Asli Bharat: The real India Palash biswas Sodepur, the newly included suburban part of Metro Kolkata, is witnessing a spectacular Gangasagar or a semi Kumbha these days as about three lakhs Dehaties, mostly Hindi speaking dalits gathered to participate an all religion preaching ceremony organised by Satsang,a Bhagalpur based Mahi Maharaj outfit. On 25th january, In the late night, it was 2Am, I just returned from night duty in office. My office car stopped on the Flyover facing traffic jam. I was surprised to see the jam. But cold not know the reason. Waking in the morning, Savita, my wife broke the news that there was a huge fire in a guest house on the main road where some sadhus were staying for the religious convention. Three sadhus were dead on spot and five others seriously burnt. I went the spot barricaded by police. The formal investigation was on and got no satisfactory information. Then I visited the venue, Amravati Maidan. About a lac people from different parts of north India had already gathered and there was no impact of the accident. I was dumb. On 27 th morning the event started with pouring in another two lacs of Dehati people, with bags and baggage, children old men and women and half oe them were women. Most of them from central Bihar, from districts like Gaya, aurangabad, Navada, Jahanabad, Bhagalpur,etc, the moaist effected area. Ironically the Naxals celebrated a Bandh, destroying the routine of Railway and roadwys traffic, bombing Rly bridge and track on The Republic Day. But the Dehat social scenerio was as intact as ever. Astha is a survival tonic, we have to be convinced. So Ramdev Baba has got such a following. What was amazing to me, this massive part of Indians seemed to be non consumer. But the organisers have arranged scores of close cicuit TV sets to telecast the progrrame. Ordinararily, the kolkatan and in general, the urban educated people never lose any opportunity to buy something. Any gathering in cities is bound to transform into commercial phenomenon. But these people were not buying anything. The tea and coffee stalls were crowded by the shahri babus and biwis who gathered to see the tamasha. The participants were having food in the Bhandara. They had their on store of dehati snax, muri/chiwra. Only some women were seen to buy the conch bangles Shakha, as they were unavailable out of Bengal. I am not a religious man in any sense. I was wondering to see the gathering in a communist run state and most of them were coming from the maoist zone. Do the ideologues care enough for the Dehaties? Should our communist and Maoist friends be not rather much more communicative instead of blaming the Sangha Parivar? While we speak about growth rate, Share index, purchasing capacity, IT, Infrastructure, development, science and technogy, globalisation, open market- do we ever mind to think about thes purchaing capacity deprived non consumer dalit dehaties? Shoul we discuss these points. The kolkata media flashed the fire accident item as hard news but underplayed the gathering. Some evening papers reported that there was a gathering of ten thousand sadhus and three of them were dead in a fire accident. Hardly there were only two hundred sadhus. This is the character of our so called live coverage. contact: Palash Biswas c/o Mrs Arti Roy Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata - 700110 Phone: 0091-33-2565-9551 (r).
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥««¤»¥«¤»§«¤» This is ZESTCaste whose members watch India's painful journey to society's de-casteisation. Members are encouraged to post messages to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join ==theZESTcommunity====================================== [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
