Humble tribute to Dashrath Manjhi on their death anniversary today. Dashrath was born in a village named Gehlour near Gaya in Bihar in a scheduled caste Musahar community. His region, like every SC settlement, was extremely backward in terms of development.
The villagers had to travel 70 kilometers for all the essential needs to the town due to the giant mountain hill of Gehlour. In 1959, Manjhi’s wife Falguni Devi died because of this very same mountain. Manjhi was devastated. He then took an oath to cut down the mountain all on his own so that no one else faces the same fate of her wife.
Manjhi worked day and night for 22 years straight and broke down the hill from a distance of 70 kilometers to just one kilometer.
He worked from 1960 to 1982.
No doubt whatever Manjhi did was courageous. But his struggle is of no romanticism. No human should ever go through this. It was sheer failure of the governments of that time and result of caste brutalization.
