feeds from sacw.net
print versionby Shahid Amin
IT IS DIFFICULT TO capture the voices of peasants from our colonial and pre-colonial pasts, for peasants of those times didn’t write, they were written about. Petitions and Memorials framed by scribes, confessions wrenched in police lock-ups, depositions nervously uttered before Magistrates—these are the usual conduits through which the voices of ordinary folk make their way into historical records. In a few instances, it could be a jeevni, the autobiographical account of an exceptional, literate peasant, that illuminates the lives of the unlettered—those who produce goods and services, not documents. It is rare indeed when thousands of peasants seek out a Mahatma-in-the-making and recount in telling detail the onerous conditions under which they toiled for the nilhé—the indigo sahibs—of Champaran.
