Wednesday, October 20, 2010

WHEN GOD WALKED THE EARTH CHAPTER 30
God transforms the life of Dalits
\
It was the month of march and like every year, Mohammed was going for a holiday to his native village ,he asked God to go with him ”it’s a quaint little village in rural India and you will love the very green setting it offers” ,Mohammed told God ..God who was always game for new experiences ,immediately agreed to accompany him
They reached the village in the wee hours when the first light of dawn had just started painting the sky in the radiant hue of crimson ,they straightway drove to Najma Appa’s house,,they rang the door bell and waited outside,Najma appa struggled to get into her wheel chair and wheeled herself to the front door,when she opened the door she found them waiting outside,she was delighted to see her friend Dr Mohammed and his handsome looking friend, ”this year you are late doctor”,
“as always my patients were not allowing to leave me ,meet my friend God”
“God” ,said Najma ”is a very unusual name but it is a beautiful name, welcome inside and make yourself comfortable whilst I make you both a nice hot cup of tea” ,she then wheeled herself into the kitchen,” she is a nice woman, how did she land on a wheel chair?”, questioned God
“one day when she had gone shopping she was caught in a crossfire between the police and a thug ,the bullet passed through her right thigh and came out from the left therefore she had to get both her legs amputated from below her thighs ,she was fitted with braces and is in a wheel chair since then, but hats of to her courage and determination to be independent ,she does all the work herself “,replied Mohammed
“doesn’t she have anyone to look after her?”, asked God
“she had a wonderful husband and two beautiful kids but she lost them all in a car accident. today she has nobody whom she could call her own”.
“and how does she support herself?”.
“her husband was a rich man,he has left her some property and some money which she has invested wisely and she spends her time looking after the interests of the dalits,they are the most exploited people in this village,my father too was a dalit who had been enduring years of social discrimination, we were persecuted regularly for being born untouchables and when indignities heaped upon him by upper caste hindus was too much for him to bear,he embraced islam,all his life he was treated like an outcaste and after converting he felt like he finally belonged”,Just then Najma Appa handed them two cups of cardamom tea,”after you have had your tea you can freshen yourselves up till then breakfast will be ready and then both of you can visit the villagers and help them out of their present predicament”
“what is the problem this time around?”,asked Mohammed
“this time the villagers are facing a very big problem ”,said Najma ”a few days back three dalit women were intercepted when they were returning home from the fields late in the evening by five policemen who demanded the chicken a woman was carrying home to cook it for her son on his birthday , she had saved pie by pie every month to buy the chicken therefore the woman expressed her inability to provide the chicken to them and this brought out their ire and they started thrashing the women mercilessly, when the women raised an alarm a large number of villagers reached the spot and started protesting and pelting the policemen with stones to free the women from their clutches which resulted in a minor injury to one of them, this was enough to invite the police retaliation .Next morning before the crack of dawn a hundred policemen swooped on the village ,for more then two hours they resorted to indiscriminate firing injuring a number of villagers and then happened the worst, they dragged the women and girls out and gang raped them before every one” said Najama
“come on God let us see what havoc the police has committed this time”
“first freshen up have your breakfast and then go ”,said Najma
“we will come back soon Appa ”,said Mohammed and together they walked up to the village tea stall which was the meeting place of all the villagers. ”thank God you have come sir” ,said Ramesh,”thunder bolts have broken over this village,in the last few days a group of police personnel went bersek raping innocent girls and thrashing old and the blind,out of fear many have abandoned the village and many young girls and women are not to be found,we suspect that the cops might have kept them hostages”,the word soon spread that Mohammed had arrived and soon all the villagers surrounded them,” Mohammed miyan you are our messiah we were waiting eagerly for you all these days,now that you are here we are sure you will get us out of this situation as you always do”,said Sultan,friend of Ramesh
“don’t worry my friends,now that I am here I will see that you will get justice”.said Mohammed
“thank you sir’ ,said Sultan again ”my mother who is visually impaired had her right leg fractured and when I went to save her I was beaten up brutally and Ramesh had his arm broken
“one of the cops took my six month old nephew and tried to throw him from a height ”,said an old man standing besides them, ”they tied at least a dozen youths to a tree and tortured them till they became unconscious, we have lost everything even our daughter and daughter-in-law’s but since we can do nothing we are reconciled to our fate”
“you must not give in so easily ”said God, ”you must always struggle to get justice ,struggle will make you stronger only cowards reconcile themselves to fate ,you have got to make things work for you ,come on all of you ,let us all go to the office of the police commissioner and report the matter to him ,I am sure he will give you justice”

With great difficulty they got an audiance with the commissioner ,the commissioner promised them a high level inquiry into the incident ,but the villagers knew that nothing would come out of the visit ,the commissioner would soon forget his promise when they returned from the commissioners office, all of them gathered at Najma Appa’s sprawling house and over cups of tea and biscuits they recounted to God their miserable life in the village ”every time the police wants to clean up the jail which is always full of muck and excreta they arrest some young boys under a minor offence and lock them up, they are only left when they clean up every thing ”,said Sainath the most articulate amongst them” when Bhawari devi”s thirteen year old daughter was raped b y a few upper caste hindus ,the uppercastes were forcing her to patch up with the rapist ,when she refused to listen to them ,they tore away her clothes and made her naked ,then they pierced her nose ,put a thick jute ring through her nostrils and dragged her by it through the village”
“I was born a dalit ”said Najma who was listening quietly to all that was being said, ”but I was very independent minded, from childhood I was a rebel ,on the independence day I hoisted a flag on the roof of my house ,immediately I was beaten up by the goons of the thakurs for soiling the flag, they said that a low caste person like me had no right to even touch a flag leave alone hoist it in the house”
“and did you ever touch the flag again?” ,asked God
“yes I did ,from the next year onwards I raised the flag in the district head quarters in the presence of the local collector”
“you are a very brave woman” ,God said in an appreciative voice
“you must listen to her other exploits ”,said Mohammed
“every time the dalits and thakurs went for a meeting ,the dalits were made to sit on the ground and the thakurs on chairs ,her biggest triumph was when she distributed chairs to the dalits who were attending a meeting with the thakurs ,since a minster was presiding over the meeting a near riot like situation was averted and here is a story why she converted herself to islam -a dance troupe had been called to perform in the village at the end of the dance the troupe asked the local youth to perform with them on the stage, everyone jumped at the opportunity many thakurs, dalit youths and girls went on the stage and amongst them was our Najma appa ,the way she danced, she made many hearts miss a beat ,the uppercaste girls became jealous and complained to their brothers, they pulled her off the stage and beat her up, in presence of everyone this was some thing she could not take and she immediately converted to Islam, the conversion was like a rebirth ,she felt at peace with herself .the stigma attached to her birth is no more ,today she is respected where ever she goes ,the inequalities are not as stark as in Hinduism and untouchability the worst of human indiginities is definitely not followed by any other religion”, said Mohammed
“dalits are not allowed inside the hindu temples”, said Najma Appa,”if they venture near a temple they are beaten up ,in some places they are not even allowed to take lord Krishna or Rama’s name. and I told them to bring their Gods home through their bodies ,a dalit had narrated to me that for centuries his anscestors were not allowed to bring their Gods name on their lips .Whilst the upper caste hindus kept their Gods in the temples ,they decided to keep their God with them on their bodies by tattooing their names all over their bodies, This way they carried their God with them where ever they went. They walked with God,ate with God,slept with God and in this way they also saved themselves from physical torture for no hindu would dare to touch a harijan with God inscribed on every inch of his body”,


WRONG FILE OMIT,OMIT,OMIT,OMIT,OMIT













No comments:

Post a Comment