Story of one ‘Kalidas’

Sukanya Roy

Although the nomadic Davari Gosavi community’s philosophy renounces all material attachments, 39-year-old Kalidas Ankush Shinde will cherish a certain Rs 10 note, like a medal, for the rest of his life.

Nearly two decades back, he had travelled around 350 km to a college in Kolhapur to write the entrance exam for a master’s degree in social work. Shinde did not have enough money to ride a bus all the way. He first took a lift in a lorry transporting grains and vegetables, and then caught a local bus. When he reached Kolhapur, he had no money left, and hunger brewed in his stomach. He waited dejectedly in a corner for his interview.

The college librarian noticed him. He chatted with Shinde and handed him an Rs 10 note, requesting him to eat something. Though hunger gnawed, Shinde did not spend the money. “In a lifetime spent feeling excluded, it was a rare gesture of encouragement shown to me,” he recalled.

In 2018, Shinde became the second person amongst about 8,00,000 people in his sub-caste, Davari, to earn a doctorate.

He shared this story on a video call from his two-bedroom rented flat in Virar, in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. Eleven other family members, including his wife Priya and their two children, share the flat. The house is bursting at the seams, but it is all they can afford.

Although Nomadic and Denotified Tribes account for nearly 10% of India’s population, according to the Renake Commission report, they have historically faced an uphill battle for education, respectable employment and social dignity. Most of them, including the Davari Gosavis, lack worldly possessions such as land, money or community resources. They have little choice but to follow their traditional occupations of wandering and begging, which in turn exposes them to abuse, even attacks, from non-nomadic society.

The stories of the Shinde family highlight the conditions in which many Nomadic and Denotified tribal communities exist, living lives that lack the basic guarantees of human rights and welfare.

Only 12.5% of people surveyed from the Davari Gosavi tribe had studied till grade XII, while nearly 59% had dropped out after grade X, per a 2017 report by the Council for Social Development. In 2008, 28% of Nomadic Tribe students had access to primary schooling, the Renake Commission had found, adding that this figure dwindled sharply for higher secondary school.

Shinde’s parents, Ankush and Kamal Shinde, had neither the will nor the opportunity to access education. They are illiterate and have begged for alms to raise their six children. The Shinde family’s plastic tent back home in Maharashtra’s Dighanchi village still lacks a toilet and an electricity connection. Nearly four decades ago, that is where Kalidas was born.

As of 2017, 75% of Gosavi households lacked access to toilet facilities and only 7.4% had an electricity connection, according to the Council for Social Development report. The Idate Commission, which was formed in 2015, to assess the development status of Nomadic and Denotified Tribes, received over 3,700 petitions and memoranda, over a three-year period. The largest category of requests received, 618, were for providing sanitation and basic infrastructures, such as electricity, roads and water supply.

Despite the lack of basic amenities, Shinde got a PhD from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. A monumental achievement—one that has cost Rs 4 lakh in loans, he said.

Education would have been out of reach, but for a lucky break in his life. In 1994, his parents were in huge debt following their daughter’s wedding and decided to resume their occupational nomadism. On Shinde’s insistence, his father agreed to send him to a government-aided Ashram school, run for tribal children in Kolhapur. Ashram schools are residential schools that have been functional since 1990-’91 and are set up in Tribal Sub Plan areas by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

To supplement his family’s hand-to-mouth predicament, Shinde sold ice-cream during his vacations. At the age of 14, he started collecting and selling scrap on his maternal uncle’s bicycle. “I topped secondary school that year,” he said.

His good grades could not, however, translate into fees for secondary school, and he worked odd jobs to raise money. While he was working at a newspaper stall, a stranger suggested he go to Mudhoji College in Phaltan. Shinde borrowed money from his relatives and put together his college fees. He spent the next five years studying English literature.

College life presented Shinde with worries that were not just financial. Caste-Hindu students would bully him, calling him “dowry” (a distortion of his surname Davari), which compelled him to change it to “Shinde”. “They would tear my notebooks, and I felt alienated from all groups in class,” he said. Pandarinath Kadam, the present principal of the college, expressed shock at this event, when IndiaSpend asked him for comment. “Our college is in a developed part of Maharashtra, and these cases are very rare.”

Only 5% of students enrolled in Mudhoji College come from Nomadic and Denotified Tribes, Kadam said. In 2018, a special cell was set up for their welfare, but it has received no complaints. While no such cell existed in 2004, Shinde felt that complaining to his professors would have attracted more unwelcome attention from his classmates.

For Shinde, joining the National Service Scheme in college in 2005 was a turning point. He worked with activist Narendra Dabholkar’s Vivek Vahini to eradicate the stranglehold of superstitions over society. “It changed my thinking, and I began to articulate my own oppression,” Shinde said.

Shinde recently published his autobiography in Marathi, epony-mously called “Jholi”. It refers to the saffron-coloured cloth bag that people from the Davari Gosavi tribe hang from their shoulders while travelling from village to village and begging for alms. Also called Nathpanthis, they sing ballads to their ancestral deity, Kalbhairavnath.

Historically, Nathpanthis were priests. Farmer and artisan castes respected them. “People would touch our feet and ask for our blessings,” Shinde said, “but now the situation is different.Do not make Gods of us. No one cares to find out what God’s problems are.”

In 2018, five Davari Gosavi balladeers were lynched to death by a mob in Rainpada in Dhule district, Maharashtra, on allegations of being child traffickers. The lynching case is currently being fought at the Sessions Court in Dhule by public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.

“Some videos of the incident were taken by witnesses, which we have presented in court,” Nikam said. “The police have identified the accused in the videos as well as in person. But it is still a long wait till the verdict.”

Currently, Shinde is a guest lecturer at Mumbai University. He feels that his present salary is not enough to either pay off his education loans or start a community organisation dedicated to the social welfare of Davari students. “Especially for the education of Davari girls,” he added. He is simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree in Marathi, as the subject is more widely taught and might give him better job opportunities.

In his heart, he nurses one nagging regret. “My parents refused to come to my PhD convocation,” he said. “They reasoned that a day of work missed would mean no food for our family that night. The irony… even with my doctorate, there are still days when their stomachs are empty.”

 [Sukanya Roy is a freelance journalist who reports stories of identity and marginalisation. Courtesy: IndiaSpend.]

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Vol 54, No. 48, May 29 - Jun 4, 2022