Dashrath Manjhi: A source of inspiration

Dashrath Manjhi (1934-August 18, 2007) was born into a poor labourer family in Gahlour village near Gaya in Bihar, India.He is also known as Mountain Man. Dashrath Majhi's wife died without any treatment, because the nearest town with a Doctor was 70 km away from their village in Bihar, India. That could have been a far shorter distance, if not for a hill in between the village and the town.

Dashrath did not want anyone else to suffer the same fate as his wife. So he did the unthinkable. He single-handedly carved a 360-foot-long (110 m), 25-foot-high (7.6 m) and 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) road by cutting a mountain of Gehlour hills with a hammer, chisel and nails working day and night for 22 years from 1960 to 1982. This passage reduced the distance between Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya district from 70 km to just 7 km, bringing him international acclaim.

He died on August 18, 2007. He was given a state burial by the Government of Bihar.


More recently, the Bihar government recommended Manjhi’s name for the Padma Bhushan. The Padma Bhushan was reportedly denied to Manjhi because of claims made by certain quarters in the bureaucracy that he did not actually carve out the hill road single-handedly. Government sources say the forest department had refused permission for the road, claiming that Manjhi had violated regulations by cutting away at the hill without the department’s permission. After Manjhi completed his road, he worked tirelessly for the betterment of his community. Among his other efforts, he managed to persuade nearly 50 Musahar families of his village to settle on government- granted land, although most of them were unwilling to leave their old homes. But when Manjhi started living on the allotted land, the rest followed suit. This new settlement is now known as Dashrath Nagar.



-wikipedia



The Mountain Parted









Every morning, for 22 long years, a frail, diminutive man, barefoot and clad in a loin cloth, would trudge two kilometres to a hillock of solid rock and chip away at it with a hammer and chisel. Bemused onlookers thought he had lost his mind, and he was an object of great fun for village urchins. But the women of the village, young and old, admired him, for his was a labour of love.

Dasrath Manjhi was building a memorial to his wife Phaguni Devi—one that won't ever find a place in hallowed global must-visit lists, but can well be passed down from this generation to the next as a monument of love. A poor man's Taj, literally. Not for its aesthetics, but for the way it symbolises the human spirit's capacity to endure, its indomitability. Dasrath had undertaken a Herculean task, perhaps unequalled in recent human history. The direct beneficiaries may be few—the residents of Gelaur, a remote hamlet in Bihar's Gaya district—but the act itself is a gift to us all: a fable for our times.

Today, a week after his death, Dasrath Manjhi is remembered by everyone in his village as 'Dasrath Baba'. In caste-ridden Bihar, under normal circumstances, he would never have qualified for this title, which only a Brahmin is entitled to. Dasrath was a Musahar, a caste which traditionally ranks among the lowest of the low. Musahars derive their caste name from their unusual occupation—they dig through rat-holes after harvest, and forage for the grain stored by bandicoots (moos in the local lingo) under the ground. When there's not enough grain, they've been known to hunt and eat the bandicoots to keep hunger at bay.

Dasrath eked out a living as a farm hand, toiling in the fields of local landlords on bare subsistence wages. One day, in the early '60s, his wife Phaguni fell ill and Dasrath set off with her to the nearest hospital. She died on the way. If only there was no hill blocking the road to the town, Dasrath would have made it to the hospital in time, and perhaps his wife's life would have been saved.

The villagers of Gelaur had to take a circuitous route and travel 19 km to Wazirganj, the nearest district town. This was because the massive 360 feet long, 25 feet high and 30 feet wide sheer rock came in the way of the shortest possible route between the village and the town.

The situation would have brought about a feeling of resignation or fatalism in the average man—as if God had himself put this giant obstacle in the path of his ailing wife. Dasrath's response was different and radical—at once unthinkable and stunningly simple. He decided to alter geography with chisel and hammer. To cut a road through the huge mass of rock.

After 22 years of back-breaking, single-handed toil, Dasrath finished in the mid-'80s. The mountain had yielded to man. Now, Wazirganj was just about six kilometres away, the people of Gelaur could reach it in under an hour.

His self-set target reached, some villagers advised Dasrath to meet the then chief minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, with the plea to construct a pucca road between Gelaur and Wazirganj. "After all, Lalooji had promised the people of Bihar roads that were as smooth as the cheeks of Hema Malini," recalls Bujhaval Manjhi, a 73-year-old farm hand from Gelaur. "Lalooji did direct his officials to take necessary action. But, as happens with such promises, no action was taken even during the tenure of Rabri Devi." Dasrath might have become a local hero, but his voice counted for nothing with the state government. Dasrath himself remained a humble, self-effacing man, doing nothing to attract publicity for his titanic feat of endurance. It didn't even bother him that the Limca Book of World Records misrepresented his achievement by giving wrong statistics that significantly reduced the size of the rocky hill he cut through, chip by chip.

A few months ago, when an ailing Dasrath was egged on by the villagers to petition Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on their behalf and remind him of Laloo's promise, he went to the CM's 'janata durbar' in Patna. Nitish received him with honour, made arrangements for his medical treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, and even offered Dasrath his own seat at the durbar. If this was a move to bring the CM favourable media publicity, it succeeded admirably.

More importantly, Nitish not only promised the pucca road connecting the village to Wazirganj town, but also a hospital in Gelaur itself—to be named after Dasrath. The land on which the hospital would come up had earlier been allotted to Dasrath, but the typically selfless man would rather that a hospital be built on the plot. It is a poignant irony that just a few weeks later Dasrath himself died at AIIMS—far from the place where he had spent his life in selfless toil, and where he continued to live in obscurity.

The recognition that had been denied Dasrath during his lifetime finally came after his death. The Nitish government arranged to bring his body to Gaya. Dasrath was given a state funeral last Saturday at his village, his body draped in the tricolour and men in uniform serving as pall-bearers. Besides the CM, Bihar assembly speaker Udai Narayan Choudhary and sundry legislators were present. Dasrath's mortal remains were not consigned to the flames but buried in accordance with the Kabir Panthi tradition.

The chief minister paid fulsome tributes to Dasrath's "perseverance and dedication", describing him as "a great soul". But in Gelaur they have a more apt sobriquet. They call him "the man who moved a mountain".




- Outlook


The Man Who Made War on a Mountain



Dashrath Manjhi was given a State funeral last weekend. During his life, however, government indifference remained as much a challenge for him as the rocks of Gahlaur Ghati, says Anand ST Das

FOR THE PEOPLE: Manjhi’s feat will long outlive him
He was ridiculed in 1959 when he started hewing a way through the Gahlaur Ghati hills of Bihar’s Gaya district, some 150 km from Patna. It would take 22 years for Dashrath Manjhi to finish his 360ft-long, 30ft-wide road — little wonder, for he worked alone, his sole tools his chisel,hammer and shovel. What was once a precarious passage just a foot wide is now an avenue that can accommodate cyclists and motorcyclists and is used by the people of nearly 60 villages with great ease. The road has also reduced the distance between Gaya’s Atri and Vazirganj subdivisions from 50km to just 10km. Children from Manjhi’s own Gahlaur and other nearby villages no longer have to walk eight kilometres one way to attend school — they can now study at a school just three km away.

We met Manjhi a few weeks before the cancer that finally ended his life on August 17 forced him to take to his bed. The 73- year-old was frail, but his energy was undiminished as he relived his work on the road. “I knew if I did not do it myself, neither would the government do it nor would the villagers have the will and determination. This hill had given us trouble and grief for centuries. The people had asked the government many times to make a proper road through the hill, but nobody paid any attention. So I just decided I would do it all by myself.”

Before Manjhi’s road, the hill kept the villages of the region in isolation, forcing the villagers to make an arduous and dangerous trek just to reach the nearest market town, or even their own fields. In 1959, Manjhi recounted, this resulted in a family tragedy on the treacherous slope. “My wife, Faguni Devi, was seriously injured while crossing the hill to bring me water; I worked then on a farm across the hills. That was the day I decided to carve out a proper road through this hill,” he told us. The mission he had set himself meant that he had to drop his wage-earning daily work — his family suffered and he himself often went without food. But his wife was not to see the fruits of his labour — a short while later, she fell ill and died as Manjhi could not get her to the hospital in time. “My love for my wife was the initial spark that ignited in me the desire to carve out a road. But what kept me working without fear or worry all those years was the desire to see thousands of villagers crossing the hill with ease whenever they wanted,” Manjhi said. “Though most villagers taunted me at first, there were quite a few who lent me support later by giving me food and helping me buy my tools.” Today, the villagers have nothing but gratitude for Gaya’s mountain man, known almost universally now as Sadhuji.

Dashrath Manjhi belonged to Bihar’s Musahar community, regarded as the lowest among the state’s Scheduled Castes. While other Dalits in Bihar had at least some land rights under the erstwhile zamindari system, the Musahars never enjoyed any such. Nearly 98 percent of the state’s 1.3 million Musahars are landless today. Not even one percent of them are literate, which makes them the community with the country’s lowest literacy rate. For many of them, the day’s main meal still comprises roots, snails or rats, from which the community’s name is derived.


UNDETERRED: Ridiculed at first, Manjhi later became a local hero


After Manjhi completed his road, he worked tirelessly for the betterment of his community. Among his other efforts, he managed to persuade nearly 50 Musahar families of his village to settle on government- granted land, although most of them were unwilling to leave their old homes. But when Manjhi started living on the allotted land, the rest followed suit. This new settlement is now known as Dashrath Nagar. Manjhi’s other efforts have been less successful. Despite his herculean feat, the Bihar government has given him only token appreciation and insincere help.

Himself landless, he made a petition once for property on which to build a hospital. Then chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav allotted him a five-acre plot in a village called Karzania — the people of the village never allowed him to take possession as they were using the land as a grazing ground. More recently, the Bihar government recommended Manjhi’s name for the Padma Bhushan. This never materialised, nor did Nitish Kumar’s promised support for a road Manjhi wanted from Wazirganj to Gahlaur. Government sources say the forest department had refused permission for the road, claiming that Manjhi had violated regulations by cutting away at the hill without the department’s permission. The Padma Bhushan was reportedly denied to Manjhi because of claims made by certain quarters in the bureaucracy that he did not actually carve out the hill road single-handedly. The villagers who benefited from his labour were outraged at these reports.

“Where was the forest department sleeping all these years when Sadhuji was creating history to help thousands of poor villagers? We have seen him from our childhood, hacking at the hill day and night as if he were possessed,” said Raj Kumar, a 30- year-old Gahlaur resident. But Manjhi was unfazed. “What I did is there for everyone to see. When God is with you, nothing can stop you,” he told us as we left. “I will keep working for the development of the villages here so long I am alive. I am neither afraid of any punishment from any government department for my work nor am I interested in any honour from the government.” Brave words, but perhaps only what one would have expected from the man. The government attempted amends by giving him a state funeral last week — but, as he well knew, it is his work that will live on longer than any honour.



Sep 01, 2007


-Tehelka