Rats' grain stocks are no longer being raided by Dalits of eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is indeed a sign of Dalit emancipation in this part of India
Circa 1975, Dalits in the villages of east Uttar Pradesh lived a very hard life. life during winters was the hardest. Paddy was harvested by the end of October. Wheat was sown by the end of the third week of November. Wages earned during paddy harvesting and wheat sowing would last till mid-January. Farm work was the prime source of livelihood then.
In January and February, no crop would be ripe enough to be harvested. Sugarcane, potatoes, pea and bathua leaves were available, though. Dalits would work on a sugarcane farm; turning sugarcane into jaggery was a prime job in winters. Dalits would often claim sugarcane juice as wages along with some course cereals. Dalits drank sugarcane juice in litres.
landlords would take potato crop for their use. Dalit families, too, would put potato crops on their small plots of land. luckily, in most part of Uttar Pradesh, the notion of landless Dalits was irrelevant. Most Dalits owned some land. Majority of them, however, fell into the marginal farmer category and hence they needed to work on landlords’ fields. Maybe, a 10th of Dalit families lived on their own.
Pea, mustard and bathua leaves played a great role in Dalits’ lives. Dalits would neither be able to add pulses nor vegetables to their menu. Pea, mustard and bathua leaves were plucked in abundance by women. In afternoon, herds of Dalit women would plunge into fields plucking those leaves. landlords would often shout at them. Those leaves were cooked and eaten with rice or bread. I would explain Dalit bread/rice separately in the coming weeks.
Since wages and crops grown on their own land were not sufficient enough to last the entire year, Dalits deployed other methods to add to their family stocks. Ask elderly Dalit women in the east Uttar Pradesh villages about their occupations in the past, and almost all would say —katiya/biniya. The term katiya stands for harvesting and biniya for collecting the leftover grains.
leftover grainsIJ While a large number of workers, most of them women, would harvest wheat/paddy, a fleet of young girls and elderly women (who are unemployable) would follow the harvesting army of workers and collect leftover grains. At times, grains gathered by a biniya person can equal the wages earned by the main worker. Often, landlords would suspect that the workers leave grains deliberately behind so their own kith and kin could collect.
The other method of grain collection involved raiding rats’ grain storages. Rats are intelligent being and they too gather grains for future. Dalit boys that hunted rats would dig out the grains rats store for their wellbeing. Grains collected from rats’ holes were called Mus-Kail. Often, Dalit kids would sell that grain to the nearby grocer and use the money as pocket expenses. Sometimes, they would bring those food grains home and hand them over to their parents.
Recently, when I visited my village in eastern Uttar Pradesh, I was told that Dalits had stopped raiding rats’ grain storages. Also, Dalits have stopped doing biniya.
What a feeling watching Dalits emancipate.