Bezwada Wilson is an Indian activist who is one of the founders and national convener of Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), a human rights organization working to eliminate manual scavenging and employ manual scavengers in India.
Wiki/Biography
Bezwada Wilson was born in 1966 (54 years old in 2020) in the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Kolar, Karnataka. He studied in a rag pickers’ school till Class 4 and then went to a higher primary school in Andhra Pradesh. During his secondary school years, his family moved to Hyderabad, where he also studied in high school and junior secondary school. In Class 12, he dropped out of school and started conducting functional literacy classes every evening for women from Telugu-speaking manual rag picker families. He later completed Class 12 and obtained a degree in Political Science from the BR Ambedkar Open University in Hyderabad and was involved in community service, especially youth projects.
appearance
Eye color: Black
Hair color: gray and white
Family and caste
Bezwada Wilson was born into a Dalit (Toti) Christian family. His parents, Bezwada Rachel and Bezwada Yakob, were street sweepers. He was the youngest of four children; he had two elder brothers named Yesupadam and Mark, and an elder sister named Anamma.
Bezawada Wilson (second from right) with his siblings Yesupadam, Mark and Annamma at KGF’s home
Profession
Bezwada began his career as an activist by sensitizing his family and relatives about manual scavenging. In 1986, he started reaching out to other scavengers and sensitizing them. Soon, he started writing letters to the KGF authorities, Karnataka ministers, the Prime Minister of India and newspapers, but these activities were largely unrecognized. In 1993, Parliament enacted the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Toilets (Prohibition) Act, under which construction of dry toilets and manual scavenging were prohibited. Despite the ban, manual scavenging continued across India. Later, Bezwada took photos of the dry toilets and manual scavenging in KGF and sent them to the then Managing Director of Bharat Gold Mines Limited (BGML), PAK Shettigar, and threatened to take action under the Act. Following this, an emergency meeting was held and the dry toilets were converted to water-sealed toilets and all scavengers were transferred to non-scavenging work. In 1994, when these photos were published in Indian newspapers, the Karnataka government had to admit that there was a problem of manual scavenging, which they had previously denied. Over the next two years, Bezwada organized manual scavengers in Karnataka and launched the Movement Against Manual Scavenging (CAMS), which oversaw the conversion of dry latrines to flush toilets and put people back into manual scavenging. Wilson then moved to Andhra Pradesh and began working with Dalit activist Paul Diwakar and retired Indian administrator SR Sankaran to encourage scavengers to rebel against this caste-based profession.
Safai Kamachari Andolan
In 1993, he co-founded Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) along with SR Sankaran and Paul Diwakar with an aim to eliminate the practice of manual scavenging and help those who practise it find better means of livelihood. SKA was operating in Karnataka till 2003 when Bezwada and his other team members launched Safai Karmachari Andolan nationwide in Delhi.
The logo of Safai Karmachari Andolan
In 2003, Bezwada and SKA filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India, asking them to eliminate dry toilets and recognize that manual scavenging violates the fundamental rights of people doing such work. The PIL became a major move when all Indian states and central ministries were forced to address the issue of manual scavenging. In 2010, the liberation of Safai Karmacharis became a major issue during the planning period of India’s 12th Five-Year Plan. During this period, Bezwada met with MPs, ministers and members of the National Advisory Council and submitted a systematic document on manual scavenging across the country. In October 2010, Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC), wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office, saying that manual scavenging was a disgrace to India and demanded that it be abolished with the utmost urgency and priority. The Indian National Advisory Council resolved to end manual scavenging by 2012. The Indian government set up a special task force to re-survey the entire country, reconstruct, amend the laws to make them stricter, and remove dry toilets. India’s Planning Commission has also set up a panel on Safai Karmacharis and appointed Bezwaada as its convener.
dispute
On December 31, 2017, the Maharashtra police arrested Varavara Rao (activist and writer), Vernon Gonsalves (writer), Arun Ferreira (activist), Sudha Bharadwaj (activist) and Gautam Navlakha (activist), and raided the residences of several other activists under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) as part of an investigation into a meeting of the “Elgar Parishad” in Bhima Koregaon village near Pune. In January 2018, Bezwada Wilson, along with other civil society members, demanded action against the Maharashtra police for launching a “malicious and malicious attack” on human rights activists across the country.
Awards
- Selected as Ashoka Senior Fellow for Human Rights in 2009
- 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award
Bezwada Wilson kisses the Ramon Magsaysay Award
- The RamaGovinda Puraskara 2019 event is organized by Smt. D. Ramabai Charitable Foundation and Sri M. Gopinath Shenoy Charitable Trust at Kalamandira
Bezwada Wilson and his RamaGovinda Puraskara
- The Real Hero Award to Rajdeep Sardesai presented by CNN-IBN in association with Reliance Industries Limited
Bezwada Wilson receives True Hero Award
Facts/Trivia
- He is an avid reader, primarily reading books on politics, philosophy, and women’s issues. He also enjoys reading about cooking, sports, business, the stock market, and income taxes.
- His parents were separated for seven years and only got back together a year before he was born.
- According to Wilson, his mother called him her “miracle baby” and was determined to get him to read, unlike his other siblings who never received an education.
- In 1986, fresh out of school, he was disgusted and shocked to see people manually cleaning human waste from dry toilets. When he told his parents what he had seen, he found out that his parents were also doing the same job. He was shocked because he didn’t know he was from a “Thoti” family. He was in so much pain that he thought about committing suicide, but somehow he decided to live and make life better for these people.
- After graduating from school, Wilson went to the employment exchange to look for a job, where he was told that he would be given a job as a sanitation worker because of his caste. He was very angry and decided to return to Kolar to encourage the Dalits there to resist the job imposed on him by caste.
- Family was the first obstacle he had to face in his fight to improve the lives of manual cleaners; his parents and relatives thought that he should not focus on something that had always been there, but after a year, they saw his passion to eliminate manual cleaning and changed their minds.
- In 2016, Wilson and SKA conducted the “Bhim Yatra”, a 125-day campaign covering 500 districts in 30 states, aimed at informing the state and government about the deaths of workers due to harmful fumes while working in dry toilets, sewers and septic tanks.
Bezwada Wilson during the Bhim Yatra
- He is a follower of BR Ambedkar and got to know his ideas – education, agitation and organization – during a bicycle pilgrimage in his area.
- In July 2012, he appeared on the Indian television talk show Satyamev Jayate (Season 1), hosted by Aamir Khan, where he spoke about his childhood experiences and reflected on the inhumane practice of manual scavenging.
Bezwada Wilson as Satyamev Jayate
- According to Wilson, he had never faced caste-based discrimination before leaving his hometown. He said,
I noticed some differences – like when playing – but I didn’t understand that it was discrimination. Later, I realized that we were not like others. We were different. People also made us feel less than others. I didn’t fully understand it and didn’t want to accept it. But they didn’t give me a choice.”
- Growing up, he had no career plan, but he loved reading and thought he could become a librarian so he could work while studying.
- In 2020, he appeared in a special episode of Karamveer on Kaun Banega Crorepati hosted by Amitabh Bachchan along with actor Anup Soni.
Bezwada Wilson as Kaun Banega Crorepati
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education