Reflections on the changing face of the gram samaj: A montage from a post-Aila Sunderbans

By Amitava Chaudhuri. Translated by Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati.

The author speaks extensively to Sunderban locals in the aftermath of Aila, finding a world where growing awareness of rights and volatility coexists with age-old faith in myths and invincibility. Old-timers reflect on the changing face of the village society or gram samaj, which was ruthlessly interventionist and coercive in feudal times, only to be replaced by a calculating politics of populism, patronage, and pilferage in modern times. The author concludes that in an age of global warming with impending disasters, an inhospitable environment like the Sunderbans where there is no infrastructure to speak of needs vibrant social networks to survive.

Setting off to the Sunderbans

It was a Monday when the storm came. I was supposed to have gone to work in Basanti early Monday morning. Around seven in the evening on Sunday I came to know from the news that a large storm system was making progress towards the region. I also had a look at the satellite photographs. I have long relied on these two things – the weather reports and the satellite photographs. Based on these, I would usually decide whether to take my umbrella or not, and whether it would be advisable to spend a long time crossing the river. After looking at the photos, I realized that the storm would result in a great destruction. I called up my workplace immediately and informed them that I would not be coming in the next day. I knew I would have to cross the river Matla in order to enter Basanti. That is why I cancelled my visit. Then that week I was not able to go to Basanti at all. I went to the Patharpratima region, where I went to Nandakumar Pukur. Nothing much had happened there. Nandakumar Pukur is in the extreme edge of Mathurapukur-2 block. Patharpratima block begins right afterwards. It was there that I first began to get an idea of the scale of the tragedy.

It was Sunday of that weekend when I was first able to go to Basanti. I visited some of the affected places – Anandabad, Maheshpur, Goranbose. It was there I first saw the impacts of the storm. At first sight it did not appear to be very different from the havoc created by storms that I had seen in the past. I had earlier seen that after storms struck the Sunderbans, how the salt water would enter past shattered, flooding villages, submerging arable land. It is not new even to see parts of islands submerged by salty water following storms. Neither for me, nor the villagers. People expect these things to happen. It is quite normal that some trees will be uprooted some houses will be destroyed when storms occur.

I recall that one of my patients whom I had met recently had complained to me about this.

“Baba, for three years I have not had a successful rice crop. How are we going to survive?”
“Three years in a row!”
“Our house is right next to an embankment. The embankment is very weak. Three years in a row it has broken. The last time, it broke during Aila. Now what are we to do?”
“The crop fails once, we can take it. For another year – even that is ok. But for three years in a row!”

Every year, one or two islands had the dam break in several places. Only by a coincidence would it break at the same place. But it is unprecedented that every dam in every island and in all regions that are near the coast would collapse all at the same time. I had never seen or heard of anything of that magnitude. In 1988, a storm ripped through the region at 250 kmph. It damaged several areas, but did not have any effect on the whole region between Sagar and Hingalgaj. This storm, on the other hand, destroyed everything on its path. It was the first time when the entire Sunderbans was affected. Several aspects of this disaster need to be understood.

Firstly, even the people in the Sunderbans had never witnessed devastation on this scale. In most places, it was observed that in the east and south east coasts, which had large rivers on their sides, had the greatest dam breakages. When embankments break or dams burst, not only are the specific areas affected, but the land that is submerged by the water that has rushed in is also rendered useless.

Secondly, it was not that all the embankments collapsed at the same time. In many places, the water went over the dams and the embankments broke on the other side of the river where the flooding occurred. Some dams collapsed on the same day, while some collapsed days afterwards. And all this took place over a large area. It was just overwhelming in its scale.

The myth of Kapilmuni

Thirdly, another strange coincidence was that different social and political factors converged at once at this time. I remember when the supercyclone came in 2008 the winds were at 300-350 kmph. It was supposed to have come towards the Sunderbans. There were some clouds, and some scattered showers, but nothing major happened.

Later on I learned that the storm had destroyed parts of Orissa, specially the port of Paradeep. A month and half later I had gone to Kapilmuni’s Ashram in Sagar Island on some work. Some old people were sitting by the tea stall there sipping tea, and I joined them. While having my tea, I started conversing with them. I asked them:

“You must have been frightened a few days earlier, were you not?”
They said, “Oh no, were not afraid at all”.
“Well”, I said “I had heard that the cyclone was supposed to have passed through here. After all, you live in isolated island, with stormy seas all around!”
One old man reassured me “No, no, we were not afraid at all!”
I countered: “I had heard that everybody had fled the island”.
“Yes”, responded he, “there was a BDO here. He took a jeep and announced warnings over the microphone all over this island and the surrounding regions. He had announced: “Run, run away while there is still time! You will not be able to cross over with the ferry later on.”

I also had heard about those warnings. I was en route to Kolkata that day. I had not been able to cross the Matla as there had been no ferry that day. The police were on patrol on the other side, and they warned that they would arrest any person trying to take a ferry to cross over. Nobody was able to cross over, even with dinghy boats. It was as if there was a red alert all over the Sunderbans. What with the BDO announcing on the mike and the police patrolling continuously, no boat could land anywhere. The authorities kept on insisting – run to the higher grounds. I had also witnessed some of this. Did it not happen on this side, on the island itself?

“Yes, it was the same this side too”.
“What did you do?”
“Oh, we did not go anywhere. Those were for the young, the striplings, who escaped when they could.”
“Why did not you not follow suit?”
“We are old, what does it matter if we live or die! That is why.”, one of the men replied.
“No, it is not that, we have a patron saint, a Baba, Kapil Muni, who looks after us”, said another.
Without thinking, the words slipped out off my tongue. “What can he do?” It was insanity to question such beliefs in this region.
The second man only smiled and replied “Don’t you know? Have you not seen Baba’s beard? He moves it one way, the storm will go to Orissa, and when he waves it the other – Bangladesh! So many storms have I seen come and go in my time!”

Take the belief that storms originate in the sea and decide where to make landfall. When a cyclone comes, and if a trawler gets the news before hand, it will return to the shore; else it will sink. On land there is nothing to be afraid of. The cyclone will either make landfall over Orissa or over Bangladesh. The people of Sagar Island have absolute faith on Kapil Muni. And in the other islands or regions in the Sunderban delta, there are other patron saints that people rely on. The net effect is that the locals believe that no disaster can strike the region. And this is the case even when scientists all over the world are talking about global warming and intensifying hurricanes and cyclones. The world and its oceans are becoming warmer and there are more and more powerful storms. But nothing appears to shake the belief of the people in this region of the world.

In the past 100 years, a large storm has struck the region on an average every 10-11 years. But nothing major has come this way for the past 20 years. The last big storm came in 1988, and it has been 20 years since then. With every passing year, the people are becoming more and more convinced that they are immune to the ravages of nature. Any cyclone will either head to Bangladesh or Orissa. Strange as it might seem, the people are becoming more and more convinced that nothing will happen to them despite several warning signs.

A more volatile population?

Fourthly, to the government, only disasters that befall the rich is news worthy. Only then do questions regarding human rights are raised. One even starts to talk about “good governance”. Whether there is firing on foreigners in the Taj hotel, or whether an Airbus is hijacked in Kandahar. Those important and newsworthy incidents involve wealthy people. Such events make raise questions which make the government uncomfortable. It suffers a loss of face when failing to explain why an IPL is not taking place in India. On the other hand, the well-being of poor people, and the fate their livestocks is not a matter of such concern. When girls of Sunderbans and Murshidabad are trafficked and sold to the brothels of Sonagachi in Kolkata, it becomes a contemporary issue. Nothing that is of great concern for the rulers. Take the case where rice was being distributed in the ration shops. Kerosene meant for distribution to the poor was being stolen by the distributors. Nowadays contractors take bribes and do not build the roads and dams they are supposed to. Some of the money used for bribery also goes to fill the pockets of the government employees, and the people in the village panchayats also get a cut. Everybody has come to accept this state of affairs. There will always be bribery and corruption, for it is the way of life.

The government has been depending on this mindset for over 20 twenty years. When the ration riots broke out this time and the violence erupted all over the state, it was immaterial on whether there was any backing of the protests by the Trinamool opposition. Nobody had ever thought that the time would come when questions about the corrupt dealerships will be raised and the dealers would be eager to give up their shops for fear of being beaten up.

But today, the time has come when people are starting to ask all sorts of questions. Questions are also being raised about the functioning of the government departments for disaster management, irrigation and water works, weather office, relief office. The day will come when people will rise up against the inefficiency and corruption of these units. When the people will rise, they will ask questions like – “Why are you there? After the cyclone struck, you sent a few ministers here and there and told the media that you have sent your people to the affected areas. You thought that people were still living in the affected areas, in their homes. You need to tell us where you were all this time. When the storm Bijli struck over a month ago, where were you? For seven days you saw Aila progress towards the coast, where were you? What happened to your departments, and the multitudes of ministers who run them?”

As days go by, the people are also starting to demand answers. They are starting to realise that it is legitimate to ask questions and that the questions are indeed relevant. Not asking them is a crime. This feeling is becoming stronger. Today, in Ramchandrakhali, there is an unfolding scandal over the construction of a dam. The governing panchayat, contractors and the Sunderban Development Board are playing a game with each other. The dam construction work is not being finished. The construction labour dues are not being paid. The dam is being constructed too narrowly, and the work is getting delayed. Every new moon, flood water is entering the area that the dam is supposed to protect. The general public had realized before that this is due to corruption and mismanagement, and they also realize it now. They would have tolerated it before, but are not willing to let this state of affairs continue any longer. For twenty years the lives of the people have not changed, and the government also has not done anything. But now the situation has become very volatile and unstable. It is clear that one day there will be an explosion of public anger and massive outbreak of public unrest. On one side, the people had been complacent that nothing would happen to them; and the government likewise was content with the belief that the system will be in place forever; no change was going to happen.

The gram samaj and the march to modernity

Fifthly, there is one more thing. There is the village society, the gram samaj. There was a gram samaj in place earlier, but it is no longer there. This is the hard reality. Let me relate an incident to you. Many years ago, I was speaking with a tribal chief named Mangal Sardar. The night progressed as we exchanged many experiences. I asked him, how it was earlier, and how is the state of affairs now. He said “It is difficult to say which was good and which is worse. We were not well off earlier, but are now. Also, it is true that we were better off before, and we are better off today as well. Both are true.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We had a house. I wanted to marry off my son. The young couple would need a different room to live in. I started to construct a new room in my own courtyard. There was only a week left for the marriage. Then the zamindar sent two of his foot soldiers (pike’s) to destroy the room. I protested “Hello, what are you doing?” They said ”This are the zamindar’s orders; we must destroy your new room.” And they did it. I rushed to meet the zamindar, and finally got an audition in the afternoon after waiting the whole morning.

“Why are you here, Mangal?” said he.

“Babu, what was my crime? Your people destroyed the new room I was building. Did I commit a crime? Apparently they did it on your orders.”

The zamindar said “Yes, it was on my orders. I gave them because you were building a room.”

“Cannot I build a room? I want to marry off my son.”

“See here, you were constructing a room in your courtyard using your own material for your own son’s marriage. I have nothing to say there. But did you ask for my permission? Do you think I would have denied your request?”

“What do you mean?”

“You assumed that since it was your son, your courtyard, your materials, you could build your own room. Is that the right thing to assume? Am I not here? If you had asked me, would I have said no? You could have asked me – I will be marrying off my son, and would like to construct a room in my courtyard. Please give me your permission. “

I pleaded with him and said “Babu, I have made a mistake.” I begged for his forgiveness. Then the zamindar assented and said, OK, now you can build your room. That was during the time of the British rule. But now, the Panchayat or the local government in our area is comprised of adivasis. There is even a separate primary school for the adivasi children. Now Adivasis get jobs in the police in the special ST quota. We now have equal voting rights like everyone else.

“So it was worse earlier, and it is better now?” I queried.

“No, I cannot quite say that”, he answered.

“Why?”

“Look there, do you see a thatched hut by the pond? An old couple live in there. They are adivasis. They have three sons. The eldest got a job as a police officer in the quota system. He left and went to Sonarpur, and married a Bengali girl. They have their own children now, and the family lives in a flat in Kolkata. The younger brother also got employment through the quota system. He works as a policeman in Baruipur. So of the three brothers, two have married Bengalis. But none of them support their parent. Now the two brothers have fought among themselves and do not even speak to each other. Once a year, the eldest brother comes to visit here, and check if his parents have died. When he sees that they are living, he requests people in the neighbourhood to let him know before anybody else when they die. Specially before the news reaches his sibling. And it is the same case with the younger brother. They give this message to the neighbors and then leave. We just sit and watch it happen. I am Mangal Sardar, the leader of the adivasis. But all I can do is sit and watch.

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“How can I? If I try to do so, they will say that we have a vote just like you do, we are all equal. I have nothing to say. It is a democracy now.”

“In earlier times, what would have happened?” I asked.

“If this had happened earlier, I would have gone to the zamindar. I would have told him, see, I am Mangal Sardar, and I would have appealed to him on behalf of the adivasis, on everybody’s behalf, that something should be done. We need to act against those boys. They do not feed or take care of their parents. They say that when their parent will die, they will sell the land that they will inherit and then go away. The zamindar would have assembled a court and put out an order. He would have said – if either of these brothers come again let me know, I will first tie them to a tree and then I will beat them with shoes with my own hands. All of us in the village would have said to each other, yes, the zamindar will get the boys beaten with shoes the next time they come.”

Now it is a different scene in the villages. Say if one has to dig a ditch, or a cut water outlet canal, or have to decide what to do about a sandbar in the mangrove forest, or has to decide whether to plant crops using a hybrid variety of rice or a native variety of rice, it would be their own decision. Even in important matters like whether to install a brick kiln or build a fishery or create a poultry farm. The gram samaj no longer has any role in these matters. Previously, it was necessary to take the consent of everyone in the village, in matters large or small. Now that system has entirely disintegrated. Why has this happened? There are many reasons for this. Who is responsible? Modernism? The Left Front government? Perhaps the darkness of the human soul? Individualism is the norm today. I can do whatever I chose to in my own property.

The adivasis have cleared the jungle and created villages with their own labour. In 90% of the Sunderbans the land has no official title deed. In those places, whoever cultivates, whoever takes out leases does so on the basis of personal agreements. Say I come to an agreement with you – I will farm this amount in your land, and you will in return give me a certain amount. It would be an unwritten agreement between us. Suppose your son and my son went to Hyderabad to work together. There would be unwritten understanding and cooperation between them. In that same way, there was an unwritten agreement in earlier times, that an action taken by a villager would benefit everyone in the village. That was the role of the gram samaj. They would decide if people would be better off or worse off as a result of the actions. Now we can no longer make such collective decisions.

There are worse things that are going on today. I will not mention any names, but I know that many women have taken to selling their bodies for a living. They even get other girls into the trade by luring them with false promises. The affected family has to deal with the problem. The village has no say about this. What can they say? What can they say if somebody’s daughter is taken somewhere?

Or take another example. Take the case of building water inlet / outlet canals, something which we have to do often. Suppose we had already started to cultivate rice or had build a home in its path. Maybe a few of us will get together and say – it is already done. Yes, we did it – do what you can, we will not let you build your canal. And then we can take the support of a political party. RSP, CPM or Trinamool, any party’s backing one would do.

See, there is no clear dividing line that says this is what it was like before, and this is what is now. Take the example of the establishment of the British rule before or after the battle of Plassey. It was actually a gradual change around the landmark event. There has been a gradual change in the society here, but has resulted in the total disintegration of the gram samaj. And in its place politics is starting to play a large role in the villages. It is the politics of populism. If there are two brothers who do not get along belong to same political party, one will leave the party and join the opposing party for his selfish needs. Of course, the other party would first find out if it would be beneficial to them to back the dissenting brother. I mean monetary or political benefit. The party would first do this calculation and then accept the brother in its ranks if it thinks that is worthwhile. So what starts as a disagreement now takes a political tone, it becomes a conflict between the CPM and Trinamool parties. Perhaps on some trivial issue like someone’s goat eating someone else’s pumpkin. The vacuum that has been left behind by the disappearance of the gram samaj has now been filled by some people who have selfish or political motives.

Reflections on the disintegration of the gram samaj

There is something unique about the Sunderbans. It is quite an inhospitable geographical region. You will find salty water, crocodiles, gharials, tigers and other dangerous animals there, and there is also no infrastructure to speak of. There are no large markets or industrial units. In this environment, people need to work together to survive. That is why there is the myth of the Ban Bibi. The people who live on the edge of the forests and go there for their livelihoods believe in this myth. This unifies them. They follow certain rites and abide by a set of unwritten rules and regulations. You will come across these guidelines if you get to know the entire story of Ban Bibi. Rules like – do not take from the jungle anything that you do no need. Do not go into the jungle unless you absolutely have to. No one even goes to relieve themselves in the jungle. If you do not follow these rules, you will not be able to survive in the jungle.

These traditions this folklore is what holds people together in this region. It has served as a unifying force for the society there. There is no Panchayat, no political party. But nobody can break the rules. Everybody must abide by the rules of the Ban Bibi.

People who go into the Sunderbans are driven to do so out of sheer need created by poverty. The folktales and unwritten rules have been created to provide them with guidelines. Like the tale of Banbibi’s mother and her three children. The husband and wife go to Mecca, wear the ceremonial cloth or galbastra around their necks, and offer a prayer with a lighted lamp in the hope of having children. Why was there a need to create a story in this way? Praying with lighted lamps is a Hindu tradition. And why is this set in Mecca? This is so because of a well-thought out reason. Tradition has been used to create unity between people of different religions.

To us, the people living in cities, the jungle has a different a different meaning. It is a world beyond rules and reasons. The forest has a spirit of its own. The fear of the village zamindar, the terror of the tiger they are the same. But the tiger also listens to Banbibi and obeys her rules. Thus the tigers becomes a mythical object, something that is a part of the legend, something that can be contended with if one follows the guidelines.

The legends give confidence to the people who venture into the forest. This is the stuff of legends and folksongs of the Bauls. A whole network of villages, a social structure, is created based on the legend. This is because there are a large number of rules and regulations. In villages where rice cultivation is the main source of livelihood, people work either to plant the seeds or the till the land. Sometimes they leave the region and travel for work, say in a potato storage unit, or in fish trawlers. They even travel to distant cities like Ahmedabad and Bangalore. But they also return for harvesting the grain when it is ripe, or for the Chaitra season festivals or the Puja’s of the Shitala or Manasa goddesses. There was poverty then, but there was also this space, the village society, the gram samaj. Now that has disintegrated, and the ground beneath our feet has crumbled. Suddenly all we can think about is our own lives, our wives, our own children, our own little plot of land. How will I survive if a large calamity strikes? No one is standing by me. The village society is no longer there to support me. A person would have personal contacts with a few people here and there, and that will remain. But he or she is no longer connected to a larger social network.

This problem has been becoming bigger in the last 50 years. Now it has come to a head. Right at this time, Aila has stripped us naked and has mocked shown us - look, where you are standing now. It is asking us questions about the very nature of our society. If the predictions of global warming are correct, and if storms like this become more frequent, then there is no time left to answer these questions. The time is past, the game is up! The writing on the wall is clear. Run away or die. Aila is our teacher. His real name is death, destruction. It is the end of civilization.

Today 200 villages have been wiped out. Tomorrow 200 more will be gone. Slowly the shadow of death will spread to Baruipur, Sonarpur, and even Kolkata. Aila has told us that for too long we have ignored the hard reality. When people go with aid to help the Aila victims, what drives them to visit? The media only sees one aspect of the disaster. They do not see this shadow. But the local population see it clearly. The darkness that bodes the end of the world. And it will affect everybody. The people who have been helped by the upper class people of Kolkata or who believe in Banbibi do not think they are worse of than people elsewhere. They realize that this could happen anywhere, and in the near future, it will.

This article appeared in the May-June 2009 issue of Manthan Samayiki.