From rickshaw puller to TMC candidate in Balagarh

Seventy-year-old Manoranjan Byapari is a former Naxalite rebel who later became a rickshaw puller before making a name for himself as a Bengali novelist.

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has fielded a 70-year-old former Naxal rebel Manoranjan Byapari in Balagarh constituency in Hooghly district in the state election.

Byapari joined the rebel group in search of equality in his twenties before returning to normal life. The TMC candidate, who has emerged as an important figure in the literary circles of Bengal, had worked in a crematorium and as a rickshaw puller.

According to Byapari, his life had taken a u-turn when he met writer Mahasweta Devi while plying a rickshaw. The renowned writer got to know that Byapari was immensely interested in literature, which led to the publication of his first essay ‘Rickshaw chalai’ (‘I pull a rickshaw’) in her non-fiction magazine Bartika in 1981.

Since then, the writer wrote acclaimed Bengali novels such as Itibrittey Chandal Jibon (2012, Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit, translated by Sipra Mukherjee into English and published by Sage in 2019) and Batashe Baruder Gondho (2013, There’s Gunpowder in the Air, translated by Arunava Sinha into English and published by Eka in 2019).

Byapari said he had worked for 23 years as a chef in a school before taking the charge of a librarian in the same school.

He said that he never desires to be a politician but the mounting disparity in society forced him to join the TMC.

"I had worked in a crematorium ground as an ash collector. Then, moved to sell tea to get my life into normal mode but never felt as ousted as I felt today. That's the reason I have joined politics to change the rising inequality in society", said Byapari.