Swasti Sardar Bhowmick conducts quiz contests in villages across Bengal. The theme is constant: personalities from the Dalit community as well as those from tribal groups who have made a difference. The names are varied — Birsa Munda, Sant Ravidas, Mahendranath Karan, Narottam Halder, Uda Devi Pasi…
This self-appointed task takes Swasti to different corners of the state. Some years ago, she went to Kamdevnagar, a census town in Baharu, South 24-Parganas. She tells The Telegraph over phone from Dhanbad, where she is currently based, “The students were worshipping Mata Savitribai Phule on the occasion of Saraswati Puja. They requested me to attend the ceremony and conduct the quiz.” Another time,
she travelled to a village in Nadia to conduct a quiz on the request of teacher and social activist Mousumi Mondal. At other times, she has been invited to Birbhum, Bankura, Burdwan, Ranaghat, North Barasat, Krishnanagar, Hooghly by social workers.
Swasti is primarily an activist. Caste-based quiz contests are an offshoot of her activism. Her NGO, the Sunderban Babasaheb Ambedkar Women and Child Welfare Trust, is barely three years old. It is yet to come into its own. Apart from the quizzes, it celebrates the birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule on January 3 every year with a cultural event. “Through this organisation, I want to educate Dalits about their own history and culture,” says Swasti.
Her activism requires her to travel constantly. Only days before this interview, she was in Bodh Gaya to join a protest against the Bodh Gaya Temple Community. She says, “While there were international organisations from the UK and US, there were organisations from within India too, from all over — Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Leh, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala…” The spur to the protest? Buddhist representatives, Swasti says, have become a minority in the temple management committee. “I belong to the Poundra caste. I am also a Buddhist.” Poundra is listed as a Scheduled Caste.
Other than Bengal, a large number of Poundras live in Assam, Tripura, the Andamans and Uttar Pradesh.
Swasti’s family is from Nurulyapur in South Barasat in South 24-Parganas. She says, “Unlike many people in our community, my grandfather and my great-grandfather on my father’s side received formal education.”
There is a primary school in Nurulyapur. And there are two high schools, one for girls and one for boys, in neighbouring South Barasat.
In Nurulyapur, says Swasti, no one was coy about giving their children an education in the 1980s. “But we are an agrarian community. Many people were happy to let their children learn about farming rather than going to school,” she adds.
The 46-year-old talks about the kabi sabhas or poets’ gatherings organised by a “village uncle” by the name of Dhurjoti Naskar.
The kabi sabha, name notwithstanding, had one rule. Everyone attending it had to recite original compositions, be it prose or poetry. Even the unlettered would be encouraged to narrate stories from their personal experience. Naskar believed that if one could narrate, they would learn to write too.
Naskar not only organised the poets’ gathering twice a month, he also lent a sympathetic ear to those who were victimised in their day-to-day lives. He tried to find solutions where he could. Other times, he encouraged people to know their rights.
When Swasti decided to conceptualise a caste-based quiz, she took inspiration from Naskar’s kabi sabha. “From there, I learnt about my community. He gave me the reason to not feel guilty for being a Poundra.”
The quiz, depending on who Swasti is collaborating with, is conducted under the open sky or in school buildings or in someone’s courtyard. The target participants are either school students or women across age groups. “But the test is only for those who know to read and write,” she says. At the end of each quiz, which is conducted in a written question-answer format, Swasti spends a good amount of time discussing the answers and elaborating on their context.
Swasti keeps returning to these villages, sometimes twice in a year. She says, “There is a narrative in Bengal that there is no caste here. It is not true. There is caste, and there is discrimination too. Bengalis do not want to see it or recognise it.”