A look at why Chharanagar is the land of lawyers

Chharas say it is the only profession where their past is not a consideration

P Kerim Friedman

Walk through the narrow, twisted alleyways of Chharangar, a small ghetto on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, and you will see dozens of houses with a black lawyers plaque on display. There are over 120 lawyers here. Why are there so many lawyers in Chharanagar? A cynic might say it is because there are so many criminals. But the truth is that becoming a lawyer is one of the few jobs the Chhara can get simply by obtaining the necessary credentials. You don’t have to face the humiliation of getting turned down for a job because people think you are less than honorable. As one Chhara lawyer put it, “I felt that if they are going to keep calling us thieves I might as well learn what the law is.”

This reputation for thieving is a legacy of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 under which the British branded entire communities as “criminals by birth.” Even if there are some thieves in the community, such collective punishment violates the most basic principles of human rights; and yet the Chhara, and over sixty million other De-notified Tribes throughout India, continue to be punished for simply being born into the wrong community.

A Chhara with a master’s in English literature might get turned down for teaching jobs because “Even though we would love to have you, the parents of our students aren’t so enlightened.” Or a business owner might think, but not dare say aloud, “We like you, but how do we know that your friends and relatives won’t use you to steal from us?” And forget about finding an apartment outside Chharanagar. The neighbours won’t speak to you, and eventually the landlord will be pressured to kick you out.

Despite all this, some Chhara manage to make a way for themselves. Over the past five years my wife and I have been filming a talented group of young actors known as Budhan Theatre. Not only have volunteers of Budhan Theatre succeeded as actors, some are going on to the prestigious National School of Drama, but they also do important community development work. They run a library, a children’s magazine, and an informal school. But more than anything else, theatre allows these youth to dream of a world where being a Chhara does not just mean being a lawyer or a thief, but whatever they want it to mean.

P Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology.

Restoring human dignity through arts

Of late, members of Chhara community are sensitising people about themselves

Political power changes the identities of people overnight. It brands communities as desirable or undesirable through law. It makes hell of a life of a community branded as undesirable. The British rule in India wanted to prevent 1857 like people’s risings. It decided to break the network of the natives, itinerants that was behind the rising of the Indian masses.


The British rule notified in 1871 that certain nomadic tribes were ‘criminal’ tribes and they needed to be controlled for the security of the civic people. Sansis or Chharas were one of the ‘criminal’ tribes. Since then, the Chharas, along with other such tribes, have been on the run. They have been kept in settlements. Chhara children were kept away from their parents. Chharas had to work hard for the British rulers. They had to go back to the settlement before evening. This all happened in Chharanagar in Ahmedabad during the last century. They were denotified from the list of ‘criminal tribes’. They live in different parts of the country like Delhi, Bhopal, Mumbai, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, and Ahmedabad. Their total population in Gujarat is about 15,000.


The stigma of criminality has not daunted them. Many Chharas have been tortured in police custody and few have even died in the police custody. Even today in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad they are suspected for any crime held in the neighbouring areas. The police and the society still believe that no community other than Chhara can be behind any crime. If we go to understand the community the facts are different.


In 1998, Chhara children and youth started a library. They have a theatre named after a denotified and nomadic tribe member Budhan Sabar. They write plays on contemporary themes. They have produced more than 20 plays, performed in various parts of the country. They have sensitised the judiciary, police, educational and political audiences. This is in itself an immense achievement. Two Chhara youth have been selected for NSD courses. We know of painters like Mansingh Chhara and many senior advocates as well as journalists are from the Chhara community. There are many youths and children who are active in restoring human dignity to their tribe through the medium of theatre and film. They are a politically aware and socially sensitive group. Their latest theatre production in Hindi is based on ‘An Accidental Death of an Anarchist’ of Dario Fo. The production has a serious message for police-controlled Gujarat, the current regime and the literary community.


How can one overcome the injustice perpetrated by history? How can one come out of the abyss of forced ‘criminality’? Chhara youth and children show us the way to human dignity via art.  Bravo! Friends.


(Kanji Patel, a professor of English literature at Arts College in Lunavada, was a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribe. A writer, he organises cultural mela DNTs every Shivratri in Lunavada.)

Isolated & potential groups of soldiers were persecuted

The story of communities known as ‘denotified’ is without doubt the most mind-boggling and despicable tale of lack of compassion

The British colonial rule in India was not only a political and economic venture, it was also an experiment in restructuring a complex society. For the first three centuries of the colonial contact, beginning with the arrival of the East India Company at Surat in 1600 to the establishment of the Asiatic Society in Bengal towards the end of the 18th century, the colonial imagination had great difficulties in understanding the complex weave of the Indian society. Out of these difficulties arose many misconceptions and myths about communities and social conventions. At times these were comical as was the idea that India is a country of snake charmers and magicians. But in many instances the wrong reading of the society resulted in untold human misery. The story of the communities known as ‘denotified’ is without doubt the most mind-boggling tale of inhuman collapse of compassion.

During the 1830s, the colonial government appointed Sleeman to prepare a list of instances of assaults on wayfarers in central India. He took to this task with an amazing devotion and produced a voluminous list of violent episodes. The list would not have amounted to much had it not been for the turn of events during 1857 in central India. In the wake of the battles fought and lost by the Indian states, all isolated and potential groups of soldiers, and even those who were likely to be in the supply chain for them, came to be seen as candidates for the Sleeman list. This list became the basis of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. The infamous CTA asked for forced ‘isolation’ and ‘reform’ of the communities listed. These included coin makers, entertainers, petty merchants, peasants, wandering groups, nomadic communities, long distance traders, and many others.

The CTA required creation of ’settlements’ as reformatories. The settlements required ’strict procedures’. These procedures kept becoming increasingly inhuman. Forced labour became the daily fate of the inmates. The CTA of 1871 went through several revisions, every revision bringing in new forms of ‘punishment’ for being born within the listed communities. The last of the CTA was passed in 1924. By then a total of 191 communities had been brought under its purview. The total population of all these communities ‘notified’ under the successive CTAs is, at present, nearly six crores. That is about five percent of Indian population. After Independence, the Iyengar committee was constituted in 1950 to think of redeeming these victims of the colonial savagery. The process of ‘denotification’ began in 1952. The CTAs promulgated in various Indian states were annulled and replaced by the Habitual Offenders Act. But by the time the HOAs were framed and the denotification was completed, the schedules of tribes and castes had already been constituted. Hence, the DNTs did not find an easy entry in these categories. Some of them were given the status of STs, some communities were admitted as SCs, the others continued to languish.

The country, and the successive governments, did almost nothing to change the sad situation of the DNTs. It was in 1998 that the DNT rights action group was formed in Vadodara as an advocacy group. The national campaign that the RAG ran resulted in appointment of a technical advisory group and a national commission. The reports of these two bodies are under consideration of the ministry of social justice.

In the meanwhile, the DNTs of India continue to suffer inhuman treatment from all sections of the society and from the law-keeping agencies.

Dr Ganesh Devi is a literary critic and a social activist. Along with Mahasweta Devi, he is the founder of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes-Rights Action Group (DNT-RAG).

The logo on the film company card is an original work by world-renowned cartoonist Mort Gerberg.

We’ve already come up with five possibilites, let us know which one you like best, or maybe suggest an alternative in the comments. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch the trailer first. And there is some more background about the film here.

Here’s what we’ve come up with:

1. The British called them “born criminals.” 60 million Indians still carry the stigma. In one community, a dedicated troupe of young people are using theater to fight back.
2. Called “born criminals” by the British, the Chhara still live as outcasts. Now they are fighting back. With Theater.
3. Like 60 million people in India, the young actors in this film grew up being told they were “born criminals.” Some even believed it. But the theater has shown them another possibility, and a way to fight back.
4. Indian society calls them “born criminals,” but they call themselves “born actors.” A dedicated group of young people fights back against police brutality, discrimination, and history.
5. Their parents gave everything to make sure they wouldn’t grow up to be thieves, but the stigma of being a “born criminal” makes it hard to do anything else. With nowhere to turn, a group of young people are using theater to fight for change.

Thanks for your help!

UPDATE: We’ve gone through all the feedback and it seems that #4 was the favorite, but everyone felt it should be a bit more “punchy”: Here is what we came up with:

• Indian society calls them “born criminals.” They call themselves “born actors.” And they are fighting back — against police brutality, discrimination and history.

In situations where that is too long, we can cut off the part after the em-dash. Thanks again for all your feedback – in comments, on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail.

We have so much exciting news to report it’s hard to know where to begin! Let’s start with our new logo and the website. Our film company’s name is Four Nine and a Half Pictures, Inc. which is a self-deprecating bit of humor, since that’s also Shashwati’s height. We wanted a logo which captured the grandeur of our ambitions while retaining the sense of humor embodied in the name. The only person we could think of who had the necessary skill to pull something like this off was our family friend, the award winning cartoonist Mort Gerberg, known best for his cartoons in The New Yorker, Playboy, Harvard Business Review, Publishers Weekly and on the Huffington Post. We are really happy with the wonderful logo he designed for us, and have featured it prominently on every page of our new company website Fournineandahalf.com.

The new website also features links to our new Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as an RSS feed. As we prepare to release our film, we plan to update all of these with more regular announcements, so please follow us via your favorite social networking tool if you want to get the absolutely latest news.

Speaking of the new film… We are finally close to a near-final cut that we are happy to start workshopping! The working title you all know, “Hooch and Hamlet in Chharanagar” has been discarded. Not only did we not get a chance to film the production “Hamlet in Chharangar,” but the focus of the film has shifted away from illegal brewing. To better capture the new focus on police brutality, the new title, “Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!” is taken from the play Budhan Theater was preforming during the period we were filming.

Here is how we describe the film:

Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! is about a troupe of young Chhara actors using theater to fight police brutality and the stigma of criminality. The Chhara are one of 198 communities in India—now over 60 million people—labeled “born criminals” by the British. Although the British are long gone, the stigma still remains. We meet Roxy whose father was beaten to death for speaking out, and his best friend Dakxin who was thrown in prison for writing plays critical of the police. We meet Dakxin’s Dadi (grandmother), who tell us about life in the government-run prison camps. The film is about a society in transition: the older generation did whatever it took to make ends meet, but they want a better life for their children. With social prejudice blocking all exits, for some young people, theater offers the only way out. From busy street corner protests to a climactic neve-wracking performance in front of cadets at the Police Academy, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! takes us inside the lives of these young people as they use theater to carve out a place for themselves in the world.

Shashwati has cut an amazing new four minute trailer for the film, which you can see on the film’s new website: dontbeatmesir.com. The website also sports a new FAQ to answer many of the questions we have encountered in the four years we’ve been working on the project.

As I said, the film is almost done. We will be taking the film with us to India in January, where we will take it to Chharanagar to show the film’s subjects. We are also arranging a two week tour of India where, together with members of Budhan Theatre, we will be running a series of workshops with activists and other DNT communities. Because the history of DNT communities is so fragmented there is still not a strong common identity. Our hope is that our film can be used as a means for fostering dialog between DNT communities within India.

But, of course, we want everyone else to see the film as well! For this reason we now have to launch into the next, and perhaps hardest, stage of film production: marketing and distribution. We have some good news here as well. The film was accepted into this year’s Asian Documentary Forum in Kolkata, India! It is a chance for us to work with producers, funders and commissioning editors from some of the top media institutions around the world to get input, guidance and possibly (fingers crossed) even make a deal…

Besides traveling around promoting the film, we also still need to pay for post-production costs, including an original soundtrack by John Plenge, color correction, and onlining the film at HD resolution. This will be a costly process, the airfare alone will exceed our budget, so for that reason we are once again accepting (tax-deductible) donations. Our goal is to raise $50,000 in the next six months. If you can help in any way, even $20 is a big help (we raised thousand’s of dollars via such small donations last time we did this), please click the link below, or go to our website and visit the support page.

And if you’d like to help out in other ways, such as publicity, fundraising or arranging screenings, please let us know! You can also help out by forwarding this post to a friend or linking to our website or trailer on your blog.

Happy holidays, and best wishes for the new year!

Kerim & Shashwati

http://fournineandahalf.com/

Here is what we sent out to all the people who have been so supportive and kind over the course of making this film. You can sign up for our quarterly updates on our homepage.

HAPPY YEAR OF THE OX!

Over the summer we returned to Chharanagar to record the film sound track, Shashwati edited the 200 hours of footage down to a 3 hour rough cut, together with Henry Schwarz we started a 501(c)3 non-profit to help support India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, and Kerim wrote an academic paper about the documentary films of Dakxin Chhara. More recently we have been working on the final 90 min cut of the film which we hope to have done by the end of March. If all goes well, postproduction should be done by the end of the year.

RETURN TO CHHARANAGAR

Each time we return to Chharanagar it feels more and more like home. Yet, at the same time, we are made acutely conscious of how rapidly the world we have captured on film has changed while we were away. Some changes were heartbreaking, others were heartening, even inspiring. Because of our focus on audio recording, this trip was a bit different from previous ones. In the past we’ve spent almost all of our time there talking to the actors and their families. This time, however, we wanted to capture the local sounds and extensive musical talent within the community to make a sound track that gives a sense of place. One of our inspirations is this video for M.I.A.’s song, Bird Flu, which we feel captures something important about what it is like to be in such an urban space. (Just saw Slumdog Millionaire and they use M.I.A’s music for a similar effect.)

Since neither of us are particularly talented musically, we looked for some help. We were very lucky to find an excellent musician who not only has experience working on film scores (he’s worked together with Shashwati on other film projects), but who also has experience traveling and working in India. John Plenge doesn’t speak Hindi, but he does speak “music,” and having him there allowed us to explore Chharanagar in a whole new way.

Working with John, we met wedding bands, a dubbing artist who sings vocals for the Gujarati film industry, and heard folk songs sung by women at weddings. I’m not trained in ethnomusicology, but I was struck by how this musical project transformed our experience of the community. Music is always a part of life there, being blasted out of rooftop speakers every day for some wedding, festival, or just because. But not being particularly knowledgeable about music I never would have explored this aspect of life there if it hadn’t been for John.

Another world opened up for us through the participation of John’s assistant, his teenage son John Adam. John Adam was a big hit with the younger members of the community who immediately befriended him. Usually shy and reserved when talking to us, all that disappeared when they were with John Adam. Our last day in Chharangar was “friendship day” but because John and John Adam had to leave early, Shashwati and I had to accept all the friendship bracelets the children had made for John Adam. We were happy to accept, even though we knew it wasn’t really meant for us.

Sadly, our good feelings about being back in Ahmedabad were shattered by the explosion of 21 terrorist bombs around the city while we were there. Although we were safely on the outskirts of the city, we were worried by the possibility of communal violence in retribution for the attacks. Luckily, that did not happen (just as it did not happen after the recent violence in Bombay). Instead, people simply went on with their lives, determined not to be cowed by terror. After a day off to see if it was safe or not, we too returned to work. For anyone who wants to better understand the history of communal violence in Gujarat, I highly recommend Martha Nussbaum’s book, “The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future.”

You can also download a podcast of her lecture on the topic at the University of Chicago’s website.

CARVING A STORY OUT OF VIDEO TAPE

Over the past five years we shot over two hundred hours of tape, all of which Shashwati transcribed, color coded, and cataloged. It may seem like a lot, but unlike a fiction film, where you know the story before you shoot, documentary filmmakers can only have an inkling of where the real drama will lie. Shashwati began by cutting together dozens of individual scenes, each of which holds together on its own, but doesn’t necessarily have a place in the larger story we want to tell. We then reviewed these scenes together and discussed how they would work to tell a story. This was the initial three hour cut we brought with us to Chharanagar. We deliberately kept as much in this version as possible because we wanted to make sure that the film subjects had a chance to respond to each of the scenes in case there were any they felt strongly about, one way or another. In fact, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and the only request was that we have more about the effect of the theater on the lives of the actors, something we asked about in our followup interviews while we were there.

Now the biggest task is to take what is now a three and a half hour film and carve out of it a story which is both dramatically engaging, informative, and easy for the audience to follow. The last task is especially difficult considering the large number of characters in the film. Our solution has been to adopt a somewhat traditional three-act structure in which Budhan Theatre itself is the main protagonist – actualized in the lives and struggles of its various members and their families. I don’t want to give too much away, but Shashwati and I are very excited about this structure and hope to have a new cut of the film soon.

A HELPING HAND

In addition to collaborating closely with the community during the production and editing of the film, we also wanted to make sure that once the film is out there is a way for audience members touched by the story to become involved in the community. With help from our co-producer, Henry Schwarz, we founded a 501(c)3 non-profit whose goal is to help India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes. Because we are new to the non-profit world we decided to start small. We have limited our current activities to supporting the Chharanagar library run by Budhan Theatre. This library is much more than a library; its a community center and an informal school as well. But its first and foremost a library – and a very good one at that! It houses a large collection of (mostly donated) books in three languages: English, Hindi, and Gujarati. Each book has been carefully cataloged and given a call number! It costs about US$1000 per year to maintain and we have already successfully raised enough money to keep it running through the end of 2009. Our goal now is to create a more long term solution for funding the library by getting 5 to 20 people to pledge between $50 and $200 a year on an ongoing basis. If you’d like to become a library sponsor, please sign up here:

http://vimukta.org/donate/sponsor

More information about the library (including pictures and video) on the Vimukta website:

http://vimukta.org/2008/09/02/more-than-a-library/

Once we have the library funding secured we hope to expand our program to do other things. Our first priority is to set up a scholarship program for girls. If anyone has experience working with girl’s education in the developing world or underprivileged communities, please contact us.

FUTURE PLANS

We have a lot in store for the next year. We hope to completely redesign our website, choose a new name for the film, upload trailers to the internet, finish work on a book of portraits Kerim shot while in Chharanagar, and begin marketing our film to potential distributors. List members will be the first to know of these developments.

Best wishes for the new year!

Kerim & Shashwati
http://fournineandahalf.com/