Dacoit Heroes: Serving the Poor

Another set of dramas presents resistance to established power in more explicit and fully developed ways. These are the plays about the dacoits (daku ), bandits of rural society.^[12] Dacoit dramas begin to appear in the Sangit literature around 1920; although they do not completely displace older story types such as the tales of renunciant kings or episodes from the Alha cycle, their frequency and continued popularity make them noteworthy. They are remarkable in that virtually every bandit hero known to Nautanki is based on a living or recently deceased individual, and that events and conflicts described are contemporary (even

when not strictly factual). Thus this subgenre shows the process of myth in the making—folklore visibly emanating from people's lives.

The characters of this recent type are ordinary, even lowly individuals, in contrast to the great kings and warriors of older dramas. The type marks an advance in literary realism comparable to developments in modern Hindi fiction, where storytelling rooted in rural reality comes into its own with Premchand around 1920. A greater degree of particularization is present not only in the characters and events but in the geographic locale. Each dacoit is firmly associated with one place, usually mentioned in the opening doha ; this town or village provides an anchor point for the band's comings and goings in the countryside. Although geographic origin may provide the basis of identity, ties of affinity and loyalty are now defined primarily by socioeconomic class rather than clan, caste, or cult. The bandit hero marks the emergence of a proletarian "king," an overlord who is of and for the poor. Earlier dramas placed emphasis on the protective function of the king and the virtue of generosity, but here for the first time, the distribution of wealth concerns society at large and is open to question by the needy, to redress from below as well as above.

The similarity of this tale type to the martial dramas needs to be restated, for they also dispute the hierarchical nature of society. The lowborn warrior, fighting for his rightful place as chief, is not far from the unjustly victimized villager who turns to a life of banditry as a means of correcting social and economic wrongs. Both narratives celebrate the underdog, although the dacoit dramas exhibit greater consciousness of both the class basis of economic privilege and the unrelenting arm of the law. It may be significant that the Chambal valley in western Uttar Pradesh is the part of northern India most associated with dacoits in recent times. This territory is adjacent to Bundelkhand on one side (the region in which the Alha epic still holds sway), and Rajasthan, the land of Rajput chivalric tales, on the other.

An early example of the structural parallels between the martial and bandit tale types is the Sangit Dayaram gujar .^[13]

The robber Dayaram is incited by his wife to steal the queen's jewels, which she has dreamed she will wear one day. He successfully stages a holdup at the river where the queen has gone to bathe, killing a large number of the king's men plus their leader. When the king hears of the outrage, he offers a reward of twelve villages for the capture of Dayaram, a challenge accepted by Jafar Khan, a friend of the bandit. Jafar

deceives Dayaram by tying him up while celebrating a sham wedding. Dayaram is sent to jail. The dacoit's younger brother, Chand Singh, goes to rescue Dayaram, challenging Jafar Khan to a fight and killing him. The king allows the brothers to meet in jail, and Dayaram is so happy at seeing Chand Singh that he breaks his fetters. To avoid a struggle with the two brothers, the king offers them both posts in the army on the condition they abandon dacoity.

This drama resembles Amar simh rathor in a number of ways. The motif of elder brother and younger brother structures both, with Ram Singh (actually a nephew) playing second to Amar Singh and retrieving his dead body, and Chand Singh rescuing Dayaram. Strong women motivate both the heroes' actions, Hadi Rani in the one play and in the other Dayaram's wife joined by her mother. The reward for capturing Amar Singh and Dayaram is the same (twelve villages), and it is a traitorous friend or relation (a Muslim in both cases) who undoes the hero. In both plays the king remains on the sidelines, waiting to reward the valorous men with posts under his command, reestablishing his authority in the end.

A dominant theme in later dramas, the rationale for banditry as redistribution of wealth among the poor, does not appear here; instead the action springs from a woman's greed. As a result, Dayaram does not figure as a particularly noble figure, except in comparison with his wife, although he is certainly a powerful and effective outlaw. The only justification presented for Dayaram's actions is Chand Singh's argument to the king that robbery is the dharm (duty) of the brothers, which could refer to birth in a particular caste or tribe. This outlaw hero is barely distinguishable from the upstart warrior whose fame and prowess bring him a modicum of respect. The king must eventually come to terms with the outlaw's power, best accomplished by enlisting him in the military.

The moral dilemmas raised by the dacoit are present in only a rudimentary fashion in Dayaram gujar . In the most enduring of the Nautanki dacoit dramas, Sultana daku , the confrontation between the admirable underclass hero and the agents of a colonial government is more problematic (fig. 15).

Sultana is a Robin Hood-like figure who robs from the rich to give to the poor. His rival is Mr. Young ("Young Sahib"), a British policeman assigned to arrest him. The early scenes of the play sketch Sultana's ruthless discipline of his band of men, his fearlessness, and his fondness

Fig. 15.
Record jacket of Sultana daku on the Odeon label, purchased in
Lucknow in 1982.

for the dancing girl who is his mistress. The dacoit hears a prophecy that he will meet his end when he holds a five-year-old boy on his lap and gives him a thousand rupees.

Both Sultana and Young send spies and launch strategies to outmaneuver each other. Young's efforts consistently fail, despite the fact that Sultana always sends a letter to the police announcing the time and place of his next dacoity. Sultana often dons a police uniform as disguise and steals weapons directly from the police station. Sultana and his gang rob a moneylender, a wealthy merchant, and a landlord. Following the raid on the landlord, Sultana sends half the booty to the city to be distributed among the poor, spending the remainder on uniforms for his men.

Finally Sultana takes pity on a captured messenger of Young's who has a large family and low salary. When Sultana promises to meet him in his village to give him a sum of money, the messenger reports the rendezvous to Young. He then meets Sultana with his five-year-old son

whom Sultana immediately takes into his arms. Young arrests him; he is tried and sentenced to be hanged. On the gallows, Sultana requests Young to bring up Sultana's nephew and prevent the boy from becoming a dacoit. Admonishing the audience to do good, not follow his example, and vote for the Congress party, he places the noose around his own neck and dies.^[14]

Just as in the story of Harishchandra, the dacoit's preeminent virtue is his generosity, which his opponent exploits and turns against him. Sultana's commitment to aiding the poor is illustrated throughout the play. The opening chaubola states: "It was his job to loot the treasuries of the rich / And always bring relief to the poor and helpless." Somewhat later Sultana declares his mission to be that of an equalizer sent by God: "For those who have found wealth and given not a penny to charity, God has made me the enemy. / For those who are poor and have no consoler, I have been born to share their sorrows."^[15] When Sultana's mistress complains that they always seem penniless, he explains that he gives all the booty to the poor and the men who work for him. It is his penchant for bestowing gifts that traps him finally when Young's messenger turns informer. Sultana demonstrates other kingly virtues, such as impartial justice, when he shoots one of his own men on a charge of indiscipline.

Consistently admired by the common folk and feared by the well-to-do, Sultana earns even Young's respect, and at the end the two are close to friendship. Yet the relationship between the men—and between the morality of Sultana's egalitarian impulses and the hierarchical authority of the state—is complex and not without its incongruities. Throughout most of the play, Sultana appears to establish a parallel kingdom, a territory in which he reigns through patronage of the poor and intimidation of the rich. He is at once king, chief minister, and head of security, playing these roles through various disguises. By sending reports on his activities to the police, Sultana seems to recognize the legal jurisdiction of the British government. Of course, he may simply be taunting the police for their ineptitude, saying, Catch me if you can. Similarly, he may wear the police uniform for its expediency, from emulation of the police, or out of defiance—or all three.

Once caught, Sultana is at pains to appear a loyal follower of the same order he previously defied. At the gallows, Sultana acknowledges the supremacy of the established rule, requesting that his offspring and the entire population follow the straight and narrow and eschew his model of rebellion. Is he reversing his former position, or is he simply

bowing in submission to a higher power, as Gopichand and Harishchandra did when they became renunciants, as Amar Singh and the Banaphars did in service to their less competent lords? Willing self-surrender is an important aspect of kingly virtue, deserving of acclaim in itself.

Difficult to interpret as well is Sultana's exhortation to vote for the Congress party. It may have been tacked onto the play at a later date, perhaps during an election campaign when the Sangit was being reissued. Or perhaps the slogan originated in the pre-Independence period, which would be particularly plausible if Sultana had been adopted as a popular symbol of anticolonial resistance, much as the Rani of Jhansi was. The words of the Sangit narrator, however, seem to refute this, inasmuch as they acknowledge the audience's fear of dacoits. They link the vote for Congress with promises to eliminate badmash elements (scoundrels) and punish every murderer, no matter how "good."^[16]

Another puzzling component of the dacoit syndrome is the apparent need to justify the bandit's way of life by reference to early misfortune and victimization. We must know why Sultana turned to a life of crime. A drama in which a hero consciously adopts an agenda that counters authority may not satisfy the audience—or the colonial censors—unless it proceeds from an initial provocation. The factual history of Sultana recounted by Jim Corbett states that he was "a member of the Bhantu criminal tribe."^[17] Two out of three Sangit versions are silent on the question of his origins. In the third, Sultana explains during the trial scene that he acquired his habit of robbery as a boy, when his mother asked him to steal a chicken to save the family from starvation.^[18] Being poor and being forced to steal for survival is the ideal rationale for a bandit's entry into a career of crime—and the one most common in these plays. The meaning of the rationale is not simple, however. Clearly it enhances the audience's sympathy for the hero, playing on its ready response of sympathy for the child victim. Compassion for the needy, however, offers a simplified form of class analysis, with its implications of the necessity to equalize the distribution of wealth in society and take back from the oppressors what was taken from the poor.

Another text of the same type, Sangit Daku man simh , devotes sixteen out of fifty-four pages to accounting for Man Singh's turn to a life of crime.^[19] The hero is a Rajput farmer of the Rathor clan, whose original offense is to beat up a Brahmin named Talfiram who steps ahead of him at the village well. This leads to a jail sentence, a vow to take revenge, and the eventual murder of Talfiram. These episodes dwell not

on the poverty of Man Singh as such (although he is a village dairy farmer, not a warrior), but on the affront to Rajput pride and the themes of honor and revenge found in the martial Sangits. Caste tensions rather than class antagonisms seem to motivate these incidents, although the difference is not always explicitly stated. After becoming a dacoit, Man Singh adopts the code of the underclass hero with its egalitarian ethos. He robs only from the rich, gives money and other assistance to the poor, uses the least violent means to achieve his ends, and avoids looking at women; he instructs his entire gang to behave in the same way. He intervenes in the marriage of a young girl to an old merchant, killing the prospective bridegroom, arranging the bride's marriage to a younger man, and presenting her with a huge dowry. With his gang he also raids several Seths (wealthy merchants) and a landlord. Respected in his community, Man Singh is addressed as dau (elder brother) by persons outside his family and is often depicted together with his community and family.

Journalistic accounts corroborate Man Singh's reputation as local benefactor: "He helped people in their distress, mediated in disputes; in short, he became the uncrowned king of Khera-Rathore."^[20] Even the police reported:

The villagers looked up to him as a friend and a guide and had their disputes settled by him. The poor received generous help from him and the legend about his charities and lavish gifts spread far and wide .... His admirers often remarked that he represented the high watermark of dacoity nobly practiced.^[21]

He was also known to be a deeply religious man who gave daily offerings to the deities. Yet this "colossus among dacoits" and his gang committed over 1,000 dacoities and 185 murders before he was killed.^[22]

In the Sangit, Man Singh's men roam disguised sometimes as policemen and sometimes as sadhus and elude the police for years. But in the end the police detect the gang and open fire. Man Singh is such a great fighter that he cannot be captured alive; in the climactic scene he and Govind Thapa, his police assailant, kill each other (the actual event occurred in 1955). Like Sultana in his final hour, the dying Man Singh seems to wish his life had been different. "Leaving my home, I wasted my whole life in the jungle, alas! / I became a dacoit, and disgraced my own name. / But I take solace in never having harmed the poor."^[23] This play also concludes with a call to support the Congress party.

Similar in many respects to Sultana daku , this drama perpetuates the myth of the noble outlaw, a theme replete with variants in South Asian

folklore.^[24] Putting this figure in sequence with the king and warrior of earlier Nautanki plays, we can perhaps give new meaning to this type of hero. The dacoit at large is, in the words of the journalist, an "uncrowned king," much in the same style as the roving knight with his band of loyal supporters. The precepts of his rule are almost identical with those of the ideal monarch—protecting the people, acting with generosity, enforcing justice, upholding honor. But the dacoit hero differs significantly in not being born to such principles or possessing any hereditary right to rule but rather achieving moral leadership after an experience of life-transforming tyranny. Further, the dacoit moves one step beyond the older models of king and warrior, practicing a primitive communism among his gang and attempting to rectify the class-based disparities of economic privilege in society as a whole. The inequities of a hierarchical society and the proper use of wealth thus become dominant themes in this most modern icon of rulership. The legitimacy of the bandit rests on careful selection of his victims and service to the poor. Through redistributing the booty, refusing to retain it for his own use, the dacoit approaches the saintly level of the kingly ascetic and the heroic death-defying stance of the warrior, who both act from self-denial and endure hardship in pursuit of virtue.

The dacoit in captivity, unlike the dacoit at large, reasserts the authority of the state and preaches conformity to the law, in apparent contradiction of his previous posture of rebellion. Despite the heralding of the poor and oppressed in these plays, a conservative impulse controls their design, serving to reinforce the established order of society through a conclusion in which the final darshan (sight) of the dacoit is as antisocial villain. Yet even here, a glow of righteousness tinges the icon of the bandit hero, imbuing him with valor in adversity. The dacoit facing death shows fortitude, humility, and submission to truth, qualities that also ennobled the earlier claimants to kingship. Like the renunciant king and warrior, the dacoit distinguishes himself by surrendering the very authority that empowered him to his limited messianic role. His willingness to relinquish power, to denounce even himself and his former way of life, provide a heroic subtext in conflict with the narrator's exhortation to vote for Congress and eliminate badmash elements. With his kingly predecessors, the rural bandit ultimately steps to one side, vacating the seat of power, and in so doing he reinforces the recurring concept of the moral basis of rulership.

Beginning with the transit from king to yogi, and moving through the trials of the warrior heroes and bandit kings, we have seen that the

transformations in the heroes' roles that occur in Nautanki dramas illuminate the qualities inherent in the true king, qualities that coexist in uneasy conflict with the exterior manifestations of power. A moral complex—renunciation of wealth, selfless pursuit of truth, and willingness to submit to a higher authority—runs through these narratives. By its universality of application, it extends the meaning of the texts beyond the king to the householder and the ordinary person. The lessons of perseverance, detachment, and charity are equally relevant to all individuals' daily existence, and should they manage to embrace this inner moral code, they too will rule in their own small kingdom.

In the next chapter, we examine the collision between romantic love and loyalty to family, clan, and community. Again the ubiquitous figure of the yogi provides a point of entry. The mendicant shorn of earthly privilege and desire serves as informing emblem not only of the king, the supreme commander of temporal affairs, but also of the lover, the epitome of passion and sensual feeling. The sufferings the lover must endure to be united with the beloved in Nautanki romances are analogous to those of Harishchandra searching for truth or of Sultana seeking justice for the poor. The model of renunciation is once more employed, not as a transcendental path to the liberation of the soul from rounds of rebirth, but rather as a moral response to crises that are fundamental to human existence in the everyday world.