ASSOCIATION OF LIVING DEAD!

Huge and populous country like India has thousands of associations or unions of different sections of people. But there is one in the biggest state of Uttar Pradesh and the name of the association is Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People (Uttar Pradesh Mritak Sangh) meaning it comprises individuals who have expired. But there is a catch. It is the association of people who are officially dead but physically alive!

nd the association is a serious one with about half lakh members and it has also received national and international media coverage. Based in Azamgarh, its challenging mission is to reclaim the legal rights of those falsely listed by the State governments as being dead. In the overcrowded regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh where the land is scarce many have resorted

to bribing officials to usurp a plot declaring the real owner dead and transfer the title to their ownership. It is an irony that the process to undo this is long and arduous, with obstacles from inefficient and corrupt officials. The Association seeks to reverse the illegal practice, call attention to the problem, and prevent others from being exploited in similar fashion. The founder of the association is its president Lal Bihari, who was “dead” from 1976 to 1994 and used the word Mritak (dead) as prefix in his name during the period. He became so famous it inspired Indian film director Satish Kaushik who made a movie Kaagaz, starring Pankaj Tripathi, based on his life. It was released on ZEE5 in January this year. Lal Behari also tried unsuccessfully to contest Parliament elections against Rajiv Gandhi and Vishwanath Pratap Singh both former Prime Ministers.

The Lal Bihari real life story started like this. He as a citizen applied for a loan from a bank in Azamgarh which is district headquarters to do a small business since he was poor. He was required to mortgage his ancestral land against the loan which is normal bank procedure. But to his utter surprise he found the land no more belongs to him since he is already dead-on official records! Further digging of mounds of land records showed that his land has been transferred in the name of his uncle since he is officially dead. He ran from pillar to post but to no avail. Then his legal counsels told him that such a case was very common in the area, and that having his death revoked would take years and may not be possible in his lifetime at least.

Lal Behari tried all other conceivable means to get justice or at least draw public attention to prove that he is alive. He changed his name to Lal Bihari Mritak (mritak is the Hindi word for ‘dead’). He also insulted police and government officials with antics like throwing pamphlets at them, trying to engage them in petty fights and

even kidnapping his uncle’s child, to entice them to arresting him. By arresting him, police and officials would have to have acknowledged that he is alive and hence would need to produce papers for that purpose. There is even a death certificate that showed that Lal Bihari was dead. Bihari’s protestations that he couldn’t possibly be dead because he was standing right there counted for nothing. “It says here in the papers in black and white that you’re dead,” Bihari remembers being told many times.

Lal Behari’s wife applied for widow’s pension, which was denied even if he was officially dead. Another attempt he made was staging a mock funeral for himself. After a long struggle in 1994, then Azamargh district magistrate, Hausla Prasad Verma, declared him to be once again alive. Now Lal Behari became the official owner of the land and lived at least legitimately.

But through these efforts, he attracted the attention of thousands of “dead” citizens across Uttar Pradesh and many other states. Bihari brought these people together with the creation of the Uttar Pradesh Mritak Sangh (Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People). His unique efforts earned him the IgNobel Prize in 2003. Ig Nobels is awarded to ‘honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think’.

As per our country’s laws once one is dead, he or she cannot own land. It’s a fact that has led to innumerable cases of people being registered dead and dispossessed of their property – and many have discovered that there is very little they can do about it.

Another case in point is Padesar Yadav. In his late 70s had moved to Kolkata. Few months later when he travelled back to his village in UP. But when reached people were shocked to see him. They stared like they were seeing a ghost and said that he is dead! And even his mourning rituals have been carried out!

Yadav now learned that his nephew who was very close to him was claiming the land as his inheritance since he had expired. When he challenged his nephew, he insisted that the “man” is an imposter! He cried for days but then he pulled himself together and called the Association for the living dead which helped him to the best extent.

Lal Bihari says that through his Association for the Dead he has supported thousands of people across India who have faced similar struggles. Many of them, he says, have not been as lucky as he was. Some even have killed themselves after spending years fighting their case and eventually losing hope, while others died natural deaths or became insane before their cases were resolved.

Another case of the living dead is Tilak Chand Dhakad from Madhya Pradesh. As a younger man Dhakad moved to the city in the hope of making a better income and a better life for his children. While he was away, he rented his land to a couple.

It was only when he returned to the village, he discovered he was no longer the owner of the land because he had supposedly passed away. Dhakad says he soon discovered that the married couple he had been renting his land had registered him as dead, and the wife had then gone to court posing as his Dhakad’s widow, saying she was happy to sign away the land.

Anil Kumar, a lawyer who has fought several cases for the living dead says each case is complex. Sometimes there are clerical errors, at other times public officials are bribed to draw up false death certificates. But Kumar says, when these cases are the result of a scam, justice can be elusive. In one case he fought, it took six years to prove his client was alive – and more than 25 years later he is still waiting for a verdict in the case against the man who allegedly had his client declared dead. The cases should be fast-tracked so that the criminal gets punished, it would strike fear into people and prevent these kinds of crime, he feels.

Bihari says he still receives calls from people across the country who want his advice to help them prove they are alive, but at old age, he is losing steam and is now contemplating retiring from the struggle. He’d always hoped that the national media would champion the dispossessed, and that the government would clamp down on the bribe-takers, but it hasn’t happened. The man who spent 18 years of his life trying to prove he was alive one day really will be dead, without having achieved the changes he was fighting for.

Source: Himalayan News Chronicle