On the border between Bankura and Purulia districts of West Bengal, there lies a village called Ushardihi; 142 kilometres to its north is a census town called Karmatar.
Today Karmatar is part of Jharkhand but in the 19th century, it was part of the undivided Bengal Presidency and the adoptive home of social reformer and educator Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar for the last two decades of his life. In this piece, though, Karmatar is the touchstone, a reference point.
Recently, Ushardihi was in the news for a play titled Biddesagar.
Biddesagar is another way of saying Vidyasagar. “It sounds like someone dear, kaachher manush,” says Adrija Dasgupta, whose theatre group Uhinee Kolkata produced the play. “He was indeed so to all those living on the margins of society,” she adds.
Acting workshop organised by theatre group Uhini Kolkata
“To escape city life, Vidyasagar had purchased an old house and a parcel of land in Karmatar around 1870,” says Prabir Mukhopadhyay, who has edited the collection titled The English Writings of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. The move to Karmatar happened little more than a decade after the Santhal Rebellion, a culmination of protracted exploitation of the Santhals at the hands of the British administration and its lackeys, local moneylenders as well as zamindars, many of whom were Bengalis.
According to Mukhopadhyay, the Santhals were apprehensive of Bengalis. He continues, “They were suspicious of Vidyasagar too initially, but that changed with time and a prolonged humane interaction unlike any that the people of the area had known to expect from an outsider. Vidyasagar had a homoeopathy practice here. He tried to educate the people here. He became a part of Santhali society.”
The story goes that after spending the whole day trying to sell corn cobs at the local bazaar, on their way home, the Santhals would offload their unsold wares at Vidyasagar’s house. By evening, his house would be full of bhutta. Well aware of this, the women and children would flock to his place, and as they munched on the corn, Vidyasagar would teach them a variety of things.
The kindness of this great big man, his fellow feeling, all of it must have seeped into the soil and spread. It must have been what drew Bhaswati Ray to Ushardihi in 2018.
Bhaswati, 67, had been a software engineer in the United States for almost all of her professional life. Post retirement, she could have settled there or in Calcutta, closer to her own roots, but she moved to Ushardihi and started a school named Lekha Porar Pathshala.
“At Uhinee Kolkata, we travel to villages across India and conduct workshops, pick a locally relevant theme or icon and tell those stories. The children tell us what they know, what they would like to sing, recite or perform,” says Adrija. She continues, “Bhaswatidi had heard that we organise theatre workshops for children. So she invited us to her school.”
Subir Mistry, a theatre professional who led the workshops, says, “There
was no set script. We would narrate the story to the children in Bangla, give them a sense of what the dialogues could be and they would come up with dialogues in Santhali. The whole play was staged in Santhali.”
Bhaswati’s school stands on the edge of Ushardihi. It is surrounded by three other villages — Jamdoba, Poroshibona and Kaduri. Children from all four villages come to her after their day school is done. Here they go over the lessons taught at school, learn to use the computer, engage in arts, music and yoga.
In the schools of Ushardihi, students speak Santhali, which they refer to as hor bhasha, but the lessons are in Bengali. Bhaswati says, “Hor means ‘human’ in Santhali.” School students here know of Vidyasagar and of his entwined history with the region. So, when Uhinee Kolkata showed up, ready to create a play involving children of the area, Vidyasagar was the natural choice.
Bengali alphabets
The play itself is not exactly about Vidyasagar the man, but one of those countless legends about him. How he walked his talk. This story goes like this: a couple at a railway station, just off the train, looking for a coolie to help them with their luggage. A good while later, one person comes forward to help them. Later, while on their way to their destination, they ask him who he is, and he introduces himself. The original story was titled Nijer Kaaj Nije Koro, meaning, do your own work.
In Biddesagar, an army of children — close to 30 of them, between 7 and 12 years — enact every element of this story, from train, to guard, to couple, to Vidyasagar. The toddlers sit on stage, up front, and draw away in their books. Most of them belong to the Santhal community.
The cast of Biddesagar with members of Uhini.
The station in Vidyasagar’s story was possibly Karmatar. Today, the same has been named after him. In 2012, Brian A. Hatcher, who is a professor of theology at Tufts University, US, and author of Vidyasagar: The Life and Afterlife of an Eminent Indian, visited Karmatar. In an email to The Telegraph, he recalls the visit.
Hatcher says, “From the Karmatar station, it is a short walk to Nandan Kanan, Vidyasagar’s house. On one side of the entry gate, the older charitable dispensary had collapsed and next to that pile of bricks was a new concrete dispensary. On the other side of the gate, there was a girls’ school. I had only just gotten in through the gate when I noticed from afar how Vidyasagar’s memorial bust had become obscured by foliage. I met the caretaker, who showed me every nook and cranny, from a bed frame used by Vidyasagar to his kitchen and latrine. The gardens were growing well, and a family lived in a newer, makeshift house beside Vidyasagar’s residence. All over the grounds, there were mango and other trees, dated to Vidyasagar’s time.”
Bidyut Pal, who is the general secretary of the Bengalee Association in Bihar, says, “Sachindranath Sen, the vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, had entrusted us with the task of finding Vidyasagar’s residence in Karmatar. Nandan Kanan was discovered in 1973. Then, this place was part of Bihar.”
He remembers the day. He says, “While asking around, it seemed as if no one had even heard of Vidyasagar. Only one elderly Santhal man came forward and said, ‘Tora ki Ishwar deo’tar bari khujchish?’”
It was that elder who led them to the dilapidated house hidden by greens gone wild. The people of the area referred to it as “Maliya Bagan” after the mali or gardener who lived there. Turns out, the property belonged to one Mallick family. Next, the Vidyasagar Raksha Samiti was formed to do whatever was needed to be done to buy and rededicate the house to Vidyasagar.
Since then, the Samiti has been busy with social work centred around Karmatar. Nandan Kanan is now a museum. It also has a seminar hall and manages over 100 adult literacy programmes in the state of Jharkhand.
Bidyut adds, “Nandan Kanan is proof that Vidyasagar never stopped working. It is from Karmatar that he would travel to the malaria-infected villages of Burdwan and treat patients. He also wrote the sixth edition of Barnaparichay right here.”
In the meantime, in Ushardihi, seven-year-old Dinesh is rather chuffed. He with the reputation of keeping a distance from books and lessons has just played the lead in a play named after a very learned man. He, Dinesh, son of daily wagers, ace crab catcher. It seems he was chosen for his broad forehead.