They still keep the flag at the tehsil office. Only here, they raise it on August 18. That day in 1942, people from this part of Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district declared their independence from British rule. The tehsildar of Muhammadabad opened fire on a crowd, killing eight persons from Sherpur village. These were mostly Congressmen led by Shiv Pujan Rai. They were shot dead while trying to hoist the tricolour atop the tehsil building in Muhammadabad.
Struggles erupted across an already simmering district where the British had issued arrest warrants for 129 leaders on August 10. By the 19th, locals took control of nearly all of Ghazipur and ran the government for three days.
The British response, says the district Gazetteer , was “a reign of terror.” Soon, “village after village was pillaged, looted and burnt.” Military and mounted police crushed ‘Quit India’ protestors. They gunned down nearly 150 people across the district in the next few days. Records suggest that officials and police looted Rs. 35 lakhs from civilians. As many as 74 villages were burnt. Ghazipur’s people paid a collective fine of Rs. 4.5 lakhs, a huge sum in those days.
Officials singled out Sherpur for punishment. Hari Sharan Ram, the oldest Dalit resident here, recalls the day: “There wasn’t a bird left in the village, let alone human beings. Those who could, fled. The looting went on and on.” Yet, Ghazipur as a whole had to be taught a lesson. The district had a record of anti-British uprisings going back to the 1850s when locals had attacked indigo planters. It now learned a lesson spelt out with bullets and batons.
To this day, the tehsil office at Muhammadabad attracts political pilgrims. Its visitors’ list over the years includes four who were either prime ministers of India or held that post later. Almost all the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh have been here, too. Usually on August 18, says the amiable Laxman Rai, who heads the shaheed smarak samiti , the association that runs the memorial to the eight martyrs at the tehsil office. He shows us the original flag of the protestors, somewhat frayed, yet carefully preserved here. “The VIPs come here and do puja to the flag”, he says proudly. “Every VIP who comes does this puja.”
Sherpur hasn’t gained much from the pujas. And class, caste, time and commerce colour the memories of the heroic sacrifice of its freedom fighters. “There were eight martyrs,” says one non-governmental organisation worker here. “But there could be as many as 10 memorial committees for the martyrs.” Some of these run diverse institutions with official grants. Sons of the martyrs, known by a term unique to this place – shaheed putra – control some of them.
So what did people die for? “There was no demand other than freedom,” asserts Krishan Dev Rai, principal of the Inter College at Muhammadabad. Most of the land-owning Bhumihars at Sherpur and elsewhere see it that way, too. The matter ended with the exit of the British in 1947.
Bal Mukund, a scheduled caste resident of Sherpur, saw it differently. A young man at the time of the revolt, he and his fellow Dalits had another agenda. “We were excited,” he says. “We thought there would be zamin [land] for us.” A Kisan Sabha movement active in the 1930s and again later, raised those hopes. That excitement revived in 1952, when the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act came into force.
It was short-lived.
All the 3,500 Dalits in the village are landless. “Land for cultivation?” asks Radheysham of the local Dalit samiti . “Not even our homes are in our own names.” That’s 35 years after the land settlement was to have been completed. Freedom did bring distinct benefits. To some. The Bhumihars did get titles to the land they tilled. The landless lower castes remain the way they were. “We thought we, too, could be like others, take our place with the rest,” says Hari Sharan Ram.
“We are not talking about 50 years ago,” says Dasuram Vanvasi of Gagaran village. “It still happens. Some have faced this just two years ago.” Other forms of harassment, too, exist. Dasuram completed tenth standard with a first division, one of very few Musahars to get that far. He quit college though, harried by the taunts of upper caste teachers and students. Ironically, that Inter College bears the name of Babu Jagjivan Ram.
As we leave Sherpur, our feet sink in the slime, mud and refuse that pave the route in and out of the Dalit basti. Rains have destroyed the main track. Streams of stagnant filth cover the lanes here. “The highway to our New Delhi,” says Shiv Jagan Ram.
“The Dalits here are not free,” he says. “No independence, no land, no learning, no assets, no jobs, no health, no hope. Our freedom is slavery.”
Meanwhile, at the tehsil office, the pujas continue.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | P. Sainath | Aug. 14, 2015