Page 194 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Memory and Social Protest 169

Text C
Chuharmal was a cowherd. He used to uproot crops from the fields,
but because he was strong, nobody could restrain him. But he was
afraid of government employees. Once, the landlord’s surrogates
along with government employees surrounded Chuharmal and cut
off his head. After the murder, his spirit started to destroy crops in
the area. Thereupon people of the area fenced the place and started
worshipping there.
This version of the myth sketches Chuharmal as an evil power
killed essentially for the sake of public welfare. This text is usually a
construct of the memory of the forward castes. The main content of
the marital relation of Reshma and Chuharmal is removed and another
theme is added in it. During fieldwork in the area an interesting ex-
planation of the name of Chuharmal was heard. According to which
the name originates from two words, chor and chuhar, meaning thief
or robber in the folk dialect, and chor-chuhar (thief-robber) being a
compound word popular in colloquial usage. The people of forward
castes depict Chuharmal as a dacoit.
In the Manusmriti, the word daku means saahasi (adventurous);
furthermore, it extends the meaning of saahasi as kidnapper or
plunderer of wealth and in the law of Manu, the killing of saahasi was
supposed to be the duty of the king. A.K. Warder (1987) suggests an
interesting inference related to the act of stealing in history. According
to him, Buddhist interpretation holds the view that in ‘primitive’
society, the concept of individual possession gave birth to ‘stealing’.
Thus ‘individual possession’ is synonymous to stealing.
According to the law of Manu, the king who forgives a person in-
volved in saahasi activities is ruined shortly. The king also becomes
an object of hatred by the people. Thus, the Manusmriti foresees the
outlines of the Reshma–Chuharmal tale. As observed during the field
survey, an old man Ram Singar Singh, 60, referred to the aforesaid
justification and mentioned the event of the murder of Chuharmal in a
local feud to be true. He asked me, ‘Why did Ram kill Ravana?’ On the
other hand, the outline of the folk tale as popular among lower castes
puts forward another justification from the Manusmriti that reflects
an opposite image. The justification in the text is that if a higher-caste
woman desires any lower caste man, the king should prevent it and
may kill the woman, and if a Śudra male desires any high-caste girl,
then the death penalty is permissible.