Saturday, November 16, 2024

People who live in the shadows


 

Journalist Siddharthya Roy, in his book, ‘The Company of Violent Men’, focuses on the nether world of terrorists, Maoists, fixers, spies, and people escaping from ethnic strife like the Rohingyas

By Shevlin Sebastian

In the preface, journalist Siddharthya Roy gives an indication of the people we will meet in his book, ‘The Company of Violent Men.’ They include ‘militants and refugees, clandestine agents and insurgents, reporters and wheeler-dealers — some extraordinary and some very ordinary individuals caught in circumstances that news headlines, including those of my own stories, have flattened them into convenient tropes of good and evil and us and them.’

Roy continues: ‘These violent men and women I speak of, some of them fight for faith, others fight for power. Many fight just to belong. But peel away the burqa or the badge, scratch the skin of a military officer or a mercenary, and the fears and failings that lie beneath are not so foreign from yours or mine.’

In the beginning, Roy goes to Dhaka to investigate who was behind the mayhem at the Holey Artisan cafe in Dhaka on July 1, 2016. A group of five men, carrying assault guns and machetes, carried out the attack and took diners hostage.

They belonged to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a home-grown outlawed Islamist group. Army commandos stormed the cafe. In the ensuing shootout, 18 foreigners died. All five assailants were shot dead.

In his search, Roy ended up in Bagmara (190 kms from Dhaka). That was where Siddique-ul Islam, who called himself Bangla Bhai (Bengal’s Big Brother) of the JMB, first set up his base.

He ruled the place with violence. Bangla Bhai forcibly collected taxes from the villagers. The JMB prohibited all non-religious gatherings. They did not allow public singing, playing sports, and plays. Women could not go out of the house without male supervision. And they held kangaroo courts where they meted out justice.

And Roy saw Musa, a victim of Bangla Bhai’s senseless violence. ‘Musa couldn’t really talk. All he could do was gurgle and squeak while froth gathered at the edges of his misshapen mouth. But he started his narrative with gusto through agitated gurgles, frothing, as his hollowed-out eyes grew big and small.

His wife, who had been standing behind the threshold to the cowshed, pulled the ghomta of her saree lower, came in and rolled up his mud-stained dhoti.’

Roy continued: ‘There were his broken legs. They were ghastly twisted twig-thin limbs with dried-up gashes of rolled back flesh.’     

After a while, the government reacted. The Rapid Action Battalion moved to Bagmara. Bangla Bhai was hiding in a shed. He gave up without a fight. Authorities hanged him in 2007 along with other members of his group. But the group survives.

Thereafter, Roy went to Kutapalong in Cox’s Bazar, to meet the Rohingyas refugees who fled from Myanmar following a genocide.

While talking to the mother of a little girl called Shaheen, Roy gave you an idea of how one’s life can go topsy-turvy in a moment. The family lived in Maungdaw Township. This was near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

The husband ran a successful farm. The wife was a beautician who ran a beauty parlour. Shaheen was born in 2011 and then the woman had a son in 2014. Life was going on smoothly.

Then the military launched a crackdown in October 2016. It lasted for the next few months. Soon, it degenerated into a genocide. The Tatmadaw (the army) burned her husband and son in their house. Shaheen and her mother had gone to see some relatives in a neighbouring village. And so they survived.

“These men were so violent and heartless,” Shaheen’s mother said. “Like monsters.”

They had no option but to flee to Bangladesh, carrying nothing. Now Shaheen’s mother was doing haircuts and threading for the women in the camp. 

In Cox’s Bazar, Roy encountered young Rohingya women at a brothel. They had entered the sex trade to survive. One of them, Inan, was a mother of four children, who had fled while her husband had stayed back at a town called Buthidaung in Rakhine State.

There was no news from him after a while. She tried sewing, but that was not enough to feed five people. But most of the men who coerced the women from the refugee camps to get into the sex trade were Rohingya men.  

This is absorbing on-the-spot reporting. No sitting in an air-conditioned hotel in Dhaka and doing phone interviews. Roy goes and sees everything first-hand, meets people, and asks questions. And then writes about it.

This seems to be rare. Roy mentions how Western journalists pay local reporters in places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran or Kenya to write detailed reports for handsome money. Then they would pass them off as their stories, adding their bylines at the top.

Later, after he gets a grant, Roy goes to Germany. He wanted to find out whether IS fighters could use India as a base to fuel extremism on the subcontinent. Many IS fighters sneaked in after Germany allowed the migration of 10 lakh refugees from Syria.

But he felt they would fail because unlike in West Asia, where Islam is dominant, and the topography is similar all over, in India and other South Asian countries there was a multiplicity of religions, thought processes and the lay of the land varied from place to place.

‘The marshes of the Indus-Ganges-Padma-Brahmaputra would, in time, swallow the zeal of zealots as they had done so many times in history,’ wrote Roy. 

The scene now shifts to Chhattisgarh, where Roy goes deep into Maoist territory. He is keen to find out whether the Indian government was using drones to bomb the Maoists. He was also keen to interview Madvi Hidma, the legendary leader of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army.

Hidma had conducted many successful attacks on the security forces. However, information and access were scarce, despite many promises by various middlemen. 

In a village called Orchha, he met the locals who told them their biggest enemy was not the State, the Army or Maoists, but bears and boars.

One of them said they had planted some corn in a piece of land. The harvest was about to take place within a couple of days. In the night, two young men were keeping guard. Unfortunately, one of them, Monu, had brought along two bottles of mohua, the local liquor. 

One villager said, “Just before dawn, the rustling began. Monu had drunk almost all of the two bottles and was sleeping. I tried waking him up, but when he didn’t, I took my spear and threw it into the bush. I couldn’t see well — but I took a chance. Sure enough, one of the beasts squealed and started struggling while smaller ones grunted and scattered. Hearing the sound, Monu woke up with a start and, like Salman Khan, ran to fight the pierced bear. The boar gave him what he deserved. Look at him now.”

On Monu’s back, there were long scars. It ran from the back to the side of the chest.

Like Monu, others, even without getting drunk, had suffered even more grievous injuries from boars, including slashes across the face. 

From a distance, many of these villages in Chhattisgarh look picturesque. But it does not seem so when you get closer.

Here is how Roy described the odour in a village where no State official or security forces had stepped foot. ‘If one wished away the shit-smeared pigs running around in the background and ignored the smell of cow dung and pig droppings, the glade was picture perfect,’ he wrote.

Here’s another description from a remote village called Metaguda.

‘A young boy had just defecated some twenty metres from where we were sitting,’ wrote Roy. ‘The pigs got into a fight over who’d eat the shit even before the boy had properly stood up. The ones who didn’t get a share of the shit cake went back to the unwashed dishes piled in a plastic tub near us and licked little bits of rice off them.’

In Metaguda, where villagers greeted Roy with a ‘Laal Salaam’, they confirmed they had been the victim of bomb attacks by drones.

“It’s been happening for three years now,” said one villager.

However, they were reluctant to show the bombing spots because the Maoists did not give permission. Roy wrote, ‘Most rebel-held areas — not just Maoists — are harsh, hegemonic and arbitrary, and not even a semblance of civil rights is maintained.’

In the end, Roy left with no one showing him any conclusive proof of the drone bomb attacks.

Roy also met with ‘N’, a Rohingya resistance fighter, at a hotel in Cox’s Bazar. And this was how the man defended his activities to Roy.

“Are we the ones killing, raping, looting, setting people’s homes alight? Or is the Tatmadaw doing that?” N said. “And what they’re doing to the Rohingya in the Arakan will be done to the Kachin in the North and the Shan in the East? The pattern is clear and the tactics are the same. A small bunch of elite Burmese sitting in the palatial offices of Naypyidaw funded by the nacro-moguls of Yangon are out to subjugate every other identity in Myanmar.

“They claim to be protecting the nation, but, in reality, they are destroying it. They’re destroying the centuries of unity different peoples had. Tearing apart the very people they vow to defend. We are patriots. And we’ve proven it time and time again. It is the Tatmadaw, which is a terrorist organisation. That too has been proven time and time again.

“The real reason the Burmese are driving us out and burning our homes and fields is because we sit on one of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves.”

Roy continued to meet all sorts of people, including fishermen who transported meth by boat from Myanmar to Bangladesh.  

And in a chapter called ‘The Louts’, Roy confirmed what most of us suspected. In many of these groups fighting for various causes, there are a lot of criminals who join.

As Roy wrote, ‘Essentially, a lot of street thugs do their run-of-the-mill thuggery and pass it off as soldiering. Their banners — whether green, red, black or stripes and stars — are just flimsy covers for acts that would’ve otherwise put them in prison.’

And so it goes. This book highlights the nether world which ordinary people do not know of. Roy has to be commended for risking his life, and many times, he experienced physical discomfort and danger, but he always went to where the action was. Thanks to his experiences, he has learnt to be sceptical. It is a world that abounds in falsehoods and misinformation. But he remained tenacious and courageous in his search for the truth.

This book is an eye-opener. And a welcome one at that.

(Published in Kitaab.org)

Monday, November 11, 2024

The divine energy in human form


 


Photo 3: Author Dr. Chandra Bhanu Satpathy

‘Shirdi Sai Baba — An Inspiring Life’ provides an intimate glimpse of one of India’s great spiritual teachers
By Shevlin Sebastian
Village woman Baijabai Kote Patil was walking among the bushes in Shirdi. She saw a 16-year-old boy sitting under a tree, cross-legged, with his eyes closed, in a deep meditation. Something about the youngster struck her. He had a divine radiance on his face.
Baijabai rushed home, made some food, and placed it in front of the boy. But the youngster did not open his eyes. Finally, she asked the boy to have a little food. The boy obliged. He was none other than Shirdi Sai Baba. Later, he became one of the greatest spiritual teachers India has produced.
Shirdi Sai Baba was born in the 1830s. Many versions exist regarding the identity of his parents, but because of a lack of records, none could be authenticated. Apparently, he was born in the village of Pathiri and settled in Shirdi as a boy.
There was also mention that his father’s name was Abdul Sattar, but there was no conclusive proof. In 1916, the British Directorate of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) identified Sai Baba as a fakir and a Muslim.
Sai Baba meditated throughout his teenage years. As a young man, he treated villagers with health problems with medicinal herbs from the nearby jungle. Many people were cured because of that.
One day, a man, Nanasaheb Dengle, approached Sai Baba and told him he had no son. To get a son, Nanasaheb married for the second time. Nevertheless, there was no child. Sai blessed him.
Soon, Nanasaheb’s wife got pregnant. The news about this miracle spread far and wide. Nanasaheb became a devotee.
Sai Baba’s name spread to places like Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nasik and Ahmednagar. Soon, people thronged the town of Shirdi.
Nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak came for Sai Baba’s darshan on May 19, 1917. Because of regular visits by nationalist leaders, the DCI maintained a presence in Shirdi.
‘Sai Baba was purely a spiritual man who tried to help the needy and sought to evolve spiritually all who came to him,’ wrote author
Dr. Chandra Bhanu Satpathy. ‘However, except for the conjectures of the DCI, in their reports, there is no evidence that Shirdi Sai ever made any political predictions or advised any of his devotees on matters of politics or encouraged any sort of political activism.’
Dr. Satpathy has recounted this in his biography called, ‘Shirdi Sai Baba — An Inspiring Life’. A scholar, Dr. Satpathy, visited the Holy Shrine of Sai Baba in 1986 and became a devotee.
In Shirdi, Sai Baba settled into a dilapidated mosque. It was called Dwarakamayi. This is where he met all those who came to meet him. Sometimes, he would go during the day to beg for food from his neighbours.
At other times, he cooked food in a big handi over a fireplace made of mud and brick. Sai Baba would distribute the food to his devotees. On alternative nights, Sai Baba would go to sleep in the Chavadi, a sort of guesthouse which was 30 steps away.
What was heartening to read was the cooperation between Hindus and Muslims at the darbars held by Sai Baba.
‘In large congregations where Muslims and Hindus perform religious rites and rituals side by side, some critical differences crop up, especially regarding the technicalities of the methods of worship,’ wrote Dr. Satpathy. ‘However, in Shirdi Sai’s darbar, Hindus and Muslims stood shoulder to shoulder like loving children before a caring father. Muslims treated him as an Awliya or Pir or Paigambar, whereas Hindus adored him as Sadguru Maharaj or Avatar. Facing west, Shirdi Sai himself would recite the “Fatiha” or ask someone from the community to do so. Muslims offered him “shirni” (sweet or other dishes).’
Sai Baba wanted his devotees to break the barriers of caste, class, status, gender, religion and appearance. ‘The innumerable people who met Shirdi Sai included the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate,’ wrote Dr. Satpathy. ‘People of all ages, all castes, all religious affiliations, women, men, children came to him. Shirdi Sai Baba wanted his devotees to learn humility and never disparage others, regardless of their appearance and situation in life.’
Once a leper came for the darshan carrying a few pedas in a packet tucked inside a dirty cloth. Sitadevi Ramachandra Tarkhad, whose husband was the manager of Khatau Mills in Mumbai, was standing nearby. She twitched her nose, as the stench from the leper was unbearable.
The leper hesitated to offer the pedas. When he left, she had a look of relief on her face. Sai Baba noticed it. He called the leper back and took a peda. He asked Sitadevi to eat one too. She did so and learned her lesson too: treat people with respect, irrespective of their backgrounds.
In a chapter focusing on the miracles of Sai Baba, Dr. Satpathy tells the story of a deputy collector, Nanasaheb Chandorkar, a devotee of Sai Baba.
Nanasaheb was climbing Harishchandra Hill, in the Western Ghats, while on a pilgrimage. He felt thirsty. Nanasaheb prayed to Sai Baba, who was in Shirdi, 173 kms away. Sai Baba said, “Hello, Nana is very thirsty. Should we not give him a handful of water?” The devotees who were present could not understand what Sai Baba meant by this.
Nanasaheb saw a Bhil tribesman pass by. He asked the tribal where water was available. The man said it was below the stone slab Nanasaheb was sitting on. When Nanasaheb removed the slab, he saw water underneath.
After Nanasaheb completed the pilgrimage, he went to Shirdi. The moment Sai Baba saw him, he said, “Nana, you were thirsty. I gave you water. Did you drink?” That was when Nanasaheb realised it was because of Sai Baba’s omnipresence he could answer the distress call of his devotees.
Sai Baba had a brick wrapped in a tattered piece of cloth. He rested his hand throughout the day on the brick. And when he went to sleep, he placed his head on the brick.
Once when a helper named Madhu Fasle broke the brick. Sai Baba knew that the end was near. He said, “It is not the brick, but my fate has been broken into pieces.”
Soon after, Sai Baba passed away on October 15, 1918. Devotees said he attained Mahasamadhi. Hindus and Muslims conducted rituals in their way.
In 1922, his devotees set up the Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan Trust. This looks after the Dwarakamayi and other structures. The Trust continues to conduct all activities to this day. Approximately 30,000 pilgrims from all over the world visit Shirdi daily to pay homage to the spiritual master.
It is a book with many sub-sections and photographs. You get an understanding of the life and character of Sai Baba. Some of the other subjects that Dr. Satpathy tackled included the link of Sai Baba with Sufism, the concept of reincarnation, Sai literature, and the sayings of the preacher.
Here are two sayings:
‘Let anybody speak hundreds of things against you. Do not resent by giving a bitter reply. If you tolerate such things, you will certainly be happy. Let the world go topsy-turvy. You remain where you are.’
‘Those who take refuge in God will be freed from her (Maya’s) clutches, with His grace.’
(Published in kitaab.org)

Monday, November 04, 2024

Living beside an angry river


 


Photos: TR Premkumar. Photos by NV Jose; A view of a house from outside; residents playing chess by the banks of the Chalakudy river 

The residents of the Moozhikulam Sala live close to nature, beside the Chalakudy River in Kerala. Then during the 2018 floods, the river water rose to a height of 25 feet inside the colony. Things have never been the same again  

By Shevlin Sebastian 

One of the first things that caught the eye at the Moozhikulam Sala (28 kms from Kochi) is that there is no gate. A few metres inside, there is a large banyan tree with overhanging branches. The mud paths abound in dry leaves. 

There is a good deal of vegetation: peanut, banana, fig, bamboo, sandalwood and cannonball trees. Because the Sala is right next to the Chalakudy river, a gentle breeze blows all the time. The cries of cicadas and the occasional cawing of a crow punctuate the silence. A dog barks when he sees strangers. Butterflies and bees circle the petals of flowers. 

TR Premkumar, 67, who grew up in Moozhikulam, was inspired by the history of the place. Maharaja Kulasekhara Varman (800-820 AD) was the ruler of the Chera kingdom. In Moozhikulam, he set up a sala or university. The university followed the Gurukula system, which focused mostly on the Vedas. The other salas that were put were in Thiruvananthapuram, Thiruvalla and Parthivapuram. 

Premkumar was a maths and physics teacher at a private college. Later, he became the manager of one of the Kochi branches of DC Books, one of Kerala’s leading publishers. One day, he read ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’ by Swami Rama. 

“Swami Rama said the more possessions you can give up, and live simply, the better it is for you,” said Premkumar. “You will experience joy. It is only then that you will see nature in all its glory. That affected me. It was a turning point in my life.” Soon, Premkumar gave up his chain-smoking habit and stopped eating non-vegetarian food and imbibing alcohol. 

He came up with the concept of a colony where people could live in close connection with nature, beside the Chalakudy River. He located a two-acre plot. Premkumar put a one-page advertisement about the eco-friendly project in the Malayalam Weekly of ‘The New Indian Express’ group in November 2005. Buyers purchased all 52 plots within a month. 

“People became enamoured to live close to nature,” said Premkumar. 

The residents belong mostly to the middle class. Most of them are those who would often visit the DC bookstore. “They are art and culturally-inclined people,” said Premkumar. Around 70 men, women and children now live in the colony.

About six families have been there from the beginning. 

One of them is Pradeep Kumar, a freelance designer. Asked about the pleasures of living in the colony, Pradeep said, “I get to breathe pure air, especially in the early mornings. There is a beautiful silence mixed with the cries of birds. The neighbours are nice and friendly. There is no sound of vehicles.”  

However, many single-room houses are empty. The owners live in other places. But they come on the weekends or once a month to get a respite from their work pressures.

On a Saturday evening, a couple of men are playing chess on the steps leading to the river. 

“Is this the impact of India’s gold medal wins in the Chess Olympiad?” a visitor said. 

One of them, in a blue T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, smiled and said, “No, we always play chess whenever we have free time.”   

Today, the Sala comprises 23 ‘naalukettu’ houses, with an area of 1089 sq. ft., with three bedrooms and 29 one-bedroom houses with an area of 230 sq. ft. “It is like a studio apartment,” he said. “Two people can live comfortably. It is good for artists, writers, and those who have retired.” Interestingly, there are no walls between the houses.   

The houses are made of burnt brick and mud, in the Laurie Baker style. 

British-born Baker (1917-2007) was renowned for using local materials to make houses in Kerala. “There is an air pocket between the bricks,” said Premkumar. “This feature keeps the houses cool.”

There is water in the well throughout the year. Next to it, they have installed a 25,000-litre tank. So every house receives piped water. The people have a carbon-neutral kitchen. That means they do not cook the food. They eat the food raw, including the vegetables. To make it easy to digest, they smash it using the grinder. “After that, you will never get the feeling it is raw,” said Premkumar. “Believe me, it has a more delicious flavour than when you cook it.”

At a nearby patch of land, the residents grew vegetables, like brinjals, cucumber, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes. And all kinds of bananas. They do not use pesticides or chemicals. But now, because of erratic rainfall, it has been difficult to grow vegetables.    

On asked how he has changed as a man, after being in close contact with nature. Premkumar said, “I love nature and I respect it. The problem is that man has lost touch with nature because of lifestyle and attitudinal changes. We want to exploit it as much as possible. This causes enormous damage to the ecosystem.”

Animals live in close contact with nature. That is why nature cares about them. Premkumar mentioned that not a single animal died during the landslides that have afflicted Kerala in recent times. “They always receive a warning beforehand, because they are in tune with nature,” Premkumar said. “Before the tsunami happened, many animals escaped to higher ground. And that was the case with the recent landslide in Wayanad. The animals that died were the ones that man had domesticated and kept tied up.”

The devastation caused by flooding 

Life changed for Premkumar and the other residents following the massive flooding that afflicted Kerala in 2018. The waters from the Chalakudy river overflowed the banks and reached a height of 25 feet inside the colony. Only the tips of the roofs were visible. Owing to red alerts issued by the Meteorological Department, all the residents had left for distant places or the houses of relatives. 

“The flood destroyed all the furniture, fridge, TV, and other items. I lost my library of 2500 rare books,” said Premkumar. The next year, water again entered the colony. 

After that, in 2020 and 2021, there was a red alert because the river was almost overflowing the banks. So the people had to leave even though eventually the water did not enter the colony. “In July, this year, water entered the house at floor level,” said Premkumar.   

Pradeep said the residents are yet to recover from the shock of 2018. “But we have accepted that this danger of flooding will be ever-present,” he said. 

The lack of a first floor in all the houses has become a problem. There is no safe place to store anything. 

Premkumar admitted that he no longer enjoyed the rain like he did as a child. “There is always a fear now,” he said. “The romance of the rains is gone.”  

Some residents want to leave, but the price has crashed. So, they are stuck here. There is no guarantee that flooding will not take place in the future. So prospective buyers are reluctant to take the risk.  

After 2018, farming has become a problem because of the unpredictable changes in the weather. “The rain has become unpredictable,” said Premkumar. “When it is supposed to rain, it doesn’t and vice versa.” 

It is a man-made disaster, asserts Premkumar. In 2018, the 58 dams in Kerala released their water simultaneously. “Till now, the government has put no proper safety measures in place,” he said. “But there is one blessing. Because the Moozhikulam Sala is at sea level, there will be no landslides, like in Wayanad.”  

Premkumar lives with his wife Sudhamani, who retired from the High Court as an office superintendent. The couple has two children. Their eldest son Vineeth is a finance manager at Apollo Hospital in Bangalore. The second son, Vivek, is a professional Carnatic singer based in Chennai. Both sons are married. 

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)