The very concept of Success is funny. We always do take a
Material variation of it as a Measuring Stick. No matter whom you consider
successful somewhere subliminally it is due to some profitable result of their
action. So even though we find a dead Hector at the end of Illiad successful,
it is due to the skill he showed in Battle and by the count of the heroes dead
by his sword. In the film 3 Idiots the sacrifice of Phunsuk Wangdu meant
nothing till he was shown as a World-conquering Scientist, similarly Bhagat
Singh Batukeshwar Dutt’s sacrifice is highlighted due to the successful raids
against the enemy, in this case the British. The concept of success today in
ennobled by a materialistic need of tangible result rather than the simple act
of living one’s life on their own terms. So Success is measured in what is done
to others or in comparison to others rather than a finite achievement of
happiness or a satisfaction in the face of the spectre of Death.
I have
chosen to reject this concept of Success as to me a Successful man is one who
can go into the final embrace of Death with a smile on his lips. Bearing that
in mind I have chosen to share the Story of Vallabh Kanu. A man I am pretty
sure none of you have ever heard of. He was born in Habibpur in today’s
Rajshahi District in Bangladesh sometime around the 1890s. He was by birth a
Santhal tribesman and unlike many of his compatriots neither his Father nor he
ever converted to Islam. They were maintained by the Zamindar of Pusa and as such were virtually his slave. Though the
Muslims atleast had the strength of numbers the Tribesmen were quite simply
slaves of the Brahmanical socio-economic state of the day and the Zamindar maintained an iron-hold on
their life. The rampant sexual abuse the Women of the Tribes faced made it even
difficult for the husbands to ascertain if the Child was actually theirs
leading subsequently to absentee Fathers who turned to alcoholism and
prostitutes to shed the miseries of their existence. Like all other children
born of Tribal Mothers Vallabh, who was actually named after the contemporary Zamindar, found himself baptised in the
furnace of hard physical labour while still at a tender stage of his life. He
started working on the lands of the Zamindar
at the age of 5 and like all tribals practiced archery to supplement the needs
of nourishment and for entertainment. Being one of the best shots of the region
and having aced at the Indian form of Wrestling, Kushti he joined the Zamindars
veritably private army of goons who kept peace in the area within his control.
He was not good at the traditional Bengali Martial Art of Lethel: a kind of stick fighting, that is useful against and with
swords and spears too: and so he was solely used for clandestine murders when
he used poison-tip arrows to decimate those who raised their voice against the Zamindar. However, though his own family
was perfectly safe he found himself unable to accept the casual manner in which
the Zamindar and the British
committed atrocities on the common people, especially the tribals. Based on the
recollections of my ancestor who was then posted there with the Police I gather
that he had started grumbling against the zamindar
and the British by the time he was 19. Around 1912, with the Partition of
Bengal finalised he tipped over the edge. Scared of Islamists and riots he
asked the Zamindar to issue guns to
the tribals as well and not just the caste Hindus employed him but he was
rudely spurned and asked to defend his little hamlet with the arrows he had
made so famous. That day he walked out of the palatial haveli never to step a foot inside it ever again. When the riots
started the tribals successfully defended themselves for 5 months and were
about to be overrun when the local Police were reinforced with the 36th
Pathan Regiment from Lahore and they were effectively saved. However denuded of
able-bodied men and still nursing rampantly raped Women they were in no
condition to pay the regular Khaajnaa;
the Land tax that the Zamindar
demanded who was in turn getting pressurised by the British to pay for the
allocation of the troops in his region. Finding the Tribals unable to pay the
Tax the zamindar thought of the only
way he could realise the money to pay the British; he leased out that piece of
Land to a Scottish Entrepreneur who intended to start Jute Cultivation there to
feed his vast Mills in Howrah near Kolkata. However the Tribals under the
leadership of Vallabh were belligerent. They had no intention of vacating the
land that they believed was theirs by right of Birth.
It was
around this time that the Administration and the Zamindar realised that during the fight against the Muslims,
Vallabh had first become the Maddi of
the tribe, a priestly Warband leader and had then become the Morol of the tribe, the Chief of his
people. So they were not arguing with a rebellious youth but with the Chief of
his people. At first the Police and Zamindar
Vallabh Kanti Sen kept returning to the hamlet to try and talk to Vallabh to
get him to listen to them. Mr V.B. Sen also went to the extent of offering him
one of his houses in the area free of Charge while the Scottishman whom
unfortunately my ancestor refers to only as Kincaide promised him that all the
tribals would be employed by the Firm. He started softening up when the Zamindar Mr. V.B. Sen started speaking
about restoring the pride of his glorious people and suitably mollified him by
gifting him a relic of a gun. He also promised to uphold the honour of Tribal
women and keep them safe from the predatory intentions of the Caste Hindus and
British Citizen something which was concurred by the British District
Magistrate, a Mr. Vaughan Rose. With the Tribals suitably mollified the land
was handed over to the firm of Mr. Kincaide and there was a great celebration
in the Zamindar’s haveli to which
many of the Tribal Elders went though Vallabh Kanu stayed back with his people
for some religious celebration to mark the hand-over. In the midst of revelry
some of the Junior White Officers came upon a young tribal girl and in some
drunken moment of viciousness raped her till she lay dead in a small clearing.
The News reached Vallabh and he considered himself betrayed and realised the
futility of dialogue with the people he considered hostile to his people as a race.
In a moment of Passion he called upon his warriors and attacked the camp of the
Pathan Regiment and in the fight concentrated their zeal on the Officers’ Mess.
The ferociousness of their attack took the Drunk Army by surprise and the
massacre was satisfying. They especially having heard that the Whites had raped
the Girl ensured that every White Officer they met was slaughtered but they
fought with bows, arrows, swords and scythes against an Army that carried 15
Vicker Machine Guns. The major section of the Young Male Population had already
been decimated by the time Vallabh Kanu ordered the retreat. He was himself
injured and by that night saw to it that as many women as could ran away from
their village towards Kolkata.
There
is no happy ending to this Story. Within three days under a Sikh Zamadar Officer the Regiment decimated
the males of the tribe and raped the Women that were left till they were glutted
even though the Local Police and Civil Administration tried to stop them. Some
of the White Officers made the youngest boys run in the Agricultural Fields
while they targeted their heads with rifles in something resembling human
hunting in its most violent Post-apocalyptic form. The Zamindar Vallabh Kanti Sen felt such remorse that he left social life
to take Sanyas while Mr Kincaide
brought in more amenable labourers in the form of Muslims from Eastern Uttar
Pradesh area of today’s India to work in the fields and drive the Trucks to
Kolkata. The section of the Population that managed to flee to Kolkata suffered
unrecorded Hardships but I know many of them even today almost generation-wise
have served in Kolkata Police from the roles of Constables to that of
Sub-Inspectors. Vallabh Kanu was caught alive but died of Gangrene in a Prison
in Dhaka. Before being taken away some of the White Officers had forced him to
see as they had raped his sister. That is the summarised story of Vallabh Kanu.
The natural Question anyone will ask is where is the success
in that! All we see is suffering and it is not like I disagree with them. All
the Biography has here is suffering but as I stated earlier Success is not
always measured by that which is won but by that which satisfies us. Vallabh
towards the end of his life confessed to my Ancestor that he carried no regret
in Afterlife because if the girls were raped, they were getting raped anyway
but he said when he will meet his Gods he can look them in the eye and say “I
am just the man you made me. You gave me problems and I faced them and at the
end I did the only thing I could, I died with honour and if you ask me what did
I do in my Human Incarnation I can tell you I have come to you happy; Because I
never stopped Fighting”.
