MESSIAH OF THE HUMBLE

MESSIAH OF THE HUMBLE

By Shyamal Roy

Beggars are a faceless entity in India, their presence only distinguishable by a whining voice or a sleeve plucked by a grimy hand. One hardly takes a second look at them. But not Shyam Bandopadhyay of Salika, Howrah. To him they are very much part of the society and, therefore, have the right to be so identified. It is not surprising, that beggars are his subject to an unending study.

An accounts clerk with the Calcutta State Transport Corporation, ‘Bhikhari Shyam,’- as he is better known, is the founder of the unique organization, perhaps the only one of its kind in the world- the Beggars’ Research Bureau. For the past 20 years, he has been collecting statistics on these hapless people in Calcutta and Howrah and 30,000 individual case histories, that he claims to have chronicled so far, reveal some hitherto unkown facts about beggars. The data reveals that for the vast majority of people who vote our leaders into power, the only means of livelihood when they become old or disabled, is begging”, he laments.

How did he get interested in beggars? Born in 1936 in Rameswarpur, Burdwan district, West Bengal, Bandopadhyay was in Class VIII at the Anglo Sanskrit school in Salkia when one day his father became seriously ill. He was immediately gripped by a sense of insecurity when he realized that he and his mother would be on the streets if his father were to die. This sense of insecurity was later to serve as a bond between him and the beggars for, as he says, he could easily have been one of them.

Bandopadhyay, who looks older than his 50 years with a straggly beard and wearing a coarse dhoti and kurta, on most afternoons can be found immersed in the musty files and documents at the State Transport Corporation depot behind Howrah court. After office hours, he sets out on his search for the beggars, sometimes walking several kilometers, till late evening.

The figures that Bandopadhyay has compiled about those living on the fringe of our society are indeed startling. The popular belief is that hordes of beggars who throng the streets are poor peasants from the outlying districts. According to his research, about 70 percent of them are workers retrenched from factories and mills who had no alternative other than to beg. He has also discovered that quite a large number of the beggars do not live on pavements as is generally believed but in rented rooms in various city slums. Many also have their own houses. “Who says beggars have no address?” Just because they have been forced to beg they have not become rootless.

In his vast ledger, are the names of many illustrious sons of Bengal who by a cruel twist of fate had taken to begging. Some time ago, he listed the name of a former member of the Indian Civil Service. Says he, “Take the case of Jnanada Haqui. Once he used to sing patriotic songs to collect donations for the freedom movement. Ater Independence, he used to sing while tilling his land. Alas, today he sings it to beg for alms.”

Bandopadhyay scoffs at the suggestion that generally lazy people ultimately become beggars.

What makes him any different from other social worker who cares for the poor is his lack of respect for institutions. He does not believe in homes for beggars nor does he believe that the situation can be remedied by providing them with a monthly dole or vocational training. The main thing is to stop the system that creates a beggar, he underlines.

-The Sunday Statesman, 29 August 1992

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