No tears for these martyrs

CHAURI CHAURA: Railway stations are class-conscious creatures. The big ones parade their wares like models flaunt their bodies: swank escalators, branded food courts and neat waiting rooms. The small ones, sadly, are condemned to wallow in anonymity. Chauri Chaura belongs to the second category. Trains, with the exception of the odd local passenger, seldom stop here. But an event that happened 85 years ago, barely 100 yards from this unremarkable railway station, ensured that the small kasbah in eastern Uttar Pradesh lost its obscurity forever and found a place in history textbooks. The incident took place on February 4, 1922 when an enraged crowd of peasants burnt down the local police station killing 23 policemen. The act made Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi call off the Non Cooperation Movement. Few know what followed: 19 of those demonstrators were hanged and 14 sentenced to life imprisonment. Another 19 were jailed for eight years, 57 received five years and 20 got two years in jail. Now the two memorials on either side of the Chauri Chaura station represent two different versions of history. The British promptly built the police memorial in 1923. A famous revolutionary couplet now adorns the place: Shahidon ke chitaaon par lagenge har baras mele, watan pe marne walon ka yahi baki nishan hoga . In other words, the cops too are regarded as martyrs by their fellow men in uniform today. Ironically, the peasant martyrs of Chauri Chauri got a monument (Shahid Smarak) only in 1993. Going through the names of those who went to the gallows, it is evident that the protestors - Sampat Chamar, Abdullah, Vikram Ahir, Meghu Tiwari, Lal Muhammed, Sahdeo Kahar being some of them - cut across caste and community lines. In fact, the protestors were part of an organised volunteer group that had emerged in these parts in 1921. For some months before the incident, they had been picketing against use of taari (palm juice toddy), fish, liquor, meat and against the high food prices in the nearby Mundera Bazaar. “Some days before the main event, police officers beat back volunteers and also administered a salutary thrashing to one Bhagwan Ahir, a demobilised soldier from the Mesopotamia campaign,” writes historian Shahid Amin in his remarkable book, Event, Metaphor, Memory - Chauri Chaura 1922-92. Sitting in the railway station, the descendants of those martyrs recall the event as if it happened before their eyes. Just like their forefathers, most of them are not illiterate. But they have heard about the event from their parents and relatives. Throughout their lives, conversations of that day have cropped up in the unlikeliest of places: in weddings, at the bazaar. In these oral narratives, myths and memories are sloshed together, it is not easy to sift fact from fiction. “That day dozens had died in police firing. But there is no record of that event,” says local contractor Shardanand Yadav, whose grandfather Vikram Ahir of Dumri Khudra was hanged. Some of these descendants receive freedom fighters' pension from the state government. But they have also formed a committee called Swantantrata Sangram Senani Parijan Samiti under Ramnarain Tripathi, the grandson of Meghu Tiwari and are fighting for more. Every month they meet at the building adjacent to the memorial to discuss methods to carry on that fight. They want free railway pass, land and jobs. “We also want government certificates that recognise us as descendants of freedom fighters,” says Dhupai Prajapati, who has spent endless years to get his freedom fighter grandfather Baijnath's pension. And chowkidaar Lal Babu Yadav, who looks after the memorial building where weeds grow tall, says he hasn't received salary for the past four months. Much has changed in Chauri Chaura since 1922. The famous pulses and jaggery mandis are gone. The stench of skin and hides, though, continues to emanate from the leather godowns in Bhopa Bazaar. Some sugar mills also exist. And as if to prove that India lives in different centuries, ironsmiths sit nearby with tools that could well have been from the Non Cooperation Movement days. But the new mobile phone shops do the best retail business. The shopkeeper at Gupta phone shop says he sells at least two cellphones a day. “There are at least 10 mobile phone shops,” he says. There are VCD and DVD shops too. Like most other kasbahs in north India, soft-porn movies such as Garam Laila have also found their way into its cinema halls. “Whatever the changes,” says schoolteacher Navneet Tripathi, “what happened in 1922 remains our calling card, our instant ID number.” At the home of Raghavendra Sharma, a local vaid who is 90- plus, someone narrates an anecdote that explains how. A local student went to appear for an interview for the post of junior irrigation engineer. He was asked, where do you come from. Chauri Chaura, he replied. They didn't ask any more questions. He was selected. By: Avijit Ghosh ,TNN Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No_tears_for_these/articleshow/22236…