The men at Bhinde ka Paar were most voluble in expressing support. And they were all old men since the younger ones had gone to Gujarat for work. When I asked them about calling the young ones back for polling day, they all assured me that each and everyone would be back, so I should have no worries on that score. This was quite a relief since Bhinde ka Paar villagers belong to the same clan as Amin Khan. And if they could defy his pressure, I was sure that others, too, could.
From Boothiya it was a quick run to Mapudi, a village for which I have a special regard. One of the highlights of my term as an MP was the case of the near-blind old woman from Mapudi who had been married into a village that became part of Pakistan. During the 1971 war, she and a grandson were left behind while the rest of the family migrated to India. It was only in 2006 that they were reunited, and when I first met her later that summer, she was effusive in her blessings for me. After that, her granddaughter-in-law began to send me a rakhi every year.
When leaving Mapudi, I had informed the Gadra people that we were on our way, but by the time we reached the meeting place, attendance was still very sparse. It was to remain that way through the meeting. It is the biggest village on the border and deeply divided between two rival factions of the BJP. And that division was vividly obvious. As a matter of courtesy, I went to visit Hindu Singh, head of one of the factions, but he was not there. (Throughout the elections, he was to do the dodging act, influenced by—among other things—the Marudi matter involving Hari Singh, the RAS chap who was to be posted in Jaisalmer.)
At Bandasar, it was wonderful to see Sher Mohammed Khan after such a long time. He had called the meeting near his house, but since most of the villagers are away at this time, there was not much of a gathering. He made up for it with his tales and anecdotes, but his son kept a sullen distance. Which did not surprise me: he had asked for a hall near his house, while I had recommended one for the madrasa children. He had taken that as a slight, and would continue to sulk. Sher Mohammed, however, never referred to it.
On the way back to Ramsar, we decided to have a spontaneous meeting at Gagariya. It turned out to be a huge success despite the short notice. But then, it is always easy to have a meeting at Gagariya since there are men from various villages sitting idle all day in the market. They come in the morning and exchange news, gossip, information and political tittle-tattle all day. If they are not in the Gagariya market then they are in Gujarat: that is the local aphorism. We all saw Nathu Khan, once a sarpanch and an influential amongst his clan, keeping to the sidelines. Since he had to be tackled, my companions Shafi and Sawai Singh decided that we would go and visit him at his village home. It must have been past 9 p. m. by the time we reached there. And even as we were trying to win him over, Nathu took off on the fact that I had ignored everybody but Fateh Khan and that now he, too, had ditched us. I told him it was never my intention to deliberately ignore anyone—it was just that Fateh Khan was more aggressive in getting his work cleared. Nathu had a valid complaint, but when it was made clear to him that I was not into playing favourites, he calmed down. Then he abruptly went inside the house, leaving us momentarily flummoxed. He soon emerged with an ajrakh which he draped around my shoulders. Everybody there began to clap—this gesture meant he was at peace with me and would give me support through the elections. Getting him on board was a huge achievement.
24 March 2009
I woke up feeling miserable as I had slept badly through the night. Had to get up twice to throw up. The stress acids had played up again, making me feel sick. I would have been relieved not to have to go out today, but there was no time to waste, and I just could not afford to take a day off.
Shafi came along today, too. He is really very committed to this election. My fondness for him grows every day. We picked up Prem Singh from the outskirts of Gadra. One of the gentlest souls in the desert, Prem Singh is also regarded as a pillar of the BJP here. He has arranged all the programmes in this region and informed people accordingly. It was a surprise when the first meeting was at Panela in the house of a former block president of the Congress. When I questioned Prem Singh about this, he said there was no choice as the villagers had unanimously insisted the meeting be held in that particular house, the Congress family being the most prominent in the village. It was a very friendly meeting, as was the meeting at Tamlor after that. Kalu Singh had organized it well, to the point that I was told not to come back till after the elections. ‘You don’t need to ask us for votes,’ they said.
Went to Hari Singh’s dhani, but he was not there. A former BJP MLA, he had made a lot of money from various road contracts in the last five years, and still ended up supporting the Congress during the Assembly elections. Obviously, he wants more contracts, and so is doing the dodging act. This was the last time I would try and meet him, and I would try to live with it. Went to his village, Jaisindhar, where the meeting was held outside the math. Was surprised to see that the road through the village was ready—rather earlier than expected, I remarked. This is one of the roads that have made the Barmer district top the national ranking in the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). Drove through Jaisindhar to Malana and Khadin, both tiny villages that I had never visited before. It turned out that I was once again the first MP to visit them. Both are very close to the border, and followers of the Sehlau Pir.
We backtracked to get on to the main road and headed towards Munabao. This is the last railway station in India, before the train crosses over the border into Pakistan. And it is here that the Border Security Force and their Pakistani counterpart, the Rangers, conduct their routine meetings, in air-conditioned buildings nestling amidst the sand dunes.
Jaisindhar Station, the venue for the next meeting, was on the way. This was my first meeting here without Teja Ram, a government employee with political ambitions, who is now deep in political trouble ever since his wife, who had been a sarpanch, committed suicide. An educated Meghwal woman, she had won the sarpanch election in a general contest but, on account of domestic stress, she had hanged herself on 8 March 2008. What tragic irony—an educated woman who did not need reservation benefits to win the sarpanch election, hanging herself on International Women’s Day. Teja Ram had been very helpful when the group going on pilgrimage to Hinglaj Mata in Baluchistan had passed through here in 2006. But despite his absence, the meeting here was extremely encouraging, just as it was in Pithakor, the next stop. A number of the residents of Pithakor are migrants from Pakistan, driven here by wars, discrimination, or both. They were emphatic in declaring that they would not ask for anything until after the election—such a change from most of the villages, where the demands keep on increasing as polling day approaches.
To get to the next meeting, at Akli, we had to cross the railway line after Munabao Station, very close to the international boundary. But that would be only if the Border Security Force sentry at the gate allowed us to pass. I did not want to show my MP identity card and pull rank. ‘Let him do his duty,’ I told Shafi and the others who asked me to flourish it. But he seemed to be doing his duty in a most lackadaisical manner, until the villagers sitting at the bus stand and the STD booth approached the Scorpio to greet me. After that, he swung into energetic action. I asked him what would have happened if our car had been carrying a woman about to give birth—would he still have taken as long? Even as he was explaining, we drove off, taking in a glimpse of Pakistan as we crossed the railway line. Maratha Hill—actually a dune—is across the railway line, an Indo-Pak war memorial. At Akli, one man in the crowd kept complaining that nothing had been done for the village. With the volume of his voice, he more than made up for the silence of the others. I reminded him about the railway line that had been restarted and the tube well made operational for the village. The others agreed and tried to quieten him, but he would have none of it. There are some who just will not accept a word contrary to the line they have already chosen. At this meeting I was severely bitten by cow ticks and Shafi laughingly quipp
ed: ‘Obviously, they like jagirdar blood.’
Now, it was back across the railway line and into the deep desert. The road has been constructed by the Border Roads Organisation, and heads off north along the border into the Jaisalmer district. This is the road I had suggested that Aveek Sarkar take when he was joining us from Jaisalmer for the Hinglaj trip in 2006. He had thoroughly enjoyed the drive, he told me later. It also goes through the heart of the infamous ‘border-selling’ racket about which I had complained to the state and the Central governments. A Gurgaon-based company, using fictitious names, had purchased thousands of bighas of land along the border. I personally checked on two of the addresses, and nobody under those names was mentioned in the registration papers. The matter has not yet been solved. Rohiri is one of the villages that has sold the most land, and I went to both parts of it—the one by the roadside as well as the older one on top of the dune.
The demand now was for a mobile-phone tower, as well as justice for somebody who had been named by the Border Security Force (BSF) in a transborder smuggling incident. The BSF officials frequently cook up smuggling incidents to impress their seniors, while allowing bigger fish to get through. The next village, Panchla, too, asked for a mobile-phone tower. Since it was very hot, I insisted we have the meeting in a thatched hut rather than the now-ubiquitous stone-and-concrete hall. It made the heat bearable.
At Sundra, the meeting was at Shyam Singh’s end of the village (Shyam Singh is an influential man who was once a sarpanch). It is a sprawling village and the largest in this part of the desert. During my first election in 1999, it still had a camel-borne polling booth. In fact, until the 1999 elections, a number of villages were serviced by mobile polling booths that were borne on camels, which would travel from dhani to dhani, collecting the votes. The government owned the polling-booth camels, since the authorities did not trust local camels not to run away with the polling booths, I presume. Other forms of mobile booths might have serviced other parts of India, but the desert persisted with its camel till the end of the millennium. Alas! The advent of electronic voting machines (EVMs) has put an end to the camel booths.
From Sundra, we decided to take the dirt track to Boi and then on to Draba. This track was to be made into a tarred road under the PMGSY, but a dispute over its alignment caused an ugly controversy, for somebody had lodged a complaint that the road was being taken through the Desert National Park (DNP). That put an end to all roads in the area. A most contrary decision, since roads had been made through the DNP earlier.
On the way back, Shafi suggested that we surprise Roshan at the village Khalifa ki Bawri. He was indeed surprised since the meeting was scheduled for the next day. Roshan was very effusive but I noticed the absence of some of his relatives who are normally always hovering around him. It was well into the night when we left Khalifa ki Bawri. It was a deserted road, and I put on some of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s qawwalis on my iPod. We listened to a couple of them in silence. As we neared Ramsar, Shafi asked me to make him a copy.
At Ramsar, I found Ganpat Singh Tanu and Wali Mohammed waiting for us. Both are in the Congress, and Wali had been present at the late-night meeting I had had at Amin Khan’s house in 2004. Wali reminded me of that meeting, and the others of the fact that we must do as our leaders tell us. I realized then that there was nothing to gain from him: he would remain active only as a Congress worker and not support me as he had the last time. He had obviously fallen in line with what the leadership—in this case Amin Khan—had told him.
25 March 2009
My last night in Ramsar has come to an end and, after I leave today, I will not be coming back here to stay. As a parting gift, I got to see something truly historical when Sawai Singh brought out his grandfather’s Mauser 7-mm rifle. It is in excellent condition, but what caught my eye were the markings of the Jodhpur palace, with a little plaque saying that it was a present for services rendered against the ‘Makrani marauders’. Before the formation of Pakistan in 1947, a number of raiding parties would criss-cross the desert to steal cattle, grain and of course gold. The Makran coast of Baluchistan was particularly notorious for producing such raiders, and the Makranis maintain that reputation to this day, as my friends in Karachi tell me. I remarked to Sawai Singh that if he recounted those stirring tales of our forebears’ exploits against the Makranis, people would think we’d made them up. It was a treat to see and touch the rifle that had seen so much exciting action.
The first meeting this morning was to be in Detani but Janki had been added at the last moment. It was only when we got there that I realized that Janki is the same village that is also known as Babuguleria, where there had been trouble between two communities—theRajputs and a community of tailors. I was shown a small piece of land in the village, which they had fought over—so it was not a squabble between two communities after all. I wondered why people would break each other’s heads over a bit of land that was hardly Manhattan real estate.
The next meeting, at Detani, was held in the back room of a shop and consisted mostly of thoughts not uttered. It was all gestures and glances. This is Amin Khan’s village, and the fear of his temper runs deep, I thought. So I made it a point to stop at the madrasa near his house on the outskirts of the village. There was nobody there, but the head maulvi called up one of the boys on the mobile and asked him to present me with a shawl before I left. A few years ago, the maulvi had been in the usual trouble of being suspected of cross-border links, as a result of which he had been greatly harassed. Amin Khan had asked me then to help the maulvi.
We were headed for Khaniyani next, and I worried about how the village—especially Jabbal Khan, its moody sarpanch—would react. He had told me not to contest the elections before I had spoken to the people. I had not quite understood him then. But today, he was surprisingly friendly, and I asked whose sparkling Scorpio, without a number plate, was parked outside. He replied that it was his. I then realized that he, too, was one of the sarpanches in the money-making business and could not be trusted. Unless a sarpanch is digging into the development funds there is no way he can purchase a Scorpio. And once the corruption begins, the trust goes, because the sarpanch can auction his services to the highest bidder.
After this, it was back to Khalifa ki Bawri, but for a scheduled meeting. And this morning, it was a completely transformed Roshan, quite different from the one who had met us last night. He was distinctly distant, very to the point in his manner, and not the jocular Roshan that I’d known. Even Shafi observed as much. Haji Hassan, his older uncle, however, was very effusive and presented me with an ajrakh. Since he was terribly hard of hearing, there was not much I could get across to him. I had told Roshan earlier that we would be eating there but not to make anything for me. Still, he had prepared a very tasty dish of kair, the berries that grow on a desert shrub. On my way back from a visit to the shrub outside, I found an interesting fossil rock that I carried in with me. When they asked me why, I told them it was for a friend who likes these things. Roshan was standing in the second or third row near my Scorpio when I told him—loud enough for all to hear—that I had asked him for one favour in all these five years and he had not done that, either. Looking guilty, he asked what it was, and I reminded him that I had asked him to gather ber for me during the season since there is a jungle full of ber shrubs at Khalifa ki Bawri. He grinned sheepishly. The young maulvi, Noor Mohammed, took me for two extra programmes, which prolonged the tour, but they were really worth it, for the villages were so completely off the track. I did not ask them if I was the first MP ever to visit them. They had brought a huge quantity of aerated drinks to Noor Mohammed’s madrasa, which I refused as a matter of principle. These bottled fizzy drinks are unhealthy—especially when compared to local options—and they also add to the expenses.
By the time we reached Pabusri, Haji Hassan had already reached there. His family members are the principals in this village as well. And he was as vocal in his support for me here as he had been in Khalifa ki
Bawri. Next in line was Draba, to sit with Ugam Singh, the most prominent Congressman among the Rajputs in this area. The building of the road to Draba, too, had been stopped because of the DNP complaints. Ugam Singh had been woken up from his nap, so it took him time to get into the right mood. And then it was all about DNP this and DNP that. I told him there was a formula that could be worked out but I could do it only after the elections. He is very close to Colonel Sona Ram, the Congress MP against whom I had contested the previous time.
We drove on dirt tracks through the Desert National Park to Khabdala, and then Bandhera, and at both places the residents constantly complained about something or the other. Since they are from the same clan as my paternal grandmother, there is a deeper relationship involved, and a lot of banter, too. I told Shafi about the 2006 floods incident when I had come to a Bandhera that had been completely cut off from all sides. We had landed the helicopter here to unload relief supplies, and the villagers began to get too close to it. When one of them almost reached the unloading bay at the back, I signalled to the pilot to take off, for others would have come near as well and somebody would have certainly got caught in the tail rotor. Shafi told me afterwards: ‘You cannot keep recounting that incident, it is like a stigma on them.’
Campaign Diary Page 6