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| Photo: Wire 21.09 2016 |
Human rights warrior, Ambedkarite, eminent poet and
writer, senior advocate Bojja Tarakam died on Friday night. His work touched
every village in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and his words went out to every
Dalit home in the two states. His work touched the lives of all activists — be
they feminists, ecologists, human rights defenders, those working for the
homeless, the factory workers, the urban poor, Muslims, Adivasis, and other
marginalised sections.
The first time I met Tarakam at his house, I heard
him tell an activist, “You haven't gone to jail yet? You haven't been arrested?
How can you call yourself an activist?” I was wonder-struck. This was in the
early eighties when erstwhile revolutionaries were falling over backwards to
distance themselves from any movement and running after the pot of gold in the
mainstream. He was not a Maoist leader, exhorting people to jump into
militancy. He was, by that time itself, noted as a man with a broad
understanding and open convictions
My husband Cyril was close to him, so we visited
them often; theirs was an open house, his wife Vijayabharathi a gracious
hostess. This was the beginning of a long friendship for me, and theirs was my
second home in Hyderabad. Later, we worked together on several issues — on
books for HBT (translation of Ramuni Krishnuni Rahasyalu, 1984; Shudrulu
Aryulu, 1984; his original works Police Arrest Cheste 1981; Nela Nagali, 2008,;
Dali-tudu Rajyam, 2008; Panchatan-tram, 2012, Charitra Marchina Manishi —
Rudraandhar Charita, 2016; on my work with agricultural labourers in
Ibrahimpatnam where Tarakam was a frequent visitor, and of course, the Dalit
magazine Nalupu.
I travelled often with him and Cyril to Karamchedu,
observing the activimany issues, including music. Bojja Tarakam was
born in Bojjavaripalem, a hamlet of Kandikuppa, a small village in the
Konaseema area of East Godavari district on the coast where the Godavari joins
the sea. His father Bojja Appalaswamy was a remarkable independent,
Ambedkar-inspired Dalit leader who was a two-time MLA, set up schools for Dalit
children, taught his wife to read and write, and had an extraordinary reach. A
Brahmo Samajist, he was dedicated to social reform. A revolutionist, he
organised militant land struggles of the Dalits in the area to retain control
of their assigned lands. He named Tarakam after Kambhampati Tarakam, the social
reformer and district education officer who hosted him all through his teacher
training course.
It was in the mid-sixties that Tarakam came out of
his father’s towering shadow. As an advocate working in Nizama-bad, where his
wife Vijaya-bharathi, worked in the local college, he took up cases of the
poor, organised fact-finding missions in cases of atrocities against the Dalits
and village poor, and helped form the Ambedkar Yuvajana Sangham, campaigning
vigorously in the villages of the district. His activity caused him a two-year
imprisonment during the Emergency
He considered himself both Ambedkarite and Marxist,
his book Kulam-vargam explaining how he synthesised the two philosophies. Yet,
for most of his life, this earned him the opprobrium of both groups — Dalits
criticising him for aligning with the Left and the Leftists shunning him for
his Ambedkarism. Tarakam never swerved. In 1978, he shifted to Hyderabad after
Ms Vijaya-bharathi began work with the Telugu Academy in Hyderabad. He began
work in the AP High Court, continuing the ceaseless fact-finding to the
hundreds of villages and towns where Dalits and poor people were tortured,
harassed, jailed. He was a government pleader in 1984 when the Karamchedu
massacre took place and resigned in protest, many people remarking that with
this, he had lost his chance of being appointed as a judge to the High Court.
It is doubtful whether he would have secured the appointment anyhow, because he
steadfastly refused to call on political bigwigs, except when in a delegation
to represent peoples' problems. He was the rare man of integrity.
Since the
Karamchedu massacre when he led Dalits there to organize themselves, their
rehabilitation and their court cases, he went on to found the Dalit Mahasabha
and in 1989, he helped found the AP chapter of the Bahujan Samaj Party,
resigning from it in 1994, opposing its alliance with the BJP in UP. Later, he
joined the RPI, but broke away from it after Ramdas Athawale allied with the
BJP.
He was the
warrior who fought, both in the courts and outside, the cases which nobody else
wanted. Karamchedu, Tsundur, Lakshmipeta — he carried the weight of the
massacres on his shoulders. Few would know that the landmark judgement of the
Supreme Court ordering compulsory registration of criminal cases in ‘encounter’
murders, was initiated and fought for by Tarakam. The little book, Police
Arrest Cheste which sold lakhs of copies and saved the lives and bodies of
countless young men and women by equipping them with foreknowledge, was
authored by Tarakam.
Tarakam was extremely neat and dapper, fastidious
to a point — white shirt and trousers for work outside, white kurta and pajamas
at home. Lean, sharp-eyed, a quick laugh, and even quicker movements. He was
used to long walks at dawn, which probably contributed to his relative fitness
later when he was fighting brain cancer. He had no vices — save tea, of which
he never refused a cup. He ate sparingly and did not relish meat, but loved the
Konaseema delicacies — the paper pastry, the khaja, etc
He was a voracious reader with wide-ranging tastes
in books. He bought them wherever he could, and his house was filled with
books, not just in the bookcases but in every corner. Tarakam was a poet and
more than that, he was musically talented. He would often say that he if wasn’t
what he was, he would have been a musician or a drama actor
When illness in the form of a brain tumour struck
him in 2013, one could not believe that it could strike such an active man. For
some time, he withdrew into himself, and later, probably after coming to terms
with his new life, began moving about once again, travelling the length and
breadth of the state this time. He was barely able to walk, but continued to
attend meetings, fight cases in the courts, and read and write. His last book
was written in this phase. He died much as he lived — with dignity, courage and
compassion for others(Wire : 21 Sept 2016: Geeta Ramaswamy)
