Kolkata
“It was a full moon night and my husband and I had set sail with five others to catch crab in the creeks of Netidhopani which is a fairly safe place by general conditions. But who knew fate had a different story scripted. The first and second days were incident free and we had a decent catch. Then in the third night as all of us were having our Panta Bhaat (rice soaked in water), it was pitch dark on both sides of the creek, I heard a splash in the creek water and then a silence befell.
“Jhontu, a fellow fisherman, then suddenly screamed that Dakshin Roy had taken Buro, my husband. We could not retrieve his body as none gathered the courage to descend from the dingy,” said Mitali Sardar, a tiger widow from Godkhali.
These elections, the likes of Mitali Sardar wanted their MPs or ministers to visit them at least once to hear out their woes, but none of them have come till now. “Why will they come? Do they have any face to come? They have stolen our wages of 100 days of work, they have stolen the tarpaulins and other relief material that were sent to us by the Government after Amphan cyclone,” they say, quite ignorant about the difference between the TMC and the Government.
When asked about yet another cyclone Rimal coming, they say, “Ki hobey bhagye ja hobe tai hobe, aar ei neta ra taka khabe (what is written in the fate will happen and these Netas will eat our money).”
Elections come back over and over again but they seldom tear through the frightening stillness of their geographical environment or light up the dreadful darkness that surrounds their lives.
The history of Sunderbans can be traced as far back as 200-300 AD when the mythological trader Chand Saudagar lived in the area. More than a thousand years later, the forests of Sunderbans were leased to the by the Mughal monarchs when Raja Man Singh during his Bengal expedition created a new Paanch Hazari Mansabdari through one Laxmikanta Roy Chowdhury. These semi Rajas built settlements in them. In subsequent years these settlements were attacked by the Portuguese and salt smugglers in the 17th century. The ruins of those attacks can be traced at Netidhopani.
Thereafter in 18th century Tilman Henckell a British Judge floated the Sunderbans Plan tried to improve a few dozen riverine islands by trans-locating the tribal population from Chotanagpur, Bankura, Birbhum and Purulia. These people mostly comprised Santhals, Mundas, Oraons, Bhumija etc. Socio-economic exigencies gradually led them to abandon their surnames and adopt “Sardar” as an alternative.
So much so that a fellow from ORF foundation points out how more than 425 people were killed by tigers between 2006 and 2016. That most of them were from the tribal community can be assumed from the statement of a senior forest official who said that nearly 60 per cent of fish and crab catchers in the Sunderbans are tribals.
The homogenisation extended beyond dropping their surnames as the tribal Sardars conveniently forgot their favourite sports of Morog Lorai (cock fights) besides switching from Haria(tribal liquor) to Banglu or Chullu (country liquor).
While clearing the forests for posterity about 700 people. Mostly tribals, lost their lives to tiger attacks. The irony is that even a century and more lately, the trend continues.
When asked whether local Trinamool Congress MP Pratima Mondal visits them, the common refrain is “No. None cares about the poor. We are conveniently forgotten after the elections. During the elections, they will come with folded hands on big vessels surrounded by police force. Often they will feign common simplicity by having meals in one of our houses and after the elections they will simply vanish.”
The anger is directed not only against the sitting MP but the entire political fraternity. This, regardless of the fact that they thank Mamata Banerjee for giving them a pittance of Rs 500 per month. When reminded about the corruption charges heaped against her government and family, pat comes the reply “to us Rs 500 is worth millions … who cares who is a thief and who is a sadhu.” True, the political consciousness is quite primitive and even the 34-year-Left rule has failed to make the locals class conscious for which they vouch in the cities.
“Didi sends money but they eat it up,” Malati Mondal (she has changed her surname) says quite convinced that all politicians save Didi are corrupt. On whom she will vote for. Pat comes the reply: “Didi!”
This perception has been created bit by bit over the past 15 years, says a middle-aged Hanshu Sardar an apparent CPI(M) supporter.
CPI(M) is an old story. The new days are emerging and India and Sunderbans will too rise with Modi ji. The future of these areas will brighten up after the BJP comes to power,” Utpal Naskar, a BJP leader says. When asked as to whether his party has any plans about the tribal population of Sunderbans, he dishes out the achievements of the BJP in appointing the first tribal president of the country Droupadi Murmu and also how his party was working for the tribal people in MP and other States.
Senior TMC leader Monturam Pakhira too says, “Hobey sob hobe, ektu somoy din. Dekchen na CPI(M) sob shesh kore diyechilo (everything will happen … give us some time … can’t you see how CPI(M) had finished everything.”
Cut to the Bidhoba Para. When asked as to whether the widows or their kin have any inkling of the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA), 1972, which stipulates compensation for deaths caused in wildlife attacks the answer comes in the negative.
The courts, have, however, done their bit to ensure some justice, say comparatively educated locals. In 1979, a court awarded Rs 2,500 in an instant case. The amount of such awards increased over time with the authorities allowing Rs 2.5 lakhs in a case in 2015. In the latest Government orders passed in 2021, the State Forest Department made an upward revision of such compensation to Rs 5 lakhs.
However, the story is not the same with Shikha, another tiger widow whose husband was killed by a tiger. Though she approached the Forest Department with all the relevant documents including the letter from panchayat Pradhan, she was denied the compensation as the Department considered the death to have taken in a core area which is out of bounds for common fishermen.
In 2015, her husband Asit went with two other men to the Garal river in the Baganbari forest to catch crabs. While his two companions returned, he was taken away by a tiger. Determined to rear her two school-going children with dignity, Shikha, a resident of Gosaba, hired a lawyer for Rs. 10,000 to help her.
The lawyer managed to retrieve Rs 1 lakh from an insurance company but the Forest Department put its foot down as her husband died had allegedly ventured into the core area. Says a neighbour the “local politicians could have helped but they wouldn’t because of her husband’s suspected political (Left) affiliations”.
Fresh nylon nets have been recently put up at a 12-km-long river stretch in Sundarbans to prevent tigers from straying out of the reserve forest and entering the adjacent villages, thereby, disturbing the poll process
On how the people, particularly the victims of the families of tiger attacks, were preparing to vote: Shantu (name changed) a college goer promptly replies on the sly: “if we are allowed to vote then we will definitely go to the booth and if we are greeted by bombs then who will risk one’s life”.
Clearly, his angst and anger is directed against the ruling outfit even as he says, “Tiger in these islands do not roam the forests only… they swim across the 2-3 km wide rivers and enter our courtyards. So in one sense, all of us are victims of tigers directly or indirectly and there is hardly a thing that has been done. The Government should have generated employment in a proper manner so that people do not have to go to the interior areas. But no party have done anything.” Shantu. a Santhal student of political science., tells The Indian Tribal.
On whether the tribal people have a bright future beyond the elections his friend Bela — whose father was a CPI(M) worker who was not killed by a tiger but an alleged TMC strongman —replies “vote ashey, vote jai, amader kichu hoar nai (elections come and go but nothing happens to us).”
