by Mark Tully
SEWA has also formed its own bank, since it found that its members were unable to cope with the bureaucratic procedures necessary to get a loan from the nationalized banks. They had also been put off by stories of bank managers demanding bribes before they sanctioned loans. The SEWA bank also gave women the chance to handle their own money, instead of giving it to their husbands. Eleven illiterate women sat up all night learning to sign their names so that they could put their signatures on the documents for registering the bank. In spite of that unorthodox beginning, the bank's deposits have grown to 11 million rupees in fourteen years – all deposited by the smallest of small savers. The minimum deposit is just five rupees, or eighteen pence.
When I got back from Ahmedabad, I went to see Ela Bhatt in her office in the Planning Commission in Delhi. She was surrounded by all the bureaucratic pomp of a senior official of the government of India – personal assistants to protect her from the public, peons to carry her files, bearers to bring her cups of tea. It all seemed a long way from that cramped, chaotic building on the banks of the Sabarmati with the friendly bank on the ground floor, Ela's colleagues who ran the cooperatives and unions sitting at desks crammed into every available inch of space, and the friendly hand-printing women on the roof. But the Planning Commission had not changed Ela Bhatt. She was still wearing a simple cotton sari, with her hair parted in the middle and drawn back severely over her ears. Her round face, which never quite manages to look severe, broke into a smile as I entered the room. ‘It's a little different to when you first met me at SEWA, isn't it?’ she said.
‘It certainly is,’ I replied. ‘I hope that you're not becoming one of those social workers who get trapped by their own success and end up like politicians or bureaucrats, miles removed from the people they started working with.’
Ela Bhatt didn't quite know whether to take me seriously or not. ‘Surely’, she said, ‘you don't think my roots are as shallow as that. I see my work at the Planning Commission as just an extension of my SEWA work. I have been talking about tendu-leaf workers all morning and about public distribution of food all afternoon – exports against malnutrition.’
Both these subjects were highly political. Tendu leaves are used for making biris – the poor man's cigarette – and the chief minister of one state had introduced a cooperative to keep out the middlemen. These, however, were a very powerful political lobby and were fighting back hard. As for food exports, the new cabinet had been split because of the multinational Pepsi-Cola. The previous government had allowed the company to come into India on condition that it also processed food for export. But, unfortunately for the multinational, the new cabinet included the socialist George Fernandes who twelve years ago had driven Coca-Cola out of India. His argument, and Ela's, was that, so long as India was unable to provide enough food to give all its own people a healthy diet, it should be worrying about internal markets not exports.
I knew how important these things were to Ela Bhatt, although the whole world seemed to be turning against her and against planning. I knew that ‘the market’, which was now meant to be the economic miracle-maker, would favour freedom for Pepsi-Cola and the tendu-leaf traders. But Ela insisted that there was an Indian answer to India's problems.
‘There is an alternative,’ she said, ‘and Mahatma Gandhi showed us what it is. I am attracted to Gandhi because he thought of human beings in totality, not only in economic or political terms. He also put women in the vanguard of social change. He said that in the struggle for social change, when the weapons were truth and non-violence, women would be the leaders.’
‘But can Gandhiism really stand up against the modern world? Hasn't it already been defeated?’ I asked.
Ela said firmly, ‘I don't accept that Gandhi has failed. I don't believe in success or failure as such. We have full faith in Gandhiji's teaching, and it has worked. Look at the strength of my members. They have achieved even more than I expected. We have made a breakthrough in the concept of a labour union, questioned the definition of a worker and tried to link policy with what is really happening at the grass roots.’
‘I agree that you have done an enormous amount for your members, but SEWA is just a drop in the ocean.’
‘You have to make a start, and that start will influence society. It's already beginning to happen. Why would I be asked to join the Planning Commission, which is drawing up the five-year plan for the whole of India, if my work wasn't important? What's more, we are creating a new type of social worker. Feminists here have been urban and, because their education has been Western-based, they have looked to the West for answers. Now the new generation are different. They go and live with poor women and try to be more conscious of their needs.’
I have always been uneasy about Oxfam, Christian Aid and other Western relief organizations because, in their efforts to raise money, they do give the impression that only we in the West are doing anything about poverty and backwardness: that Indians, for example, are not doing anything to help themselves. Yet everywhere I go in India I find dedicated Indians – often very young - sacrificing comfortable careers to live and work among the poor.
Ela Bhatt wasn't worried about this aspect of the international relief agencies' work. ‘I don't really mind what they do in your countries. If you want to believe that we are not doing anything to help ourselves, that's your business. One shouldn't always be worrying what other people think of you. But there is a feeling of mistrust about the foreign agencies here. They have their own priorities, which are not ours.’
Ela Bhatt smiled at me and then went on. ‘If you are so worried about the impression of India abroad, why do you press-wallahs give such a wrong picture of us? Whenever I go abroad, people only ask me about sati and dowry deaths, as if our men were all murderers. Even when I went to China and Korea they asked me about that. Sati is a very minor thing if you take the actual number of cases, and when a girl who is about to do sati is rescued that's never reported. The issue of dowry deaths is also overblown. There are dowry deaths as a result of materialism, but not as many as you say. It's a modern, middle-class phenomenon which has really been over-publicized by the newspapers. The journalists are urban, middle-class people and so are the women's organizations, and so it's easy to blow this up.’
There was nothing I could say to that, so I hurriedly turned to the subject of communal riots in her home city of Ahmedabad. I asked Ela whether she thought that the press exaggerated them too.
‘In a way, yes. Whenever there are communal riots we hear all about them, but we never hear about the peacefulness which is there most of the time. When there are no riots, Ahmedabad is such a safe place. Women can go out at night and not be afraid. We don't have any of what you call “mugging” either. Unfortunately we are only remembered because we have a reputation for communal riots.’
‘Well, why do you have these riots if Ahmedabad is so peaceful?’ I asked.
Ela thought for a moment and then said, ‘I agree with those who say that riots are used to change the politics of the state.’
Nevertheless, the politicians and the press continue to blame the riots on religious fundamentalism. This may be convenient for the politicians and fashionable for the press, but according to the victims – who ought to know best – it's just not true. The victims of the riots don't even know the meaning of the word ‘fundamentalist’, but they do know that it is not religion that divides them. Chandaben Pappubhai, a Hindu who sells old clothes for a living and is a member of SEWA, addressed a public meeting after the dreadful riots of 1985 and 1986. She said, ‘In the midst of the violence, we met our Muslim sisters and brothers in Sarkhej. We vowed to prevent any violence, especially by outside goondas. We sat together, talked together, ate together. We know that while big sahibs sit in offices, drawing big salaries, it is we the poor, the self-employed of all communities who suffer. These sahibs are the people in this city who want to divide us, to keep us down, but we will fight back – together.’
9
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br /> THE RETURN OF THE ARTIST
Schoolboys used to jeer at Jangarh Singh Shyam as he carried loads of wood to the bazaar to sell. He had been with them at the government school until he was thirteen, but then his father died and he had been forced to earn his own living. The boys despised Jangarh because he was condemned to a life of collecting wood, working on other men's land, labouring on roadworks or even begging. They were going on to university, and that meant they were in with a chance of getting a government job – the ultimate in achievement for children who go to state schools. The government does not pay generously, but it does confer status on all its employees and it gives most of them plenty of opportunities to use their office to augment their income.
When I met Jangarh fifteen years later, he was the successful member of his family. His nephew, Shiv Prasad Singh, had been to university and had not stopped at his BA but had gone on to achieve MA honours in history and political science. He had then succeeded in getting a government job in the railway police. Eight years later he is still a constable, with a salary of just 944 rupees per month. He believes he has been passed over for promotion because his relatives do not have the clout to do sifarish – to lobby on his behalf. Discipline is old-fashioned and humiliating – the punishment for a constable who returns a few hours late from leave is to run round and round the parade-ground holding a rifle above his head. One constable who did not salute an officer was sentenced to salute continuously for ten hours. Degreeless Jangarh, however, is now a nationally respected artist, with a job in a cultural centre. Some of his pictures sell for more than his railway-police nephew earns in a year. That is some achievement for a young man from a remote village in the tribal area of central India.
Jangarh Singh is a Pradhan, a member of one of the clans of the Gond tribe. The tribes of India – now known as ‘adivasis’, or ‘original inhabitants’ – lived in the remote jungles and remained outside the mainstream of Indian life until the British came. They were not considered part of the Hindu fold. The British, with their hatred of bureaucratic untidiness, decided that the tribals should be administered like anyone else. As a result of the opening up of the tribal areas which resulted from this decision, the tribes lost much of their land and were exploited by more sophisticated traders and farmers. There were a series of tribal revolts, put down with the utmost severity, but in the end the British gave up and segregated the tribals so that they could live their own lives and preserve their own culture. Cultured they certainly were, with their gods, their languages, their poetry, music and dance and their customs suited to life in the forests.
The government of independent India decided that the British policy was an anachronism, however, and the tribals’ segregation was ended. Because they were considered ‘backward’, they were given crutches to help them limp into the twentieth century. Seats in parliament and state assemblies were specially reserved for tribals, and quotas of university places and government jobs were allocated to them. Special tribal welfare departments were set up in the central and state governments.
In the first flush of enthusiasm which came with independence, it was thought that grateful tribals would speedily integrate with the rest of society: their special privileges were guaranteed only for ten years. However, it soon became obvious that integration was a much more complicated task than first imagined, and the tribals still have their special privileges. In spite of these, independent India's policies have not proved an unmixed blessing to the tribals. A senior official in the tribal welfare department of the government of Jangarh's state, Madhya Pradesh, said to me, ‘The tribals’ forests have been slashed, their lands have been taken away for industrial development and they have been penalized for defaulting on loans they did not have the skill to make proper use of.’ The tribals of central India have now started a political movement demanding their own state, to be called Jharkhand, where they can, within the limited autonomy India grants to its states, frame and implement policies which will make themselves the beneficiaries of the development of their homelands, rather than the industrialists, bureaucrats, politicians and traders. This movement is inevitably being strongly resisted by the government in Delhi and by the governments of the states who would lose territory to Jharkhand, including Madhya Pradesh.
Independent India has not put all the emphasis on integrating the tribals: there have also been attempts to preserve some of their culture. It was one of these attempts which rescued Jangarh from a life of hard labour and more than compensated for his lack of a degree.
I first met Jangarh Singh at a handicraft fair in Delhi. I saw this small, sturdy, dark-skinned young man, with a lively, open face, selling pictures of his tribal gods. I was attracted by the bright colours, the swirling lines and the strong presence of the gods and I bought some pictures. Talking to Jangarh, I learnt that he had been ‘discovered’ by Jagdish Swaminathan, an internationally renowned artist on the staff of Bharat Bhavan, a government-run cultural centre in the Madhya Pradesh capital of Bhopal. When I decided to write about Jangarh, I went first to Bharat Bhavan, where I found Swami, as he's known. He looked out of place in a government office, with his black hair streaked with grey falling over his shoulders, his untrimmed beard, his white kurta and dhoti. He was smoking a biri - the common man's smoke despised by all self-respecting government officials – and shuffling papers uneasily around his desk. He cheered up immediately when I suggested going to a hotel for a drink.
Swami describes himself as a ‘cultural bastard’. His parents were south-Indian Brahmins, but he was born and brought up at the other end of India, in Simla, which was then the summer capital of the British raj. He has a deep knowledge of Hindi, Urdu and English literature, and says his last ambition is to walk the Hardy country in his dhoti – no matter how cold that might prove. He comes from that generation who had a genuine love-hate relationship with Britain: he opposed the raj but admired some aspects of British rule.
‘I believe the British introduced a sense of justice in India. I'll give you an amusing example. When I was young, there was a crowd of us walking in the road in Delhi. A British Tommy bumped into us on a bicycle. We shouted, “Why can't you look where you're going?” He replied, “Why are you walking in the road, not on the pavement?” I then pointed to his cycle and said, “You should have your lights on.” He replied, “You are quite right, Sir,” and cycled off. Now isn't that justice?’ laughed Swami.
One reason for Swami's interest in the tribals was the British habit of supporting the underdog. Another was his own deep-rooted suspicion of progress. ‘I was a communist,’ he told us. ‘I was also a socialist. But now the very notion of progress is obnoxious to me. How can I say I am better than my father or my mother? The three demons of the modern age are Darwin, Marx and Freud. Just look at these tribals. Just because we can destroy their civilization, and are doing so, does it mean that we are better than them?’
‘How have the progressives taken your work with the tribal artists?’ I asked.
‘Just as you would expect, of course. The leftists say we are trying to glorify backwardness. As for the intellectuals, well, they held a seminar at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Simla. What a presumptuous title, isn't it?’ grunted Swami. ‘What did they come up with? The speakers there said that, as all tribal art was based on superstition, to attach any abiding importance to it is to perpetuate superstition. I call that highly ignorant and arrogant. The stupid fools don't know what effect Picasso's discovery of tribal art had on Europe. Where would we be now, artists like me, without that? Our intellectuals don't even have pride in their own country. You know, we were the first people to collect the work of the tribals as art, not as folkcraft. When we sent an exhibition to Japan, I was criticized for not explaining where the tribals came from and who they were. I said we are running an art exhibition, not an exercise in ethnography or anthropology.’
‘You have had this opposition from the intellectuals, but what about the tribals? Have you been able to do an
ything for them?’
‘I think so. Most of the time they didn't take their work seriously until we met them. They weren't proud of it. There was an old tribal woman, for instance. We brought her to Bhopal and she started trying to do representational work. She couldn't do it, and we told her she shouldn't. We said, “Do your own work.” But she insisted that was no good. You see, her values had been distorted by the city. That was what we had to fight against.’
‘But what success have you actually had?’
‘Well, I think that we have instilled some self-confidence into four to five hundred artists, and because of that others are gaining their self-confidence. There was a time when you could buy their works for five rupees; now you have to pay 500 at least. Of course not everyone likes that. Do you know, we have even been accused of spoiling tribal artists by getting them money for their work. Why should we so-called “modern” artists get paid, then?’
‘What about the “modern” artists? How have they reacted?’
Swami chuckled. ‘When Jangarh had his exhibition in Delhi, most of them kept away. They felt threatened, I reckon.’
Bharat Bhavan was the first place in India to have a permanent exhibition of tribal art. To make his collection, Swami sent teams of art students into the tribal areas to search for artists and their work. They were given written orders, which Swami says his communist past helped him to draw up. The orders were curt and concise, like ‘Obey the team leader’ and ‘Do not under any circumstances offend the villagers.’ Jangarh Singh Shyam was one of the artists the teams discovered. Jangarh now works in the printmaking department at Bharat Bhavan, and his wife and two children live with him in Bhopal, but he agreed to go back to his village with us. We had hoped that Swami would be able to come too, but he was called away to a meeting in Delhi. However, he lent us his car, his driver and a ‘modern’ artist from Bharat Bhavan to be our guide.
