P. A. Chacko SJ
For Dalits and Adivasis it is still a long way to freedom in this independent India.
India is still labouring under centuries old caste confabulations and confounding bias against the economically backward people including the Dalits and the Tribals. Political climate can aggravate such situations as we witness all along.
Gurucharan Murmu of Santal tribe in West Bengal can be considered a victim of all the above characteristics rolled into one.
In his article on Murmu, Rinchen Norbu Wanchuk in Better India highlights the above assumption: ‘Growing up, Gurucharan would encounter denials by the social and economic establishment on account of his identity as an Adivasi.’
Even his teachers with caste and class biased mentality would taunt him to get back to his rural pastoral life rather than aspire for higher things. Yet he stuck on.
When he was three, his father passed away. But his elder brother Manik Chand Murmu took over and ensured a good schooling to his sibling.
From Gandapal Primary School and Belpahari SC High school he moved on to the Scottish Church School in Calcutta in 1962. Thereafter he completed his degree in Bachelors and Masters under Calcutta University. His hard work and earnestness made him clear the UPSC exam and joined the IPS in 1972 in West Bengal.
His career spanned from being an Assistant Superintendent of Police of Lalbagh in Murshidabad district, to Addl. Superintendent of Police in Noida, IG Traffic and IG Vigilance Commission.
But, as an honest Vigilance officer, he was a hard nut to crack. His vigilance notices to politicians and politically connected people arrested his progress in the tracks. Within 13 months he was transferred.
Finally, he “was denied his final promotion as an Additional Director General (ADG) which was due before retirement. Instead, he was superseded.”(Tanmay Chatterjee, Statesmen, March 9, 2004, quoted by Rinchen Norbu Wanchuk in Better India)
Gurucharan had surrendered the best part of his life as a civil servant under the Marxist government in West Bengal. Being an Adivasi, politics was not his penchant. Nor would he yield to the game of currying favour with politicians and political powers. That was a beating stick for his opponents.
On retirement he dreamed of building a school, a hostel and an old age home. He invested his hard-earned money on a 30 bigha land which was yet to be registered. But, when he suffered a cerebral stroke, the land owner cheated him on hearing his condition and disclaimed any deal.
But, all along his life, Gurucharan made no issue with all the harassments or failures he suffered. Instead, he invested a good part of his spare time to literary matters. He wrote and published essays on the relationship between Santali and Austric languages with Sanskrit. He was a co-founder of Paschim Banga Santali Academy.
In addition to his mother tongue Santali, he was good at Bengali, Hindi, English, Sanskrit and Farsi or Persian. He was said to have had a decade long engagement with the Indus script and wanted to explore any affinity between Santali and the Indus script. Keeping up his interest in traditional tribal system of herbal medicine, he worked upon a doctoral thesis on: Santal Medicine over Time and Space. This work remained unfinished.
The best tribute to Gurucharan Murmu is paid by Rinchen Norbu Wanchuk in Better India. I quote: ‘Nonetheless, Gurucharan emerged out of all that and in his own way made history. He showed generations of young Santals in the state that it’s possible to make it against all odds if one has the determination to withstand hardship that would come by. That’s his legacy.’
{Arrupe Tribal Cultural Centre, Bhognadih, Jharkhand, India.}