No Country for old men

 

 

t’s been 62 years since independence, but their struggle is far from over. Chaitanya Sahoo (87) and Dayanidhi Naik (84) of Panimora village (Bargarh district, Orissa), participants in the Quit India Movement, are on a hunger strike in the run up to August 15 this year to draw attention to the need for a pucca road to Panimora. Back when it was a village of 33 houses, 32 persons had walked out to join Gandhiji in his peaceful quest for freedom. Today Panimora desperately waits for some proper roads to walk on.

When we decided to pay a visit to the village, we chose to heed to our friend’s suggestion to go on a two-wheeler instead of a four-wheeler, and were we thankful for the precious piece of advice! Traveling 40 kms from Baragarh (Bargarh district headquarters) on the national highway, we crossed Sohela (the last town of Orissa before you enter Chhattisgarh). Taking left from Sohela, we traveled another 10 kms – the longest in the journey – to reach Panimora, the land of freedom fighters.

We were greeted by a statue of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, right at the entrance. Adjacent to the statue stood a pillar with 32 names inscribed on it, the names of men and women fired up by Bapu’s call for freedom. It had all started with one person, poet Dibyakishor Sahoo. “He inspired us to fight for the country and fight for our independence and all of us joined the Quit India movement,” remember the freedom fighters of Panimora, now old and infirm, but with distinct memories of those difficult days.

What is unusual is not that the whole village responded to Gandhiji’s call, but that they continue to be influenced by his principles to date. Every day, after the morning puja in the village temple, all villagers are summoned by beating the ‘dibdibi’(a drum-like instrument), and there is held an all-community prayer, just like the way Gandhiji went about it. Khethrabasi, one of the villagers, recalls, “We have been following this routine every day without fail for over 60 years now… regularly since Gandhiji’s death in 1948.”

Apart from Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave is also venerable in Panimora. Dayanidhi Naik, Jitendriya Pradhan and Madan Bhoi, the only survivors of the 32 aforementioned soldiers, informed us that Panimora was also at the forefront of the Bhudaan movement mobilised by Gandhi’s spiritual successor, Vinoba Bhave. Freedom fighter Phoolsar Pradhan’s son Desabandhu Naik recalled, “September 11, 1963 was a great day for our village. That was the day when Vinoba ji came to our village. Villagers handed over 1222 acres of land for re-distribution in the movement. Perhaps that’s the reason why no one in our village is landless today.”

So, what does it feel to breathe in the free air of a country they struggled to free? Nothing too heartening, it seems, for even with all its historic significance, Panimora is tottering on the verge of obscurity. It was yet another struggle for the villagers to get a telephone connection, which they did only last year. And a good road connecting the village to the rest of the world is possibly still a struggle away. Jitendriya Pradhan avers, “The governments after independence have lost their way. Nobody cares for the development of rural people. Nobody even listens to us when we go to file a complaint in any government office.” A village with a population of approximately 4,000 including 2,200 voters, Panimora is still nowhere on the government’s development radar. A disillusioned Madan Bhoi says, “We never thought the fruits of independence will be so tasteless.”

Far from Panimora, on the eastern front of Orissa is Champailo, another village that sacrificed many of its sons for the freedom the country. Here, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose remains the ideal. Situated about 60 kms from the state capital Bhubaneswar, Champailo is known for the 23 young people of the village, who went to Rangoon looking for a job and ended up joining Netaji’s Indian National Army (INA). We heard the real account of the heroics from Brahmachari Uttaray, one of the very few of the 23 still around. “It was 1943. We had no work in our village. To earn a living, we finally decided to go to Rangoon and were working there as daily labourers. That was the time when we heard Netaji’s call to fight against the ‘goras’. We could sleep no more in peace. Finally in a meeting at Mangla in Burma, we decided to join INA. Netaji said that independence is not possible without blood.” Asked about the difference between India then and now, he replied, “Back then we were fighting to free our country. We thought everything will be alright after independence and we'd live happily, but nothing like that happened. Today, the government may pay us Freedom Fighter’s Allowance, but there are no real feelings for us.”

In the village, however, the legacy of their fathers’ and forefathers’ sacrifice is still held in high esteem. Freedom fighter Daitary Champatiray’s son Pramod Pratap Singh said, “Every year we celebrate Netaji Jayanti and pay homage to the brave freedom fighters of our village.” Vir Sen Baral and Anand Samanth Ray, sons of two INA soldiers also recall with great pride the days of the struggle and the post-independence period. The latter experiences were, sadly, pocked with dispassion and disillusionment. We certainly owe it to the sacrifice of those selfless heroes to restore our country to its glory of yore…

With inputs from Ajit Nayak