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Banishment from hearth and home

P. Devarajan

IT was an early evening of Saturday as the Trax cut off the Shahpur road to Kesla village where the main office of the Tawa Matsya Sangh (TMS) was situated in a godown. Paul, Dr. Anwar Jafri and myself were hoping to find Sunil Gupta for a chat and as we walked in we found a pleasant Smita Gupta who said Sunil would be available on Sunday morning as he was not on one of his many tours.

By 10.30 on Sunday, our Trax drove up to a brick walled, scantily tiled-roof home to find Sunil stretched out on a `charpoy' in the portico. He walked up to the gate with a namaskar and offered us the charpoy to squat in. It did not look as if the house has any electricity or any of the modern amenities but it does not bother the Gupta family with their two kids, the son bearing the name of Iqbal Abhimanyu (one forgot to inquire his sister's name).

The kids offered us sarbat and were considerate enough to offer a glass to our driver who was resting in the Trax without anybody's bidding. An adivasi woman, as ancient as womankind, dragged herself and sat on the mud floor of the portico and Sunil offe red a glass of thando to her.

Since 1985, Sunil and his wife have been working with the displaced adivasis in the Tawa reservoir area with Sunil playing the advisory role. The kids go to the local government school while Sunil shapes the numerous fights with the authorities out to ma ke life miserable.

In this area, the Gonds and Korkus are prepared to take on the government and the strongly built Fagram is a good sample. Though illiterate, he is not for any kowtowing. When policemen demand a cut in the catch meant for the markets, Fagram refuses to ob lige and if the police insist, places the entire catch at their disposal and walks off.

Fagram, Karim, Guliya Bai and the rest have their own minds and it is not as if they accept Sunil without an argument. Sunil prefers the style and after spending about two hours with him one realised dealing with a 24-carat sparkling socialist.

Apart from getting the Tawa reservoir transferred to the TMS, Sunil is battling for tribals stuck up in the Bori sanctuary across the Tawa river. ``A tribal or an adivasi has no right to the wood of the forests in India though he is the traditional owner of the green,'' says slenderly built Sunil in a firm but quiet tone. It's a delight to see Sunil sticking to facts and not coating it with any socialist rhetoric.

There are 17 villages in the Bori Sanctuary and the tribals have no legal rights to stay, to cultivate crops or even to market the produce. A government inquiry came up with the finding that they did not have any rights even before the reserves were conv erted into a sanctuary as the British had not recorded them.

``Even today we have to go by the acts or non-acts of the erstwhile colonial masters,'' a cut-up Sunil tells us. As of now the forest department has decided to keep the issue on the files and the Madhya Pradesh Government has in principle agreed to villa gers living in Bori Sanctuary.

But this is no way and Sunil thinks, ``the policy of the government to protect sanctuaries is motivated by the desire to promote tourism rather than offering a decent deal for the tribals.''

The lease of the Tawa reservoir to the TMS expires on December 23, 2001 and Sunil will have to find ways to extend the lease and this time for a longer period. For Sunil and his family the teak forests, the Tawa river, the fisheries project and the triba ls are not statistics in some file of the Planning Commission. They are not virtual reality but reality. Even today one has not been able to shake out Sunil from one's thoughts.

The Trax takes four hours to reach Bhopal and Dr. Anwar Jafri suggests visiting Bhim Bhitika on the way. A well-tarred strip runs up the hill near Bhiyanpur, some 45 km south east of Bhopal and has some rare rock paintings aeons old.

Cavernous rock shelters are spread across an area of nine km and Kishore who took us around talked of spotting leopards, scorpions, snakes and other wild animals. In 1958, an archaeologist V.S. Wakankar discovered the shelters and the red and white rock paintings, going by the details given in the plaque set up by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

As Paul and Dr. Jafri clicked away, one stood amazed by the paintings resembling the scrawl of school kids. The rhino, elephant, horse, tiger, deer, boar and battle scenes are scripted on some of the walls belonging to the Stone Age.

The ASI believes the time period stretches some 100,000 years to 10,000 years and are in nine phases from the mesolithic (the cultural period between the paleolithic and neolithic ages marked by the appearance of the bow and cutting tools) to the chalcol ithic (belonging to a transitional stage at the end of the neolithic age, when copper was in use).

For the common man, it is a religious centre as Bhim of Mahabharata spent 12 quiet years in this area. Long time ago, the Indian society had a unique way of punishing the unorthodox by banning them to the forests.

In most cases they spent time brooding over man, woman, nature and the very transient ways of living to come back and rescue society. Sunils and Fagrams seem to be styled on the concept trying to get back tribals to where they belong, the forests, animal s and a way of life.