Tireless fighter against scavenging
Avijit Ghosh
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New Delhi:
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Magsaysay Awards For Activist Bezwada Wilson, Carnatic Vocalist TM Krishna
Bezwada Wilson's earliest memory of manual scavenging is that of a young family member telling his uncle, “Why did you give me this job? You should have given me poison.“ “I was barely fours year old then and couldn't really understand why he was so upset.And why he kept smelling his hands all the time,“ recalls Wilson, the 50-year-old Dalit activist who has been selected for the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award.Wilson was raised in Kar nataka's Kolar Gold Fields township. His parents and elder brother were manual scavengers. So was much of the neighbourhood. His early days in school were free of caste prejudice because everyone was from the same colony .
But as he shifted to Kuppam, a small town about 30km away , for higher studies, life became difficult and bewildering as a young Wilson tried to understand what made him different from fellow students.
One day his schoolmates asked him where he lived. He replied, the sweeper's colony .“Till then, they were all affectionate. From then on, they lost interest in me,“ he says.When he spoke about the incident to his parents, they just said, “It's everywhere and nothing new.“ He was eight then. In 1982, Wilson moved back to his home town and started teaching at night to fellow community members.
But within a few years, he realised that illiteracy wasn't the only problem among Dalits. Alcoholism, too, was another major issue. Working at an alcohol de-addiction camp, Wilson learnt a bitter truth.“Some people at the camp told me, you tell us not to drink.But if you see the way we work and where we work, you will understand why we drink,“ he says. His battle against manual scavenging had begun. From 1986-89, Wilson says, he wrote dozens of letters to authorities and the then prime minister and also published articles in newspapers highlighting the scourge.
Then came another turning point in his life. As part of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's birth centenary celebrations, Wilson participated in a cycle rally from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka lasting 50 days.The rallyists met hundreds of villagers on the way . It turned out to be a voyage of self-discovery .
“I realised there is a word for all the discrimination I had faced. It was called `untouchability`. And that it happens due to the caste system. And to come out of it, there was only the Ambedkar way ,“ says Wilson. He spent large parts of the journey reading, listening and talking about Ambedkar's ideology .
By 1992, he had come up with Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), a people's movement against the social evil. “I realised that the fight is not against the bucket and the broom. The battle was deeper with roots in the caste system,“ says Wilson, a political science graduate.
Manual scavenging was banned by an Act in 1993. In 2013, another Act with more bite was passed. But the practice continues, especially in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharasthra and Tripura. As per 2011 socioeconomic caste census, 1.82 lakh households in rural areas reported themselves as manual scavengers. The 2011 House-listing and Housing Census found that there are about 26 lakh `insanitary' latrines in the country .
The Magsaysay citation details Wilson's work: filing PIL in Supreme Court on the issue, raising awareness, training local leaders and volunteers for the movement.“The SKA has liberated around 3,00,000 scavengers,“ it says. “The entire cleaning of sewage must be mechanised.No worker should stop into the drain. Stop killing us,“ says Wilson. The Magsaysay citation rightly says, “The board of trustees recognizes his (Wilson's) moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.“
None will disagree.
But as he shifted to Kuppam, a small town about 30km away , for higher studies, life became difficult and bewildering as a young Wilson tried to understand what made him different from fellow students.
One day his schoolmates asked him where he lived. He replied, the sweeper's colony .“Till then, they were all affectionate. From then on, they lost interest in me,“ he says.When he spoke about the incident to his parents, they just said, “It's everywhere and nothing new.“ He was eight then. In 1982, Wilson moved back to his home town and started teaching at night to fellow community members.
But within a few years, he realised that illiteracy wasn't the only problem among Dalits. Alcoholism, too, was another major issue. Working at an alcohol de-addiction camp, Wilson learnt a bitter truth.“Some people at the camp told me, you tell us not to drink.But if you see the way we work and where we work, you will understand why we drink,“ he says. His battle against manual scavenging had begun. From 1986-89, Wilson says, he wrote dozens of letters to authorities and the then prime minister and also published articles in newspapers highlighting the scourge.
Then came another turning point in his life. As part of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's birth centenary celebrations, Wilson participated in a cycle rally from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka lasting 50 days.The rallyists met hundreds of villagers on the way . It turned out to be a voyage of self-discovery .
“I realised there is a word for all the discrimination I had faced. It was called `untouchability`. And that it happens due to the caste system. And to come out of it, there was only the Ambedkar way ,“ says Wilson. He spent large parts of the journey reading, listening and talking about Ambedkar's ideology .
By 1992, he had come up with Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), a people's movement against the social evil. “I realised that the fight is not against the bucket and the broom. The battle was deeper with roots in the caste system,“ says Wilson, a political science graduate.
Manual scavenging was banned by an Act in 1993. In 2013, another Act with more bite was passed. But the practice continues, especially in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharasthra and Tripura. As per 2011 socioeconomic caste census, 1.82 lakh households in rural areas reported themselves as manual scavengers. The 2011 House-listing and Housing Census found that there are about 26 lakh `insanitary' latrines in the country .
The Magsaysay citation details Wilson's work: filing PIL in Supreme Court on the issue, raising awareness, training local leaders and volunteers for the movement.“The SKA has liberated around 3,00,000 scavengers,“ it says. “The entire cleaning of sewage must be mechanised.No worker should stop into the drain. Stop killing us,“ says Wilson. The Magsaysay citation rightly says, “The board of trustees recognizes his (Wilson's) moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.“
None will disagree.
Source: Times of India, 28-07-2016
