Six years back, Varanasi had stunned the entire world by electing Narendra Modi of Gujarat as its parliamentarian and later as the country’s prime minister. Even Arvind Kejriwal, who had come from Delhi to contest against Modi, was accorded respect and he cornered a decent share of votes cast. Then the city astonished everybody when, over the past two years, a few temples and deities were pulled down in Varanasi and Kashi Vishwanath was accorded a commercial identity when hundreds of shivlings and idols were discarded. There was no big noise or big movement.
Now, when the entire city is under lockdown and has lost its pace, a few people have yet again achieved an astounding feat.
A community kitchen has been set up in the city. The cooks belong to the backward and Dalit communities. Those serving the dishes are from the upper classes. The people who are being served are from the poor Dalit and Musahar communities. The most notable thing is that the kitchen is being run by an organization, Jan Mitra Nyas, in association with the All India Brahmin Samaj, whose executive director is from the Kshatriya community, the descendents of Lord Rama. Varanasi, which is regarded as a citadel of Hinduism’s caste system imperatives and also the center of Shraman Culture against caste system, is today transcending caste and creed lines during the global pandemic.
In the vicinity of Goddess Kali temple in Chaukaghat locality situated on the banks of River Varuna in Varanasi City, puris and kachauris are being fried and vegetable dishes being prepared at a massive community kitchen. The hot, cooked food is routinely packed in protective foils and later served to 300 poor and deprived members of 70 families of non-formal sector, apart from 35 migrant labour families. Noodles and tea have been sponsored by the ITC and Tata respectively. Nearly 700kg wheat and Real fruit juice packets have been arranged, while medicines worth thousands of rupees are being distributed. The kitchen’s beneficiaries live at Dhelwariya and Chaukaghat area, which is inhabited by the city’s most poor and deprived sections of people.
This noble work is spearheaded by a couple—Dr Lenin Raghuvanshi and Shruti Nagvanshi.
“While some sell eggs, others run kiosks. They have come from Chandauli district or from Bihar. No one possesses ration card, since they own a house. The real paradox is they do not have anything to eat,” Jan Mitra Nyas’ Dr Lenin Raghuvanshi, who operates the community kitchen in consort with the Brahmin community, stated over telephone. He calls it ‘Raj Dulari Memorial Neo-Dalit kitchen’.
Now, it is time for us to feel startled. Could the community kitchen be categorized as Brahmin and Dalit? When the dismantling of the upper and lower castes is being furthered, then what is meant by ‘Neo-Dalit’? Dr Lenin explains that in reality the process of fostering elimination of democratic gap among different castes is the basic philosophy of Neo-Dalit movement.
Dr Lenin Raghuvanshi has been running the Neo-Dalit movement for some time now, and even organised two major conventions on the subject at Varanasi and Haridwar. Recently, he has conjoined another word “micro minority” with “Neo-Dalit”, notwithstanding the general ignorance of people regarding his concept of Neo-Dalit itself.
He said Neo-Dalit is the concept to converge and bring at one platform all the secular and liberal forces, and upper and lower castes to fight the chauvinistic, communal and fascist ideologies. Divulging the practical side of this idea, he said the time has come for the upper castes, who have been the beneficiaries of the caste system for centuries, to seek forgiveness from its victims.
“This kitchen represents a form of seeking pardon, wherein the members of the upper caste are engaged in giving food with dignity, honour and hope to the deprived and needy sections.”
A journalist Siddhant Mohan had written a story regarding the Neo-Dalit movement wherein he poses a question as to why not the upper caste Hindus, Dalits, Muslims and other deprived sections start a dialogue with and about each other. Such a dialogue is utterly needed to stamp out fascism from the country. This is the core philosophy of the Neo-Dalit movement, which is slowly gaining traction in the university campuses too.
Across the country, a number of organisations are running community kitchens to help the poor people and feeding the deprived and the hungry. This is purely a charitable act, and the irony is that for the first time even the communist parties are also seen indulging in such deeds.
In Varanasi, parties including CPI-ML, a socialist party, and Sanjha Sanskriti Manch are distributing food to the poor. In Delhi too, political organisations subscribing to the communist or Gandhian socialist ideologies are operating similar kitchens.
However, the community kitchen of Jan Mitra Nyas and All India Brahmin Samaj is quite distinct as it is not merely a charitable act. The core philosophy of the kitchen is ‘charity with politics’. The basic idea of encapsulating and inspiring charitable act through a political approach is quite new and fundamental, which translates into the community distribution of multi-vitamin supplements, other nutritional supplements and tea, apart from running the kitchen.
This is how Varanasi springs a surprise.
In the starting days of the lockdown, the Jan Mitra Nyas (JMN) was engaged in paperwork before setting up the kitchen and distributing food items. The initial task of distributing food was then shared by Sanjha Sanskriti Manch and CPI-ML. The Neo-Dalit kitchen idea came much later with its own set of political philosophies, when All India Brahmin Samaj’s Rakesh Ranjan Tripathi came around and social activist Parul Sharma, who lives in Sweden, provided the monetary support.
In the early days of lockdown, the JMN sent letters to the Human Rights Commission and campaigned for the release of prisoners to protect them from coronavirus. This pressure resulted in the UP state government, following a Supreme Court order, releasing 11,000 prisoners on parole. Even earlier, the organization of Lenin Raghuvanshi and Shruti Nagvanshi had been instrumental in facilitating food to the Musahar community, who were on the verge of starvation in Koiripur, Pindra. However, a member of the JMN had to pay a heavy price for this. Mangla Prasad Rajbhar, who had first reported about their starvation ordeal on Facebook, was slapped with a fake case.
Later, it was the turn of the community kitchen. Now, minimum 600 food packets for lunch and dinner are being prepared on a daily basis and dispatched to the needy households belonging to the poor, Dalits and the downtrodden. The future plans are even interesting. The Nyas is in the process of starting counselling for the psychological impact due to the lockdown.
The organisations’ associate and think tank, Mohan Panda has written on the Youth Ki Awaaz platform that the work had already started for launching the counselling sessions to deal with the mental health issues of the migrant labourers, police, paramedical, volunteers, etc.
In the meantime, the kitchen staff is busy preparing lunch and dinner. At the same time, Jan Mitra Nyas distributed 3000 packets of food and juice to children with the support of #CRY and #ITC; 1000 high-quality masks and 1,200 gloves to community workers, health workers, doctors, safaikarmi (sanitation workers) and police; and 105 food packets to most needy people who did not receive any support from anybody. We provided a list of 15,000 families to the state government and the district administrations in ten districts, who then received food grains; two communities received drinking water facilities; 1,235 migrant workers directly received food and other support through our intervention and network.
JMN, a public charitable trust of PVCHR, supported two daily workers from Varanasi and Delhi by providing ₹2,000 for food grain and other essential commodities. PVCHR also provided sanitizers to 700 people, 60 protein packs as nutritional supplement to pregnant and lactating mothers, 2,500 Calcium and vitamin D tablets, 100 multi-vitamin drops to children up to 3 years and 55 folic acid and iron syrup to women. We distributed 12,00 soaps to members of the most marginalized communities and community workers. We also distributed tablets of 200 vitamin C and 300 multi-vitamins with anti-oxidant to community workers. We distributed 1,200 packs of biscuit to children too.
JMN reached 25,000 people in four districts to change knowledge, attitude and practice for hand washing and physical distancing with concepts of empathy and dignity, with the support of staff from CRY, Tata Trust, and the UN Trust Fund for Victims of Torture, and ChildLine, Badaun. Their dedicated staff intervened in 3,000 cases of violation of food security and torture through email petitions, media intervention and phone calls to officials.
We wrote to different stakeholders for raising funds, and we are continuously intervening in cases of human rights violation and supporting survivors of the lockdown. We wrote to Niti Aayog and policy makers for implementation of different schemes immediately after the lockdown on March 25, 2020. Niti Ayog appreciated our effort and the National Commission for Women (NCW) appreciated our advice.
PVCHR also contacted Ms Claudia Roth, Vice President of German parliament for support to India in context of intensive investigation of coronavirus, and the office of Ms Roth wrote further to the Foreign Ministry of Germany to take necessary actions.
Associates of PVCHR mobilized more than 300 people at village-level to support Musahar people and migrant workers. PVCHR received €1,000 from International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) for our work to support torture victims during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Main article (in Hindi) can be accessed here.