Contents

The Beginning of Social Organisation of a Village
The Lalpur Experiment Faces its First Major Challenge

Article No. 6, December 2000
THE BEGINNING OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF A VILLAGE

Inspite of initial skepticism the village fund has been created now at Lalpur. 26 families have decided to join it. With collection of two months a bank account was opened with Rs. 520. The account will be jointly operated by Changa Lal, Pyare Lal and Om Prakash, the three villagers chosen in an open village meeting held in September for this purpose. The Bank would not open an account in the name of the village organization. They would allow a Self Help Group consisting of less than 20 members to operate an account but would not admit a group formed differently from their rules. They were suggesting to break up the group in two. But it was told to them that the essential purpose of the group was to strengthen village unity and not avail of the loan facilities that the government has been offering to what have become very popular in recent times, the SHGs. So, ultimately it was decided to have a joint account of the three people who were chosen by the villagers to operate their bank account.

The first test of village unity came very soon. Babaji from Bharawan had donated a sum of Rs. 500 collected during his Sunday 'satsangs' to be given to some needy family of Lalpur. A decision had to be taken in an open meeting as who should be the beneficiary. The villagers decided, almost unanimously, that the money should go to Ramdai, a widow who has been finding the going tough. But it was decided against handing over the cash to him. She was called to the meeting and was asked in what form she would like to avail of this sum. She said that she would like to be freed of some of the loans that she had taken from several people in and from nearby villages. The total amount that she owed to other people was close to Rs. 1900 but with the amount that was becoming available to her she could repay completely to people outside of the village and partially to two people from within the village. The responsibility of clearing these loans on her behalf was given to Changa Lal.

Meanwhile the village women have held several meetings with Parmita and Arundhati in closed doors at the Ashram. Three women from the village, two of whom were undertaking their first train journey, went as far as Jhansi to participate in a women's empowerment rally organized by several women's organizations of Bundelkhand region on December 4th. The group has also decided to start sewing training classes for the women of the village, none of whom know sewing at present. A youth of the village, Nand Kishore, who has some experience working as a professional tailor in Lucknow, but is now back in the village for health reasons has decided to volunteer himself as the teacher. With a sewing machine donated by Shri Ashok Jain, the training programme got started from the first week of December. And Meena, a student of High School presently has decided to run literacy classes for girls and women of her village who'll come to this sewing class.

Regular morning and evening prayers have begun at the Ashram. Because of the cold very few people are able to make it to the morning prayer but the presence at the evening meeting is good. A strong youth group is taking shape with the initiative of the Ashram. They have decided to take the responsibility of lot of daily chores of the Ashram, like cleaning, watering the plants, etc. and manage the public events like the medical camps. On 17th a very successful anti-tobacco programme was organized at the Ashram in which Prof. Ramakant from Lucknow Medical College spoke and exhibited slides on a solar projector highlighting the ill effects of tobacco. The impact of the programme was such that 4-5 villagers threw away their tobacco containers in the pond next to the Ashram. This programme drew crowd from the nearby villages as well. This was a very novel experience for the villagers and probably the first programme of social awareness in their village. Moti expressed his jubilation at the end of the programme by bursting a fire cracker.

The Ashram has also started drawing people from the nearby area who are curious about the beekeeping activity that the Ashram has started since last month. The honey bees are presently working to their full capacity taking advantage of the mustard crop standing in the fields and of the modest temperature during day time. Ten boxes have multiplied their bee population to about one and a half times in about a months time. Laxmi Narayan, a villager who lives right across the road from Ashram has been managing these boxes. He had gone to receive training at the Asha beekeeping training centre at Kaithi, Varanasi before the boxes were brought to Lalpur.

Laxmi Narayan has also been producing cement tiles on the peddle operated mechanical vibrator developed by Shri Ashok Jain. These tiles have been used in a shed at the Ashram. This vibrator has been put for public use at the Ashram and anybody can use this to earn a livelihood also by making and selling these tiles. But it probably needs some more publicity before it is accepted by the people.

In November artist and activist Shyamali Khastagir from the world renowned Univeristy Shanti Niketan in West Bengal, which was established by Rabindranath Tagore, conducted a two day art and craft training programme for teachers and volunteers of Asha as well as associated organizations. This programme was well received by the villagers and some local talent was spotted. The participants also learned to make 'adua,' a round seat made of rice hay used by villagers to sit on ground. During such training programmes the outside participants are distributed among the village households to go to have their meals. The villagers gladly host the guests from outside.

However, everything is not going on smoothly with the social experiment at Lalpur. A campaign to discredit the Ashram has already been launched by some miscreants. A rumor is afloat in the area that it is Christians who have come here to set up this Ashram with the objective of converting the local population. And associated with this people have also started believing that huge foreign funding is coming to this Ashram. Some people have come to clarify these matters with the team at Ashram but most who do not care to come have helped to spread the rumor. The team at Ashram has a difficult time when it visits nearby villages and is countered with these questions. It is hoped that only with time as more people become familiar with the Ashram and its way of operation these rumors will die.

THE LALPUR EXPERIMENT FACES ITS FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE

In the last article I had mentioned about how certain forces, mainly belonging to upper caste, were behind branding the Asha team at Lalpur as Christian missionaries with having a hidden agenda of converting the dalits of the village one day. However, inspite of a devious attempt by these forces to confirm this suspicion in the minds of people by circulating a book published in 1986, which by an uncanny coincidence is called ‘Asha ki pustak,’ carrying the message of Jesus Christ, in the area, we were able to overcome the doubts mainly because of deeper relationships that we were developing with the people as well as because of unconditional support of Babaji from Bharawan (see an earlier article on him). We were confident that this problem will not last very long and even hosted a white Canadian national for a week as a volunteer at the Ashram knowing fully well the risks it involved.

However, a fresh attack has been launched by the man who donated the land for Asha Ashram. Dr. Devendra Tripathi and his brothers, the only landlords of the village, are out to create trouble. Dr. Tripathi has been associated with RSS earlier and was in-charge of mobilizing youth from Lucknow and Unnao districts for sending them to Ayodhya at the time of assault on the Babri masjid. He himself participated in that event. However, it was his disillusionment with the Hindutva brigade, about a couple of years back, which brought him closer to us and we also decided to establish a relationship with him thinking that he could devote his energies to constructive activities. We ignored warnings from some friends not to trust a man who has been associated with RSS. For two years things went on smoothly. He legally transferred his land to Asha Trust and participated in all programmes organized by us, some of them directly questioning the stands of the BJP government.

For some reason he has now decided to turn against us. He says he never thought that we would allow dalits to have so much say in running the activities of the Ashram. He has apparently been under pressure from his Brahmin and other upper caste friends to stop the activities at Lalpur which are giving so much prominence to dalits. Dr. Tripathi came to the Ashram last month along with his brothers and quarreled with Asha volunteers Raju Thapa, Parmita and Mahesh accusing them of allowing dalits entry into their kitchen, of having polluted the land of his forefathers and for not even being able to drink water at the hand-pump of the Ashram because it was being used by dalits all the time for drinking or bathing purposes. He says we have even polluted the gobar of the entire village by mixing it with human excreta in our bio-gas plant. (I had changed my research area from control systems, which had applications in defence, when I moved from UC Berkeley to IIT Kanpur to Biogas thinking that it was a perfectly innocuous area and could only benefit humankind; little did I know then that somebody could come up with this kind of weird argument too!)

So, he wants to perform a yagna to bring back the purity of the land on which Asha Ashram stands today. He has also lobbied some local RSS support for this purpose. Arundhati, Shri Ashok Jain, Babaji have tried to reason with him but he is adamant. In this entire drama the dalits have obviously chosen to side with the Asha team. They say that they don’t have any problem with Dr. Tripathi organizing his yagna but in keeping with the Asha tradition in the Lalpur village, all the guests from outside who come to participate in the yagna will have to eat at their homes. The brahmins are, no doubt, infuriated even at the thought of this. The RSS representatives have registered their protest. How can brahmins eat at chamar households? (While the rest of the Lucknow seems to have extended a very heartening welcome to the team of girl students from Islamabad, Dr. Tripathi, and probably some of his RSS colleagues, says he is aghast that we could be associated with something like this. The next thing he’ll probably do is call for performing a yagna to purify the city of Lucknow which has been polluted by muslims from Pakistan!).

It is a testing time for the Asha team and the dalits of the village. They are under attack from feudal, casteist, obscurantist, status-quoist forces. The dalits have found an ally in Asha. It is probably for the first time in their lives that somebody, outside their fold, treated them like equal human beings. That there could be dealings where they would not have to compromise their self-esteem is something they are experiencing new. That they can shake hands with some upper caste and class people instead of having to touch their feet has come as a welcome relief to them. Asha has definitely set in process a social change which is questioning well-entrenched ideas and practices. The Asha team is facing a dilemma. It doesn’t want to enter into confrontation with Dr. Tripathi and the upper caste of the area (like the Dalit Panthers which has a presence in the area) and neither does it want to withdraw, which would not only mean defeat for us but would also be a blow to the morale of the dalits.

Next Article: POLITICAL INTERVENTION BY THE ASHRAM