86 august 2019
yapari was born in 1950
into a family of fisherfolk
in the lush Barisal district
(in today’s Bangladesh). As
namashudras, the lowest rung of the
Dalit people, his family had little to lose,
but the derangement of Partition took
their home as well. The Byaparis were
herded into a truck, along with at least
30 other families, and transported to
refugee camps in the badlands of West
Bengal. Memories of that terrifying
journey—being bumped around in
the vehicle in the searing heat, the air
clouded with red dust from the tracks,
a baby being born en route and an old
man dying on the truck—were burnt
into the brain of the 4-year-old.
Upper-caste people were provided
land after Partition, but Dalits were
thrown into camps. Shiromonipur, in
Bankura, was like a prison camp, only
with dole. The refugees were randomly
shoved into furnace-like canvas tents.
“The rice we got had a disgusting
sour smell and caused widespread
dysentery,” Byapari recalls. “Every
night, there were babies dying. It’s
impossible to forget the loud wails of
grieving mothers and the small pond
close by, where dead babies were
cremated. The fire never quite died
down—the smoke from the pyre blew
over the camp.”
As an infant he was also infected.
“I died one night. And my body
was supposed to be buried the next
morning. Somehow, I started showing
signs of life when day broke.”Ever since, his life has been a scram-
ble for survival. As a teenager, he got
sucked into the Naxal movement, chan-
nelling his rage towards armed strug-
gle. Walking the thin line, he veered
into a life of crime. In and out of prison,
over the years, he worked in a crema-
torium, as a cook, a coolie and a rick-
shaw puller. Chance encounters helped
Byapari drag himself out of the subhu-
man life of a chandal (corpse burner) to
pursue learning and wisdom. He would
target his pent-up rage to speak out
against upper-class tyranny. He would
dip into his well of lived experiences
to chronicle the unwritten histories of
the Dalit people, and, finally, become
a symbol of subaltern dissent.ntouchability, and the stigma of
caste, were drilled into Byapari
as a child. “In the camp we were
all namashudras, but never noticed
it. Later, when I grazed cows for a
Brahmin home, I was shown my place
as a human. They used to pour dal into
my misshapen food bowl from a height.
They would kiss a dog, but weren’t
willing to touch me”.
By the time he was 10, his father had
developed ulcers out of persistent hun-
ger, and his little sister died of starva-
tion. “We had no clothing, used mud to
wash our hair and lived in a hovel. My
mother used to wrap a mosquito net to
cover her body. I realized I too would
die—we all would—if I didn’t escape,
so I ran away,” says Byapari.
He landed up in Kolkata, and thenReader’s Digest