Life of Shama Kolam : Part One
Shama Kolam, famously known as Robinhood of Vidarbha, was born on 26th November, 1899 in village of Niranjan Mahur in Nanded district in an aboriginal ‘Kolam tribe’. It is said that Kolams are Dravidian. Their language – Kolami- has resemblance with Dravidian languages.1 Kolams are mostly populated in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra state. They are spread to the other adjacent districts of Nanded, Adilabad & Chandrapur. It is one of the most backward aboriginal communities of India. Though they have some cultural semblance with Gonds, they are different from Gonds in many aspects. There’s no caste hierarchy in Kolams. They are mostly divided by surnames which have been adopted from the names of villlages.2
Shama was born in one of the
poor families and brought up in the adjacent jungles of Mahur and Nanded. Short
but stout and strongly built, Shama was polite in his conduct. He was
illiterate and worked as a labourer in and around Mahur. He was favourite of
all of his employers. He became a bandit by accident. He was fondly remembered
by the last Zamindar of Mahur, Raje Madhukarrao Deshmukh, in his memoir
‘Shikarnama’, as ‘the one who laid down his life for the welfare of his people
but eventually betrayed by the same people’. When asked about the reason behind strong conscience and moral principles of Shama Kolam, his biographer –Dinkar
Dabhade- pointed towards the lifestyle of Adivasis and their thought process
developed out of it.
In 1930s, Mahur was under the
territory of His Highness Nizam of Hyderabad. And the Zamindari of Mahur was
with the historically famous family of Raje Udaram, which a had control over some parts of today’s
Buldhana, Washim, Yavatmal & Nanded districts for almost 350 years. The
famous Maratha lady warrior RaiBagan who fought against Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in
Battle of Umberkhind, also hailed from the same family.
Raje Vyankatrao alias Bhausaheb
Deshmukh of Raje Udaram family was the Zamindar of Mahur and Shama was working
as a labourer for him. Bhausaheb was a renowned Hunter of those times. He had
hunted numerous tigers and leopards and had ‘Nargya’, a tiger and ‘Moti’, a
tigress as pets since 1932 to 1937.3 He was a daredevil and on most
of the occasions, Shama played the Huntsman for him. Shama had a great interest
in hunting and with practice, he had earned great shooting skills. His aim was perfect.
Life was going well as he had started working for the Patil (a village
headman) of Mahur. But something else was written in his fate. His destiny
wanted him to walk the great path through the darkest of times with great
hardships and still lead an exemplary life. Perhaps he was born with a mission,
the mission of the welfare of the downtrodden people. The mission which
resembles with the ideas of the great socialists of the time. A mission to
establish equity. Shama was staunch, and unwavering in his moral principles. He
never mended them.
One day, Shama accompanied Raja
– his childhood friend – and several others for hunting in the jungles of Mahur,
far from realising that the day was going to be a turning point in his life.
Whole day, they went on searching for a Shikar,
but nothing substantial could be found. In the evening, on the insistence of
Muhammad Hussain – new face in the group - they resorted to a nearest village
named Dhanoda, to meet the Village Sahukar
or Moneylender ‘Prabhu Rangari’. Muhammad knocked the door of the house
and the moment Sahukar opened the door, he put his riffle barrel on the
chest of Sahukar. Before a surprised
man could say anything, he pulled the trigger. With a bang followed by
the cry of dying Sahukar and scream
of his wife, whole village got alert. Without any known reason, Sahukar
was murdered mercilessly. Immediately, Raja, Muhammad and others ran out of the
village as like they had planned everything. But Shama did not. Stunned and shocked, Shama could not
understand what exactly had happened. People came on the street to witness Shama
being one of the riflemen among the murderers of Prabhu Rangari. He was seen as
a co-conspirator and murderer. He waited. He couldn’t hear anything
clearly. When he came to his senses, he saw villagers approaching him, he fired
a bullet in air to disperse the villagers and disappeared into the dark.
Why Sahukar was killed, remained a big question mark for him throughout
his life. He had come only to accompany Raja in hunting and not to be a
co-murderer. Muhammad left to be never seen again. Shama left for home, alone.
He couldn’t sleep the whole night. Next morning, he went for the work quietly.
In the evening, police arrested him. He was brought to the Haveli (mansion)
of Bhausaheb. From the whispers, he got
to know that Raja and others have disappeared and could not be found by the
police. Bhausaheb kept Shama with him and told police to search for the other
culprits. He was then led to a room where Bhausaheb had already hid Raja. After
a long deliberation, Bhausaheb told both of them to surrender next day and
assured them no conviction.
But Raja was a different
chemical altogether. He could not say anything before Bhausaheb, but when
Bhausaheb left, he told Shama that he refuses to surrender to the police, since
it was a force of Nizam and Nizam was a servant of British. They
planned their next journey. And they fled the mansion at midnight. They decided
to meet again at the nearer lake, Matrutirth,
after they pay a final visit to their families. Shama was married to a woman
named ‘Bhiwra’. They had a two-year-old son, Dashrath. He told his brothers to
find a suitable person and remarry Bhiwra, since he was not going to be there
to look after her and her life should not get devastated because of mistake
made by him. He assured all of them that he will soon see them again and went
away. Meanwhile, Raja confronted a policeman when he was on the way back from
home. He shot the policeman and killed him. Shama resented this act of Raja,
which according to him, was not justifiable at all. They met at the lake and
disappeared into the jungles.
Shama was of the opinion that
killing Sahukar was a mistake, but Raja didn’t see it that way. He wanted to
revolt against the establishment. It is said that he was inspired by the then
movement of freedom struggle.3 Raja gathered more same-minded
criminals, and made a gang out of it. They decided to resort to dacoity and
banditry and started extorting money from villagers. Shama was of the opinion
that the gang should extort money only from Sahukars and rich, and not
from the poor. But others didn’t pay attention to him. Perhaps their aim was
different. Eventually Shama severed relations with the gang and lived alone. He
joined the gang again only on the condition that he won’t be involved in
looting poor people.
The gang was initially helped
and supported by fellow villagers but later villagers turned against the gang
and one day people themselves led the police to the spot where the gang was residing
in the fort of Mahur. In the severe firing by both sides, Raja was injured and
Shama managed to flee. Raja was arrested and in a transit to Adilabad, he died.
It is said, that he had so much contempt for the police, that even when he was
severely injured and cuffed and dying, he kept abusing policemen and Nizam. He
took his last breath cursing the British government.4
Next day Shama told other survivors
of the gang to surrender themselves to the police. He made the Patil of nearer
village to take them to the police station. In this way, he closed the first
chapter of his bandit life. When Patil asked him to surrender himself
since he had no support and there will be a huge police force to hunt him down,
he said,
“I agree
with you that I should stop. But to surrender is not the DHARMA of a bandit. Bullet fired by the police alone will kill me.”
Within a year, by the end of
1936, all of his men were gone and he was left alone. He went into the jungles
and ate whatever he could, either from hunting or from the help of villagers.
Sometimes, he had to eat the rotten bread and meat. Police was behind
him all the time and he had to change the place everyday. The jungles of Mahur
were famous for tigers and leopards. He lived in those jungles among the
ferocious and dangerous wild animals; spent days and nights there alone. Many a
times these beasts slept near him. But not even once he was attacked by them.
Snakes would slither on his body, but never bit. He described this miracle as a
‘love of the Goddess of jungles for him and that he can repay the debt of his
parents, but cannot of these jungles’. He
changed places frequently, walked and traversed the whole patch of districts of
Adilabad, Nanded, Chandrapur and Yavatmal impersonating himself as a farmer,
monk, trader and sometimes even a policeman.
To keep his fear unabated,
Shama then looted some arrogant banias. He took away carts of cloth from a bania
to teach him a lesson. Later the cloth was sold and money was distributed to
the homeless and needy people. He beat a Lala (wine merchant) badly who refused
to obey the orders of ‘Shama Kolam’ and sell wine to him. When a police officer
summoned his mother for questioning, he had almost shot the police officer.
Officer was spared only when he apologized and promised to never involve any of
the family members of Shama again. But this was not the original Shama. He
never harmed the helpless. He had to resort to severe measures only to keep his
terror alive. He also knew the importance of public support. In the times of
drought, Shama looted a godown of a farmer cum trader who refused to sell food
grains even at higher price when the people did not have food and children were
dying. The grains, mainly Jowar and rice were taken by Shama and then
distributed equally among the people in need. It should be noted here that the
impact of drought was such that the people came from distant villages for few
kilos of rice. Shama raided and looted many Sahukars
in his life, but he never kept any money for himself or even for his
family. He gave away all the money to the needy people. Some erected orchards
out of it, some built home, some started hotels, some started businesses. To
many, the money was given as a loan. People who misused the money were also
taught lesson in a ‘Shama dada way’. Shama had earned great respect as well as
fear in the whole area. Shama Kolam gradually became a Robinhood for these
people. He also had many good Sahukar
friends. Many women had made him their brother. When Shama got arrested and
shifted to Yavatmal jail, number of women would make sweets for him everyday
and wait in front of the jail in the hope that they would be allowed to give
it to their beloved brother, Shama.5 But people did
not stop here. They started calling him their God. Then he said in his special varhadi accent,
“I am a human being, just like you.
And I request you to let me be that way. Don’t make me a god.”
Adventures of Shama became the
topic of discission among the people of berar. Newspapers started reporting
about his bravery. In a recent interview, Dinkar Dabhade has said, that mothers
used to make their children sleep by telling them, “Sleep or I will call Shama
kolam”. Shama kolam was to the berar what Gabbar Singh -a fictional character
in Sholay- was to Ramgarh.
While he was doing good for the
people out of his banditry, one young brave lady, listening to these great
stories of Daku Shama Kolam, was falling in love with him day by
day. While dealing with her, the most feared person of berar, Shama Dada, must
have melted like a wax.
Read next: Life of shama Kolam-2
References
:
- कोलाम, लेखक :
भाऊ मांडवकर,
सेवा प्रकाशन,
अमरावती,1956
- Kolaami,
A Dravidian language, by M.B. Emeneau, University of California press
Berkley and Los Angeles, 1955.
- शिकारनामा, लेखक –
राजे मधुकरराव देशमुख, मनाक्षरे पब्लिकेशन्स.
- शिकारी राजा, लेखक –
राजे मधुकरराव देशमुख, निर्मल प्रकाशन, नांदेड.
- बिलामत,
लेखक – श्री. दिनकर
दाभाडे,
ग्रंथाली प्रकाशन, 1994
© Vinit Raje
©
varhadnama.blogspot.com
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