Dakxin Bajrange Chhara (Author Profile)
Who are the Chharas? In this interview, the author describes in detail the history of the Chhara community as a nomadic community that was forced into an urban settlement in Ahmedabad by the British in 1931, under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed after independence, but the Chhara community continued to reside in a particular neighborhood of Ahmedabad just opposite the settlement where they were forcibly confined (today referred to as Chharanagar).
Founding of Budhan Theatre: The Budhan Theatre group was founded in 1998, as the first and only theater group to be led and run by members of the Chhara community. The creation was inspired by the arrival of G.N. Devy and Mahashweta Devi in Chharanagar.
Community members worked together to create a play inspired by the death of a young Bengali man, Budhan Sabar, in police custody. Budhan Sabar was a member of the Khedia Sabar community, also a Denotified Tribe. The play was first performed in Chharanagar, but has been performed in many other locations in subsequent years.
A documentary was made about the Budhan Theater group, called Acting Like a Thief, in 2004. A comprehensive educational resource related to that documentary film can be found here.
On DNTs, OBC, and SC/ST Designations: In postcolonial India, most Adivasi communities have been classified as "Scheduled Tribes" (ST), and granted certain welfare and affirmative action protections. However, the Chhara community has been classified as an "Other Backward Caste" (OBC), which means it does not receive the same support. The author describes his frustration at that at length below:
AA: The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed immediately after Independence in 1949. Do you really think you are decriminalised?
DBC: I don’t believe that we are completely decriminalised. And this is not just about the Chhara community, but around two hundred DNT communities around India constituting some 10-crore people, either still roaming around or living in slums or near railway stations or sewages—these people are looked upon as thieves even today by the government as well as the people. I don’t think the colonial stigma has completely gone away from these communities. It is still there, lurking.
What the British did was to make these communities ‘notified’, but the task of criminalising them was the making of independent India. The elite leaders of the newly independent India did not pay much heed to these communities and considered them criminals. The impact of such an attitude is such that, even today, there is no policy at either state of central level for the welfare of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes. Certain things were shaken up, thanks to the efforts of the community in protesting, making theatre, and raising their voice. But still, no single policy is in place for the welfare of DNT communities. Even today, political parties point us towards the moon and tell us, ‘That is your roti. We shall give it to you someday.’ The person belonging to the DNT community looks at the roti, but he has never tasted it. He salivates looking at the roti. And that saliva has only benefitted the political parties in the form of votes. And this is a brutal reality. I have been involved in political activism for 20 years, and I see that all the governments take so much time in solving this issue. Another reason for our oppression is that the government put us into the OBC category while we should have been put into the SC or ST category. OBC category has a lot of middle-class people, and some of them are very powerful. That’s why we have never been able to compete with them. That’s why we never get jobs and other benefits from the government. I believe that this was a criminal act, of including DNT communities into OBC rather than the SC or ST categories. That’s what we have been fighting for lately. We believe we will be truly independent when we get a constitutional guarantee from the government. And this guarantee can be achieved by including us into SC or ST categories, or having a different schedule altogether with a specified budget and welfare schemes. (source)
Budhan Bolta Hai. "In autobiography of Dakxin Bajrange Chhara. It includes five of Budhan Theatre's plays. The book is a personal account of his own life and the personal journey of Budhan Theare in Chharangar. It shows the DNT community how to sustain theatre against all forces working against them. The book was awarded the national Mahatma Gandhi Bi-yearly Award in Creative Writingi in Hindi for 2010-2011 by the National Human Rights Commision. The awards ceremony will be in 2014."
The book can be read in Hindi from Bhasha Research here