Plight Of The Denotified Tribes : Part II

Dipak Bhosale was running with all his strength…the terrain was rough but was known to him…the 11 year old Dipak was scared….52 policemen were following him for 30 minutes… one of the policeman fired at him…the bullet pierced through his calves…then another came and then another…he fell down…he was arrested and he was accused of a murder that had taken place 7 years ago…when Dipak was only a four year old kid…oblivious of the bitter truth that he was also born in a wrong tribe…
After Independence, in 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru went to Solapur, symbolically opened the gate of a barbed fence of a concentration camp and announced the declaration of a notification of cancelling the British notification of “Criminal Tribes” and formally de-notified the tribes. But officially, absolutely nothing was done to bring this huge, patriotic population to the main stream. On the contrary, in 1959, a new law named “Habitual Criminal Act” was implemented to continue the legacy of the British “Criminal Tribes Act”, in complete contradiction to the so called social justice & social welfare. So instead of treating them as born criminals, a new term was introduced to treat them as “habitual” criminals. The social stigma was continued. Even during the trainings of the police officers in their academies, they were taught of the new act with the backdrop of the British act of “Criminal Tribes” and hence, the impact & the treatment continued.
The impact was so deep and ruthless that in 2008, an 18 month old son of Aamosha Bhosale, a Paardhi in Ahmednagar district was booked under the crime of a robbery. He was arrested, a policeman lifted him in his arms & produced in the court; even the Judge asked for his bail and when a bail produced, he was released. Till then the 18 month child was in police custody. Even the Judge was insensitive enough not to question the authorities of how a toddler can possibly be an accused in the case of a robbery.
In 2010, a 13 year old son of a Paardhi was pelted with stones and was killed by the mob in Solapur district in Maharashtra on the assumption of his involvement in a robbery. Later, it was clear that on the day of robbery, the child was very much present in the boarding school of an NGO which runs school for the Paardhi children.
The government negligence is so much that apart from a very few sound bites in the media reports nothing was done. There are over 193 tribes in India comprising a population of over 12 crores who have been subject to this torture, harassment & complete social negligence for over 150 years now. The Paardhi, Masanjogi, Berad, Kanjarbhat, Shikalgar, Masanjogi, Maragamaa, Kaikadi, Dombar, Kolhati, Bahurupi, Gondhali, Vasudeo and almost 193 such tribes were refused any possibility of integration with the society. This forced them to keep wandering, hunt animals, remain uneducated and at times, when no hunt was possible, then resort to petty thefts. The only time the so called civilized society called them was when big wild boars would enter their farms and endanger the crop.
Then, the Paardhi goes to the farms…with two very sharp knives in both the hands…rest of the crowd creates a big noise with drums, crackers and shouting…the wild boar is forced to move towards the armed Paardhi…he stands in front of a huge net spread across the border of the field with knives in his hands…the wild boars runs towards him roaring…the risk of getting cut into two pieces with the huge tooth of the wild boar and a moment before the wild boar jumps towards the Paardhi to tear him apart, the brave collapses down and when the boar is passing over him, he cuts the stomach of the wild boar with both the knives in his hands…the boar with a torn stomach falls in the net and is captured…in return, the tribe gets a prize of 5Kg of grains and the wild boar.

To be continued…

Plight Of The De-notified Tribes : Part I

“I was raped by four persons including the Patil (village chief) of the village on my wedding night…my husband was severely beaten up & tied to a tree by ropes...we were crying, shouting…”, Jayashri Bhosale a woman of the Paardhi tribe in Osmanabad district of Maharashtra was telling me. Later, the next day her husband Kasturya & Jayashri went to the police station to file a complaint but there again…instead of filing her complaint, she was molested again by the police…again in front of her husband and when he tried to resist, he was booked under attempt to kill and was arrested…
Jayashri tried to plead her plight in the court and she told the judge that she was first gang-raped and later molested by the police but her complaint is not registered. She couldn’t afford a lawyer as he too had an eye on her flesh but even the judge did not listen to her cries & begging for justice… witnesses, evidences everything was managed and now Kasturya is serving a seven year term in Jail…
Their only fault was that they were born in the wrong tribe…something which was beyond their control. The Paardhi tribe was notified as one of the “Criminal Tribes” by the British way back in the 1871. Actually, Paardhis were an extremely brave tribe serving as the frontline soldiers with the kingdoms of the Peshwas, the Rajputs and the rulers of the central India. After losing the battle of the 1857, many of these tribes associated with the earlier Kingdoms had to disappear and take shelter in the Jungles. Many were arrested and hanged by the British and the rest were declared as “Criminal Tribes” through a notification. The arrested women & children were kept in concentration or settlement camps under vigilance. The “Criminal Tribes” were not allowed to be in any village for more than 72 hours and the village chiefs were ordered to report of their existence, possessions and movements to the Police.
So, throughout the Independence Movement which was stretched over a period of the next 90 years, these notified “Criminal Tribes” remained deprived of the basic rights, education, and any livelihood earning opportunities and most importantly remained deprived of the social acceptance. They had to wander in the jungles, depend on herbal medication (in which they became an expert) and live on the hunting of animals. And whenever they tried to cross the limits of their forced exile, they were beaten up, arrested, jailed or at times even killed by the so called civilized society but they kept on increasing in numbers for the lack of any family planning awareness or facilities available.
Today, they are estimated to be more than 12 crores plus in population spread across the country…this is nearly equal to the population of the United Kingdom but for us in India, they do not exist in the census, they do not exist in the voters list, they don’t have residence proofs, they can’t have ration cards, they do not get admissions in schools, they don’t have birth certificates and they don’t get death certificates also…but they still feel proud to be Indians and often their children are named like “congresshya”, “Tilak”, “Shivaji”, “Bharat”, “Laxmi”…
To be continued…