KHAT ANDOLAN, ACHALPUR

What does it take to sit on a cot or a “khat” as it is known in Rajasthan? Apparently a lot, if you belong to the wrong caste. In Achalpura village near the small town of Bhadesar in Chittaurgarh district, a dalit boy dared to sit on a khat belonging to a Rajput. All hell broke loose, the boy was beaten up. Many organisations working in the area took up the cudgels in favour of the boy and organised a Khat Andolan in the village on September 15, 2005.

The clarion call for the meeting was the slogan – “aazadi hai saath par, chale baithe khat par” (Been free for sixty years, let us now sit on a cot). About a hundred cots were brought in from several villages, more than five hundred dalits from the area congregated along with a number of social activists from across Rajasthan. The dalits sat on the cots, in full public view and many men and women from amongst them spoke about experiences of humiliation they had to suffer at different times from the so-called upper castes. There was a lot of slogan shouting, singing and laughing at the expense of their exploiters.

Initially, the speakers were very circumspect. One woman even asked what the need was to sit on cots. She immediately got her reply from another woman in the crowd. Promptly, she was brought to the mike and her two-minute speech helped change the flow of thoughts. After her, several men and women started narrating their own experiences, of the tyranny of the so-called upper castes, of the humiliation they have had to suffer.

In one case, this young man named Ramalal visited a village on some work there. He sat at the chabutara in the centre of the village dominated by the jat caste. He was then asked about his caste. Fearing that if he told the truth (of belonging to the chamar caste) there would be trouble he used the name of another caste better than his own. Unfortunately for him, the jat youth did not want to share the platform with anyone beneath them, dalit or not. He says he left the place without complicating matters. More misfortune was in store for him. Back in his village, people of the barawa caste, whose name he had used, came to know about him claiming to be one of them. All hell broke loose and a squad of goons was set after him. He was saved by the intervention of some activist friends.

Several young men narrated incidents of them being not allowed to sit on cots. A young woman asked if such incidents happened only with men. She narrated her experiences, in several villages where she had gone to conduct meetings for the NGO she worked with, when once her caste became known, other women would ask her to get off the cot.

The difference in the positions of older and younger men was very apparent. The older men would talk about cases of humiliation they suffered and leave it at that. The younger ones were using their time for giving calls to arms. One particularly fiery young man was very clear, it is no use sitting on these cots, ”baithna hai to prasasan ki khat par baitho, rajniti ki khat part baitho” (let us occupy the seats of political leadership and the administration). Yet another young man directed his ire at the so called dalit political leaders whom he called ‘paltu titar’ (pet birds) of the hunters upper castes are. Like the hunters who use the tamed birds to attract more of their ilk (when the pet ones scream, the ones in the jungle will think “Oh, one of us is in trouble, let us go help him”), and snare them, the dalit legislators and leaders are only there take advantage of their caste status and bring in the votes.

There were several activists who spoke too. Two of them were rajputs and the master of ceremonies did raise some laughter by referring to this fact. However, the more interesting speech was that of the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). His frequent references to ‘Dalit ki beti, behen Mayawati’ were well received. How she managed to arrest Raja Bhaiyya, the Rajput strong man in UP (who raised crocodiles in his pond and fed them with bodies of dalits), how she brought upper caste IAS and IPS officers to their knees! He himself – ‘grandson of a cattle flayer’, ‘son of a stone quarry contractor’, younger brother to a ‘police officer’ – was now “a registered chamar” who had resumed the original occupation of flaying, not cattle but all those upper caste goons out there, who rob dalits of their izzat. The crowd that had gone into a state of slumber with all the speeches preceding this one were awaken with a jolt and this leader received such ovation. No wonder, the BSP has been able to make strong inroads into the political sphere in many States of North and Central India.

The other aspect evident at this meeting was the large number of adivasi leaders who had arrived as a show of solidarity. All of them laboured the point of adivasi – dalit unity. They were concerned by the fact that both nationally and in Rajasthan, the so-called upper caste controlled system was trying to drive a wedge between these two communities. Some dalit leaders also stressed this point, but a sense of despair was evident in the voices of the adivasi leaders who had come from places as far as Jodhpur.

Print and television media was there in a substantial number. Television cameramen were trying hard to get the people not to move around so much, so as to not block their recording. Away from the hearing of the media men, some young men were heard remarking about the upper caste bias of the media. They were wondering if anything about the meeting will be shown on TV or printed in the papers, given that all editors were the so-called upper castes. Whatever, the large number of media persons at the venue was apparently the result of the networking capability of the general secretary of the Rajasthan PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberties, one among the organisers of the meeting.

As the day progressed, speakers graduated from mere citing of humiliating incidents to asserting the right to dignified life. Most slogans heard in the later part of the day were then about the khat being only a symbol, dignity and respect being the key issues. Later in the day, the meeting was to adopt a resolution, one that probably would go down in history as the “Achalpura declaration”.

(written in September 2005)