Why Madhya Pradesh's Pardhi tribe has been homeless for 9 years

There have been days in the month of January when the temperature in Madhya Pradesh's Betul dropped to a bone-chilling 2.5 degrees.

For the rest of the country, it was time to get out the woolens but for Betul's Pardhis — the 400-odd nomadic tribe that is both historically poor and exists on the fringes — there has been no respite.

The Pardhis neither have the woolens nor the quintessential rajais and shawls — most of the tribe just cannot afford them.

Even now the city continues to be in the grip of a cold wave.

The "dispossessed and displaced" Pardhis have been living here as refugees on an abandoned bus depot for the past nine years, waiting for justice and long "promised" new houses.

It has been almost impossible for them to secure proper jobs or set up street businesses because they are homeless and stigmatised — and as a result, many of them have no way out but to beg on the street.

Life wasn’t always this cruel. They had houses with legal pattas and their own village.

That village no longer exists as it was destroyed by a mob about nine years ago. Since then, the community has been fighting for its survival — camping on open ground in Betul.

A few days back, they filed a writ-petition in the high court demanding interim relief in the form of temporary houses, a school for their children, and even some quilts and winter wear such as shawls, sweaters and jackets.

In the past few years, the cold wave has claimed Pardhi lives. They don't want it to happen this time too and have sought interim relief until they can be rehabilitated by the district administration.

The current court battle has been protracted as orders passed in favour of their rehabilitation have not been complied with.

The high court had earlier ordered that families from the displaced community be given new houses and their children provided with a school and basic civic amenities.

The administration has, so far, failed to act on the more than three-year-old court order, forcing the Pardhis to file an appeal for interim relief.

Although a piece of land has been earmarked for them, the plot lies vacant. Besides the case for interim support, a "contempt of court order" is being fought in the high court. September 11, 2007 changed the lives of the community forever.

On this day, two tractor-loads of hooligans belonging to Kunabi and Kiral communities entered the Pardhi community’s Lothiya village in Betul district and started vandalising homes, setting them on fire, looting their valuables.

Ironically, elected representatives from the BJP and the Congress were both present at the village on that day and bore witnesses to the violence that ultimately led to the destruction of the village. The few policemen present at the site acted as mute spectators. They made no attempt to stop the mob from demolishing the houses.

The above facts are well-noted in the report of the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNT), which investigated the Lothiya village incident.

Even a video recording of the incident shows the mob breaking down the houses one after another, indulging in arson and loot. The high court, in an August 2009 order, also accepted the video footage as a prima facie evidence against the elected representatives.

A day before the incident, the police had asked the residents to vacate the village under the pretext that their lives were under threat.

The police didn’t even let the villagers collect their valuables. They were brought to the nearby Multai station on the night of September 10, 2007 by the police.

For a year after that, the 400-odd persons kept shuttling from one place to another, never returning to their destroyed village, facing hunger and death, until they finally settled at Betul.

In the backdrop of what unfolded on September 10 and 11 was another incident – the rape and death of a woman from Kunabi community, living in a nearby village.

It was accused that she was raped by men belonging to the Pardhi tribe. It was later found that the two Pardhis who committed the crime didn’t even belong to the demolished village.

In fact, the people from Lothiya helped the police track the culprits.

There is a historical background to the kind of reaction they get from neighbouring tribes and the state. Between 1871 and 1924, British labelled more than 400 tribes in India Criminal Tribes through piece of legislation named Criminal Tribes Act (CTA).

The idea was to bring the many tribes who lived on the fringes of the society and were perceived to be rebellious by nature under their direct control.

The biggest trouble with this law, in an already casteist society this "criminality" was seen as a hereditary trait. This law was later revoked by the Indian government and most of these tribes officially became nomadic and denotified — as are the Pardhis.

However this legacy of the British Raj continues to haunt the community today.

The perception that they are a criminal tribe persists and many think of it as an inherited trait.

Several politicians have been trying to capitalise on this negative perception to win over larger communities such as Kunabis, Kirals, and even ordinary citizens.

This is stated implicitly in the NCDNT report: “The Commission strongly rejects a public discourse in which the Pardhi victims are being labelled as criminals by the administration or the elected representatives”.

Some policemen have admitted that they believe the community is "criminally" minded even when facts defy logic. There has not been a single criminal case against the 400 Pardhis in the past nine years; not even a case of theft.

“All we now want is that we be provided with new houses and those who destroyed our village be punished,” says Alsiya Pardhi, the chieftan or sarda of the Pardhi community there.

The wait for justice has taken a severe toll on his health. He has had bypass surgery and severe pain has left him bed-ridden.

There have been several appeals and protests to set right the wrongs done to the community. Every legal framework has favoured the Pardhis and said that their demand for immediate resettlement is well justified.

But nothing seems to move the government machinery into taking concerted efforts to build homes for the community.

Anurag Modi of SJP says, “Delays and excuses plague the whole process of rehabilitation. Clearly there is a lack of will.”

The Pardhis are known for their physical dexterity, innate knowledge of forests, herbs, roots and the wild. The end of winter is still three months away.

The men, women and children who call themselves Pardhi have been rendered a homeless wait by an apathetic administration - hoping to be treated as human beings.