Maganbhai is No More

The boy named Magan Kalesh, however, wanted to try something new out instead of doing just back breaking labour on construction sites and so with his friend he joined a roadside hotel as a dishwasher. Soon Magan through dint of hard work rose to become a sweet maker. He became so expert in this that his employer took him and his friend to Mumbai to work in his shop there.

In Mumbai the boys used to do their work and then take off on trips around the city to see and taste its many faceted delights. On one such trip they went to the airport and seemed to have strayed into a restricted area from where they were apprehended by the security staff.

When asked to furnish their residence address and the name of their local employer they gave false information fearing that their employer would get angry and so landed up in a juvenile home. They spent six months in the juvenile home before being set free as somehow their employer came to know about their whereabouts.

Their employer then sent Magan to Hongkong to work in his sweet shop over there. But after just one month's work he was made to work as a domestic worker in cleaning and dusting the flat in which the employer used to stay. Magan was not allowed to go around the city like he used to in Mumbai.

This was too much for him and he forced his employer to send him back threatening to drown himself if he didn't. After reaching Mumbai he decided he had had enough and came back to Alirajpur after five years to a hero's welcome from his family.

This was in 2000 and he was promptly married off to a girl by his family who hoped that this would curb his waywardness. However, Magan continued to lead the life of a vagabond and would have gone the violent criminal way as many other Bhil youth of Alirajpur do if he had not met Shankar Tadval, the leading activist of Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath, one day. The idea of engaging in activism towards the establishment of a strong independent Bhil identity struck a harmonious chord in Magan's rebellious mind and he became an enthusiastic participant of this movement.

This was the time when considerable amount of publication was being undertaken in Bhilali and Hindi on the subject of Bhili culture and so it was decided to set up a stall in Alirajpur to sell these publications. To finance this stall it was made into a combined book store cum tea stall. Magan with his experience in hotel management took charge of the stall.

Not surprisingly, Magan was not one to be tied down to this role for a long time and soon the shop was shut down and Magan became a roving activist once again. At about this time the administration in Alirajpur took it into its head to institute mass community marriages of Bhil couples to curb the tendency among them to elope and settle down without any formal marriage.

The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath opposed this move on the part of the administration as a blatant attempt to Hinduise the Bhils and obliterate their distinct culture. All such mass marriage events were vigorously opposed and Magan went to jail several times and eventually succeeded in getting the administration to desist from its campaign.

Magan went from strength to strength as an activist of the sangathan with broad responsibilities ranging from rights based work to development and also when the need came to intellectual production in the form of articles and poems. He immersed himself whole heartedly in the Bhils' struggles for a place in the sun and recognition by the mainstream of the positive aspects of their anarcho-environmentalist life and culture.

Over the past two decades he initiated many important actions of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Rights Act, Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, Right to Education Act, Insterstate Migrant Workers Act, Control of Usury Act and the like and became a shining mainstay of the KMCS and the Adivasi Ekta Parishad and the modern day Bhil struggles for justice.

He was extremely active in the struggle for rehabilitation of silicosis victims working in stone crusher factories in Gujarat. He was instrumental in collecting evidence for the case in the Supreme Court. In fact some of the factories that caused silicosis came to a grinding halt because of the collective struggle in which Magan played a very active role including surveying families and tracing factories and at one point he had to work underground to approach factories to avoid factory owners' backlash.

Unfortunately, we lost him prematurely yesterday to a long illness that had afflicted him over the past year or so and are all devastated. Rest in power comrade they don't make them like you anymore.