Forgotten Freedom Fighters: When ‘Salihan’ Took On Armed Britishers

[JANASENA]

 

 

 

Demathi Dei Sabar ‘Salihan’ and her friends took on gun-toting British officers with lathis in Nuapada, Odisha

She was working in the fields along with the other Adivasi women when a youngster from their village Saliha came racing to them, yelling: “They’re attacking the village, they have assaulted your father. They are torching our homes.”

“They” were armed British police who had cracked down on a village seen as defiant of the Raj. Many other villages were razed, burned down, their grain looted. The rebels were being shown their place.

Demathi Dei Sabar, an Adivasi of the Sabar tribe, raced back to Saliha with 40 other young women. “My father was lying on the ground bleeding,” says the aging freedom fighter. “He had a bullet in his leg.”

That memory brings alive a mind otherwise fading. “I lost my temper and attacked that officer with the gun. In those days, we all took lathis as we went to work in the fields or forest. You had to have something with you in case wild animals showed up.”

As she attacked the officer, the 40 other women with her turned their lathis on the rest of the raiding force. “I chased the scoundrel down the street,” she says, angry but also chuckling, “raining blows on him. He was too surprised to do anything else. He ran, he ran.”  She beat and chased the man around the village. She then picked up her father and took him away from the spot. He was arrested later, though, while leading yet another agitation. Kartik Sabar was a key organiser of anti-British meetings in the area.

Demathi Dei Sabar is known as ‘Salihan’ after the village in Nuapada district where she was born. A freedom fighter of Odisha celebrated for having taken on an armed British officer with a lathi. There is a fearlessness about her, still. She does not believe, though, that she did anything extraordinary. She doesn’t dwell on it anyway. “They destroyed our homes, our crops. And they attacked my father. Of course I would have fought them.”

The year was 1930 and she was around 16 years old. The Raj was cracking down on pro-Independence meetings being held in the rebellious region. Demathi’s charge against the British and their police was a feature of what came to be known as the Saliha Uprising and firing.

Demathi was closing in on 90 when I met her. There is still strength and beauty in her face. Emaciated and fast losing her sight now, but probably beautiful, tall and strong when young.  Her long arms, which still hint of hidden vigour, must have wielded a mean lathi. That officer must have had a rough time. He certainly had the right idea in running.

Her incredible courage unrewarded and – outside her village – largely forgotten, ‘Salihan’, when I saw her, was living in degrading poverty in Bargarh district. A multi-coloured official certificate authenticating her heroism was her only possession. That too spoke more of her father than of her, and did not record the counter-attack she led. She had no pension, no assistance from either the centre or the state of Odisha.

She struggled to remember – the one thing sparking her mind was the story of her father Kartik Sabar being shot. When I brought that up, she spoke with an anger that had not abated, like it was happening right in front of her. It also rekindled other memories.

 

Salihan gives us a great smile, many great smiles, but she is tiring

 

“My elder sister Bhan Dei and Ganga Talen and Sakha Toren (two other women of the tribe) – they too were arrested. They’re all gone now. Father spent two years in Raipur jail.”

Her region today is dominated by feudals who were collaborators of the Raj. They have benefitted more from the freedom that Salihan and her kind fought for. Islands of wealth dot the ocean of deprivation here.

She gives us a great smile, many great smiles, but she is tiring. She struggles to recall the names of her three sons Brishnu Bhoi, Ankur Bhoi and Akura Bhoi. She waves at us as we say goodbye and leave. Freedom Fighter Demathi Dei Sabar ‘Salihan’ is still smiling.

‘Salihan’ died a little over a year after our meeting in 2002.