'Mother India' rerun in a big brothers' badland

Sonpatia Kunwar is nowhere concerned with 1957 epic blockbuster Mother India but by knowing her story, seasoned film director Mehboob Khan’s soul would have pleased in his grave! Why not when, instead of getting impressed with some one’s resolve and portraying it as reel life story, a real life character relives the story after decades the film won a million heartsIJ

The story of a 35-year-old woman of Ponchi village near Satbarwa block of Palamu district starts when one morning she stepped into her 10 katta of farmland by holding a tiller’s handle herself. Her decision to plough the fields with pair of bullocks and petite son Chotu and daughter Parvati along her side was not smooth. 

“They denied me the permission for ten long years citing heavenly troubles would fall on the rest of the villagers if I plough the fields. Elders of the village and higher caste people fought with me. Even my own relatives did not support my act which pushed me and my children near to starvation,” Sonpatia narrates her saga.

As the acts of ploughing, tilling and making thatched roof by a woman are considered inauspicious and are in complete disagreement with self made rules among rural communities across the country—followed more vigorously in Jharkhand—Sonpatia had to face a strict no-no from society’s big brothers. The step becomes doubly difficult when one happens to be from ‘Bhuiyan’ sub-caste, standing at the lowest strata of the Scheduled Caste community.

“It was getting difficult to meet my two ends when my husband passed away in 2003 due to illness. I wanted to do farming but did not have money to pay the labourers. This forced me to work as a domestic help for 10 years with petty in return. It was insufficient and finally I took the step about one year ago,” says Sonpatia with tears in her eyes as if her struggle is melting out.   “We were small when our father died. Not much were left with us and often we had to go to bed hungry,” said Parvati, now a Class X student of Satbarwa High School. Plight of her children compelled Sonpatia to go ahead with her determination which came with heavy cost.The panchayat or kangaroo court of a kind issued diktat of her exile from the village, slapped her with monetary fines and even mulled to snatch her small piece of farmland, the only asset left with the widow.

The ordeal sounds graver when list of villagers also include Manoj Bhuiyan, former Member of Parliament from Palamu. Incidentally, he also comes from the caste Sonpatia belongs to and houses yards away from hers but had little time to listen to her plight and intervene. “It was unforeseen for the villagers that a woman is hell-bent to plough fields. The panchayat ordered her exit but she refused to leave the village and contacted the local administration and some social organisations active in the area. Her resistance bent the village panchayat and the mukhia, sarpanch etc. Other powerful villagers of higher caste agreed to provide her labourers or plough her fields along with theirs. In return, she would do paddy re-plantation work in their fields,” said Jitender Prasad, a member of the village panchayat. Though Sonpatia could not succeed in breaking the shackles of the society completely and in removing artificial bars imposed on women, the commitment shown forced her re-entry into mainstream as fellow villager. 

“She was on the verge of getting a witch tag which could have been worse. She now does farming on her fields and produces vegetable, potato etc apart from paddy,” said Pooman Viswakarma, a worker of ‘Ponchi Ekal Nari Sahayata Samooh’, the organisation that stood up with her and mobilised others for her fight.