Banwari Manjhi (middle) shares the dais with chief minister Nitish Kumar, district magistrate Sanjay Singh and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi during the flag-hoisting ceremony at Musahari in Patna on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Balapar Musahari, Aug. 16: On an occasion like Independence Day rarely does one come across a scene where the chief minister of a state and his cabinet colleagues stand on the sidelines while a commoner hoists the National Flag.

But Bihar’s Balapar Musahari hamlet, located around 30km south-west of Patna and home to over 50 Mahadalit families, witnessed that at a function organised to mark the 64th anniversary of India’s independence. In the presence of chief minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi and cabinet colleague Shyam Rajak, one Banwari Manjhi, a 66-year-old Mahadalit and a farm labourer, was invited to unfurl the Tricolour.

The function was part of the state government’s move to organise Independence Day functions in 28,799 Mahadalit hamlets of Bihar, where a resident was asked to hoist the National Flag.

Of the 22 castes falling under the Scheduled Caste category, the state government has accorded 21 of them the status of Mahadalits. The government considers people belonging to these 21 castes as the most backwards among Dalits. Mahadalits constitute around 10 per cent of the state’s population of 10.38 crore.

Clad in white dhoti, kurta and a Gandhian cap, Manjhi unfurled the Tricolour amid thunderous applaud of around 400 villagers, majority of whom belonged to the Mahadalit hamlet. As it was a first-time experience for Manjhi, he faced problem handling the ropes of the flag but Nitish stepped forward to help the elderly man unfurl.

It soon began to drizzle. Villagers, however, stood firm in their places and while some took out their umbrellas, the majority used the chairs as cover. “How can I leave the venue before completion of the ceremony?” said Chameli Devi, a Mahadalit, watching hoisting of the Tricolour for the first time in her life. Standing beside her was Sanjho Devi, in her mid-twenties, who didn’t even know the significance of the occasion. “It is August 15,” she said, but Sanjho, could not explain the importance of the day. Twenty-year-old Dukhan Manjhi, an illiterate farm labourer, braved the rain to attend the occasion. “Someone told me that now people from our community would hoist the flag. Hence, I took a day off from work because such a thing had never happened in our village,” he said.

Once the National Anthem was over, Modi and Rajak, sensing people were braving the rain, cut short their speeches handing over the microphone to Nitish who then went on to elaborate the importance of the occasion. His gesture appeared to be correct, as many in the crowd didn’t know the importance of August 15.