Way to Mithila-II
Way to Mithila will come via Barahia, Baruni, Begusarai , Khagaria, Bachhwara, Dalsingsari, Samastipur, Muzaffarpur is my old belief. Had it to come through Darbhanga or Madhubani it would have come in past one century when the leadership of movement from that core area of Mithila failed to realize the importance of organisation for any cause and the magnanimity in matter of many things, including the dialects of Maithili and their due recognition be from southern, eastern or western which now are taking wrong nomenclatures of Angika and Vajjika which are nothing but southern and western Maithili as delineated by Sir G. A. Grierson.Though I did not describe in detail about the area from Simultala to Hathida ,it was more due to my less working interaction with those area but those are crucial.Many persons think of these area will remain with Bihar due to proximity with Patna but when the deciding question would be ask whether you would go with Jarasandh's Magadh or Janaki's Mithila, I've no doubt that due to cultural proximity they would prefer to be in Mithila.Churalmal of Maokameh had a rivalry with Lorik (a yadav king) of Mithila and it was so distasteful that Maithils still even living at Patna wish to be cremated at Pahlezaghat, on the north bank of Ganga (probably in the region of Magadh only as Magadhinans were tyrants- the Ajaatshatru, son of a daughter of vaishali, a part of epical Mithila was first to annex Mithila) and since then this type of rivalry is continued and let us see that in this life we get our Mithila free from the shackles of Magadh.Not only old district of Munger is vivisected by Ganga, if its southern parts of Ganga do not come in Mithila , there would remain an everlasting riparian problem for Ganga water- future Cauvery cauldron!And I am further optimistic that with the completion of Ganga Mahasetu at Khagaria many more relations would be between both sides of the Ganga as is happening now after ganga bridge at Bhagalpur or would be in two parts of Mithila after Nirmali Mahasetu on Koshi. Probably Vajpayee's these two Mahasetus are more important for preserving the boundary of Maithili as well as its economic regeneration than his gracious inclusion of Maithili in the VIII Schedule of the Indian Constitution.In 1992, I had written an article , "Barauni Mithilak Kendrasthali" and I still feel that it is the centre of the Grierson's Maithili speaking area. As afar ease in work is concerned it was the place from where in 1992 I( had started pamphleteering, "Jagu maithil Dheer." And had gone till Forbesganj and then via Lalitgram to Saharsa and Khagaria to Darbhanga.On the eve of the census in 2001 ,I got 20,000 pamphlets printed in a mix of all dialects of Maithili and and had 3000 posters which took me a second Saturday and Sunday and the next Sunday again to distribute personally those and see that posters were pasted by a boy for some rupees. I lost my blanket in that February morning there but got all distributed and pasted on all trains passing to every corner of Mithila and then up to Samastipur and Darbhanga. I could not attend a picnic by Bharati, the local Maithili organisation of MECON-SAIL, Ranchi.It is easier to assemble for picnic and social gatherings but we must remember that all Maithili organisations have some of the contributory loan to Mithila.Ask any old Maithil he would like himself/herself to be cremated at Simaria Ghat…I saw light from one dead body's cremation and bade pranam from the train.Being transferred from Ranchi, I could not manage to attend XIV International Maithili Conference sponsored by Swami Chidanandji during May 27-28, 2006 at Simaria where local MLAs took pledge in the support of Mithila State and a' Clean Ganga Movement.'At Barauni station I was waiting for Darbhanga bound Kamla Intercity passenger which was very late on that day.I asked on phone my sister's daughter who informed me that I could go to her house even at 2-3 am. (I was thinking of the law and order problem of Bihar!).There at Barauni a person was anxious how he could go to Lahan(Nepal) with an old eye patient. The way to Laukha was difficult to go as due to gauge conversion there was 'megabolck' in between Darbhanga and Sakri.That is a temporary problem but is not this a paradox that Nepal could have an advanced eye institute but not Mithila where my teacher Dr. Shreemohan Mishra when had passed FRCS in eye was one among a few in the country!There was one more person Madanmohan Jha of village Hiramba of District Begusarai who had a close connection with Rajbiraj(Nepal) and also with Jhajha where he asked me contact Shivnandan Jha and his disciple Narendra Singh, a minister of Bihar Govt.When Kamla Intercity came, I slept on upper part meant for luggage, after all I was a luggage and anyone was so in Mithila. On the other side a lady climbed and slept who got down at Samstipur. Their sonorous Maithili talks evoked a sleep to me like mother's lori would have been in childhood. On the other side were kujaranis who use to purchase vegetables from one part of Mithila and sell in other and to many such passenger trains I used to say 'Kujarini Express.' Because I chided them, they could not keep vegetables there and hence, that lady or I could sleep.Though I crossed Dalsing Sarai where at Ajnaul in the village of Satyanarayan Mahto of Bhilai I had been in the Maithili Workers' Camp and then at Dalsing Sarai during November .22-23,2003, XI International Maithili Conference was held which was in fact the first ever conference which was a balanced representative of the delegates of all castes and sects of Mithila.There when I had said that Nepal may not remain united may form some Nepali Maithils had said, "You may say so but we do not see its possibility," but in 2007 those speculation of mine are apparent.My assumption was that India is united due to Muslim against whom all Hindus were united from Kashmir to Kanyakumari but Nepal was a Hindu kingdom with no binding force and hence it may be balkanised any time with the storms of time to which the present king put last nail in the coffins who was regarded as the murderer of his whole scion including the popular king of Nepal.I reached Darbhanga and saw platform, a grand sleeping yard of thousands of people who would be migrating to west bound trains and or returning to home from there or going to Patna for official work…The platform was much changed than when I was a student of the DMC and its iron exit I had on 8.8.1977 had asked Govindacharya that we medicos should have a different organisation than that of the ABVP.I was also scolded by a police there for I was cycling on platform and knowing me a medico had left me…now there is so much rush anytime not only at night that who can think of cycling? This is the story of the down gradation of Mithila- the hub of labour and brain supplier too all over the world not only western India…There are direct trains for all corners from there- Punjab, Delhi, Darbhanga, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, and also for Bangalore…Many people would be happy but I am not…our resources kachha mal as well as mazdoors are being shunted to all places unlike those kujarinis who might be working on a mega- barter system this is the exploitation of a poor area- of Indian as well as Nepali Mithila for which soon all such trains after gauge conversion would run up to Jainagar on the Indo-Nepal border!At Darbhanga I forgot this time that I was a medical student of that place and the NMO was seeded there- going to Chhapki village for weekly clinic while a UG student and a memory that how a cute child of few months who had a central corneal ulcer was relieved of that by terramycin eye ointment when I had not read ophthalmology( in our days it was a subject of final year)- that mother's grateful eyes, I can never forget!Today I listened to in the Tv there is discrimination with SC students at the AIIMS…but that was a predominantly Harijan village of rickshaw pullers…might be that boy too would have been a rickshaw puller and who knows that 30 year boy would have been in one of the trains meant for internal migration.Whether I should have instead service through founding the NMO should have turned to other ways of politics or so…I do not know…Darbhanga has been a crucible for politics… but in this journey I got a book from Dr. Sureshwar Jha on Sooraj Narayan Singh, a great socialist who was called his Hanuman by JP (when he was killed by a police lathi charge by Kedar Pandey's hobnobbing with Usha Martin of Ranchi when I was 18 yr. old studying in the Ranchi College) who came out with JP from Hazaribagh jail and later broke Hanumannagar jail of Nepal to release 'the Lenin of India' JP who himself was killed as 'Trotsky of India,' in a free India..When I was a child someone had said me quoting Sooraj Babu if you have no money you can't do politics in India.Yes, I do not had nor for that matter many Maithils who could have changed the shape and destiny of Mithila (and thereby of the nation) and therefore I took the path of the least resistance 0f social service and organisation though still I could have had my caste not Brahmin might not have been Mandalised by the talented Lohia's myopic change of 'class struggle from 'varn struggle' as was said by Sooraj Narayan Singh to Lohia in 1967..What Sooraj said 'Mangal Pandey's progeny would be debarred and the hangman's would be given reservation' in Lohia's module of socialism is being seen today…Only, Sooraj Babu did not envisioned that hangman was merely executing the orders which too would be given by the 'creamy one' among them or by vote asthmatics of combination of MY or other and those lieutenants of Lohia have not merely Mandalised the socialism rather vandalised that and everything where ever they could making that part a complete BIMARU though previous regimes were also had malnourished the regions.And if I say now that Mithila should have an IIT at Darbhanga , IISc at Muzaffarpur, AIIMS at Saharsa and IIM at Purnea many frown at…, but I have seen today after many days there are signatures in three digit for my petition to the PM out of which I am quoting two though one may click on it to get very heart touching comments:Read the IIT should be opened at Darbhanga in Bihar PetitionFaizan Khan Petition me hai dum kyunke Darbhanga aajtak upekcha ka shikaar hi hota raha hai. Ab toh use India ke map pe laakar justice karo "IIT" kholkar.....SHAIL THAKUR Please help plant a seed, Prime Minister Sir, to allow a distinguished region of Bihar to have this IIT. Darbhanga, the cultural capital of Mithila has had more than its share of neglect in the last 60 years. We are asking you democratically, peacefully and logically. This is our turn to have IIT in Mithila's center - Darbhanga which has a working wide airport if that is what qualifies Patna too have one more crowding element there. Thank you Sir.While Faizan's comments are explaining the plight of Mithila SHAIL(I presume her a girl by name)'s assertion of seedling the development by IIT is heart touching.Had I been a PM and any such petition from any other part of the country must have investigated thoroughly and unbiased .All such leaders visit Mithila for aerial visit of floods.I visited Madhubani the next day where for the first time a small but productive group meeting was held and a committee was formed with Prof. Gaya Prasad Chaudhary as president and Advocate Pramod Jha as secretary( while coming from his residence I saw again Gileshan Bazar an apbhransh of Grierson the Irish, in the same evening Dr. Sureshwar Jha had told me at Darbhanga that he wanted reference material on Ireland and Irish language as the problem of Mithila seems like that of Ireland, when I had told him the saying of an Irish Jailer who used to tell my uncle Madhukar Thakur who had to break bricks for making gitti as of rigorous labour,"Boys for Independence we, Irish, too suffered a lot."Suraj Babu too was in the same jail and my uncle use to recite the Ramcharitmanas for him though both were of almost same age.I too had spent 9 days in the same Ward No.13 of that Sooraj ward(where I was kept with several medicos while protesting capitation-fee based medical colleges in 1977) where during Emergency MISA prisoners' were also kept.