In 1983, I was in Golana village in Gujarat, where my colleagues and I were working with the local Dalit population. They had been alotted around 33 acres of land under the land reform legislation, but the dominant castes would not allow them to take possession of it. I was the secretary of the local cooperative and insisted that if the land was in their name, they should be able to go and occupy it.
Two emissaries were sent to the panchayat office, and the original owners of that land were also summoned. The villagers explained, “We have not taken away your land; it is the land that was given to us by the government. If the land is in our name, then we have the right to use it.” They were in no mood to listen and sent our people packing.
When they came back, I wrote a letter to the local landlords saying, “Since you weren’t willing to listen and talk to us, we will come on a particular day next week at 10 am and take possession of the land.”
I stayed back in the village the previous night. There were around 100 Dalit families in the village. When I woke up the next morning and stepped out, I saw that 100 households were completely empty except for old people and children. When I asked what happened, they said that the men had some pressing work that morning. I realised they had been warned the previous night that “anyone who goes on the land will not return home safely.”
I stood there alone, in the middle of the street, wondering what to do. I told myself, “Look, Martin, if you don’t have the courage, then you better go home, watch movies and take up some government job. Or do what you came here to do. Stand up for what you believe in.”
I decided to go alone. It wasn’t my land, but I had written the letter. I was joined by two others, an accountant from the cooperative and a driver, who were also outsiders. We took the tractor and went to the land. There were around 20 people holding lathis in their hands. I got off the tractor and said, “Start tilling the land.”
One by one they moved away because they realised that we were firm in our resolve to stay on the land. That day we took possession of the land; land that was rightfully ours. When we returned to the village, we saw all the Dalit people of the village standing there. They hadn’t gone anywhere. They were hiding and watching.
I learned my first lesson in life
Your biggest enemy is not your caste, not your religion. It is your fear.
I saw this 40 years ago in the Dalit movement in Golana, and I’ve seen it since: It is the fear of what might happen that keeps you from moving forward.
Last month’s youth protests for educational reforms showed what happens when people overcome fear. The young had lost fear. They stood at Jantar Mantar, in the streets across the country and said, “No matter how mighty you are, we don’t fear you. We have faith in the law, in the Constitution. Governments can come and go, but our fundamental rights remain; our Constitution will remain.”
Where do I stand?
Over the past four and a half decades, I have worked with people of all ages. And I’ve seen that children have no fear. The older and more educated we become, the more fearful we often grow.
When we are scared, we struggle to take a position. The question that we all must ask ourselves is, where do I stand?
Navsarjan, the organisation I founded in 1989, is well known in the country, especially in Gujarat, for fighting the practice of untouchability. So, it wasn’t surprising that we lost our FCRA in 2016, along with other organisations such as Teesta Setalvad’s Sabrang Trust. It was the early years of the government using the FCRA law to curtail the freedom of organisations working on human rights and social justice.
Since then, at Navsarjan and Dalit Shakti Kendra (a vocational training centre for marginalised youth), we’ve taken a stand where we are telling the government, “You are free to take away our licence, our offices, or do whatever you wish.” But we are going to stay here and continue to do the work. We did not start this organisation because we had an FCRA, 12A, or 80G. We started it because untouchability was rampant, violence was widespread, and atrocities against Dalits were commonplace. Tackling these is our life’s mission, and it doesn’t matter whether we have licences or whether the organisation remains. In fact, currently, we have an ongoing case with the Income Tax Department. They have revoked our 80G and now want to take away our 12A.
You have to do the work publicly
Babasaheb Ambedkar did not write the Constitution in hiding. He wrote it in the open, visible to everybody and visible to criticism. He crafted a constitution that took a stance against 3,000 years of caste ideology and oppressive practices. And he took that position in public. All work done with the people has to be public work.
In our sector today, people say keeping quiet is being strategic. How do I plan, how do I do my work in a way that, as the Gujarati saying goes, the snake gets killed and the stick also doesn’t break in the process? But that is a trader’s mentality, weighing every pro and con. That’s not human rights.
There is a price to pay
Given my long journey in the social sector, I’m fairly well known internationally as well as here at home. I had a large network of people I counted as friends and well-wishers. But when we lost the FCRA, there was extensive coverage of the news in both Indian and international media, but almost no one reached out to me. I received a couple of calls from friends, but no one else.
It was extremely disheartening because it’s my life’s work. I said to myself, “You’ve stood up to power so many times, and it was never easy. And yet, when it mattered, there were very few who stood up for you.”
It’s also lonely at times because so many people have stepped back in fear in the current political environment, many will continue to step further away, and you’re still fighting the fight with everything you have. You become isolated in society, not from the community, but from your colleagues and friends. For the first time in my life, I feel like an untouchable.
And while it’s painful, ultimately the truth at the end of the day is, to paraphrase Buddha, “This is your fight. You’re fighting nobody’s war. You’re fighting your own war. Decide for yourself.”
I have worked in villages where the most vulnerable of women have stood up to the police, to their threats, to corruption. I have seen them being fearless. But those who claim to work for them, are choosing to be strategic and playing it safe.
I ask them and their funders, why did you set up your organisation? Wasn’t it because there was a pressing issue that you had to address? Today, the biggest concerns have become FCRA, 12A, 80G, and organisational survival, but we’ve forgotten the purpose of being in this sector.
Since we lost our FCRA, Navsarjan has openly run 40 programmes against untouchability. Large programmes without institutional money, driven by the funds given by rural communities.
This independence gives us power. Recently, the chief secretary of the state told a journalist friend of mine that they had made a big mistake by taking away our licences because now we have nothing to lose. He said, “They have become so aggressive. We cannot control them. We took away whatever we could from them. Now we have no excuse to stop their work.” This has made us more fearless. We turned our vulnerability into a liability for them.
As civil society, our mandate is to educate people and get educated in the process. We have not used the opportunity that we had in the last 30-odd years. The period starting from the 1990s was the best time for our sector, given the resources made available to us by Indian and global funders to do the kind of work that one can do when you’re not at war. But we’ve missed that boat. However, as we say in Gujarati, the day begins when the sun rises.
When I am asked how I am continuing despite all the bitter experiences, I say I do it because I see change arriving with the schoolchildren and the young people I work with. I’m emboldened by them. I have more energy because of them. The young will teach me.
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Know more
- Learn why civil society’s future depends on speaking up for the people it serves.
- Read this interview with Martin Macwan where he talks about his journey and his philosophy.
