The Man Who
Made War on a Mountain
Dashrath
Manjhi was given a State funeral last weekend. During his life,
however, government indifference remained as much a challenge for him
as the rocks of Gahlaur Ghati, says Anand ST Das
He
was ridiculed in 1959 when he started hewing a way through the Gahlaur
Ghati hills of Bihar’s Gaya district, some 150 km from Patna. It
would take 22
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| FOR
THE PEOPLE: Manjhi’s feat will long outlive him |
years for Dashrath
Manjhi to finish his 360ft-long, 30ft-wide road — little wonder,
for he worked alone, his sole tools his chisel,hammer and shovel. What
was once a precarious passage just a foot wide is now an avenue that can
accommodate cyclists and motorcyclists and is used by the people of nearly
60 villages with great ease. The road has also reduced the distance between
Gaya’s Atri and Vazirganj subdivisions from 50km to just 10km. Children
from Manjhi’s own Gahlaur and other nearby villages no longer have
to walk eight kilometres one way to attend school — they can now
study at a school just three km away.
We met Manjhi a few weeks before the cancer that finally ended his life
on August 17 forced him to take to his bed. The 73- year-old was frail,
but his energy was undiminished as he relived his work on the road. “I
knew if I did not do it myself, neither would the government do it nor
would the villagers have the will and determination. This hill had given
us trouble and grief for centuries. The people had asked the government
many times to make a proper road through the hill, but nobody paid any
attention. So I just decided I would do it all by myself.”
Before Manjhi’s road, the hill kept the villages of the region in
isolation, forcing the villagers to make an arduous and dangerous trek
just to reach the nearest market town, or even their own fields. In 1959,
Manjhi recounted, this resulted in a family tragedy on the treacherous
slope. “My wife, Faguni Devi, was seriously injured while crossing
the hill to bring me water; I worked then on a farm across the hills.
That was the day I decided to carve out a proper road through this hill,”
he told us. The mission he had set himself meant that he had to drop his
wage-earning daily work — his family suffered and he himself often
went without food. But his wife was not to see the fruits of his labour
— a short while later, she fell ill and died as Manjhi could not
get her to the hospital in time. “My love for my wife was the initial
spark that ignited in me the desire to carve out a road. But what kept
me working without fear or worry all those years was the desire to see
thousands of villagers crossing the hill with ease whenever they wanted,”
Manjhi said. “Though most villagers taunted me at first, there were
quite a few who lent me support later by giving me food and helping me
buy my tools.” Today, the villagers have nothing but gratitude for
Gaya’s mountain man, known almost universally now as Sadhuji.
Dashrath Manjhi belonged to Bihar’s Musahar community, regarded
as the lowest among the state’s Scheduled Castes. While other Dalits
in Bihar had at least some land rights under the erstwhile zamindari system,
the Musahars never enjoyed any such. Nearly 98 percent of the state’s
1.3 million Musahars are landless today. Not even one percent of them
are literate, which makes them the community with the country’s
lowest literacy rate. For many of them, the day’s main meal still
comprises roots, snails or rats, from which the community’s name
is derived.
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| UNDETERRED:
Ridiculed at first, Manjhi later became a local hero |
After Manjhi completed
his road, he worked tirelessly for the betterment of his community. Among
his other efforts, he managed to persuade nearly 50 Musahar families of
his village to settle on government- granted land, although most of them
were unwilling to leave their old homes. But when Manjhi started living
on the allotted land, the rest followed suit. This new settlement is now
known as Dashrath Nagar. Manjhi’s other efforts have been less successful.
Despite his herculean feat, the Bihar government has given him only token
appreciation and insincere help.
Himself landless, he made a petition once for property on which to build
a hospital. Then chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav allotted him a five-acre
plot in a village called Karzania — the people of the village never
allowed him to take possession as they were using the land as a grazing
ground. More recently, the Bihar government recommended Manjhi’s
name for the Padma Bhushan. This never materialised, nor did Nitish Kumar’s
promised support for a road Manjhi wanted from Wazirganj to Gahlaur. Government
sources say the forest department had refused permission for the road,
claiming that Manjhi had violated regulations by cutting away at the hill
without the department’s permission. The Padma Bhushan was reportedly
denied to Manjhi because of claims made by certain quarters in the bureaucracy
that he did not actually carve out the hill road single-handedly. The
villagers who benefited from his labour were outraged at these reports.
“Where was the forest department sleeping all these years when Sadhuji
was creating history to help thousands of poor villagers? We have seen
him from our childhood, hacking at the hill day and night as if he were
possessed,” said Raj Kumar, a 30- year-old Gahlaur resident. But
Manjhi was unfazed. “What I did is there for everyone to see. When
God is with you, nothing can stop you,” he told us as we left. “I
will keep working for the development of the villages here so long I am
alive. I am neither afraid of any punishment from any government department
for my work nor am I interested in any honour from the government.”
Brave words, but perhaps only what one would have expected from the man.
The government attempted amends by giving him a state funeral last week
— but, as he well knew, it is his work that will live on longer
than any honour.
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