Basti scholar documents untold stories of region, highlights problems
GORAKHPUR: Two years before she died for want of proper treatment and in abject poverty in her Shekhpur Guda village in Jalaun district of West UP in June 2018, Ramkali Devi, the younger sister of bandit-turned-politician, late Phoolan Devi, shared her life’s hardships with Basti-based journalist Shah Alam.
A video shot by Alam, shows the woman sitting by a traditional chulha, inside her partly collapsed one-room, kachcha house and appealing to the government with folded hands to ensure a house and toilet be built for her and a ration card be made, a request which fell on deaf ears.
Her death came as a shock for mother Moola Devi, who is still struggling to get justice for Phoolan Devi, gunned down by Sher Singh Rana in 2001.
Basti-based M Phil degree holder Shah Alam, 36, has incorporated Ramkali’s story in his book ‘Beehad mein cycle’ a collection of untold stories from the Chambal, once infamous for the dacoits that made the region – covering regions of West UP, MP and Rajasthan – their home. Alam cycled some 2,800 km in these terrains, from March 29, 2016 to June 23, 2016, spoke to people and took down their views, and thus, the ‘cycle’ in the title.
The book highlights the prevailing backwardness in the region, sordid condition of families of those killed in the region, continuance of malpractices like manual scavenging and his role in combating the problems. He released his book at his wedding on March 5 this year.
“In 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha poll, after touring the villages in the Chambal and knowing the basic problems of people inhabiting it, I drafted the Chambal manifesto in consultation with 1,100 people of the region. Led by Phoolan’s mother, Moola Devi, 80, 1,100 villagers handed over this manifesto to representatives of all political parties and Congress’s top leader even gave verbal assurance on it. The manifesto sought to link the Chambal villages with basic facilities of water, electricity and roads, promoting the region as tourist spot, and preserving the heritage of the region. But still the villages await any development.”
In Asta village of Auraiya (part of the Chambal), the families of those killed are still jobless and do not have access to basic facilities and government schemes.
Fourteen people were killed on May 26, 1984, in Auraiya, when dacoit Lala Ram and his girlfriend Kusuma Nain made 14 Dalits stand in a queue and shot them dead to take revenge of the 1982 Behmai massacre, in which 20 Thakurs were gunned down by Phoolan Devi after she was sexually harassed.
His book further describes how the 32 bighas of land allotted in lease in 1947 to the family of revolutionary and martyr Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil, in his ancestral village, Barbai, in MP’s Morena, has been grabbed by land mafia, while the family struggles to get justice.
This village of Bismil was also home the first woman dacoit of Chambal, Putli Bai, who was shot dead in a police encounter in 1958, Alam recounts in the book. He claims that a library set up 26 years ago in the name of Bismil in Barbai couldn’t get even a single book. Its roof collapsed was ever repaired.
Alam further narrates how he came across Dalit women earning their livelihood by working as manual scavengers in villages of Jalaun in west UP, (part of the Chambal), especially in Margawa village. “We started getting threats after we reported over 649 manual scavengers in Jalaun, despite many NGOs being awarded for their role in helping eradicate the banned practice in the country,” he recounted.
One chapter of his book underlines the migration from the forest village of Biththauna in Agra (also part of the Chambal) after it was cut off from the main region, with all its ways blocked by bushes and trees.
Filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma, keen to make a web series on the Chambal, is now in touch with Shah Alam.