Disturbing the Dust: Notes from the Margins

By Anthony Herbert

Tony Herbert SJ has lived and worked for over 50 years, with those on the margins of Indian society. In this inspiring and challenging book, he explores such questions as these:

Can the Catholic Church be a Church of the poor for the poor? Who are the poor? How does following the way of Jesus help us love our own poverty? What does poverty

• Language: English
• Publisher: Voicity Pty Ltd
• Release date: Aug 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9780648109211

Book preview

PART ONE

Learning about poverty

THE GOSPEL ROAD

I recall Hiraman, a frail enough person, one of our village teachers in his own village of Sirka. In the days when armed naxalite platoons – Maoist guerrillas – were still wandering those villages, one group came to Sirka. For some obscure reason Hiraman became the target of a strong thrashing with a lathi – a bamboo staff – so much so that he was bed-ridden for days. When I went to commiserate with him sometime after, he simply said, If it happened to Jesus, why shouldn’t it happen to me?

Hiraman was following the Gospel road and coming closer to Jesus. In being so ready to give his life, he was also finding life.

In the early days of our Jesuit studies we were challenged to be ready to serve in any ministry, in any place. Are you ready to go and work in any corner of the world? my novice master asked. No problem. Are you ready to spend the rest of your life here at Watsonia? – this was our seminary, a large dull grey building, hardly immune to Melbourne’s wet and cold. Hesitation on that one!

It was the custom that each year a group of young Jesuits would be sent from the seminary to the Hazaribag Mission. For those in the final year of their studies at Watsonia, a major question in the minds of the whole class was who would be going to India? I did not volunteer, because those who volunteered tended to do so with a dose of piety. I reasoned that I knew nothing about India, and I knew far less about my suitability for it. Towards the end of 1964, however, I was told to "go home for a week, then catch the P&O Orcades from Melbourne. Paul Horan will be going with you, and will pick up the boat from his home town of Perth."

In those days being sent to India was a life-long transfer, because traditionally the missionaries did not return. There were various farewells, a Mission Send-Off in both Melbourne and Sydney, and streamers as the Orcades pulled out from the dock. My memories of my emotions of that time are now very vague and, possibly, I covered them with bravado. More likely, however, I had little awareness of my feelings at all. Those were the days of a Victorian stiff upper lip and the detached ecclesiastical mould in which I had lived for five years.

I left Australia full of youthful enthusiasm for overseas travel, with excitement and idealism to do something great in life, but also, let me admit, keen to escape the confines of a semi-monastic life. Only in later years did I understand the depth of the pain and hardship for my parents, particularly my mother, although happily they visited Hazaribag three years later, a visit that allayed their fears. But the boat journey at that time was symbolic of a definitive break.

We travelled on the Orcades in the twilight years of the England-Australia steamers, two young men in clerical suits amongst a colourful mixture of travelers and holiday-makers. We stopped for a day in Colombo and on the way back to the boat some friends of the Jesuits bought us some coconuts. We ate them that evening, while the final leg up the Indian coast was made at night, and we arrived at Bombay at dawn.

Paul announced that he had been up much of the night with vomiting and diarrhea. I felt fine, so I went up to breakfast – until half way through, when I had suddenly to excuse myself and became miserably sick. By this time, the boat had docked. I eventually struggled out to the deck for my first glimpse of India, the docks, the endless multitudes of people, the shouting and noise, the red-jacketed coolies sitting around, the general chaos, the touts pleading, the suffocating humidity. I prayed that I would die. Lord, take me away, not this! Thus began the great adventure of two young men coming to liberate the Third World. Our landing in the Bombay docks was a rude reminder of the fact that poverty was not just something out there in the Third World. It brought a glimpse of another poverty: our own.

We weren’t helped much at the time of our arrival by Fr Francis Xavier Whitely. He was an earlier Australian Jesuit missionary, legendary for his cycle riding to distant villages, who had spent years of self-giving in Mumbai and Gujarat. We met him in the community infirmary where we were picking up our strength. Young enthusiastic missionaries coming to India? he asked. Well, when you die in fifty years’ time, India will be just the same as it is today!

One of my favourite Jesuit writers, Aloysius Pieris, makes a different observation about poverty:

In the final analysis there are only two basic concepts to be distinguished: voluntary poverty ... and forced poverty. The first is the seed of liberation; the second is the fruit of sin. The kingdom of God can be viewed in terms of a universal practice of the one and consequent elimination of the other

Voluntary poverty entails both exterior renunciation of goods and interior resignation to God…. Poverty recaptures for us Christ’s own attitudes, options and pattern of behavior… To understand this is to know him; to practise this is to follow him.

I was to find that this was very true.

COME TO OUR VILLAGE

We were celebrating Mass in Babupara village. Suddenly all these people started walking in, dressed only in lungi – a sarong – and singlet; they just walked in and sat down, just kept coming and coming, about thirty in all, taking up so much of the space. It was Bishop George Saupin’s first visit to Babupara, all carefully arranged to go well, and now suddenly this unexpected intrusion. I panicked somewhat.

Moti, who are all these people? What the heck’s going on?

They’re from Ambajit, said Moti. They heard that the ‘big man’ is coming, and have come to meet him.

The initial contact and focus of our village work was in Babupara, surrounded by paddy fields going up to the foot of wooded hills. Unknown to us, two kilometres across the fields was the village of Ambajit. It was a large village, with houses clustered together in single-caste ghettos.

There were about one hundred families of Brahmin Bhumihars – that was top social standing – in Ambajit. Being of that particular high-caste, they were respected by all the others. They owned 95% of the village land, and that was clear economic power. They held the posts of village headmen in both Ambajit and neighbouring Gondalpura villages, and one of them was ‘pramukh’, headman of all the approximately fifteen headmen of the whole area – and that was unchallenged political power. So they were tops.

At the other end of the spectrum were a hundred or so families of Bhuiyan Dalits, the bottom of the outcaste hierarchy, the at-call labour to the Brahmins for domestic and agricultural work, with no voice in the village affairs. They lived in three separate clusters of houses at the extremities of Ambajit village. Ambajit encapsulated the feudal caste system, and played out the inter caste dynamics in that system.

Our first knowledge of that village began with a violent altercation between our Chamar Dalits of Babupara village, and the high-caste Bhumihars of Ambajit. The Chamars alleged that the headman had made lewd remarks to the wife of Deonath, the catechist, so they challenged him the next time he walked through the village. They had long learnt not to challenge the big people, but now with us around they were learning not to submit, and so they challenged.

Unfortunately, challenging the high-caste Bhumihar had never been done before – it was simply just not done. The high-caste responded that evening with a twenty-man raid on the Chamar hamlet, smashing, hitting, wounding, and picking up anything worth taking. They repeated the same the next morning, telling the local policemen who had turned up to go away, that they themselves were handling the situation, and all was under control. Ironically, it was the Bhuiyan Dalits from Ambajit who had helped the high-caste people by carrying off the wooden beams from our Babupara schoolroom then under construction.

The outcome, besides various criminal cases and a protective police picket in the village, was the cessation of all interactions between the two villages. Such interactions were essentially economic. Our Chamar Dalits now had to struggle to find work elsewhere, no longer finding income from employment given by the Ambajit landlords, and the landlords themselves not coming to take the crop of their Babupara fields. And so for us the name ‘Ambajit’ as spoken by the Babupara people became synonymous with something evil, a place to avoid, a place to fear.

Nobody told us about the three large clusters of Bhuiyan Dalits – all of whom, if not bonded labour, were the cheap labour of the high-caste landlords. The Bhuiyan Dalits were landless and illiterate. Now we had their unexpected intrusion into our carefully planned Babupara celebration with the bishop. Come to our village also was their firm request. They had seen how the Chamar Dalits had stood up to and resisted the high-caste bullies to live their own lives. They wanted to taste the same freedom. Come to our village also! Yes, we would like to, but no way, thank you, not with the present hatred and threats of revenge coming across from that same village!

During the next month Amabjit Dalits kept making regular contact, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large ones. They kept on saying that life in Ambajit was impossible, and that they wanted to get out and find land elsewhere.

Again in April, a delegation of eighty came to Babupara to ask what was happening about the land allocation, because they still had hopes they might be granted some new land. So did we, but the government bureaucracy was grinding down our efforts.

In June, Shadev and three other villagers came in bloodied by a beating. I was to learn that control of the Bhuiyans was maintained by a constant undercurrent of physical violence. Any youth showing leadership was picked on for some incident and physically thrashed, to ensure he forever after kept his place. Those days, and during the many years ahead, we encountered many atrocities against the Bhuiyan Dalits, but were never able to register cases against the landlords, even for blatant criminal offences. I was to learn about the power they had, by virtue of caste and money, to manipulate the local officials.

In October we started adult education centres in each of the three ‘Tolas’ – hamlets or clusters of houses – around Babupara. That month the villagers of nearby Motra had called us and we had started having meetings there too, so the Ambajit people would come there to attend those meetings. I was to find that Ambajit had a high percentage of literacy, including a number of post-graduate students, all high-castes. But among the Bhuiyan Dalits all we could find were two who had dropped out of middle school. The rest were totally illiterate.

The next year came. All during this time we would have meetings in Babupara or Motra. Ambajit itself remained out of bounds for us Babupara people.

When will you come? the Bhuiyans of Ambajit would ask. If we were to keep good contact with these Bhuiyans, we needed to have meetings with them in their hamlets; we had to provide awareness building and social and personal training. The adult education centres, however, were in the hands of teachers who themselves were semi-literate, born and bred in the cave of darkness and who had not seen the outside.

I was very keen to get access to the village. I didn’t know what to do, and was very frustrated about not being able to go there. I asked my local companions, Moti and Raghu, if they were willing to go, but understandably they were unwilling.

Happily, at that time Victor Kerketta, a young Jesuit in studies, came to stay with us for several months. I gave him the job of supervising the adult education centres that we were running at Gondalpura, Motra, and Tilwa and the three centres at Ambajit. I told Victor about the situation with Ambajit very clearly and he said he was willing to give it a go. The Bhuiyans of the nearest hamlet, Bagi Tola, took him under their wing. He went, stayed there, and on several occasions was aggressively challenged by the high-caste Bhumihar youth: Who are you? Where are you from? Victor was small, thin and frail-looking and they thought they could easily scare him off, but he stood his ground. They even made the mistake of trying to up him by speaking English. It wasn’t long before he had made friends among them and created fresh access for us around the village, but he told me there was opposition to me because I was ‘disturbing the dust’. What saddened him was the fact that even the youth were heavily into drink – they were apparently without hope of anything better. That was another challenge.

When will you come to our village? The Ambajit question continued to haunt me. Victor was there for approximately four months, and by then it had became clear that the time had come: I would have to go myself.

THE VILLAGE UNIVERSITY

I sent word across to Ambajit for somebody to come to Babupara to take us there. Dineswar came with one other – I’ve forgotten his name. When we arrived the people were still out working, so we found a kathiya and sat chatting on the edge of the village overlooking the fields to the north. I paid scant attention to a youth who approached us on the left from the village, but I remember his bright red shirt.

He stopped about twenty metres in front of where we were sitting and, without so much as a normal greeting or introductory talk, simply said Angrez, idher aao – English fellow (pejorative) come here. That was a rather challenging introduction: no traditional greeting, the anger blazing hotter than his red shirt.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I asked him what he wanted, and invited him to come and sit down. No, he said, you are not to come into this village. I parried with him, told him I had been invited by these people, and so on and so on, and tried to get him talking. No, we put up with your Raj for 200 years, and we will not tolerate it again. You are never ever to come to this village. Again I asked him to come and sit down, tried to keep him talking, but he was adamant.

I was not going to simply walk out of the village, so I asked him where he expected me to go at this late hour in the evening, because the last bus for Hazaribag had already left. He paused; he had no answer to that one. Fortunately he did not realise that I was staying in Babupara, half an hour’s walk away. With hands joined in supplication, he said, All right, you stay here tonight, but I request you, don’t you ever come to this village again. And he stormed off. I turned to my companions, and it was only at this stage that I noticed that apart from a few small children, Victor and I were alone. At the first sign of trouble, the Bhuiyan Dalits had disappeared. Hard lessons there.

We all came together later in the evening, had some singing, talked and discussed, and the next morning, after a meal, returned to Babupara without any disturbance.

One more month passed, and I knew that it was either time to go back again, or accept the ultimatum I had been given and never return. Once more, some of the Ambajit Bhuiyans came to collect us, and I noticed that this time they sat us down not on the edge, but in the middle of their cluster of houses. The men gradually came in from the fields, came and greeted us, and then went to their houses to clean up and, I noticed, have a few glasses of the local hooch. It had just got dark when a high-caste boy of about twelve years entered the hamlet and said to me Tum ko bhula rahe hain. This without any greeting, let alone the common greeting of child to senior and, worse, using the diminutive form of address, They are calling you.

Who is calling?

All the village people.

Where are they?

Down at the school.

The school was about two hundred metres down in the village. I was inclined to go, as I believe that face-to-face contact and straight talk always solves a lot of misunderstandings. But an electric fear gripped those who stood around. I was not to go, they said, on no account. They too were adamant. Still I insisted, but then I remembered being left alone the previous month. Realising that most of them had been drinking, that I was in a village I didn’t know, in a game whose rules I really did not know, I saw that it would be folly to leave their hamlet in the dark. "Tell your village