Being America Devi

The story of a feisty leader of the downtrodden in Bihar who procured fair wages, water and microfinance for fellow Dalits.

Through the swirl of a dust storm rising from the under-constructed embankment along Kamala River, shrouded women make for Tewari Pokhair. Like many parts of Bihar, the site smoulders with caste tension. Upper-caste men, who lost control over the place—a pond and seven acres of ‘ceiling surplus’ land around it—to Dalits almost 15 years ago, have still not given up hope of recapturing it. These men bristle at its memory, thoughts of staging a reprisal not too distant to entertain. Aware of this, Dalit women maintain a regular vigil. It’s just another daily chore.

There’s a particular reason that Dalit women risk bearing the brunt of upper-caste wrath. The reason is their attitude—it has been shaped by America Devi, a landless woman who has assumed leadership of the area’s womenfolk. She was illiterate, and only 25, when Tewari Pokhair was ‘liberated’ in 1994. It was only months later that she learnt how to write her name. And it took another five years before she learnt that it means quite another thing to most of the world, that her namesake on the other side of the globe is a superpower, that this identity could not go unnoticed.

The discovery didn’t overjoy her, though. The world around her was one of caste markers and caste oppression. Defying it was what mattered. “I had no idea at all that America is also the name of a country,” she says, sitting outside her thatched hut at Sohrai Tola, a Dalit habitation of Madanpur Panchayat in the Madhubani district of Bihar. “I always thought that it was the name of an upper-caste girl in whose household my grandfather was working. He liked the name so much that when I was born, he started calling me by the same name. Brahmins made fun of him for trying to cross caste barriers through the name of an upper-caste girl, but he refused to change my name,” says America Devi.

“Neither was my grandfather Bilat Sadai aware of a country called America. When I grew up a bit, he told me how my name America was resented by his masters and how he never gave in to their pressure,” she says, with a wry smile suggestive of youthful naivete. But it’s equally clear that life had already taught her enough about herself by then.

To most villagers, America Devi is a Moosahar, a scheduled caste. Among the poorest of the poor in Bihar, Moosahars are seen to be the lowest of the low in the caste hierarchy, deriving their name from moos (rat), which they catch and devour for want of better food.

To us, America Devi comes across as a leader who is interesting, compelling and intelligent. She has had a life of struggle, disappointment and reward. In 2005, in recognition of her two decades of work among Dalit women in Madhubani district, she was among the 1,000 shortlisted women nominated from 153 countries for the Nobel Peace Prize for their daily commitment to the improvement of the living conditions of present and future generations.

She has no clue of the year she was born, but believes she must be around 40 now. At her parents’ house in Lohna village in the same district, she spent most of her time herding goats, working in fields and generally fuming at caste inequities. Her marriage at the age of 15 with Jagdish Sadai, a wage labourer, brought her to Sohrai Tola. It was here that America’s anger started taking shape. Her husband, a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), encouraged her to make mass contact with people. So, in 1990, America Devi set out to awaken the consciousness of Sohrai Tola. Her first targets were moneylenders who lent Dalits cash at usurious rates of interest, leaving almost all households here mired in perpetual debt.

“I was nervous and afraid,” America recalls. “But women accepted me with love and affection.” After a series of meetings, the women decided to constitute a contributory Gramkosh (village fund) that would offer loans at soft rates to the needy among them. “It soon became a great success,” she says, “Initially, every woman contributed a fistful of grains, and then we decided that each household should contribute Rs 5 every month. Within two to three years, the Gramkosh started showing results. In 1994 an account was opened in the post office for the Gramkosh, which gradually freed us from the clutches of moneylenders.”

Currently, each household puts in Rs 10 every month, and the Gramkosh has Rs 2 lakh in its kitty. The model has since been taken to other villages—guided by her senior comrade Phulia Devi, another resident of Sohrai Tola. “Come out and fight,” they tell fellow women, “for your self-dependence and social dignity.” Some 20 Dalit habitations of various village panchayats in Madhubani now have a gramkosh.“I watched with amusement as America grew in confidence,” reminisces America Devi’s husband of her early activism, “I noticed that she had started looking straight into my eyes while talking. There was fire in her eyes. I knew she had crossed some sort of boundary.” It was tough on him, his wife’s activism, but he bore the criticism and jibes for her sake.

Crossed a boundary, she certainly had. Hardly had the Gramkosh taken shape in Sohrai Tola that America and Phulia started exhorting Dalit women to claim their fair share of the public space. Specifically, to liberate common village land and ponds, as also ceiling-surplus land, from the illegal occupation of dominant castes. In 1994, nearly 150 women of Sohrai Tola laid siege to Tewari Pokhair, which was under the control of a Brahmin family, and declared it liberated. “That evening as I went to bed, I thought, ‘yes, this was a spectacular day. Maybe it’s true, maybe the world can be changed’,” says America Devi. Before the ‘landlords’ could react, the women ringed the captured pond with huts to consolidate their takeover. It has been with Dalits ever since, even if there has been the occasional raising of voices by Brahmins who remain unhappy about the new state of affairs in the village.

Yet, the battle was not merely about access to public space. It was about work dignity as well. By the late 1990s, America Devi and her band of women had launched an agitation to raise wages for labour in the village. “Ten years ago, a labourer used to get two seers (a little less than 2 kg) of rice or wheat. On several occasions, we sat on dharna. Now one person gets 3 kg of foodgrain or Rs 50 a day,” she says.

And then there was the news of America being nominated for a Nobel prize. “I could not understand anything when I was told about it for the first time,” she says, “Later, the members of the NGO I am associated with (Lok Shakti Sangathan) explained the entire thing to me. I felt proud of being included with such amazing women who had done such great work. I was certain that this group of 1,000 women would get the award.”

America Devi’s husband admits he had lingering doubts, but kept them to himself. “I was unsure how a Moosaharni could get such an honour. I wanted to shout, ‘Does no one get it? A Moosaharni has been nominated for the world’s most prestigious award.’” The caste, its name, and everything it connotes is not something easily brushed aside, in his view.

America was disappointed to hear that the Nobel didn’t go to the 1,000 women nominated jointly. She is still clueless about who eventually got this prize in 2005. She has never heard about the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), nor its Director General Mohamed El Baradei, joint winners of the prize that year. She, however, is certain that her efforts will bear results—that much good will come of them. America could yet be blessed.

caste politicslandless farmersMadhubaniwomen