Opinion - News Analysis
The agony & the ajaat
P. Sainath
"CASTE IS EVERYTHING": Chaitanya Prabhu and Shyam Maharaj, the
surviving grandsons of ajaat founder Ganpati Maharaj, at Shyam's house
in Mangrul (Dastgir) village of Amravati district.
Amitabh Bachchan says that if ever asked about his caste by Census
enumerators, his answer would be: Caste – Indian. That, of course,
would do little more than stoke the media's bollywood feeding frenzy
yet again. Shyam Maharaj is no Bachchan. Nor is his brother, Chaitanya
Prabhu. But they and the followers of their fraternity will likely
throw up far more complex answers — and questions — if Census
enumerators do finally pop that query on caste. "Our answer: we are
ajaat. Here is my school leaving certificate to prove that. But you
can write what you like," Prabhu tells us at his house in Mangrul
(Dastgir) village of Amravati district.
Ajaat: this literally means ones without caste. The ajaat was a bold
social movement of the 1920s and '30s that at its peak had tens of
thousands of committed followers in what are present-day Maharashtra,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It was led by the colourful and
eccentric social reformer Ganpati Bhabhutkar better known as Ganpati
Maharaj. Chaitanya Prabhu and Shyam Maharaj are his surviving
grandsons. Apart from the usual anti-liquor and anti-violence norms of
such movements, Ganpati Maharaj threw in others. He attacked caste
frontally. Many stopped idol worship at his call. He pressed for
gender equality and even railed against private property. And, in the
1930s, he and his followers declared themselves as ' ajaat.'
His inter-caste dining drive raised hackles in the villages he worked
in. As one of his disciples P. L. Nimkar put it: "he would ask his
followers from all castes to bring cooked food from their homes. This,
he would mix up totally and distribute the mix as prasad." Caste was
his great target. "Inter-caste weddings and widow remarriage — that's
what he sought and achieved," says Prabhu. "In our own family, from
granddad to us, we married into eleven different castes, from brahmins
to dalits. In our extended family there have been scores of such
weddings. Ganpati Maharaj himself had such a marriage." He also
"created the religion of ' maanav' (humanity) and opened the temple
here to dalits, offending the upper castes," says Shyam Maharaj. "They
filed cases against him and no one would touch his case. All the
vakils here at the time were brahmins."
The movement waned over years, as some followers left on the caste
issue, and with its Gurus's death in 1944. (He is buried at a
community centre he built here decades ago, just opposite Prabhu's
home). Still, it remained known and respected for some time after
independence. "See my school leaving certificate," says Prabhu,
showing it to us. "As late as the 1960s, even the '70s, we still got
certificates calling us ajaat. Now, schools and colleges say they've
never heard of us and won't give our children admission." The
surviving ajaat are not doing too well. Shyam and Prabhu just about
make ends meet as petty agricultural traders.
Forgotten by the late '70s, the ajaat were re-discovered some years
ago by Nagpur journalists Atul Pandey and Jaideep Hardikar who wrote
about their plight in Marathi and English respectively. Their reports
sparked a Maharashtra government move to help them. But that died with
the exit of the one senior official who had shown interest in the
matter.
Ajaat candidates can't contest panchayat polls. Poll officials refuse
to accept their forms — which state no caste. " Ajaat folk can't get
ration cards without a huge struggle," says Prabhu. College
admissions, scholarships and government jobs elude them for the same
reasons. Other villagers won't marry into these families now as their
caste status lacks clarity. In short, the followers of a once proud
anti-caste reform movement have been reduced to a couple of thousand
people viewed as something like a caste themselves.
"My niece Sunaina could not get into college," says Prabhu. "The
college said: 'we don't recognise this ajaat. Bring us a proper caste
certificate and we'll admit her'." His nephew Manoj who did finally
make it to college says: "They treat us as an oddity there. There were
no scholarships for any of us. No one there believes such a thing as
ajaat exists." A restless younger generation feels imprisoned by the
past. Many of the ajaat, including Prabhu's family, have faced the
ignominy of having to trace out an ancestor whose caste could be
clearly proven.
"Imagine our humiliation," he says. "We have to take out caste
certificates for our children." Not easy, given the generations of
inter-caste marriages these families have seen. And even the ledger of
the village kotwal lists them as ' ajaat.' Some have had to trace a
great grandfather whose caste could be established. "To recover and
rebuild those old records is a horrible job," says Prabhu. "The
authorities suspect us of concealing things and faking our caste. And
it hurts us like anything to make these caste certificates. But
without them our children are truly stuck." Sadly, they had no choice
but to trace out the caste origin of anti-caste crusader Ganpati
Maharaj himself. That was needed for his great-grandchildren.
Quite a few of the remaining 2,000 or so ajaat gather at that centre
in this village in November each year. "Now there is only one such
family we have contact with in Madhya Pradesh," says a glum Prabhu.
The rest are in Maharashtra. "Only 105 are formally registered with
our body, the ajaatiya maanav sanstha. But far more than that come to
our annual meeting. However, consider that we once had 60,000 members
in this movement."
"We need a much more comprehensive survey of caste than the mere
introduction of a question in the Census will permit," says economist
Dr. K. Nagaraj (formerly with the Madras Institute of Development
Studies) who has worked on the subject. "That we need caste data is
beyond doubt. But we need that data in a frame that captures the huge
diversity, location-specific nature, and the many other complexities
of caste. A single question in the 2011 census will not achieve that.
This is perhaps a job for the National Sample Survey and its team of
trained investigators with much advance preparation."
So what happens if that enumerator does come around to your house with
the question on caste? "Believe me," says Prabhu, "It will confuse
him. I think they should create a different category in the Census for
people like us. We must declare who we are. We have fought against
everything that stands for caste. But in this society, caste is in
everything."
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