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Yes, the worry was more about the transplant being successful, but not that he would go away without giving himself a chance. We thought that we had all the time in the world. The last few words that I had with him were hardly a parting.

Image: Krishna Prasad / Scroll.in

He wanted to get out of the ICU but the doctors thought that he was still very vulnerable; they had put him in the pre-operative room of the Apollo CCU which was in the front part of the ICU, away from the critical patients. He had told the doctors earlier that the ICU was a faceless place and he did not want to be there. The doctors themselves agreed with him and said that this aspect about the ICU was a global problem and there was no solution as yet.

So when he urged with me on the 15^th and 16^th February evening that he be brought out of the pre-operative into a private room or we go back home, I had to say no, with all kinds of excuses, promising him that the next day we would try getting him out. He told me that I should not let the doctors manipulate me, I tried convincing him otherwise.

So the 16^th evening was of course routine and also very painful for me as I was denying him his freedom from the ICU. That evening apart from asking the brief of that day, which included all the khabar related to hospital bills, politics, search for the live donor as a standby and other sundry details, he also asked for his mobile and went through it, once at 6.30pm and the second time at 9.30/ 10p.m. I asked him whether he wanted to reply to any of the messages, I could help doing the typing, he replied “later”.

During the second meeting that night, the nurses were restless that I was meeting him outside the scheduled time and that he had to have his juice, go to the bathroom, so they requested me to leave. He also told me that I could go as he wished to sleep and that was the last I met him where we both communicated.

On the 17^th of February, 2018, it seems he talked at 2 am to the doctor, but by 4am, when we got a call, we were told that the saturation of oxygen in his blood was low and that they needed me to come immediately.  By the time we reached, he had been moved back into the ICU, he had been put on the ventilator, facilitating his breathing. He was there, he seemed to see us, the eyes were moving left and right, there was cognition, was responding to command, he held my hand. He was shaking his legs, when Karen my friend told him to keep walking. But the next two days, his eyes got more sluggish, he was also headed for multi-organ failure, despite medicine and machine connecting him through tubes, to bring normalcy to his physiologybut 96 hours later we were told that his brain had damaged severely and that now it was a matter of time.  On the 24^th morning he breathed his last on his own.

He was cremated on the 24^th in an electric crematorium, no ritual, no pundits; only friends offering him songs, poetry and slogans, in Hindi, English and Tamil encircled his mortal remains till the last. When the first rays of the sun hit the sea at Elliot’s beach, we immersed his ashes and he merged with the water, air, sand, sunshine and the sky. How ironical he went to Apollo to be a recipient of an organ, but ended up donating his own cornea to four people. Ironical that he and I went together sitting side by side on the 4^th of February, 2018 watching the Anarkali of Arrah on the flight from Delhi to Chennai, but I  came back on the 26^th of February, 2018 with a framed photo of his beside me. It was as if he was liberating me from this relationship so that I could become my own anchor again, almost as if telling me: why the sadness, are you not pleased that you have one task less, one relationship less to work on. Move on, that was his motto, Charaiyaveti, keep walking, chalteraho…..[1]

The year was 1995. The place was Jaipur. We were no teeny boppers when we met. In 1996 we were into a relationship. Neelabh was 36 and I was 32. At the core was the politics we shared. We were both deeply involved with people. Our idioms and modes were different. He was a people’s journalist and I was an activist.

He and I were both deeply rooted in feminism. No institutional arrangement of togetherness was acceptable. Marriage was an antiquated structure. So when we decided to be together, Neelabh told me the choice was mine, marriage or living in, as either way the consequences of the choice would impact our genders differently. We decided to “live in sin”, right there in my office in the house of my parents or his house 500 metres away.

Even before Neelabh came into my life my personal space with the support of my family and friends had already begun being carved out as a space from where movements were being coordinated, where people from all over Rajasthan would come and get to use the computer, the printer, the fax the phone, be given food and a bed. But now our collective personal space had become even more attractive as people now started coming to consult Neelabh, whether it be just a letter to a department or a pamphlet to be written or it was about taking strategic decisions. Our home was open for runaway girls, women and couples. He was mentoring young men and women who did not know what to do with their lives.

Neelabh came to Jaipur from Patna, from the world of letters, from the world of literature, from the world of human rights and the world of Gandhi, JP and left radical movements. Neelabh stayed in Jaipur from the 1995 to 2003.

He had shared his love for poetry and literature and frequently read his unpublished poems, that was part of our very intimate moments too, so when I asked him why he did not join the Sahitya group in Jaipur he said that he had had enough of that world in Patna and was still recovering from the heights of creativity and the depths of hypocrisy that that world carried with it. So in Rajasthan it was not to be them and we were so lucky to have him.

Through these years, Neelabh used to get the writers itch at 5pm. He initially would travel to the Central Telegraph Office to send his despatches but later my workspace become increasingly his own. The days were of the Mahila Atyachar Virodhi Jan Andolan, of combating serious cases of violence against women, of establishing the Right to Information (RTI) movement through long dharnas along with the public hearings. It was about the collective assertion of the Right to Information, drafting the legislations on it, of reviving the PUCL in Rajasthan, opposing the jingoism around the nuclear explosion and the militarization of the Rajasthan border, defeating the BJP in the 1998 elections, setting up of human rights institutions like the State Women’s Commission and the State Human Rights Commission, bringing centre stage atrocities against Dalits which was not even recognized, combating the attempts at the communalization of the state, the Trishul distribution in Rajasthan, the murder of Graham Staines, the Gujarat genocide and of course the situation of hunger amidst plenty, with growing hunger deaths all around with the Centre and state governments scoring points against each other and the emergence of the Right to Food campaign.
Neelabh was also a part of the process of the world social forum in order to build an alternative global movement from the largest democracy in the world.

When the outrageous judgement came on the 15^th of November, 1995 in the Bhanwri Devi gang rape case, no journalist in Jaipur would report our critique that the rapists had been acquitted on grounds of caste and age. Neelabh was one of the only 3 or 4 reporters who did so. Most of the Rajasthani press feared contempt. They kept telling us that they would write that we were moving the Rajasthan High Court against the judgement but there would be no critique of the horrendous judgement.

The suggestion, that we go to Delhi and hold a press conference came from Neelabh and other senior journalist friends like Sri Prakashji, Sunny Sebastian and Anant Krishna, finally brought the issue into the mainstream.

When we were planning the anti-judgement rally, Neelabh sat quietly in one corner translating the judgement into English which we wanted circulated. When we were drafting the appeal against the acquittal of the accused in the Bhanwri Devi case for the High Court, Neelabh sat in the meetings with the lawyers. When Nikhil Wagle came to Jaipur to seek assistance of a lawyer against the contempt case filed against him, Neelabh was in all the deliberations. Very soon he had become a part of our women’s collective, drafting, writing, advising, doing all the tasks as required by the movement and at the same time continuing to be the journalist that he was, reporting, writing, analyzing.  He even agreed to carry telescopes for us to a destination 400 kms away from Jaipur when the total eclipse happened in October 1995. He was one of the most modest journalists that I and others have ever met.

He grew very close to the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), Rajasthan and was very active in the Right to Information movement, including the setting up of the National Campaign for people’s right to information. Apart from sitting in the endless long dharnas, he also wrote several articles on the movement.

It was the Rajasthan story of the People’s Right to Information Movement that was published as an HDRC discussion paper by the UNDP in 2003[2], which was one of the first comprehensive writings on the genesis and the decade long movement. Apart from the writings he had a special relationship with all the members of the MKSS. Whether workers or middle class persons, all had a claim on him. He would have long discussions with them on how from an issue- based movement the platform of RTI had to be synergised with all the other social, political and economic issues in order to collectively fight the anti-democratic, corporate, patriarchal, communal and casteist forces.

The platform which emerged from the women and the RTI movement, developed itself as the platform to combat drought and hunger and very soon we had several journalists including Neelabh doing stories related to hunger. The most noted amongst them was the ‘Anatomy of Hunger’ published in the Hindustan Times in May 2001. It became a very important document of the famous PUCL case on the Right to Food in the Supreme Court. He not only worked on the several affidavits filed in court on this issue but also helped us lay the foundation of a platform that later emerged as the Right to Food Campaign.

Coming from a background of workers and farmers struggles, he had come to Rajasthan with two names in mind: Ms Hemlata Prabhu, an educationist who at that point was the general secretary of the PUCL, Rajasthan, and Srilatha Swaminadhan, a leader of the CPIML Liberation party in Rajasthan. Soon he was working with them along with Aruna Roy and all of us for the revival of the PUCL in the state.

All through the decade of the new millennium and to some extent even now, the platform of the PUCL emerged as one where all movements came together to work collectively on our democratic rights. Some of the path breaking fact finding reports became the foundation for commissions and for all those combating anti-democratic forces including the communal forces. One of the first fact findings against land grab and the setting up of a beer factory in an ecologically fragile region of Alwar was done with Neelabh.

When Togadia was arrested in 2003 April, Neelabh did the analysis and the translation of several of his hate speeches taped by the PUCL volunteers in the state, where he was distributing trishuls, for the case against him in the court. He also was part of the movement for the removal of the Manu Murti (Idol of Manu) from the premises of the Jaipur Bench of the Rajasthan High Court. He participated in the padyatra from Mahad to Jaipur over December 25^th 1999 to 26^th January 2000 led by Baba Adhav from Pune in Maharashtra.

In 1997 Neelabh was one of the first to break the story that India under Vajpayee was planning to do a nuclear test, which was halted then but carried out in 1998 May 11^th. Neelabh travelled to both ends of the Pokhran field firing range — the Luharki village end where the 1974 explosion had happened and the Khetolai end, where the 1998 tests were done — and wrote several stories. Including breaking the story that the PUCL exposed of Sanawada in Pokhran, being proposed as the place for depositing the nuclear intensive waste of the country, this drove the MECL out of Pokhran and Rajasthan. But he was equally a part of the organizing that the PUCL did of meetings with the Hibakusha survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945. He along with others was among the founders of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, India.

Neelabh’s continued association with movements was endless. Even when he shifted to Delhi he was always at the Jantar Mantar expressing solidarity with the groups that came. His journalism complimented his association with the various initiatives and struggles to keep Indian democracy alive. The pen did not lose its might when standing in solidarity or siding with the people in their effort to implement the Constitution, fight oppression, despots and fascists. Our house in Delhi continued to be the centre where a lot of people from movements came to reflect, strategise and also just be there.
There are no words to express how much I will miss Neelabh. Like Eric Fromm said, I want to be free like a rooted tree, Neelabh was my roots, that is how I was free.

It is John Donne’s Valediction forbidding mourning which sums up our togetherness:

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
 
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
 
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
 
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just
And makes me end where I begun.
 
We were both the fixed foot and did the oblique run and that was life.
 

[2]Neelabh Mishra, People’s Right to Information Movement: Lessons from Rajasthan, Delhi, UNDP, 2003.

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In a letter dated March 4, the Commissionerate of College Education in Rajasthan has directed all the state-run colleges to introduce a dress code that can be implemented from the next academic session. While it has already chosen the dress code, it has directed the colleges to discuss the ‘colour’ of the uniform for both boys and girls. The dress code decided for girls-namely salwar-suit, chunni, sweater or cardigan, saree, shoes/sandals and socks is especially troubling forcing an almost dictatorial view on how the girls should dress. The dress code for boys includes shirt, pant, jersey (in winters), shoes, socks and belt. The preferred colour of the uniform needs to be discussed and sent to the Commissionerate by March 12.
 
There are around 400,000 students, including 175,000 women, in government colleges in Rajasthan.

Understandably, the order has drawn flak from progressive sections. People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) leader Kavita Srivastava said the government wants to “clip the students’ freedom to wear what they want.” The PUCL also expressed that limiting the girls’ clothing to just salwar and saree and blouse in these times when girls are wearing trousers, jeans, t-shirt, skirts, ghaghara, palazzos etc , is like throttling their freedom to choose how they wish to express themselves.” PUCL has termed the order “unconstitutional, retrogressive, patriarchal and authoritarian step”
Kavita Srivastava also termed the directive a RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh agenda of imposing its value system of “achi and buriaurat.”

PUCL was not the only one to react sharply on the order. Former chairperson of Rajasthan State Commission for Women Lad Kumari Jain too found the move regressive, she said “Tomorrow the government may ask women to come to colleges in veils. Which age are we living in? Do we want to push our women back to medieval times,”

However, Higher Education Minister Kiran Maheshwari said that the government is willing to accept other uniforms if the colleges write to them. “It will be better if we have some uniform which will help us identify who is a college student and who is an outsider” she said, while talking to The Indian Express.

The PUCL has demanded an immediate withdrawal of the circular.

https://sabrangindia.in/article/over-15-years-india-slides-key-marker-gender-parity

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After being at the beach we walked down the promenade drinking coconut water and then ate one of the best “tiffin” breakfasts at a place called Murugan.The great foodie Neelabh will always be remembered.

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The slightest pretext is needed in Rajasthan by the Hindutva forces to communalise any incident of vandalism and crime. The latest issue to ignite the communal cauldron is the name of Osama–bin–Laden. While most of the countryside is oblivious of who this person is, Bin-Laden’s name on wall writings even in interior villages and mofussil towns have provoked communal tension in three places that I personally know of in the state.

While it is important for the law and order machinery to identify those responsible for these wall writings, the reaction and capital made out of it by individuals representing the BJP, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and the VHP needs to be monitored.

A few shops in that kasba are forcibly shut down by the vandals, Muslim traders terrorised, the Muslim community isolated, madrassas regarded with suspicion and a spate of cases lodged against Muslims. A recent incident in Daulatgarh (Bhilwara district) illustrates the trend. An investigation carried out by PUCL members, Bhanwar Meghwanshi, Raju Jangid, Allaudin Bedal, Ganga Singh Rathore and Abdul Hamid Bagwaan, all from Bhilwara, who visited Daulatgarh on December 29, 2001 and again on January 9, 2002 to study and also initiate a process of peace in the kasba is worth recording:

Daulatgarh was a sleepy kasba town in Asind tehsil with the local Thakurs controlling the politics of the region. In the month of August and September last year (see CC, August Sept 2001) after the demolition of the Kalindri masjid, Sawai Bhoj Temple complex in Asind in July, 2001, representatives of the BJP, VHP, Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal first carried out a trishul diksha samaroh and then a jal abhishek ceremony in September and October (CC, November 01).

Against the backdrop of what had happened at Asind, these programmes of aggressive mobilisation were enough to terrorise the seventy odd Muslim families in a village of over five hundred families. The arrival of a 28-year-old Maulana, Anwar Hussein in the village, became reason enough for the representatives of the local BJP, VHP and SS forces to launch their propaganda, claiming that they felt threatened.

The Muslim community especially called down Anwar Husein from Jodhpur, after collecting contributions from local families, so that he could educate their children in the madrassa. This fuelled rumours that the maulana was conspiring with the youth and talibanising them.

The month of Ramzan saw unease in this kasba for the first time. According to one sympathiser of the Hindutva lobby, villager Bharat Singh, "…. it was the loud calling of the azaan and other "Quran bhajans" every morning at the time of sehri that caused tension. Since half-yearly exams were taking place, the blaring mike disturbed school students.

The villagers got the police to intervene, who ordered that mikes could not be used. Two days later, on December 16, at about 9 am, a rumour spread through the village that someone had written pro-Osama-Bin-Laden slogans on the temple wall. According to one Shanti Lal, the wall writing said, "Mike bandh karane wale teri jagah jehannum mein – O B Laden"(Those responsible for stopping use of the microphone in the mosque shall burn in hell – O B Laden). As a result of this, villagers were up in arms and blamed the maulana for provoking the youth to write it.

The police who were close by, intervened and promptly erased the writing on the temple wall. The Muslim community told the PUCL fact-finding team that though by the time they reached the temple the alleged writing had been erased, they were willing to believe the account and were willing to punish those who did it.

The Muslim community then did what the Hindutva forces wanted them to do. Reacting under pressure, they promptly sent away the maulana. They did not want to be labelled "Laden samarthak" ("Supporters of Laden") which people in that area including the local police started calling them. They feared that the police would keep an extra watch on them.

On January 9, Muslims of Daulatgarh were declared "worshippers of Laden" by the over ten thousand strong assembly that had gathered at Sawai Bhoj Temple to hear Sadhvi Ritambhara. The erstwhile Daulatgarh Thakur, who complained that Talibanis had found their way even into the backwaters of Rajasthan, was chairing the meeting. Speaker after speaker at the public meeting condemned Daulatgarh Muslims for being Laden worshippers and demanded that strong action be taken against them. Sadhvi Ritambhara, known for spreading poison, led the attack. Her speech continued uninterrupted by the police for well over an hour.

Muslims of Daulatgarh live in great fear today. Even dispatching the maulana back to Jodhpur has not changed of people’s opinion towards them.

Shekhavati youth challenge communal forces

From January 1 to January 10 last month, more than 50 kasbas and villages in the Shekhavati region of Rajasthan, which covers the districts of Churu, Jhunjhunu and Sikar witnessed communal vandalism of a kind that the region had not witnessed before. The state home department list classifies three cities of Sikar district as "communally highly sensitive cities" and three others as just "sensitive."

In the past, riots have not erupted in this region. Even at the height of the Babri masjid demolition movement there was no violence here. According to local residents, tension did prevail in some towns but never got out of hand. The region, like other parts of Rajasthan, has also produced kar sevaks who were responsible for demolishing the Babri Masjid, but who could never indulge in similar criminal activities in their own areas.

On the night of January 1, a drunken criminal belonging to the Muslim community broke three idols of the Ram Darbar Mandir in Rolsabsar and threw them by the roadside. Rolsabsar village has a population of eight hundred families, half being kayam khani Muslims and the other half Hindus belonging to various castes. Fearing great tension, the very next morning the family of the accused Ghulam Nabi alias Rasgulla promptly handed him over to the panchayat who in turn handed him to the police.

According to the young sarpanch, Aijaz Ali, they also handed over two other notorious Muslim boys, who everybody knew were not directly involved, in a bid to demonstrate that Muslims did not encourage such acts. Ali told the fact-finding team that local Muslims did all they could to demonstrate their condemnation of this solitary act, saying that the culprits deserved the harshest punishment.

In Rolsabsar, local Muslims initiated such sensitive and salutary measures for peace, as did local Hindus in Sangarwa a few days later.

According to the deputy sarpanch, Puran Singh, and the temple priest, they, along with the entire Hindu community in the village, were satisfied by the prompt response of the Muslim community and the police. The idols were replaced and further action was left to the police. The matter was closed as far as they were concerned.

But while the people of Rolsabsar had settled the matter amicably, it became a useful rallying point for the BJP, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and the VHP to mobilise the entire Shekhavati region. Capitalising on the prevalent heightened passions of nationalism, with the country’s borders less than 100 kilometres away, the act of breaking the idols was described as "anti-national" by these communal groups.

Over the next ten days, more than fifty villages and kasbas of that region saw schools, colleges, bazaars, courts and even offices of professionals like lawyers and doctors, forcibly shut down by these groups. But the law and order machinery did not intervene.

Three mosques were desecrated in the region during this period. A pig was thrown into one, the gate of another was burnt and the third was also damaged. Violence followed in some kasbas.

In Churu, police lathi-charged people when prohibitory orders were violated. In Laxmangarh town, during a bandh on January 2, a mosque was desecrated and tension followed. The Muslim community protesting the mosque desecration was dubbed anti-national by the BJP leadership. Laxmangarh remained forcibly closed for the next three days by the forces exerting pressure on the local administration to arrest the "anti-national miscreants".

Interestingly, in the sleepy village of Sangarwa, where very poor Muslims reside — and who were oblivious to any of the disturbances in the region — the door of the local mosque set on fire on the night of January 6. Members of the local Hindu community, with the help of the police, promptly replaced the door and re-painted the wall to prevent escalation of tension.

The vernacular press described these bandhs and violations as "spontaneous" and as "expression of public anger."

On the January 4, the BJP sent a high-powered team, led by former education minister and senior RSS leader, Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi, along with Gulab Chand Kataria, a former state party president. They justified the retaliation of their cadres to the anti-national incidents at Rolsabsar. They condemned the Muslim community for trying to provoke religious sentiments especially when the country was on the verge of war. Hate speech and vilification was dished out in large measures.

Where were the progressive forces? Neither the CPI(M) – who had mobilised one lakh people to protest the dismantling of the Rajasthan State Electricity Board in October 2000 — and a party that has a strong presence in Sikar (the only MLA comes from the Dhond constituency in this district) – nor the Congress — which has won a majority of MLA and MLC seats from the region — stepped forward, barring stray statements that made no impact.

Incidentally, of the 14 municipalities in the Shekhawati region, Muslims chair eight and locals speculate that the BJP is really concerned with snatching away this political control.

The first strong voice of protest against the mobilisation based on division and venom typified here by the RSS and BJP leadership, came from a group of about a hundred and fifty young boys from Ratangarh, one of the important towns of Churu. Ratangarh had a protest bandh on January 2 itself.

Mobilised under the banner of Srijan, these young men belonging mainly to the poorer and vulnerable sections of society decided that they had had enough. They would challenge the politics of lies and manipulation as epitomised in the posturings of the sangh parivar.

This was not the first time that they had been mobilised. But this time the issues were dramatically different. From relief for the Orissa cyclone victims in 1999 — (under the leadership of Rajeev Upadhaya, who hails from a family that subscribes to Gandhian values) they had raised more than fifty lakh rupees which helped in buying more than three lakh clothes for the cyclone victims — to drought relief for the residents of Barmer, to a head-on battle against the politics of venom and hatred today.

Last August, the group had protested the sale of a minor girl and ensured her rehabilitation. Their success in this case got the culprits arrested and even helped them organise a public hearing on violence against adolescent girls.

Concerned over how their region was being held victim to communal poison, these young men organised a 28-kilometre march from Ratangarh to Rolsabsar to demonstrate that both towns wanted peace. Most were unemployed youth while some were involved in small entrepreneurships. They were young boys from all communities, Muslims, Bodh, Harijans (Mehtars), as well as Brahmin, Bania, Jat, Malli and Rajput. The rally, which took six hours to cover 28 kilometres was unprecedented. It provided a platform for ordinary people to voice their views on peace and harmony.

The traders of Ratangarh expressed anger that they had been forced to close the market on January 2. They showered flowers on the marchers and made speeches. The people of the villages that were located on the way also expressed their solidarity with the rally and small sabhas were held on the way.

The rally received an emotional welcome before it reached Rolsabsar, when more than a thousand people of the panchayat, including Bhanwru Khan, the local MLA, the Zilla Pramukh, Bhagwan Singh Dhaka, the pradhan, sarpanch and upsarpanch and several administrative officials of the region joined the last kilometre of the peace march. Women joined the march when the rally went around the village and it finally culminated in a sabha in the temple compound of Jamwaya Mataji ka Mandir.

In the speeches that followed, villagers remembered how young Shahid Mohammed Ikram of their village had laid down his life in Kargil and how today they were proud that the local high school was named after him.

They said that since World War II, the village had produced soldiers who laid their lives fighting for their country. In the 1965 and 1971 wars, more than 250 soldiers from all communities, including Harijans and kayam khanis (Muslims), had fought on the border and today, more than forty of their village boys were on the border facing the Pakistani forces.

Could this village be termed anti-national, the MLA asked? He said he appreciated that stringent punishment, even capital punishment, must be given to the boys who committed a heinous crime like breaking idols of Ram and Sita. He thanked the villagers of Rolsabsar for handing over the guilty Muslim youth to the police.

Other interventions made during the rally also appreciated the no-nonsense attitude displayed by the Muslim community in handing over the guilty persons but lamented that society was unable to deal with mistakes, even crimes, in a just and humane fashion.

Several young boys denounced the role of the media, which had inflamed passions but had ignored coverage of their peace march. Some said the best reply to Pakistan was for Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together in India.

The youth from Ratangarh announced the holding of a sadbhavna mushaira as part of their next move to promote peace and harmony. The villagers of Rolsabsar arranged buses to take back the youth to Ratangarh as a gesture of gratitude.

It was only after this dynamic local initiative by village youth that the CPI (M) took out a huge peace march in Sikar and after that several other organisations were motivated to hold peace meetings in different kasbas. For the time being, at least, thanks to this local and dynamic intervention, expressions of peace are finding a platform in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, January-February 2002 Year 8  No. 75-76, Breaking Barriers 1

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BHILWARA

Bhanwar Megwanshi

Twenty–six years old Bhanwar Megwanshi is the editor of a monthly Hindi magazine, Diamond India, published from Bhilwara in Central Rajasthan. A Meghwal, one of the scheduled castes, he was born of humble parents in village Sidiyas near Bhilwara. Though his parents were not literate, they educated Bhanwar and his elder brother in the local village school and sent him to a boys’ hostel run by the social welfare department to complete his 12th standard, after which he did his BA privately. 

He comes from a family that believed in Baba Ram Dev, the medieval saint worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims. The latter call him Rama Pir. He grew up worshipping the pagliya, feet of Baba Ram Dev. And Bhanwar has grown up a long way to this day when he is busy combating communal forces and fighting caste oppression in his home district. But it has been an arduous and amazing journey for him, a battle 13–years–long, beginning since he was only a boy of 13. A chequered way to dignity and fulfilment through a fight for justice in society.

As early as standard 6th, the reality of being born an “untouchable” was driven home to him. Bhanwar had gone to meet one of his school friends — a Jat by caste. Till then his friend’s mother had never objected to his sitting anywhere in their house. But that day she asked him to sit on the floor and not the bed on which he was sitting, as the family had guests who knew that he belonged to one of the ‘lowliest castes’. The family tried apologising to him, but Bhanwar was broken. It hit him for the first time that he was a low caste and an “untouchable”, and had a fate radically different from his “upper” caste friends. 

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh came to the village with its shakha in 1988 when Bhanwar was in the 8th standard. Bhanwar went to the secondary school in the neighbouring village. His Geography teacher in that school started the shakha with help from the peon. As the RSS shakha provided the only opportunity for games and physical exercises, Bhanwar joined it along with several other boys. In the shakha, he was introduced to Panchjanya (the central organ of the RSS) and Patheya Kan (the Rajasthan RSS mouth piece). 

In the first year itself, he was promoted to the mukhya shikshak of the shakha. When only 15, in the year 1990, he was selected for the Officers’ Training Camp by the RSS. He completed the first camp of 20 days. In the same year, he was promoted as the RSS Zila Karyalaya Pramukh or office in-charge of Bhilwara district, quite a prestigious post. 

He wanted to rise further in the organisation and become a pracharak.  He told the seniors of his ambition. He was told that he could not become a pracharak, “…Kyunki tum ek vicharak ho, tum apne dhang se hamare vichar rakhoge na ki hamare hisab se…” He was further told that since he belonged to a lower caste he would not be acceptable. 

His having a mind of his own and his lower caste status disqualified him for the post of a RSS pracharak. Nevertheless he was selected to become a worker in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad office which had only then started in the heart of the Muslim area of Bhilwara as compensation. 

Thus he became a vistarak, a post as important as that of a pracharak – vistarak of the ideology by moving to an allied organisation like the VHP. As a vistarak, he could also have moved to other allied organisations like the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, Sanskar Bharti, the Bhartiya Janata Party or the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. 

In December 1990, Bhanwar was selected for the first “kar sewa” at Ayodhya. The 400-strong contingent from Rajasthan was stopped at Tundla near Agra where they were arrested. They stayed in a temporary jail in Agra for ten days. On his return to Bhilwara he went back to his village as the VHP and the RSS were taking out the asthi kalash yatra of the so-called kar sewak martyrs who had lost their lives by the Saryu in Ayodhya. This event was the turning point of his life. 

The asthi kalash carried by the VHP sadhu-sants and leaders was given a glorious welcome by the villagers under Bhanwar’s leadership. He got his family to prepare the meal for the yatris, consisting of kheer and puris. When they were asked to eat the food, a senior RSS leader took Bhanwar aside and told him that they did not have problems eating in his house but the sadhus would. So they suggested that the food be packed to be eaten in the next village. The food prepared for twenty-five people was packed and given. The next day Bhanwar discovered that the food his mother had prepared with such pain had been thrown by the yatris on the roadside. They had instead eaten in the house of one Brahmin. 

This was a shocking, second encounter with untouchability. Bhanwar felt angry and cheated. He took the decision to leave the RSS. He decided that he would not work with those who would not eat or sit with him. It was a painful moment of introspection for him. His every day experiences of being an untouchable hit him with a force. He realised that his RSS and VHP colleagues had never let him get into the Charbhuja temple close by. Being “untouchables” he and his folks were made to take water from a separate hand pump. As a Dalit he could not ride a cycle past the Thakur’s Rawala, or the village manor. The rule for the Dalit was that he had to get off the cycle. His anger against Hindu dharma made him want to leave it. 

Finally one day, he left his village and went to a nearby town in the district to a Roman Catholic Priest and told him that he wanted too become a Christian. His past brushes with Christians made him believe that theirs was a religion that practised equality. He felt that he would find his answers there. 

He was honest with the Roman Catholic priest. He told him that his desire to join Christianity was not out of any love for the religion but an act of vengeance against Hinduism that had treated him with indignity. The priest advised him not to be hasty, asked him to go back to his village and read the Bible. Only after he felt convinced, would he be baptised. 

Bhanwar tried to explain to the priest that his fight was against caste and untouchability. It was in that context that he wanted to convert. The priest did not respond to this. Bhanwar took the Bible away and went to the priests of other Christian denominations. He felt that none of them could understand his anger against Hinduism and the indignity he had gone through. And none of them were willing to fight against caste. They all talked of things spiritual: that “Christ is the Saviour “ and that he should “surrender to Christ”. 

One of the priests even sent word to his family that their son was going astray and planning conversion and that they should stop him. Bhanwar’s father told him firmly that they would be ex-communicated from the caste if he took a wrong step. He felt a betrayal by the Christian Church. When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992 and many of his erstwhile companions had gone to do ‘kar sewa’, Bhanwar was trying to seek his answers in Christianity. 

His struggle to attain a new identity and do away with his original lower caste Hindu identity, which he hated, made him so lonely and engrossed with himself that he was even indifferent (he can not believe it now) to the demolition of Babri Masjid and its bloody aftermath.

His desire to fight caste and the RSS was so great that he felt that he would get a platform for this by joining party politics. In 1993, at age 18, he joined the Janata Dal. He was promptly made the Bhilwara district president of the Chattra Janata Dal. In no time he got disillusioned, as the party had no programme. He came in contact with Ram Vilas Paswan and was made the district Dalit Sena president. He found the Dalit Sena full of sloganeering and no programme dealing with the Dalit reality on the ground. He was also disillusioned by the local Dalit Sena leaders who talked of scientific temper but spent a great deal of time with astrologers. 

When Ram Vilas Paswan was railway minister in 1996, Bhanwar was dutifully paid for his services and made an advisor on the Divisional Railway Users Consumer Committee of Western Railways (Ratlam Division). At the young age of 21, Bhanwar was in a powerful position. But corruption in high places put him off. He found that many of Paswan’s close supporters were keen that he become a broker for the minister. Not willing to the do this dirty work, he resigned from the committee in early 1998. 

He once again felt cheated and realised that the famous words of Ram Vilas Paswan: “Mein us ghar mein diya jalane chala hoon jis ghar mein sadiyon se andhera hai” were only propaganda. Paswan was just like any other Raja, a Dalit Raja. He maintained a separate court for the ordinary workers, like the Diwan-e- Aam of the Rajas, and a Diwan-e-Khaas for the office bearers. Bhanwar called him not Ram Vilas, but Bhog Vilas. He left the Dalit Sena. 

Still keen on getting answers some where on party political platforms, Bhanwar joined the newly floated Rashtriya Janata Dal. Although the district president of the RJD, he felt that at the state and district level it was a Yadav party, of the Yadavs, by the Yadavs for the Yadavs, the rest of them were just showpieces. He moved on from RJD and took membership of the Samata Party in 1999. When the Rajasthan Samata party merged with the Samajwadi Party, he decided to leave party politics altogether. 
He realised that none of the political parties were serious as far as the Dalit question was concerned. He had had truck with all the socialist groups. Why did he keep away from the BSP? He recalls that he met Kanshi Ram of the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1999. He did not like Kanshi Ram calling all Dalits chamaars. Bhanwar felt that chamaar was pejorative in Rajasthan. He felt that the BSP was also not addressing the core issues of indignity and untouchability. It was moving with the compulsions of electoral politics. 

Disillusioned with life, Bhanwar returned to his village and joined as a teacher of the newly started Rajeev Gandhi Pathshalas. He wanted to have no truck with any ideology. He felt that neither religion nor party politics could bring about essential change. So disenchanted was he by the world that he chose not to even read newspapers or hear the radio. 

In August 2000, he met a Sufi saint called Selani Sarkar in Ahmedabad. Bhanwar felt comfortable with him and his followers, as they did not believe in divisions of caste or religion. Bhanwar found that people of all castes and religions seemed to have the same place in the Sufi saint’s order. He experienced a sense of freedom, of being just a human being, free of caste, religion and other identities. Something that he had not experienced till then at all. 

He found that people of different religions had even adopted each other’s practices. It was here that he realised what Manav Dharma was. The Sufi saint inspired him to begin writing and start a magazine. Bhanwar involved his teachers of the area to start a publication of their own under the company nomenclature of Diamond Newspapers Private Limited. 

In the last year he has made this magazine, Diamond India, a platform for voices of the oppressed and for communal harmony. He feels that his resolve to practice and live Manav Dharma is actualising through this endeavour. The first issue of the magazine talked of Hindu–Muslim rishtedari. These youngsters took the bold stand of Hindu–Muslim inter-marriages in a scenario where such marriages cause communal tension. 

Through their magazine they said that if a Hindu has no Muslim or Christian friend and vice versa, he/she has lived an incomplete life. They talked of how friendship between people of different religions must not stop at the tea stalls, but should move to the homestead. 

In the last seven months, Bhilwara district has seen many instances of breaking/ damaging of mosques and mazaars, including the latest ones in Asind and Jahazpur. In this backdrop, Bhanwar’s magazine has fearlessly taken a stand against the sangh parivar and allied communal forces. The Diamond India team is combating communalism and caste through the printed word. 

Even though Bhanwar has been able to take life in his stride and tried living Manav Dharma, he is still often subjected to indignity for being a Dalit. He is saddened by it but feels that through his work he can make the minorities and Dalits see their strength in their togetherness. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2001, Anniversary Issue (8th) Year 8  No. 71, Cover Story 8

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