was essentially a people's movement.

In 2008, a whole new dimension was added to the Singur issue, when India was faced with a food crisis. Though falling productivity, crop diseases, low yielding varieties, etc could be blamed nobody could deny a major issue here - the failure of the system to provide encouragement and succour to the farmer. Farm lands all over the country have become the target for land acquisition for SEZ's when barren, unproductive land is also vastly available. In such a situation with little or no state support, it is no surprise that farmers are giving up agriculture, a profession they are happy doing despite all the hardships they have faced from nature. In this respect the West Bengal government has also faced criticism that they opted for productive lands like Singur and Nandigram, when it also encompasses vast regions like Purilia which has no economical activity worth its name to boast of.

Despite slow progress, India's commitment to socialism and social justice ensured that rural way of life and agriculture didn't suffer too badly. The New Economic Reforms have widened the disparity between urban and rural areas, service-industry sectors and agriculture, and several other categories of social strata. In a fitting culmination of a people's struggle the WB government decided to return the acquired land back to the farmers on Sept 7. In a way, democracy which is about majority and popular sentiment lost. The people of the country, especially the middle-class , thanks to a media which conveniently overlooks the broader picture, overwhelmingly hoped the Tata's don't lose in Singur. We can only hope for the success of many more localized movements like in Singur, so that they ultimately open people's eyes to the reality that the State is not always right...that the State can also commit grave wrongs!

P.S Op-Ed written for course work.