We love Indira but now we vote Modi

Mirror spends an evening at Saranyavaas to know what the Wall erected to hide their poverty from Trump means to them

We are here because of Indira Gandhi. We loved and adored her. When I was about five, she came to our homes here, says a Saranyavaas veteran Kesriben who was born here like four generations before her. “They lived here and died here. So shall we and four generations after me”.

The Saraniyas say hundreds of journalists from India and abroad have come and met them. But nobody has asked us why we are here. “We are here because Indira Gandhi promised us that we will never have to vacate this place. Menaben says, “We may remain poor, maybe we are cursed. But Indira Gandhi has blessed us and we will stay here for ever.” Nobody knows the dates but all the 56-plus veterans living here recall how Indira Gandhi came to Saranyavaas one day and spent over 45 minutes with them. “She came, she sat with us in the style we sit with crossed legs and she even had tea and snacks with us in our vessels,” remembers another 78-year-old Dadaji.

Mirror researched and found out that Indira Gandhi visited this colony in early seventies before the Emergency was imposed. She visited Saranyavaas and spent over 45 minutes. She went to then the Collectorate and Municipal Corporation to find out details. After realising that the Saraniyas had made this their home since generations, she recalled her 20-point programme.

Under this programme all hutment and dwellers could get rights to live where they had been staying. Those years, this Saranyavaas did not fall in Ahmedabad city but district. For city slums, she asked the Municipal Corporation then headed by Vadibhai Kamdar and the Ahmedabad collectorate to authorise these slums. “The Saranyavaas society immediately went to Kubernagar and spent Rs 5 to get lots of sweets”.


Nanubhai, another veteran, says, “Indira Gandhi gave us documents and rights to this land.” Now there are 750 houses in Saranyavaas. They are one of the 28 scheduled nomadic tribes who have settled in Gujarat over 90 years ago.

J S Rana, a retired bureaucrat, came to Gujarat on his first posting as an IAS in 1976. “Those times, the Sachivalaya was in Ahmedabad city. My first posting in 1976 was in Rajkot but I was posted in Ahmedabad and the Indira Bridge was very much there. The Indira Bridge is next to Saranyavaas and was constructed and dedicated to Indira Gandhi after her visit.

Senior Congress leader Deepak Babaria told Mirror that he would have been about 20 when this happened. “I have been associated with the Congress since then,” Deepak Babaria who is Congress incharge for Madhya Pradesh told Mirror. He recalls how happy the residents of Saranyavaas were when they got papers for this slum. As Dadaji told Mirror, “we kept Indira Gandhi’s pictures in our house with our gods and worshipped her.”

Things changed from the nineties for Saranyavaas. Gripped in unemployment, addictions and intense class and caste discrimination, the Saranyas realised that the Congress was no more helping them.

“In 1995 also, we voted Congress but then the BJP captured power. We were constantly being alienated and discriminated. Deepak Babaria confirms that in 2006-07 when the BJP was ruling the municipal corporation, there was a move to evacuate these slums. “Some private builder wanted to construct a high-rise here and there was a proposal, too. The Saranyavaas residents came to me and I tried to help them. There was violence too and we initiated a movement to ensure that they do not lose their rights. Our movement was successful,” he said.

However when Mirror went to Saranyavaas, we could not find a single Congress voter. In two trips that we made, at least 45 people we spoke to said they were die-hard Narendra Modi fans. “Congress is dead in Ahmedabad. Modi gives us hope for a better future and hence we vote for him. Also, because we vote for BJP, we get at least some basic facilities. Otherwise there would no water also, a senior Saranayavaas resident told us. Rajubhai Saraniya says he is one of the few educated persons here. He says.


“The Congress and liberals are shouting against the wall made to hide our poverty but we do not mind. It will give us safety. Forget that this has been done to hide our poverty from President Trump, we also do not want to showcase our poverty.”

Manubhai Saranya said he earns about Rs 100 a day and feeds a family of 8 people. “I have no time for interviews or showcasing my poverty to you,” he told Mirror. The youth of the community even today, struggle to earn a meagre livelihood, earning Rs 150 to Rs 200 on a daily trade carrying out their ancestral trade of sharpening household knives, a far cry from their respected job of yore, making sure that the weapons in the armoury of Chittorgarh’s legendary King Maharaja Pratap remain sharp.

Sanjay Saraniya, 27, a Class X dropout, who works in the Kalupur cloth market and earns about Rs 7,000 per month, spends about Rs 2,000 every month on his wife’s medicines, who has had four caesarean operations, of which two children died.

Sanjay has two children, one boy aged 7 and a girl aged 5 years. While both go to a municipal school, he is not very hopeful of how far they will be able to study. His wife too, is a Class VII dropout. He rued, “We have dreams but I really can’t see how to fulfil them.”

Most of the other youth at Saranyavaas have the same dilemma and the same condition as regards to education. Taking up mantle of earning for their homes at a young age, most have not studied past Class X.

Ramji Saraniya, 30, who works as a labourer in Chandlodia and also uses his father’s cycle with the attached wheel to sharpen knives, said, “I earn about Rs 200-Rs 250 per day doing odd jobs. If I have time left, I go to sharpen knives.” Ramji has also studied only till Class Rahul Saraniya, 28, a Class 12 pass out, started work young after his father lost his job in a textile packing unit that shut down in the spate of closures after the implementation of GST. Rahul’s father Vikram, 40, lost his job in the garment factory and has been unemployed since then. While Rahul left studies to support his family, his two sisters are still trying to pass Class X on their second attempt. However, these girls are aberration, as most get married as soon as they turn 18.

The condition of water supply and sanitation is dismal at Saraniyavaas. While open gutter lines flow though the inner streets, there are two big kunds or series of taps installed at the front of the slum where the entire area gets its water from. Kesriben said fights are common and many must go without water or share the scarce resource after standing in line for hours on end. Dharma Saraniya said most of the families in the slum vote for Modi. He said, “We hope and hope that Vikas will come to us. We don’t want much, small houses and a road will do. That is why we vote for Modi.”

Dharma, his three brothers, their families and his parents all stay in a two-room house in Saraniyavaas and most of them have to sleep outdoors at night. Speaking on the lack of space due to the burgeoning population, he said, “When someone dies, we don’t even have space to gather and mourn the deceased.”

Further, Dharma added that he has an LPG connection but prices to purchase a bottle has consistently risen from Rs700 to more than Rs 1,000. “However, we must pool our money to purchase it because there is hardly any wood to cook food with so many families to provide for in the community.”

When asked if he will keep voting for Modi, his mother chipped in to say, “Obviously, we will vote for Modi. He will give us a proper home where we can fit our whole family.”

Golden smiles

A curious sight that strikes outsiders when speaking to residents of Saraniyavaas are the smiles of the women. While younger girls have pristine white teeth, married women have one to four frontal teeth covered in gold caps. Kesriben says this is a tradition, albeit one that is soon vanishing, thanks to education. The golden teeth are in some way, what is brought by the girl to her husband’s home when she gets married. While older women have four golden teeth, the younger brides have as few as one. Senior members of the community say this tradition is dying out with the younger generation refusing to get it done and most of the families not having the money to pay for so much gold.