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Uday
Prakash |
It was a time when
all forms of Rahul were making and breaking news. Rahul Mahajan, Rahul
Arora, Rahul Dravid, Rahul Gandhi, Rahul Bajaj and so on. And there
were the vips — someone hospitalised, shot dead, absconding, consuming
cocaine, caught in a sting operation counting currency, named in a sex
scandal…
And there was he,
working day and night on the keyboard. His fingers lurched and took
time to obey his brain as he had developed Parkinson’s disease.
He mumbled as his tongue grew more taut because of the medicines he
took to remain active. Day by day he was finding it difficult to communicate
through speech, so he concentrated on writing. Day by day he was transforming
into what Roland Barthes called ‘a paper being’ or an ‘Author’
with a ‘very active head on a most passive trunk’.
On May 20, 2006,
at his Saket residence, when his physiotherapist came for his daily
session, he had just finished another book. He smiled and mumbled, “It
is all over”. And minutes later, he collapsed forever in the middle
of therapy. Kumar Suresh Singh was just over 70 on the day he passed
away.
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KUMAR
SURESH SINGH
1935-2006 |
He was one of the
intellectual giants in India. He died in oblivion in the capital city.
His monumental output in the field of anthropology and history was not
a spectacle like cricket, cinema or politics. His business was something
else. He was one of very few Indian scholars to have received a UN award
for field research in Geneva. Filmmaker Mrinal Sen compared him with
any of the “five great sons of Bengal”, though he was not
exactly from Bengal. And Mahasweta Devi was deeply indebted to him while
writing one of her best novels Aranyer Adhikar (Owners of Forests).
Dedicating her novel to him, she said, “If Birsa Munda today has
become a symbol of ‘adivasi desires’ — for freedom,
justice and rights — and has turned into a long-awaited hero of
tribals in India, the credit must go to Kumar Suresh Singh and his path
breaking research and discovery of this hidden saga of a great tribal
upsurge in British India.”
Kumar Suresh Singh
used to reminisce about the event that led him to unearth this epical
story. He was 25, posted in Khunti district, in Bihar as a young ias
officer. It was a chilling night in December, in a small village Beer
Banki, 25 miles away from district headquarter, when he heard a song.
They were the Mundas. They had made a bonfire and were dancing and singing
around it. Tribals don’t have ‘octaves’. Just four
notes. It was a weird but captivating song. Singh, a young enthusiast,
had learnt a bit of Mundari. He could interpret the meaning.
‘Brothers
and sisters...and kids,
Run away ...run …run …run…
A big storm is to assault…
Run …it is coming…run …
A tornado which has devoured half of the mother earth
Is coming here to swallow our own earth and forest…
Look sky is fogged and our country is floating like a leaf
Storm has blinded us …
We can’t see paths …where to go…
Run ...run …
Run ….run…
Darkness has descended all around...’
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Singh’s 45-volume
work, People of India is considered one of
the ‘rarest and biggest intellectual exercises of the 20th
century’
by western media. It radically alters the way we see our country |
The young ias officer
was moved. He could guess the song had its roots in the community memory
of some unknown historical crisis. The Mundas were singing in memory
of their own past mayhem. Later, after immense field research, working
with the Santhals of Chota Nagpur, a story emerged. The story of Birsa,
epical hero of ‘Ulgulaan’, the historical tribal resurgence
against British India.
Dust Storm and the
Rising Mist created ripples as it was the first subaltern quest in mainstream
Indian historiography. Singh was criticised, eyebrows were raised and
his work was dubbed ‘non-scholastic’ as it had used tools
and methods alien to the writing of history. But the book’s impact
was enormous. In the central hall of Parliament, if we see a portrait
of a young tribal, an icon of self-esteem for dalits and tribals as
Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak and Shastri are for others, some credit must go
to the storyteller. He was a Homer who scripted ‘Ulgulaan’,
an Iliad for Indian Adivasis. Birsa now is undoubtedly a Gilgamesh to
them.
Again, in 1967,
when Singh was just 29, he encountered a terrible famine in Palamau
district, where he was posted as District Magistrate. The corruption
and lack of concern of Indian naukarshahi for dalits and tribals compelled
him to write another pioneering book Famine in India. “Famine
and drought is usually man-made and its catastrophes are due to corruption,”
he used to say. He kept inviting trouble and faced constant transfers
from one posting to another, till he was made director general of the
Anthropological Survey of India (ASI).
Here, he published
his life’s feat — People of India, a monumental survey of
the entire human surface of India. Its findings are mind-boggling. Its
45 volumes shock and radically alter the vision we have about our country
and society. The western media sees it as “one of the rarest and
biggest intellectual exercises of the 20th century any where.”
Launched in 1985, it is the first postcolonial survey of people in this
part of the earth, and took more than seven years to complete. It sought
to create a fair and unbiased anthropological profile of the communities
living in India and to study the changes and impact of the development
process in post-Independence years. The project was gigantic and involved
personnel not only working in the asi, but also university scholars,
social and political activists, ngos, tribal researchers, historians
and so on.
People of India
will tell you there are 4,635 communities that make up the society we
live in. Their diversity is as amazing as their commonality. Would you
believe there are 35 communities in India who have equal faith in Islam
and Hinduism? There are 116 who likewise keep faith equally with Christianity
and Hinduism. There are 17 communities who are Hindu, Muslim and Sikh
simultaneously. You’d be surprised to find that minor and lesser
known gods have more followers than major gods like Rama, Krishna, Shiva
etc. A fascinating aspect of these minor gods is that they all are ‘secular’;
their followers are from all castes, religions, race, creed.
At a time when every
one is talking about ‘conflicts’ and their ‘management’,
Singh was deeply engrossed in analysing the linkages and interactions
between the people of India. He was focused more on the micro study
of subcultures than in the large noise that surrounds what is happening
at the surface level of our social fabric. Communities and ethnic groups
seen fiercely fighting for political power and for access to natural
resources, jobs, etc are also integrating through marriages, food habits,
language, etc. When the infamous US theory of ‘balkanisation of
India’ was pronounced, Singh’s survey provided us a clear
micro picture of socio-cultural structures in the process of integration.
He used to say
that the media and politics have created certain myths that we must
dismantle and deconstruct first, to see the reality about our people
and their culture. Our society is not a fossilised replica of the Manu
Smriti. It has long ceased to be a varna samaj. Go to a hair-cutting
saloon in your own locality and ask the man about his caste. For certain,
he is no nai. A carpenter in your area is no badhai and the cobbler
is not always a mochi, dalit. Occupations have altered and it is a newer
Indian society that is emerging very fast.
MN Srinivas, the
reputed social scientist, had said, “Those of us who have read
Dr Singh’s work on tribes (of Bihar) are grateful to him for the
contributions he has made and this great enterprise of his — People
of India — has placed all of us further in his debt.”
But who is bothered to pay ones debts these days? Not one paper or channel
even marked Singh’s death.
Uday Prakash is
a celebrated Hindi writer best known for Pili Chatri Wali Ladki
