Bapus karmabhoomi fights to keep his memories alive

BELWA, BIHAR: Once a proud mansion, Belwa Kothi now has the sadness of ruins. The roofs have surrendered to time. And the plaster on the walls have peeled away. Close at hand lies a crumbly factory overrun by wild grass, forsaken like a stale idea.
But for this drowsy village in Bihars East Champran district, the two buildings are reminders of their inseparable association with history. In the early years of the 20th century, the factory was managed by a British officer AC Ammon and extracted neel (indigo) which farmers of the region were forced to cultivate on 15% of their land.

The oppressive system, known as tinkathia, was widely despised. Raj Kumar Shukla, a local farmer, drew Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis attention towards the exploitative system. Gandhi arrived in Bihar in April 1917. Champaran became his first karmabhoomi in India. A worried Bettiah BDO wrote, Gandhi is "daily transfiguring the imaginations of masses of ignorant men with visions of an early millennium.” During those days of struggle, Gandhi had stayed for a night in Belwa.
While in Champaran, Gandhi shuffled alternately between the districts two main towns, Motihari and Bettiah. He travelled across the hinterland, recorded statements of 8,000 peasants. He convinced the Commission of Inquiry set up by the government that the tinkathia system needed to be abolished and ensured that the planters refund 25% of the amount they had taken illegally from the farmers.
That was then. Now Belwa lives on memories. And rues about unfulfilled promises. Shuklas grandson, Mani Bhushan Roy, who still lives in his grandfathers ancestral village, wonders what it is all about. “I dont know what freedom means for us. We have electric poles, but no electricity. And we have roads that flood during monsoons,” he says. He keeps Shuklas red hard-bound pocket diary in a black polythene bag and opens it sometimes to remind government officials of the role his grandfather played in the freedom struggle.

02:28Champaran – Gandhiji's Karmabhoomi

To celebrate 100 years of that landmark moment in the national movement, busts of Gandhi and Kasturba were installed in Belwa by Bihars minister of rural development Shrawan Kumar in 2018. Just a few months later, Gandhis statue was beheaded by anonymous miscreants. “We have written to the administration several times after that, but no action has been taken to restore it,” says a Belwa resident.

Many places associated with the Champaran struggle are also gone. At the house of Gorakh Prasad in Motihari, Gandhi stayed and compiled farmers testimonies. The house, which served as Gandhis base, was razed to construct a new house.
The residence of another freedom fighter, Ram Babu Kedia, who hosted Gandhi on various occasions, has now been converted into a school. Though the students remain unaware of its history, teachers speak of a glorious past, and depend mostly on oral history lessons to reconstruct the past.

“We have heard our grandfathers say that Gandhiji stayed in this building. But these are private properties now and the owners can use them as they see fit. These buildings could have been preserved only by the government, but no attention has been paid to them,” says a teacher at Shikshayatan School.
Yet some are fighting to keep Gandhis spirit alive. For the past 20 years in Motihari, celebrations of the Mahatmas life start a week before his birth anniversary. Tarkeshwar Prasad, who owns a general store, organises a “puja” on October 2. The whole town participates in the event, which starts with a prabhat pheri at 7am. Participants first circle the town market and come to the pandal, where Gandhis statue is installed.

“Gandhiji is like God for us. He did not just fight for independence; his fight was for the entire world because it showed everyone the importance of truth and non-violence,” says Prasad. Adds history enthusiast Bhairab Lal Das, who works as the project officer at Bihar Legislative Council, “The first chapter of the freedom moRead More – Source