August 31st, 1990. Moti Lal Nehru Hospital, Allahabad.
A large gathering of over a 1000 students was keenly watched by 100 armed policemen. The policemen had orders – not to allow the March. The then Central Government had decided to come down heavily on protestors against its prized decision to implement “The Mandal Commission Report”.
The report (which most urbane, educated and mainly upper-caste youth saw as flawed) talked about giving reservations in jobs to people not on the merit but on their caste. The logic being that the lower caste people have been oppressed for a long period of time and they need this crutch to share better opportunities.
The Flaw -
Downtrodden, oppressed – yes, they are. They also need an additional support and understanding. But they need self-esteem and dignity too (which definitely have taken a hit over centuries of oppression).
How would this happen? Wouldn’t it by “enabling” them through education? Education is the key. They should be provided free education, free books, and free meals as they attend schools. If we fail here, we would keep failing to enable them. No matter how much and how long you reserve jobs for them. Providing out-of-turn reservations in jobs at best would incentivise kids to take up studies but at the same time it would dent their sense of equality, the thing for which they all have been striving for centuries!
But the leaders who look at them as “vote-banks” wouldn’t agree. They would keep doling out short-term measures to woo the community. So what if these measures can only be enjoyed by select few who already had the opportunity and means to reach till college!
Coming back to that day, the procession of 1000 students which even had a representation of 30 odd women was finally allowed to march - but for only 50 metres! This of course was not in the mind of all of us who had decided to do something about the issue and led by our leaders, we kept walking. As the police resistance grew, the leaders started lying on the ground to protest. Soon most of us were lying on the Civil Lines road.
The message went through to the police and soon the police-vans arrived to take us to the big jail – The Naini Central Jail. While we were taken, we were routed through the posh and happening areas of Allahabad like Civil Lines, High Court, C.S.Azad Park, Hindu hostel etc – this enabled us to shout slogans through-out these areas. May be, there was a tacit support to us from some unexpected quarters in the Police!
Roughly 500 of us reached Naini Jail where our leader Ratan Dixit (a Sabhasad, Editor of “Pragati-Manjusha” and also the Organiser of “Nyay Morcha”) told us to give voluntary arrests. It would have been a tough decision for most students as they were concerned about their parents’ reaction, but for a Hostler like me, it was easy.
103 of us got arrested.
We were taken to barracks which were ear-marked for “B” grade prisoners. We were given a dari, a blanket, a bed-sheet, a surahi and a mug. We were free to do anything inside the barrack except whistling (as it was one of the ways in Jail by which people alert the inmates in case there is a fight or a jail-break).
The officer who was assigned to us seemed to be a helpful one and provided us tea on our request even at an odd hour. His kindness extended further as he provided us with a Colour TV set! We ate Poori-Bhaji, watched some TV and retired for the day. It was a real jail, I was a real inmate and yet -I had a sound sleep!
Morning saw some of the guys managing “Neem-Datoons” for us. Then there was a ‘sad’ breakfast followed by discussions of hunger-strike over the food quality. But it was concluded that it isn’t a major issue when we were there for a bigger cause.
The romanticism of fighting for a cause was there but then there were hard realities too and I confess, like many others I too was worried about the forthcoming exams.
Mr. Dixit suggested that we give application and he would persuade the higher officials to allow us to take exams, in case our stay extended in the jail. So far, we had no clue how long we’d be imprisoned.
As the day progressed we were informed that a group of visitors is out there waiting for us. We were taken into a huge compound with high-rise boundary walls and as the gate opened, imagine our joy as hoards of students, parents, university officials rushed inside – most of them bringing with them bunch of bananas!
Soon the compounded was full of anti-mandal, anti-establishment slogans and also - banana peels!
It was a sentimental moment as the parents including mothers applauded our action and encouraged us to stick to the cause. This was the ultimate satisfaction.
We were then all taken back to our barrack where after lunch we busied ourselves in cultural activities – few in the group displayed their talent. Done with it, we had a meeting on how to carry forward our movement. As often happens in life, people were split between using violent measures and non-violent ones. The final decision reached was to stick to a non-violent protest.
Before the evening could set in, we were taken by surprise when we were told that we are being released! It seems someone had taken a bail for all of us. That finally drew curtains on my one day jail-yatra and arguably on my small few moments of glory.
One of the things which I particularly liked about Naini Central Jail was that there were certain life-term prisoners who after their good conduct were given authority to maintain discipline in the jail. These people referred to as “Pukka” were even given a uniform and played a big role in maintaining law and order right there, among their fellow hardened criminals. Strange are the ways of life, sometimes!
(An autobiographical account)
