Dead Man Walking

 

Dead Man Walking

 

 

He was born in 1955. He died in 1975.

But, on 30 July, 1976 he stood in front of the Lekhpal!

Was it a dead man walking? As a ghost!?!

It was a cool and drizzly day on 30, July 1976. A young farmer in his early twenties went to the tehsildar office at Azamgarh District in Uttar Pradesh. He stood in front of the lekhpal (low-ranked bureaucrat) and asked for his residence, caste and income certificates. He needed these documents in order to apply for a loan at a bank against his ancestral property at Khalidabad that belonged to his father. He needed the loan to start a handloom business in his village named Amilo.

The young farmer said that he needed the proof of identity of Lal Bihari of Amilo village in Azamgarh District. The lekhpal looked at the man first and then at the village records of Amilo and said “Lal Bihari died last year.” At first, the young farmer thought that the lekhpal was joking. But then, the lekhpal showed a piece of paper which said that after the death of Lal Bihari in 1975, his one bigha (one-fifth of an acre) of land had been devolved to his uncle.     

The young farmer turned pale for a few seconds, and then filled with demonic rage and his eyes bloodshot, he thumped the desk and thundered “I am Lal Bihari of Amilo.” 

The lekhpal had the fright of his life! Dead man walking? As a ghost!?!

For the next eighteen years, the young farmer, Lal Bihari of Amilo, was pitted against the bureaucracy and officialdom trying to prove that he was alive. But bureaucracy had documented his death. While the officialdom wanted to contend that Bihari was “officially dead,” Bihari wanted to establish that he was a walking (living) man wrongly “declared dead.”

What happened after eighteen years is now history!

In the next eighteen years Lal Bihari learnt how hard it was in the bureaucratic set-up of his land for an officially “declared dead” individual to establish that he was wrongly “declared dead.” Bureaucracy has trained itself to turn to blind eye or a deaf year to its own lapses. Instead of acknowledging lapses, it sadly tries to cover-up lapses by projecting falsehood as truth!

Lal Bihari, the common peasant versus the powerful District Administration of Azamgarh. Real drama! Or, is it an epic?

One of the first things that Lal Bihari did was to kidnap his nephew (brother’s son). Not being a seasoned kidnapper, Bihari did not know what to do with his young victim. Therefore, everyday they went to watch movies. The victim’s parents maintained a studied silence. A frustrated Bihari smeared his nephew’s shirt with goat blood and sent it to his nephew’s parents. If his nephew’s parents would have registered a case against him then he could prove that he was alive. Strangely, the nephew’s parents did not complain to the police station. The kind-hearted kidnapper let go the child to his parent’s house.

Why Bihari kidnapped his nephew and why his nephew’s parents did not lodge a complaint forms the sub-plot of this drama!

Next, Lal Bihari arranged for his own funeral and subsequently applied for a widow pension for his wife hoping that the government would rectify the mistake upon seeing him alive. But this theatrics was also in vain.

Bihari had to conjure something big and glaring. At this point, he met a politician named Shyam Lal who became his Guru. The guru advised the disciple to openly call (introduce) himself as Mritak (deceased). The insane idea appealed Bihari so much that he not only started introducing/addressing himself as Mritak (Late) Lal Bihari but also started the Mritak Sangh, an association of the living declared dead. But there was a problem. The association had only one member – Late Lal Bihari!

Bihari’s story appeared in a regional newspaper called the Swatantra Bharat and the article drew the attention of the local MLA who raised the issue in the UP Assembly. Lal Bihari sat on a dharna outside the Assembly in Lucknow. As the drama unfolded, Bihari got a visitor pass to enter the assembly when it was in session. He heroically stood up in the visitor’s gallery when his issue was under discussion and shouted “Mujhe Zinda Karo.” The Marshalls had him thrown out of the assembly!

Two extreme steps that Bihari took brought him into national focus. In 1989, he sold his property to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Allahabad against former Prime Minister V P Singh. When the results were declared Bihari himself was surprised – the dead man had got 1600 votes! Lal Bihari had become a national figure. In 1989, he thought of an even more outrageous idea. In 1989, he first filed his nomination papers against Rajiv Gandhi in Amethi and then promptly filed an application for countermanding the elections, as he (the candidate) was dead. The election was not countermanded! But the tragic-comic story of Lal Bihari attracted too much attention; much to the discomfiture of the Azamgarh District Administration.

After 18 long years of struggle, finally, in 1994, Lal Bihari was declared alive by the court! Today, Lal Bihari’s Mritak Sangh has 20000 members. The association helps people like Bihari to seek justice who have been declared dead by the family members in the lure of property.

Now we come to the sub-plot this drama. How and why was Lal Bihari declared dead in the first place? Therein lies the sub-plot filled with greed, treachery and unscrupulousness. His own brother had bribed the tehsildar’s khatuni (record-keeper) to declare Bihari dead on the official papers and transfer one-fifths of the land to them. The kanungos, naib tehsildars and tehsildar are also in connivance. No wonder, the brother’s family didn’t complain when Bihari kidnapped his nephew!

Today, Shyam Lal Kanojia, Panchu, Deepchand, Ram Lallak, Paltan Yadav are all members of the Mritak Sangh. Like Lal Bihari, they have all been wrongly declared dead due to treachery of their own close relatives. Lal Bihari is fighting for them. His theatrics and gimmicks are still intact.  For instance, he once convinced a blind person who was declared dead to contest the Lok Sabha elections.  “Andha kanoon ke liye andha umeedwar” (a blind candidate for the blind law), he declared grandly!

Experience has taught Bihari that it is easy to declare a living person dead. Experience has also taught him that it is a staggering task for a living person to prove that he is not dead!

Dear reader, the enormity of the task accomplished by a simple village farmer is exactly what prevents us from describing the life of Lal Bihari as a drama. In terms of its magnitude, heroism, murky plots and sub-plots and its themes, the saga of Lal Bihari of Amilo village is fit to be called an epic – a subaltern epic.

The dead man from Amilo is now walking, trying to raise more “dead” people back to life!

 

Neethi Acharya III BA