12-22-2004, 05:40 PM
IN SEARCH OF A KINDER GOD
TRAVELOGUE
By NIRUPAMA DUTT
Kaisa hoga Bombai, sochate thhe hum apne Punjab mein...(What would
Bombay be like, we would wonder back home in Punjab). This line from
an early poem by Deepti Naval lingers in my memory. I wonder if she
ever wonders Kaisa hoga Punjab ab... Probably not! For that wonderment is lost in the journey from the provinces to the metropolis; in the journey from home to abroad_ but for the rather sentimental and romantic picture which the non-resident Punjabis nurture in their
hearts.
So let me tell you Kaisa thha hamara Punjab ab ki baar. It is a
journey that I take with a Tele-film maker with trying to put together a travelogue film. We start at Chandigarh_ warming up for the real journey. An evening in photographer Diwan Manna's well appointed home with some artists and journalist becomes a starting point of sorts.
Diwan has perfected the art of picturising death and sorrow and his
beautiful works, both old and new, convince me that he is our best
homegrown prophet of doom. Incidentally, he is holding more shows in
London, Paris, Berlin, and so on rather than home. Our sufferings
indeed have many takers abroad. Here Painter Malkit Singh recalls some memories of the partition and links them to the present times. He also tells us that the mosque abandoned in his village since the Partition has been re-opened. Malkit belongs to Rode-Lande, the twin villages in the Malwa region of Punjab from where the militant leader, late Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala, hailed.
Chal Samrale Chaliye (Let's go to Samrala)
Memory by-lanes are rarely geographical. They meander through the mind transcending the barriers of time and place. So I return to Malkit's narrative of the abandoned mosque being reopened in Rode-Lande. This is not an isolated case. The reopening of the Guru di Masid, renovated with community help in a peace initiative started by conservation architect Gurmit Rai, wife of celebrated photographer Raghu Rai. This
mosque was built by Sikh Guru Hargobind Rai for his Muslim disciples
and had been lying desolate since the Partition of the country.
Gurmeet along with her group renovated this monument of a composite
culture and handed it over to
Muslim believers dedicating the act to the memory of a young girl
killed in the Gujarat massacre.
A number of mosques have been reopened in the villages and towns of
Punjab. The Muslim population in Punjab is also increasing and it has
taken more than half a century for the wounds to heal. But for the
enclave of Malerkotla Punjabi Muslims were either killed or they had
to migrate or take on Hindu and Sikh names, the price for staying on,
as was the case with Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab now a part of
Pakistan. Malerkotla is quite another story. History has it that the
Nawab of Malerkotla had opposed the state order of bricking alive of
the two sons of the Tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, who founded the
Khalsa and bestowed on the Sikhs a new faith and identity. The Muslims
who belonged to Malerkotla or reached Malerkotla were safe for here no
killings were done in gratitude to the protest by the Nawab. Strange
indeed are the reasons for being killed or being saved!
Among those who managed to reach Malerkotla was the father of Punjabi
short story writer Gulzar Mohammed Goria. The latter was born in
independent India at Padaudhi village near Samrala, a small town
between Chandigarh and Ludhiana. Yet another writer, the famous Saadat
Hasan Manto, famed for his Partition stories, was also born here
although he was bred in Amritsar. Goria is a schoolteacher in Samrala.
Interestingly the mosque in Samrala was opened by the initiative of
Goria and my friend poet Lal Singh Dil. Dil was the star poet of the
Naxalite, the extreme Left movement that started in 1967 in the
Naxalbarhi village of North Bengal had its reverbrations in Punjab
and other states and was brutally crushed by 1970. When I got
acquainted with the literary scene of Punjab in 1977-78, he had
already become a mythical figure. The poet who had inspired a movement in the late Sixties in East Punjab and had a great fan following, had gone underground somewhere in the orchards of Uttar Pradesh. He had converted to Islam and in an odd letter home he had written that the crescent moon had appeared on the palm of his hand. In the same letter he had said: 'Allah is very kind to Maoists because he understands
cultures!'
Dil was born into the low-caste chamar (tanner) community and he dared to be a poet challenging the established order. The first of his clan to finish school and go to college, he could have been a teacher, but Naxalbari intervened. Police torture, imprisonment and rejection forced him to leave Samrala. His conversion to Islam was yet another way of changing his life. And he hoped to find a wife for himself in
his new faith. Marriage was not be for him so Dil returned home to
Samrala after Punjab's long night of terror ended. Alone and addicted
to cheap liquour, he became the caretaker at the mosque with Goria
sending him his two meals a day from his own home. For five years Dil
said the morning and evening azaan. Goria, who is also Left of the
road, recalls: "God is everywhere and our effort in opening the mosque
was directed to give confidence to a minority community who should not
be afraid of going to their own place for prayer. However, when people
started coming to the mosque_ the Wakf Board intervened and took over
and now Dil and I are persona non grata there." Well, the Wakf Board
must be having its own reasons because political ideology apart, Dil
and Goria are just a bit too fond of their drink. Well the great
Ghalib had said: Zahid bhi zaroor aata go chori-chhupe peeta, Maikhana
gar koi masjid ke karib hota. But Dil and Goria do not belong to the
tribe who will do anything in secrecy or be hypocritical.
In the tea-maker's shop
Once Dil was ousted from the mosque, he was at a loose end again. Then
poet Amarjit Chandan, another proclaimed offender of the Naxal days
and later rehabilitated as a translator in England, sent money for
Dil. With this money his hut was made over into a pucca home and a
wooden shack built to serve as a teashop so that he may earn a living
by selling tea. I was to meet Dil only in the mid-Nineties at his
teashop opposite the automobiles market on the Maachiwara Road. Once I
stopped there to interview him for a newspaper over a cup of tea. I
was to return many times; we had struck up a literary friendship.
Never mind, if Prem Prakash who edits the literary journal Lakeer from
Jalandhar chooses to call it a mutually reciprocated crush between two
romantic 'outcasts'. Well there are outcasts and outcasts. As for
romanticism, pundits in the West now believe that it will succeed
post-modernism. Ahead of our time, aren't Dil and I?
Dil no longer runs his teashop. He closed it down some two years ago
when his partner Pala fell ill. The last time that I had gone to see
him, the teashop was locked and I was led to the cremation ground
where Pala's last rites were being performed and Dil sat there
vacant-eyed. This time in Samrala, we start looking for Dil and we
begin at the spot where the teashop once stood. It is no longer there.
Whenever in Samrala, a search has to be made for Dil. Each time I have
found him at a different spot_ the mango grove, the tractor repair
shop, the cremation ground or the liquour shop_ everywhere but home.
This time it is Dil is in the home of the Hakim Sahib, who has just
shifted home from Old Delhi to Samrala. So it is red-hot chicken
curry, chapatis and phirni made by his wife who, Hakim Sahib proudly
says, is a Punjabi from Malerkotla. Hakim Sahib once had a wool
factory in Ludhiana but it was burnt down in an accident. Hakim Sahib
is among the many Muslims who are moving from Central India to Punjab.
It is more comfortable for them to be in a state where a national
minority, the Sikhs are in majority. Hindutva is less menacing here.
And it is heartening to meet Punjabi Muslims. For in our childhood
even a decade and a half after the bloodshed of the Partition, one
never saw Punjabi Muslims. But now the fears seem to be ending.
Next day in Dil's home in the Chamar basti, two images that stand out
are a terrace garden, two flower-beds that he has made on his kacha
kotha and his little grand-niece who keeps crawling up the stairs
asking Taya (Uncle) for a toffee. No matter how harsh life may be but
there is yet room in it for a few green leaves, a child's smile and
some sweetness. I am reminded on one of Dil's famous poems of the old
days: Dance:
When the labourer woman
Roasts her heart on the tawa
The moon laughs from behind the tree
The father amuses the younger one
Making music with bowl and plate
The older one tinkles the bells
Tied to his waste
And he dances
These songs do not die
Nor either the dance in the heart...
Some wooden planks of the tea shack, remnants of the tea vending days,
lie on the terrace, others Dil has given away. Inside his dark room
some four dozen trophies and shields are gathering dust literally. Dil
now survives on a pension of Rs 500 given to him by a Ludhiana
publisher for his autobiography, Daastan, and the money sahit sabhas
give him along with the memento when they honour him_ ranging from Rs
500 to 2100. Dil is now sixty plus but the Punjab Languages Department
pension for old and destitute writers has still not come his way.
Dil Sahib agrees to accompany us to Ludhiana and Amritsar. At lunch by
the Neelon canal, Dil Sahib lights three bidis at a time, generously
handing over one each to the television guy and me as he tells us of
the Sufi traditions of Punjab. The poor young Tele-film maker has a
tough time for he is not as much a nicotine addict for he probably
grew up in the anti-tobacco campaign times. But he knows that one
cannot refuse a bidi when it is Dil who is offering it. See it is Dil
offering us bidis and not me offering him cigarettes. The wicked Prem
Prakash, an old friend of Dil and an ardent admirer of his poetry, had
once written in Lakeer that ever since Nirupama has started taking him
to Neelon and interviewing him over cigarettes and beer, he has shed
his mild demeanour and keeps booming all the time.
The Colour Green
Green is the colour of fertility. And this colour has a long
association with Punjab in the agricultural revolution the state saw
with mechanised farming. Green is also the colour of faith. And it is
very visible in the Doaba area of Punjab. Mazaars or tombs of the Sufi
saints have always been a part of the Eat Punjab landscape. But if you
move through Doaba, the land between Sutlej and Beas, hundreds of new
mazars have come up. The old ones are painted anew with and well
tended. Green chaddars adorn the tombs and buntings decorate the
shrines.
When in Jalandhar, it is inevitable to find oneself in Prem Prakash's
den in Mota Singh Nagar in Jalandhar. We have come fresh from the
Doaba countryside, villages in the Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur district,
where in the past few years hundreds of mazaars have come up. These
mazaars are tended and well kept with green chaddars adorning the
tombs and buntings and flowers decorating them. We discuss the
phenomenon with Prem Prakash who is sprawiling on his cot. "Do you
know the population of the scheduled castes is very high in this area.
They too need a God. The temples have always denied them entry and the
gurdwaras look down upon them. They also need their place of worship,"
he says and jumps out of the cot.
"Caste is a major problem of our society and even we in the Left never
addressed it. We talk only of class but class is also caste. I raised
the hornet's nest when I dedicated an issue of the Lakeer to 'Class
and Creed'. Some said that I had lost it and others said that I was
making mischief. Well, one has to make mischief sometime," Prem Pakash
springs up and brings out the issue from his closet full of books and
journals. Now what he had done is that in this issue he had published
a list of a few hundreds of writers with each one's caste in the
brackets. Besides, articles analysing the dispersal of awards and
rewards on the basis of caste and creed. "Now look at Lalu (that is
how he fondly calls Dil) he remained discriminated against even in the
Naxalite cadres. He is one of our finest poets but what has he got?"
In Doaba we see the curious phenomenon of caste-based gurdwaras this
when the tenets of Sikh religion do not recognise caste but caste
prejudice could just not be erased in practice. There is an
interesting story about a village near Kapurthala. The lower-caste
Sikhs of the village wanted a separate gurdwara for themselves and
they did manage to construct it for they felt uncomfortable in the
gurdwara where the upper castes dominated and scorned at them. But
problems arose there too for the Kabir-panithis (weavers) felt the
Ravi-Dasias (tanners), who were there in a majority, felt they were
being looked down upon and thus they wanted their third gurdwara. At
this the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) put its foot
down saying that they could not thus encourage the coming up of
caste-based gurdwaras. The Kabir-panthis threatened to convert to
another religion and the SGPC allowed them to construct the third
gurdwara. So one village has three separate gurdwaras based on caste_
never mind the tenets of the Sikh religion.
A young dalit writer-journalist, Des Raj Kali, guides us through the
many dalit deras all over the countryside. In a rather large and
affluent Ravi-Dasia dera (people belonging to the caste of Chamars or
tanners worship Gur Ram Das and are now called Ram Dasia) one is
struck by an image. It is a cycle in the huge cemented and covered
two-wheeler parking lot. It obviously belongs to a shoeshine man for
the box and other tools of the trade are proudly tied to the cycle as
he has gone in to pray. Where else can he so confidently keep his
bike!
In Chowk Husainpura fort in Amritsar, we discuss caste and class with
Parminderjit, editor of Akhar, a little magazine featuring poetry and
fiction. He tells us; "The dalit organisation in Punjab cannot be
looked away. Gone are the days when people were apologetic about their
caste. Every day when I come to office, I see at the square a cobbler
with the board_ Nathu Chamar and his rates for polish, cream polish,
sole and half-sole happily displayed. He is a craftsman and labourer
who his selling his hard work. He has no cause to be ashamed."
Also in Amritsar we call on Prof. Harish K. Puri who a political
scientist and his subject is the modern history of Punjab. Having done
excellent work on the Ghadar Party Movement and terrorism, he is now
working on 'Role of Deras on Dalit Psyche'. He too has taken note of
the growing mazaars. "Mazars never went away from Punjab even though
the Muslims were either killed or driven out at the time of the
Partition. <b>The growing number of mazaars can be attributed to
assertion of the dalit identity and also a reaction to Hindutva."</b>
So this is how Punjab is showing signs of change. The growing caste
consciousness and the way it is being addressed in the open is a
pointer that discrimination in the social fabric of East Punjab is not
for all times. <b>The color green of the mazaars and the mosques is yet
another happy sign.</b> Change is inevitable but when it is for the better
it raises hope.
TRAVELOGUE
By NIRUPAMA DUTT
Kaisa hoga Bombai, sochate thhe hum apne Punjab mein...(What would
Bombay be like, we would wonder back home in Punjab). This line from
an early poem by Deepti Naval lingers in my memory. I wonder if she
ever wonders Kaisa hoga Punjab ab... Probably not! For that wonderment is lost in the journey from the provinces to the metropolis; in the journey from home to abroad_ but for the rather sentimental and romantic picture which the non-resident Punjabis nurture in their
hearts.
So let me tell you Kaisa thha hamara Punjab ab ki baar. It is a
journey that I take with a Tele-film maker with trying to put together a travelogue film. We start at Chandigarh_ warming up for the real journey. An evening in photographer Diwan Manna's well appointed home with some artists and journalist becomes a starting point of sorts.
Diwan has perfected the art of picturising death and sorrow and his
beautiful works, both old and new, convince me that he is our best
homegrown prophet of doom. Incidentally, he is holding more shows in
London, Paris, Berlin, and so on rather than home. Our sufferings
indeed have many takers abroad. Here Painter Malkit Singh recalls some memories of the partition and links them to the present times. He also tells us that the mosque abandoned in his village since the Partition has been re-opened. Malkit belongs to Rode-Lande, the twin villages in the Malwa region of Punjab from where the militant leader, late Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala, hailed.
Chal Samrale Chaliye (Let's go to Samrala)
Memory by-lanes are rarely geographical. They meander through the mind transcending the barriers of time and place. So I return to Malkit's narrative of the abandoned mosque being reopened in Rode-Lande. This is not an isolated case. The reopening of the Guru di Masid, renovated with community help in a peace initiative started by conservation architect Gurmit Rai, wife of celebrated photographer Raghu Rai. This
mosque was built by Sikh Guru Hargobind Rai for his Muslim disciples
and had been lying desolate since the Partition of the country.
Gurmeet along with her group renovated this monument of a composite
culture and handed it over to
Muslim believers dedicating the act to the memory of a young girl
killed in the Gujarat massacre.
A number of mosques have been reopened in the villages and towns of
Punjab. The Muslim population in Punjab is also increasing and it has
taken more than half a century for the wounds to heal. But for the
enclave of Malerkotla Punjabi Muslims were either killed or they had
to migrate or take on Hindu and Sikh names, the price for staying on,
as was the case with Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab now a part of
Pakistan. Malerkotla is quite another story. History has it that the
Nawab of Malerkotla had opposed the state order of bricking alive of
the two sons of the Tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, who founded the
Khalsa and bestowed on the Sikhs a new faith and identity. The Muslims
who belonged to Malerkotla or reached Malerkotla were safe for here no
killings were done in gratitude to the protest by the Nawab. Strange
indeed are the reasons for being killed or being saved!
Among those who managed to reach Malerkotla was the father of Punjabi
short story writer Gulzar Mohammed Goria. The latter was born in
independent India at Padaudhi village near Samrala, a small town
between Chandigarh and Ludhiana. Yet another writer, the famous Saadat
Hasan Manto, famed for his Partition stories, was also born here
although he was bred in Amritsar. Goria is a schoolteacher in Samrala.
Interestingly the mosque in Samrala was opened by the initiative of
Goria and my friend poet Lal Singh Dil. Dil was the star poet of the
Naxalite, the extreme Left movement that started in 1967 in the
Naxalbarhi village of North Bengal had its reverbrations in Punjab
and other states and was brutally crushed by 1970. When I got
acquainted with the literary scene of Punjab in 1977-78, he had
already become a mythical figure. The poet who had inspired a movement in the late Sixties in East Punjab and had a great fan following, had gone underground somewhere in the orchards of Uttar Pradesh. He had converted to Islam and in an odd letter home he had written that the crescent moon had appeared on the palm of his hand. In the same letter he had said: 'Allah is very kind to Maoists because he understands
cultures!'
Dil was born into the low-caste chamar (tanner) community and he dared to be a poet challenging the established order. The first of his clan to finish school and go to college, he could have been a teacher, but Naxalbari intervened. Police torture, imprisonment and rejection forced him to leave Samrala. His conversion to Islam was yet another way of changing his life. And he hoped to find a wife for himself in
his new faith. Marriage was not be for him so Dil returned home to
Samrala after Punjab's long night of terror ended. Alone and addicted
to cheap liquour, he became the caretaker at the mosque with Goria
sending him his two meals a day from his own home. For five years Dil
said the morning and evening azaan. Goria, who is also Left of the
road, recalls: "God is everywhere and our effort in opening the mosque
was directed to give confidence to a minority community who should not
be afraid of going to their own place for prayer. However, when people
started coming to the mosque_ the Wakf Board intervened and took over
and now Dil and I are persona non grata there." Well, the Wakf Board
must be having its own reasons because political ideology apart, Dil
and Goria are just a bit too fond of their drink. Well the great
Ghalib had said: Zahid bhi zaroor aata go chori-chhupe peeta, Maikhana
gar koi masjid ke karib hota. But Dil and Goria do not belong to the
tribe who will do anything in secrecy or be hypocritical.
In the tea-maker's shop
Once Dil was ousted from the mosque, he was at a loose end again. Then
poet Amarjit Chandan, another proclaimed offender of the Naxal days
and later rehabilitated as a translator in England, sent money for
Dil. With this money his hut was made over into a pucca home and a
wooden shack built to serve as a teashop so that he may earn a living
by selling tea. I was to meet Dil only in the mid-Nineties at his
teashop opposite the automobiles market on the Maachiwara Road. Once I
stopped there to interview him for a newspaper over a cup of tea. I
was to return many times; we had struck up a literary friendship.
Never mind, if Prem Prakash who edits the literary journal Lakeer from
Jalandhar chooses to call it a mutually reciprocated crush between two
romantic 'outcasts'. Well there are outcasts and outcasts. As for
romanticism, pundits in the West now believe that it will succeed
post-modernism. Ahead of our time, aren't Dil and I?
Dil no longer runs his teashop. He closed it down some two years ago
when his partner Pala fell ill. The last time that I had gone to see
him, the teashop was locked and I was led to the cremation ground
where Pala's last rites were being performed and Dil sat there
vacant-eyed. This time in Samrala, we start looking for Dil and we
begin at the spot where the teashop once stood. It is no longer there.
Whenever in Samrala, a search has to be made for Dil. Each time I have
found him at a different spot_ the mango grove, the tractor repair
shop, the cremation ground or the liquour shop_ everywhere but home.
This time it is Dil is in the home of the Hakim Sahib, who has just
shifted home from Old Delhi to Samrala. So it is red-hot chicken
curry, chapatis and phirni made by his wife who, Hakim Sahib proudly
says, is a Punjabi from Malerkotla. Hakim Sahib once had a wool
factory in Ludhiana but it was burnt down in an accident. Hakim Sahib
is among the many Muslims who are moving from Central India to Punjab.
It is more comfortable for them to be in a state where a national
minority, the Sikhs are in majority. Hindutva is less menacing here.
And it is heartening to meet Punjabi Muslims. For in our childhood
even a decade and a half after the bloodshed of the Partition, one
never saw Punjabi Muslims. But now the fears seem to be ending.
Next day in Dil's home in the Chamar basti, two images that stand out
are a terrace garden, two flower-beds that he has made on his kacha
kotha and his little grand-niece who keeps crawling up the stairs
asking Taya (Uncle) for a toffee. No matter how harsh life may be but
there is yet room in it for a few green leaves, a child's smile and
some sweetness. I am reminded on one of Dil's famous poems of the old
days: Dance:
When the labourer woman
Roasts her heart on the tawa
The moon laughs from behind the tree
The father amuses the younger one
Making music with bowl and plate
The older one tinkles the bells
Tied to his waste
And he dances
These songs do not die
Nor either the dance in the heart...
Some wooden planks of the tea shack, remnants of the tea vending days,
lie on the terrace, others Dil has given away. Inside his dark room
some four dozen trophies and shields are gathering dust literally. Dil
now survives on a pension of Rs 500 given to him by a Ludhiana
publisher for his autobiography, Daastan, and the money sahit sabhas
give him along with the memento when they honour him_ ranging from Rs
500 to 2100. Dil is now sixty plus but the Punjab Languages Department
pension for old and destitute writers has still not come his way.
Dil Sahib agrees to accompany us to Ludhiana and Amritsar. At lunch by
the Neelon canal, Dil Sahib lights three bidis at a time, generously
handing over one each to the television guy and me as he tells us of
the Sufi traditions of Punjab. The poor young Tele-film maker has a
tough time for he is not as much a nicotine addict for he probably
grew up in the anti-tobacco campaign times. But he knows that one
cannot refuse a bidi when it is Dil who is offering it. See it is Dil
offering us bidis and not me offering him cigarettes. The wicked Prem
Prakash, an old friend of Dil and an ardent admirer of his poetry, had
once written in Lakeer that ever since Nirupama has started taking him
to Neelon and interviewing him over cigarettes and beer, he has shed
his mild demeanour and keeps booming all the time.
The Colour Green
Green is the colour of fertility. And this colour has a long
association with Punjab in the agricultural revolution the state saw
with mechanised farming. Green is also the colour of faith. And it is
very visible in the Doaba area of Punjab. Mazaars or tombs of the Sufi
saints have always been a part of the Eat Punjab landscape. But if you
move through Doaba, the land between Sutlej and Beas, hundreds of new
mazars have come up. The old ones are painted anew with and well
tended. Green chaddars adorn the tombs and buntings decorate the
shrines.
When in Jalandhar, it is inevitable to find oneself in Prem Prakash's
den in Mota Singh Nagar in Jalandhar. We have come fresh from the
Doaba countryside, villages in the Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur district,
where in the past few years hundreds of mazaars have come up. These
mazaars are tended and well kept with green chaddars adorning the
tombs and buntings and flowers decorating them. We discuss the
phenomenon with Prem Prakash who is sprawiling on his cot. "Do you
know the population of the scheduled castes is very high in this area.
They too need a God. The temples have always denied them entry and the
gurdwaras look down upon them. They also need their place of worship,"
he says and jumps out of the cot.
"Caste is a major problem of our society and even we in the Left never
addressed it. We talk only of class but class is also caste. I raised
the hornet's nest when I dedicated an issue of the Lakeer to 'Class
and Creed'. Some said that I had lost it and others said that I was
making mischief. Well, one has to make mischief sometime," Prem Pakash
springs up and brings out the issue from his closet full of books and
journals. Now what he had done is that in this issue he had published
a list of a few hundreds of writers with each one's caste in the
brackets. Besides, articles analysing the dispersal of awards and
rewards on the basis of caste and creed. "Now look at Lalu (that is
how he fondly calls Dil) he remained discriminated against even in the
Naxalite cadres. He is one of our finest poets but what has he got?"
In Doaba we see the curious phenomenon of caste-based gurdwaras this
when the tenets of Sikh religion do not recognise caste but caste
prejudice could just not be erased in practice. There is an
interesting story about a village near Kapurthala. The lower-caste
Sikhs of the village wanted a separate gurdwara for themselves and
they did manage to construct it for they felt uncomfortable in the
gurdwara where the upper castes dominated and scorned at them. But
problems arose there too for the Kabir-panithis (weavers) felt the
Ravi-Dasias (tanners), who were there in a majority, felt they were
being looked down upon and thus they wanted their third gurdwara. At
this the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) put its foot
down saying that they could not thus encourage the coming up of
caste-based gurdwaras. The Kabir-panthis threatened to convert to
another religion and the SGPC allowed them to construct the third
gurdwara. So one village has three separate gurdwaras based on caste_
never mind the tenets of the Sikh religion.
A young dalit writer-journalist, Des Raj Kali, guides us through the
many dalit deras all over the countryside. In a rather large and
affluent Ravi-Dasia dera (people belonging to the caste of Chamars or
tanners worship Gur Ram Das and are now called Ram Dasia) one is
struck by an image. It is a cycle in the huge cemented and covered
two-wheeler parking lot. It obviously belongs to a shoeshine man for
the box and other tools of the trade are proudly tied to the cycle as
he has gone in to pray. Where else can he so confidently keep his
bike!
In Chowk Husainpura fort in Amritsar, we discuss caste and class with
Parminderjit, editor of Akhar, a little magazine featuring poetry and
fiction. He tells us; "The dalit organisation in Punjab cannot be
looked away. Gone are the days when people were apologetic about their
caste. Every day when I come to office, I see at the square a cobbler
with the board_ Nathu Chamar and his rates for polish, cream polish,
sole and half-sole happily displayed. He is a craftsman and labourer
who his selling his hard work. He has no cause to be ashamed."
Also in Amritsar we call on Prof. Harish K. Puri who a political
scientist and his subject is the modern history of Punjab. Having done
excellent work on the Ghadar Party Movement and terrorism, he is now
working on 'Role of Deras on Dalit Psyche'. He too has taken note of
the growing mazaars. "Mazars never went away from Punjab even though
the Muslims were either killed or driven out at the time of the
Partition. <b>The growing number of mazaars can be attributed to
assertion of the dalit identity and also a reaction to Hindutva."</b>
So this is how Punjab is showing signs of change. The growing caste
consciousness and the way it is being addressed in the open is a
pointer that discrimination in the social fabric of East Punjab is not
for all times. <b>The color green of the mazaars and the mosques is yet
another happy sign.</b> Change is inevitable but when it is for the better
it raises hope.