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Journalism of Courage
Sarita and Mahesh are gone but they continue to inspire the people whose lives they changed forever.
Ten days after the two social workers were gunned down by thugs opposed to their work to free the village from a time warp, Shabdo is a village in mourning. Yet there’s no stopping the march ahead: work will begin tomorrow on a new bore well, the last project the activist-duo had finalised with a government grant of nearly Rs 5 lakh.
Every male member of this 400-strong village has tonsured his head in accordance with the Hindu custom of mourning the death of a close relative. The village barber has worked non-stop for the last three days. Says Yuvraj Prasad: ‘‘Maheshbhai and Saritabehen were family members for all of us.’’
Shabdo’s experiments in community living have been outstanding. After Sarita and Mahesh reached this village three years ago, people demolished not only their farm boundaries but also the walls of intolerance and social hierarchies. And they all quit alcohol.
In the process, Sarita and Mahesh earned true friends and many enemies. The criminal gang in the village, no longer able to oppress the poor and run its illicit liquor racket, is suspected to have been behind the killing.
On the 10th day of their death, people of Shabdo observed shradh in their memory. But the gang is still on the loose. Sadhu and Shailendra, two sons of Saman Yadav, a gang leader who was shot dead by the police on November 30, have been threatening the residents.
The gang, they say, believe Mahesh and Sarita, along with the people of Shabdo were responsible for the police raid on them.
‘‘The sons are threatening to kill eight more in the village and they roam around freely, but the police are looking the other way,’’ local residents told The Indian Express today. The Gaya police have so far made no arrests.
Yuvraj Prasad, 104-year-old Nandlal Yadav, a veteran of the Kisan Sabha movement of the ’70s, and others in the village say they will finish the work started by Sarita and Mahesh.
On the evening of January 24, Sarita and Mahesh had sat with the villagers to give final touches to the inauguration ceremony of the borewell.
‘‘I told them to stay back in the village. But they promised to return early morning and left for their camp centre at the block office,’’ recalls Yuvraj.
That was a promise never kept. Just a kilometre from the village, they were shot. ‘‘We will live by what they taught us,’’ people of Shabdo say.
They did teach them a lot. Between their sudden arrival and departure, the village changed.
Children now go to schools, farmers have entered collective farming, a centuries-old irrigation system has been revived, agricultural productivity has been increased and every penny of government money allotted to this village has been optimally utilised. Unfortunately, also the very reasons why people still get killed in Gaya.
