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“Sir aap gaon Kakrali, zillah Gujrat ke rehne wale hain ?” (Sir are you from the village called Kakrali in district Gujrat ?), the priestly attired guy asks me when I reach “Ramgiri ki Haveli” (Ramgiri’s mansion) in a narrow by lane of Haridwar – the holy city of the Hindus. These days it hardly looks like a mansion with small randomly arranged rooms rented out to many people like him. It has taken me well over an hour to locate this guy but one word with me and he has figured out where I am from !

I am on a journey with my brother in law to trace our ancestry, having driven 5 hours from Delhi to reach this small town on the foothills of the Himalayas where the holy river Ganges emerges from the mountains into the plains. The other purpose is the immersion of my father in law’s ashes as he recently passed away.

Haridwar is a pilgrimage center of ancient repute amongst the Hindus and is a series of such places spread across the Indian subcontinent. Hindus of all kinds visit one of these places at least once in their lifetime – whether happy & alive for taking a dip in the holy waters (literally called “Sukh snan” or happy bath) or dead & in an urn full of their ashes for immersion into the holy waters. An essential part of this life ritual is to find the “panda” or priest from your place of origin and enter into the “bahi khata” (literally meaning – a book of accounts) and enter the name of the relatives who have just died and along with them the names of your descendants for your future generations to see.

This has been followed for many generations of Hindus, some say for thousands of years. And these “Bahi khatas” now form a historical genealogical record of Hindus that goes back centuries.

I walk up the narrow stairs with him into a small dimly lit room full of bound reams of papers while he chats me about some other people with the same last name as me – “Bedi”, that have their family details in these books. He seems to remember a cousin of mine, who is now a famous Bollywood actor but had come here many decades ago to immerse his mother’s ashes along with my dad. He even remembered the fact that at that time my now famous cousin had barely started his film career. And mind you – he had not yet opened any book to read my ancestry !

This ritual has very interesting beginnings. As part of the Hindu tradition, one is supposed to go on pilgrimages to one or more of these holy places, especially to one that is closest to your place of residence. Of course some folks are more ambitious and visit many of the far away pilgrimage centers as well. While these days these places are typically a few hours away from large metropolitan areas using modern means of transportation but in times past, these were a “once in a lifetime” arduous journeys undertaken at great cost and peril. It was not certain how long it would take or whether you would even return alive. Hence folks started the practice of entering their names into these record books so that even if they did not reach back alive, someone from their family in a subsequent pilgrimage would be able to ascertain the fate of the ancestor’s pilgrimage.

Recording your name is fine but it also needed to be entered in the same register consistently for it to have value and trace ability. This was an opportunity for the priests at these pilgrimage centers to also apportion parts of the countryside amongst themselves for record keeping. This was usually based on ancestral villages and districts.

And this is how I wind up reaching this guy, as my ancestors belong to the village called Kakrali in the district of Gujrat, in the state of Punjab now a part of Pakistan (earlier undivided India). The name Kakrali is derived from the word “Kikar” a member of the Acacia group of hardy trees which thrives in dry shrub lands of Punjab.

My family is from a Hindu sub caste called “Khatri”. This includes people with last names same as mine or others like Khanna, Kapoor, Malhotra, Mehra, Chopra, Sodhi, Sood etc. One of the very famous Bedi was Guru Nanak who start Sikhism centuries ago. Khatris claim to have originated as Kshatriyas (warrior caste – the number two in the traditional caste pecking order with the top one being brahmins) but somehow over the centuries they found better luck as traders and wound up dominating trade routes as part of the famous silk route in and out of the Indian subcontinent all the way up to Russia and beyond. So a reasonably wealthy class, now spread over a large part of north India.

I make myself comfortable on the red colored floor mat at this guy’s small room and he starts opening the “Bahi Khata” which contains my family’s history. 

We start in reverse chronological order and read through an entry made by an uncle of mine in 1996 which had me and my brother’s names listed as well. The writing is mostly in Hindi but with almost no space between the words making it hard for me to read it but our guy is a pro and he quickly reads out the text to me and I am convinced that this really is my family as I also see my uncle and dad’s signatures.

We keep moving backwards in time. The records are still mostly in Hindi with a few in English & Urdu and one interestingly in the language used in financial record keeping called “Mahajani”, a part of the “Lande” family. My ancestors being traders must have used this language extensively for book keeping – and of course I can’t read it !

The geographical location of where my ancestors traveled from keeps changing as well. While the more recent ones are from the Delhi area where we settled, it moves into the Sikh holy city of Amritsar where we moved post the partition of India in 1947, then it moves into the village of Kakrali where we originate from.

We continue flipping through history. 1916 – Lala Hirachand (my great-great-great grandfather), 1879 – Dana Mal and finally 1818 – Sabla Mal. And that’s where I find a mention in the records that our family originated from a nephew of Guru Nanak (who started Sikhism and died in 1539) called Tipru. Wow !! We cannot find records prior to this which may also be due to the fact that palm leaves used (instead of paper) then did not have much of an archival life. Or maybe they are hidden amidst the millions of records in these rooms.

As I am busy clicking pictures of these treasured pages, I am educated that there are about 2500 of such “pandas” in Haridwar but their tribe is rapidly diminishing as the younger generation does not find this exciting or lucrative enough as a career. Also, due to lack of any institutional support to preserve, these valuable records are also succumbing to the forces of nature. The real talent of these people is their ability to memorize these records passed to them from their forefathers and be able to search across millions of these in a matter of minutes without the help of any technology. No wonder he was able to place me so quickly.

Anyway, I google the name Kakrali and surprisingly the village still exists close to the town of Gujrat in Pakistan. Someone even has a nice YouTube video of the place but looking at the geo-politics between India and Pakistan, I doubt if I will ever be able to visit Kakrali.

I pay some money to this guy for his efforts and walk back into the crowded street but with a smile on my face and a feeling of greater belonging in my heart. Maybe someday I will visit Kakrali and get some glimpses of the world that my family came from.

In case I have intrigued you enough and you too are enthused to trace your roots, write to me and I might be able to help guide your journey: rahul@bedi.co.in

23 years and going strong. Years ago, when the Internet in India was just still new and you could access it either on a slow dialup modem or using the grand 64kpbs leased line from the office, I chanced upon a post by someone on an environment BBS about sustainable farming and I replied. That started off a seemingly odd friendship with a man who was 20 years older, a wee bit crazy, passionate about social change and an avid traveler who ran a non-government organization (NGO) called Dakshinayan in the tribal belt of (then) Bihar (and now Jharkhand).

What started off as a “let’s see what this is all about” journey about twenty three years ago with Dakshinayan and Siddharth Sanyal still continues strong. And I am now sitting under a hundred year old banyan tree in the compound donated by the local community to the school project that Dakshinayan runs in the Roldih village of Godda district in Jharkhand, writing this.

While I have been engaged with Dakshinayan through the years via my personal time or financial contributions. But in the last decade due to various, I was not able to visit the school. Finally I decided to take a week off from work and make the trip. And am I glad that I did.

Local economy improvement brings in new jobs and raises salaries. When I reached Roldih on the 11^th of Nov 2019, it was as if I had time travelled forward in time. The whole environment around the villages seem to have fast forwarded. There is a frenzy of house construction driven by the PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna) scheme, the village roads are being built, there is electricity in all the villages, the local shops seem to be bigger and better stocked, govt schools now have real teachers (thanks to the mandatory biometric based attendance) and more people own bikes (and some with cars !!). Something unheard of 10 years ago. I remember the time when we heard a motorbike passing near the project campus, we all peeked out to see who it was, now no one cares – there are so many.

The formal education sector still lacks quality and needs support schooling that will instill knowledge, awareness and life skills to kids. While there are more schools with teachers but the quality of education in this part of the country is still abysmally poor. There are enough class 7-9 students who don’t even know how to read and write even at grade 2-3 levels !! Moreover the rote based learning imparted by the schools does not impart any life skills or awareness about the outside world that these students have to engage with a rapidly increasing speed as the economy grows. Even basic knowledge of working English gives these kids a level playing field when dealing with the govt. machinery and outsiders who use bits of English to intimidate them. On the other hand, enrollment in the govt schooling system gives the kids access to all the facilities being provided and ultimately a formal school passing certificate.

So Dakshinayan has moved from a more formal schooling role to a “bridge education” role. Most of the students that attend the school early in the morning also attend the govt school, which, realizing the value of what we teach has even changed their timings to enable kids to attend both the schools. This allows kids to not just get access to the govt system but also get quality education readying them for the challenges that they will face as they grow up.

We also want to make sure that the students and their parents see real value as well as have skin in the game, hence we ask them to pay a small amount of Rs. 750/- per year.

People lack skills in the new jobs and opportunities that are emerging. Growth of the local economy has brought with it jobs but the local community is not ready for that yet. We were trying to get our local electric supply fixed and I realized that the local electric line man Shiv Pravesh seemed to be throwing a bunch of random electrical terms which made no sense to me, so I got talking with him and realized that he was working as a contractor to the local electric supply company with no formal training. No wonder we were getting 440v instead of 240v and bulbs kept popping off !! This is just one example and I am sure there are many more Shiv Praveshs who need to be trained on vocational skills so that the opportunities that the growing economy is throwing at them don’t get wasted. This is another area we are starting to explore in partnership with the local community.

Development Education program and our funding ethos. At Dakshinayan we have a strong belief that sustainable social change is a slow journey that can take decades of persistent partnership with communities and there is no one size fits all. Unfortunately this goes against the key drivers of mainstream corporate and institutional funding which pushes for rapid results and scale aligned to their business models. Hence we rely on non-institutional sources of funding which includes individual donors coupled with a unique program called “Development Education” where we seek volunteers to work on the project and pay a small fee to cover their expenses as well as partly fund our activities in return for gaining a unique perspective on social development in India.

Over the last few years the inflow of volunteers to the project has diminished, forcing us to reach out to additional individual donors to keep this journey moving forward especially when the need for the community is more than ever before. And this is where you come in.

We are seeking partnerships with likeminded individuals to help join Siddharth, Manas, me and few others to fund & drive this social transformation effort by sponsoring 5-10 students on a monthly basis as well as engaging closely with us.

Monthly expense for 10 students is Rs. 8000/- and covers books, teachers salaries, food, infrastructure, transportation etc. (averaged over each student). Our goal is to teach upwards of 75 kids in 2020 and have committed our resources to fund about half that number.

If you can sponsor 5-10 students for a year by funding us Rs. 4000-8000/- pm on a recurring basis, it will really mean a lot to the community. Any other contributions monetarily or otherwise are also welcome.

Update (2nd Dec 2019) – Thanks to all who have supported us, we are slowly inching closer to our goal but are still Rs. 300,000/- (US$ 4200) short. So please pass the word around.

Update (5th Jan 2020) – We are now closer to our goal but our still Rs. 1,50,000/- short.

Feel free to reach us at:   

Siddharth Sanyal – sanyalsid@gmail.com / +91 73186 43634

Rahul Bedi – rahulbedi2002@gmail.com / +91 98451 49915

Manas Das – manasdas1@gmail.com / +91 98800 18652