The Economic Times, Jan 1, 2010
Nageshwar Patnaik
There are some revolutionaries who make money subsequently, enough money to last them generations. And there are some who don't. They shun money and publicity and live in a world of ideologies, not afraid to tackle hardship. But they need to live as they think fit.
Add to that the fearsome landscape of Kalahandi in southwest Odisha, the arid plains dotted with terrible poverty. Recollect the last lines of Dr TK Pradhan's award-winning poem
"Her body, breathing, lies exhausted/ A gleam of compromised content in her eyes/Having added two rupees to the forty she earned last/week by selling off her daughter". Put the revolutionary in it and imagine him trudging across the endless plains of this vast wasteland trying to bring back some respectability into the lives of these miserable people --- and you will get a heady cocktail that's so strong, you would need a stomach to hold it.
Meet Rabi Dash, the Naxalite turned Sarvodaya leader, who does everyday what political leaders in their starched kurtas run away from. Dr Pradhan's poem had earned him the Sahitya Academy's Indian Literature Golden Jubilee Award for Poetry in 2007. Rabi Dash has got nothing, neither does he care.
Today at 70, Rabi Dash still believes in an equitable and just society as strongly as he did back in the 1960s. Always smiling, always cheerful, Rabi Dash wears a khadi kurta and dhoti, takes a simple handspun khadi sidebag on his shoulder, travels hundreds of kilometres by bus and walks tens of kilometres to reach out to impoverished tribals living in the remotest Kalahandi villages. His mission : Spin, weave, spin..... .
Rabi Dash believes that it is only spinning khadi that can alleviate the misery of the people there. He encourages them, he provides them with the inputs, he markets their produce and he gives them their earnings.
He shuns publicity, but leaves no stone unturned to do whatever he thinks is right for the ill-fated such as live in Kalahandi. Born in a farmer's family on Diwali in 1940 at Tarpur, 60 kms away from Bhubaneswar, Dash learnt the alphabets and basic arithmetic in village level schools. He made it subsequently to a high school.
"We had to walk all the way and cross two rivers, Mahanadi and Kaninai in a boat to reach the school", Dash recollects. That would have been the end of the road, his father having passed away in 1958 and his grandpa not in a position to send him to college at Cuttack.
"We decided to cultivate jute, a cash crop, and earned about Rs 1,250, from which we were able to save about Rs 350. With that I took admission in Christ College in arts" he said.
The stay in Cuttack changed his life dramatically as he got drawn to Left ideology. As a student he got drawn to AISF, the CPI's student wing and became a member. By the time he had moved to BJB College in Bhubaneswar, Dash had already become a member of the CPI and reported for the CPI mouthpiece New Age, and the Indian Press Agency (news agency).
He got disillusioned with the CPI leadership before long. "In the 1961 assembly polls, CPI had initially nominated Banamali Das as its candidate against late Biju Patnaik of Congress party. But Banamalibabu's nomination was withdrawn apparently to help Bijubabu's victory in the election. This double-speak of CPI leaders made me resign in protest" Dash recounts.
After his graduation in 1962, he concentrated on writing popular science books. He got married in 1963 and continued to stay in Cuttack.
"The same year, we formed the CPI (M) along with other leaders. We organised a public meeting at Cuttack where Jyoti Basu addressed the crowd. That was his first meeting in Orissa" Dash said.
He subseqently also visited the CPIM's election office at Trivandrum in 1965, when most CPM leaders were in jail from where they were contesting the Kerala assembly elections. Though the CPM won the polls, the party could not form the government because of the charges against elected leaders under the Defence of India Rules (DIR).
"President's Rule was imposed in Kerala and I realised that there was no democracy as there was neither trial nor any chargesheet drawn. I met various leaders at New Delhi including Dr Ram Manohar Lohiya, AB Vajpayee, Kissan Patnaik. How can you detain dissenting politicians without trial ? Dr Lohiya told me : "Oh dost, mera ankh khuldiya" he recalls.
In West Bengal at that time, the CPM and Bangla Congress had formed the United Front government in March 1967. The landlords started evicting the landless sharecroppers. In Prasadjyot village under Naxalbari PS, the police killed 11 people on May 26, 1967.
"I first gave a statement to PTI and UNI opposing this act of the UF government. I was expelled from the party. I then went to Kolkata and contacted like-minded people who were supporting the farmers' cause. We launched Naxalbari Sahayak Committee in August", Dash said.
A formal meeting was held in November 1967 and the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) was formed in May 1968.
"Sushital Roy Choudhry, Saroj Dutt and me went to Charu Majumdar's posh residence at Siliguri and requested him to attend a mass rally in Kolkata to protest the police action of November 11, 1967. It was a massive turnout which even surpassed the one addressed by Nikita Khrushchev in 1955", he recalled.
In April 22, 1969, the CPI (ML) was formed with 14 founder members, that included Rabi Dash. This was the central committee and Charu Mazumdar was its general secretary. Police arrested Dash in 1971 near his village.
"First they put me in Cuttack Jail, then shifted me to different jails for almost 8 years. They tortured me so much that I became senseless most often" Dash recounted.
Does he still believe in armed struggle? "I am not active with any factions. But I still subscribe to CPI (ML) ideology," he said simply.
When Kalahandi starvation deaths hit the headlines in 1985, socialist leaders Kissan Patnaik and Kapil Naryan Tiwari filed a petition to order the state to ensure that nobody died of starvation. Disposing off the case, justice PN Bhagabati had asked the Gandhi Smark Nidhi, Orissa, to investigate into the allegations of starvation and submit a report.
Ram Devi, who was heading the Gandhi Smark Nidhi at that time, requested Rabi Dash to inquire and prepare a report. His report was accepted by the apex court which confirmed the starvation deaths.
But Rabi Dash did not come back to Cuttack. Kalahandi had become his second home since then. He shunned everything to stay with the hapless tribals. He formed the Kalahandi Vikash Parishad (KVP) to continue his work under the Sarvodaya movement. Encouraged by Sarvodaya leader Maniben Nanavati, he initiated cotton cultivation in Kalahandi region.
Through numerous ups and downs, the KVP has managed to provide employment to the poverty stricken, mostly scheduled tribes and castes and majorly women. KVP introduced spinning and weaving among the tribals of Kalahandi and is himself passionately involved.
His main agony, however, is in marketing. He sent his stuff to Ekamra Hat (village market) organised at Bhubaneswar to market the products of member artisans of KVP. "We have now 163 members engaged in spinning, weaving, processing and dress-making.
It is a constant moral challenge, trying keep these people alive against tremendous odds in the market", Dash said with a tinge of sadness. But Dash's never-say-die spirit refuses to buckle. He fights on for the people of Kalahandi and they look up to him. Rabi Dash is perhaps the only life-line they've got.
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