THE LALPUR EXPERIMENT FACES ITS FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE In the last article I had mentioned about how certain forces, mainly belonging to upper caste, were behind branding the Asha team at Lalpur as Christian missionaries with having a hidden agenda of converting the dalits of the village one day. However, inspite of a devious attempt by these forces to confirm this suspicion in the minds of people by circulating a book published in 1986, which by an uncanny coincidence is called ‘Asha ki pustak,’ carrying the message of Jesus Christ, in the area, we were able to overcome the doubts mainly because of deeper relationships that we were developing with the people as well as because of unconditional support of Babaji from Bharawan (see an earlier article on him). We were confident that this problem will not last very long and even hosted a white Canadian national for a week as a volunteer at the Ashram knowing fully well the risks it involved. However, a fresh attack has been launched by the man who donated the land for Asha Ashram. Dr. Devendra Tripathi and his brothers, the only landlords of the village, are out to create trouble. Dr. Tripathi has been associated with RSS earlier and was in-charge of mobilizing youth from Lucknow and Unnao districts for sending them to Ayodhya at the time of assault on the Babri masjid. He himself participated in that event. However, it was his disillusionment with the Hindutva brigade, about a couple of years back, which brought him closer to us and we also decided to establish a relationship with him thinking that he could devote his energies to constructive activities. We ignored warnings from some friends not to trust a man who has been associated with RSS. For two years things went on smoothly. He legally transferred his land to Asha Trust and participated in all programmes organized by us, some of them directly questioning the stands of the BJP government. For some reason he has now decided to turn against us. He says he never thought that we would allow dalits to have so much say in running the activities of the Ashram. He has apparently been under pressure from his brahmin and other upper caste friends to stop the activities at Lalpur which are giving so much prominence to dalits. Dr. Tripathi came to the Ashram last month along with his brothers and quarrelled with Asha volunteers Raju Thapa, Parmita and Mahesh accusing them of allowing dalits entry into their kitchen, of having polluted the land of his forefathers and for not even being able to drink water at the hand-pump of the Ashram because it was being used by dalits all the time for drinking or bathing purposes. He says we have even polluted the gobar of the entire village by mixing it with human excreta in our bio-gas plant. (I had changed my research area from control systems, which had applications in defence, when I moved from UC Berkeley to IIT Kanpur to Biogas thinking that it was a perfectly innocuous area and could only benefit humankind; little did I know then that somebody could come up with this kind of weird argument too!) So, he wants to perform a yagna to bring back the purity of the land on which Asha Ashram stands today. He has also lobbied some local RSS support for this purpose. Arundhati, Shri Ashok Jain, Babaji have tried to reason with him but he is adamant. In this entire drama the dalits have obviously chosen to side with the Asha team. They say that they don’t have any problem with Dr. Tripathi organizing his yagna but in keeping with the Asha tradition in the Lalpur village, all the guests from outside who come to participate in the yagna will have to eat at their homes. The brahmins are, no doubt, infuriated even at the thought of this. The RSS representatives have registered their protest. How can brahmins eat at chamar households? (While the rest of the Lucknow seems to have extended a very heartening welcome to the team of girl students from Islamabad, Dr. Tripathi, and probably some of his RSS colleagues, says he is aghast that we could be associated with something like this. The next thing he’ll probably do is call for performing a yagna to purify the city of Lucknow which has been polluted by muslims from Pakistan!). It is a testing time for the Asha team and the dalits of the village. They are under attack from feudal, casteist, obscurantist, status-quoist forces. The dalits have found an ally in Asha. It is probably for the first time in their lives that somebody, outside their fold, treated them like equal human beings. That there could be dealings where they would not have to compromise their self-esteem is something they are experiencing new. That they can shake hands with some upper caste and class people instead of having to touch their feet has come as a welcome relief to them. Asha has definitely set in process a social change which is questioning well-entrenched ideas and practices. The Asha team is facing a dilemma. It doesn’t want to enter into confrontation with Dr. Tripathi and the upper caste of the area (like the Dalit Panthers which has a presence in the area) and neither does it want to withdraw, which would not only mean defeat for us but would also be a blow to the morale of the dalits.