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Taking Stock
The Rustic Seer
By Rizwan Ullah
 It
was about this time of the year in eastern UP. The morning breeze had bid
a cool send off to the Mahwa-mango flavour in the air and a mustiness of
the freshly growing grass had registered its presence.
The year was next to our 'tryst with destiny' which had opened its score
with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. But by that time the word
'terrorism' had not been plucked from the pages of dictionary to describe
chilling cruelty although there was no dearth of such events in the wake
of partition. The horrific events were casually described as riots and the
society, a civilized society, had coalesced in silence unmindful of the
consequences of its growth. However, it was little late that morning but
still the sun was slightly pale as its brilliance had been borrowed by the
early morning mist. I was standing on the bank of a small river Tons which
crisscrosses the city of Azamgarh and then goes on placidly on its charted
course eastwards. I was waiting for the lone boat to come from the other
side of the river. It did come. Those coming from the other side jumped
out on the slippery bank. Then it was our turn to try a jump in. There was
a piquant passenger too who swam alongside the boat and his master in the
boat held the rein. It was an unharnessed horse. The cart along with the
paraphernalia had been pushed on into the boat with the help of fellow
passengers. Anyway, the boat turned towards the other side.
Passengers were the local folks carrying their commodities or wares to the
market place close to the other bank. There were some students, certainly
not the madrasa students, it was obvious from their appearance and
behaviour. The boatman had spread a piece of dirty cloth in front of him.
The passengers gave him something by way of fare, a handful of grain, a
pinch of vegetable or a few paisas. All was dropped on the cloth as if in
charity and not in return for his toil and the sincerity with which he
spanned the banks of the river braving all weathers. The cartman paid him
two annas. The students paid nothing which was their birth right.
However, we jumped out of the boat on the other bank. The students took
lead. An old man was the last person to leave the boat. I took the winding
path towards the railway station. The old man was waddling along. The
group of jostling students in shabby clothes, bare footed, dangling
typical cloth satchels was waking with a faster pace a few yards ahead of
us doing some young age pranks.
The old man trying to walk alongside me was murmuring some thing, he came
a little closer and pointing towards the boys uttered in audible whisper:
They will be the thugs and dacoits in future. I thought that the old man
was piqued by the jeers by the boys over his slightly crooked back and had
retorted by saying: At my age, if any of you could ever reach, would not
be able to stand up on your feet. As my thought process continued my next
idea was that the ignorant, illiterate old man had a natural aversion to
education that is why he believed that the education would be destructive
of old traditions. On the other side I thought that the young boys were
breathing the fresh air of independence and to them it meant freedom in
every respect and their future expectations knew no bonds; as for duties
and responsibilities in the free country, they had no idea about it, may
be they had not heard about it.
When the old man, perhaps observing a slight smile on my face, realized
the signs of my disbelief in his surmise, he elaborated: Look, today these
boys did not give khewa (boatman's due) tomorrow they will ransack his
house. After heaving a breath he continued: They will not get high
education so as to be able to get good jobs, they will study a little and
then leave the school. With some education they will be shy of the
traditional job of their forefathers in the village, they will forget that
too. But they will grow, their family will grow, their needs will grow.
Then how will they meet their needs? They will take to loot and pillage!
By now the generation of those boys has grown old. Some of them must have
joined the ever growing crowd of politicians of various brands whose track
record is before the countrymen. Alas! In all probability the old man, the
rustic seer, would not have survived for another half a century to see how
true was his vision, to see how the country has produced and brought up
generations of people who are unaware of their heritage, the traits and
traditions of real India whose heart throbs in our villages, the villagers
that are increasingly polluted by the evil side effects of imported
culture which is increasingly splitting the society in smaller sections of
beneficiaries and increasing number of the deprived. The visionary could
not see that the increasing number of the deprived would rise one day to
demand their share of the pie and that the newly ignorant would fail to
define that human urge and in that bewildered state of mind all sorts of
alibi would be given a try. And thus regionalism, lingualism, separatism,
casteism, communalism, anti-nationalism, war group, naxalism and
fundamentalism were all given a chance trial but nothing stuck like
terrorism with its undefined parameters.
The uprising in North-Western hill areas in post-Independence years began
in Naga Hills and spread to other adjoining areas. The rebellion was
innocently called ‘demand for sparate tribal states.’ But the violence
continues inspite of the creation of those states. The rising in Bihar
against Bengalis was branded the voice of the ‘sons of soil.’ The
anti-Bengali riots in Assam and Orissa were regarded as mere ‘language
riots.’ But ask any Bengali the extent of terror he was struck with. In
Punjab the stir was only for a ‘Punjabi state,’ we were told. But
after the creation of that state the violence did not subside, rather it
went from bad to worse. As for terror, better not mentioned. There have
been violent incidents in South as well for various reasons. In fact these
are all cases of political failures given to the armed forces to solve. q |
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