[Excerpts from a description of Mahendra Singh’s funeral by Prabhat Khabhar editor Harivansh]
Whoever has seen this crowd will never forget the surging mass of people who had come to bid their last farewell to MLA Mahendra Singh. Long queues of thousands, women-children-old people, some weeping bitterly and others silent, …these people were Gandhi’s ‘last men of the society’. Now no political party attracts people of this class character. Since 1977, Centrist parties have been ferrying loads of people to their rallies, those who are mobilised with money. Even in these ‘managed crowds’, the ‘last men of the society’ are never seen. People had spontaneously spilled on to the streets to bid farewell to Mahendra Singh. Was it a crowd or a sea of people - a human sea!
Today, if a political party mobilises even two to four thousand people, the police is required to control them - even then the crowd behaves in a most indisciplined manner, mindless, like lumpens. Their most powerful leaders shout from the dais, but the crowd doesn’t heed them- some get up while others sit, some shout while others create nuisance, but the mass that had gathered to pay homage to Mahendra Singh had an altogether different character; there was no police command, some party activists would merely make some requests from the dais and the mass of more than half a lakh people would obey without a sound. This was a mass of people among whom one felt like a member of a massive human family, a mass in whose care you could forget your fears.
Again and again one is reminded of the handful of political people among whom one feels fearful - where man fears man. Here was a mass of people where more than 50 thousand people shared their silence. This was a gathering of the poor who were dreaming of an identity for themselves.
What a mass of women! In this feudal society, such a surging mass of women who came to attend the funeral left me dumbfounded. Twice it was announced through the mike -comrades and others should shift towards the rear leaving the front for women. That was enough. The mass instantly shifted back. In the surging mass, the front was occupied only by women. The entire mass was in deep mourning, not a clap, not a sound. It was the first time I saw the Polit Bureau Members of the CPI (ML) from close range. It would be a demeaning to call them ‘Neta’. They were just as ordinary as their cadres; there was nothing special about them. When the District Secretary of a dead organisation moves, a crowd of lumpens moves with him, but here were many leaders like KD Yadav, all an integral part of the massive crowd. Dipankar Bhattacharya, a product of the internationally prestigious Indian Statistical Institute was just like any common cadre. Maybe this is why the mass of Gandhi’s common men is attracted to CPI (ML) and is not to be seen in any other party. q