Silent Zone

Years back we used to collect for our fruits, hunt for our meats, we were together. Then we select you to lead us, to protect us. We have learned to till lands for our crop and you were there to protect our land. Then you had the sword and we had the land.

Ages gone. You and your learned companions made us to forget that you were our servant and so you used to get one sixth of our produce as your service charges. We have started believing that you are sent to rule over us by heaven. You become our lord and your descendents also. Your service charges became our taxes, which sometimes you have taken by force. You started keeping chains with your sword. Then you had sword and we have started to have hunger.

You have defined our place in the society. We the toiler, we the producer have heard that we are at the lowest level of the society. We have started believing that our caste have taken birth from the feet of the god while you have taken birth from his mouth and arms. So our place was defined at the feet of yours. We the Shudras were there to serve you. We had rights to produce for you, rights to serve you, we must not dare to learn, must not dare to access knowledge. Then you had education and we had ignorance.

In between we have rebelled against you and that also in your leadership. Your strict boundaries for us never get loosen. We have tried other religion, those were new, progressive but there also we found you to rule over us, there also we found our place at the bottom. Then we have learned that it is our fate, we really are the cursed race who has taken birth from the feet of the god. When we consider our fate our life become easier, when we consider you as our eternal ruler we were in peace.

We have started to remain happy with our land, our defined cast-life, our produce, our culture, our song, our dance, our worship and our self-governance which function in absolute democracy within our small boundary, within our village. But we the cursed people again loose our last refuge when you have come with money and trade. You made us tenant in our own land. You have snatched our food, our crafts, our forest, our everything. You have even forced us to produce whatever you wish in our land. We starved, suffered, whipped, raped. You gave us court instead of our village government, you gave us access to education, and schools then were not forbidden for us. You were then foreigner; you have tried to give us your religion. We took but we have seen that we are still starving and suffering. Then you had guns, you had money, you had knowledge and we only had our hunger.

We rose for freedom, we hope for a new dawn, we got killed but we have dreamt for independence, which would solve our all problems. We would have food, work, education, our land and justice. At the eve of independence you told us that we are not equal. There are differences amongst us. The temple-goers and the mosque-goers cannot live in the same country. Then you were one of us and we the cursed people believed you, forgot that for thousand years we have stayed side by side, start fighting, get killed and than you divided our land in two separate countries. We again lost everything and become refugees to you. Then you had religion and we had hunger.

We have heard we are now independent. You have come with a new constitution. You told us that now you and we are equal, we could vote and choose our government, we choose you. You and your constitution promised that we would get work, get back our land, get access to justice and our children would get education. But years gone we still remain starved, threatened, poor and uneducated toilers and we finds you still as a parasite there, relishing on our toils. Now you have your constitution and we still have hunger.

Yes, you have thrown to us sometimes some pieces of land, sometimes some health centers, sometimes some cheap schools, sometimes some development schemes. What ever we got we grabbed. You also given back us our village governance but we understood that that governance become a mere appendage of your rule in our village.

But now you have started again looting our land, our home, our temples, our mosques, our bamboo-bush, our river, our village and that also in the name of our interest. We have interest to get work, to get medicines, to get educations, to get justice from you because you are there to serve us and we know that by looting our villages you would not serve any of our interests. We don’t believe you. We reject you and your policy. We know you have your guns but we still have our hunger.

We know that you, your power, your money, your gun will perish but we the mass will exists and so our hunger……

“I live in a tattered hut roofed by palm leaves
Which get shattered every year by thunderstorm,
Scorching sun burns my feet and my head in summer
And my cloths are so short in length that it always fails to cover either one,
Listen to my mournful stories O mother goddess,
Even in autumn roothless rain suffers me,
Streams and rivers are get united and
Water floods eight directions of my world.”

Fullara to Chandi – My unskilled translation from Chandimangal

Sound of drums was like waterfalls; roads were simmering, glittering and roaring with colourful crowd; the sunny morning of New Delhi was shivering with slogans of hundred voices and that was the Indian Social Forum in three grounds surrounding of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Children were there from streets, slums and villages, there were dalits protesting against Hindu Bharat in block robe, there were peasants demanding for their command over the land, water and forests, there were tribal dancing whole day with Dhamsa-Madol and on melancholy tune in front of the icons of their forgotten heroes – Sidho-Kanho and Birsha Munda, there were even unux groups dancing with every other groups in demand of their dignity.

A miniature of this vast country was singing, dancing, speaking whole day for their basic rights - their right to education, right to health, right to land-water-forest, right to works and wages. They were protesting against the much-discussed capitalist globalisation, selling the dream of another world.

There were around two hundred and fifty seminars in the four days of Indian Social Forum. All on real issues, issues related to the life of the common mass, issues which are very much political. There were rallies, street dramas, and cultural performances. But this big event where even children spoke about their own demand, where fifty thousand people from all corner of the country have participated, even representative from Kenya and Bangladesh were also present, were ignored by the media and the political society.

Whether they have kept themselves purposefully indifferent, whether they were afraid on this mass gathering or …. there are lots of opinions.

What I felt that this event yet has not become important in the mass life of India. The social forum could never compete with the popularity of Holi, Diwali, Navratri, Id-ul-Fitre or even of Christmas. Still it has remained as an intellectual event, not even a political one, where there is some motivated involvement of mass. This series of social forums, world, continental and national might be a ground-gaining tussle between the capitalist world and the recently weakened socialist groups and thus these events supported sufficiently by foreign resources. And the NGOs, who have changed their roles in last thirty years from philanthropist to campaigner, have taken these platforms to exercise their newly gained political recognitions.

And vast, illiterate, patient and religious India, who knows which cloud could bring rain for her crop and does not know about Social Forums. She lives in thousands of villages, has taken government and political leaders as their Mai-Bap, still believes that only her fate could bring another world for her, only wants that her children should get two squares of meal everyday.

This India dance in Holi in her ragged clothes, lit lamps under the star-studded sky in Diwali, stand patiently in long queue under the scorched sun to cast her vote and dreams that she will overcome some day. This India has forgotten that her scholar long ego has given her right of rebellion and even regicide. She even was advised, “an unjust and oppressive king should be killed by his own subject like a mad dog”.

Could Indian Social Forum instigate her courage, would it ignite her patience like dried fuel, or would it help her to fumigate her grievances, anger like a safety valve and help to maintain a status quo.

The future has the answer in her womb. But when I was in the ISF ground surrounded by the enthusiasm, slogans, unity, freedom and proud of the people I was inspired to believe that it is the beginning…. Beginning of our journey for a new world.

“I am dreaming with an expectation that you come
And the days passing by one after another,
They are igniting fire with and expectation of better time
And for nothing few people passing away,
To see the sky with their head hold high
They see the dirty, black smoke,

But still my heart wants to hope,
But still my heart wants to love,
But still my heart wants to dream………”

--------------------------------------------------
Photographs taken from SPAN and EKTA PARISHAD

When we were discussing about the numbers of miseries of their life sitting besides the large glass window and relishing on the cups of “Darjeelings(tea)”, they were just down on the pavements, happily spending the late winter dusk of Kolkata by inventing numbers of games with pebbles, torn papers, sticks and twigs. When we came out from the restaurant they surrounded us with a claim of ICECREAM!! We the Kolkatans have seen these little faces at the traffic signals, railway platforms, moving buses, begging for coins. And this time they are asking for Ice cream! May be our foreigner friend with her blond hair has given their demand this height.

They are the street children of Kolkata, the street urchins, street paupers, children of lesser god, the children in need of care and protection and the bunch of thieves.

I have seen Subhash, a runaway from home, spent his childhood in Dum Dum railway platform, his addiction reached the height of smacking adhesive. We failed to keep him in children home because he felt there was not enough freedom for him. He bought a knife to kill his teacher (of near by street children education center) when he was eleven years old. And this eleven-year-old hero carried one of his sick street friend on his back one and half kilometre to a local health centre.

And the little divers of the Ganges! At the bathing-ghat of the sacred river they waited. Whenever a devotee throws a coin (part of worship) in the river, they dive. Within a few minutes they come up with the glittering coins in their hands. And their wet faces glitters with proud and joy.

They are mature, they are opportunists some time, but still they are children. If you can win over their putrid body odour, the lice amongst their sticky hair, their hostile attitude, the child will come out. Than you are bound to hear to their numerous questions, your copies would be filled with their unskilled drawings, they will give you funny nicknames.

Yes, they are vulnerable on streets, even when they are living with their families. They should not be left on street but where they will go? Law says they should be in children home, public says in jail and government says nothing but scaring them by evicting their families regularly.

The children are never asked. How they aspire their life? They must have a dream of a secured home but how the home would look like? Would it be free like the street? Would it be luxurious like the bunglows showed in Hindi films? Do they like to be in schools? How the school will be? You don’t know because you never ask, you never got enough guts to enter their own world. You know everything should be in the best interest of the children but you never know that what is actually their interest!!

“That naked street-child starving within me
Abandons her games in the dust
And stretching out her arms against the wind
wails in hunger:“Give me love!”
At this, her playmates,
The crow and the street-dogs
Stop their games of snatch and tag
And stand still for two minutes
Upon the garbage heap”

(English Translalation of Balbhashitam -
a bengaly poem written by Nabanita Debsen)

----------------------------------------------------
Name of the children are changed