Arre oh samba, kitney aadmi thhey?

Once, because of men like Bahadur Singh, travelers from Delhi would ensure they crossed over the Chambal into Morena well before dark. Today the traveler has very little to fear. On the new highway, the only stretch of the north-south corridor in Madhya Pradesh where work has been undertaken, it takes less than half an hour to drive past the ravines. And dacoity has all but disappeared from the Bhind-Morena region, once at the centre of the phenomenon. Today the most prominent gangs in Madhya Pradesh—the Gadariya and the Rawat—operate around the Shivpuri region. And at their strongest they are but quarter of the size of the most prominent gangs prior to the surrender. Mohar Singh, who surrendered with nearly 50 of his gang members, carried a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head at the time. The reward on the head of the Gadariya gang, T1 or target number one in police lexicon, still doesn’t stand at that amount.

Bahadur Singh was part of the Harbilas gang, ‘‘At one time there were 80 members with the gang. At the time of the surrender the gang was much smaller. Eleven of us surrendered. All of us carried a reward on our heads. Our time had been devoted to loot and kidnapping. If we couldn’t abduct a man at night we would abduct him at noon. We once attacked the police station here. We were well armed, the police here still doesn’t have the kind of weapons we used to own then. And at the time of the elections, the netas would come to us seeking our help. We would tell the voters in our pocket of influence who to vote for. It was not difficult, we knew who had voted for whom in each of the villages.’’

For men such as Harbilas life has not been easy after the surrender. He spends his day sitting at a Gumti in the village of Rijhouri selling gutka, ‘‘We were promised 15 acres of land, a good education and a job for our children. I got five acres of land which was of no use, no job, my children were not educated. My son has not been educated and he cannot even get a menial job, who wants to employ the son of a dacoit?’’

Just a few kilometres from Bahadur Singh’s village, Roop Singh Gurjar lives in the village of Samai. He was one of the mukhiyas who surrendered. He says he is well past 80 and recalls that the reward on his head in the three states was well over Rs 50,000. The surrender documents list his age as 37, which would mean he is around 70 years old now, and lists the reward on his head at Rs 1,000.

But then the legend of the Chambal has continued to grow in the minds of the people here. For them the dacoits of the past were baghis, men who had revolted against the persecution of the patwari and the police. Today, they say, the men go under the garb of dacoits, are petty criminals. This awe has helped men such as Roop Singh exercise considerable influence in the village and with the administration. He has also managed to obtain the promised 15 acres of land. And indeed the more prominent of the surrendered dacoits have had a better deal. Mohar Singh owns a farm in Malegaon in Bhind and has political ambitions. In fact he was given a ticket by the Samajwadi Party in the recent Assembly polls but his papers were rejected during the scrutiny. Malkhan Singh, perhaps the most famous of the Chambal dacoits, surrendered at a separate ceremony well after the 1972 surrender. He has contested the Assembly elections on several occasions from the Karera constituency near Shivpuri.

But the footsoldiers who surrendered share Bahadur Singh’s problems. Every year the Gandhi Sewa Ashram in Jaura, the very place where JP organised the surrender of 1972, organises abaghi mahapanchayat on April 14, the date of the surrender. It helps the surrendered men let off steam. It didn’t take place this year, and now Bahadur Singh and his compatriots plan to resume their fast, once the elections are over of course.