Meet Babulal Dahiya from Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district, who has till now collected over 110 traditional varieties of rice. And he has been cultivating these 110 varieties on small-sized plots in his two-acre land to preserve and protect them.
He is a collector of folk songs and seeds. And it was while collecting Bagheli folklore, this 72-year-old farmer cum Bagheli poet realized that saving folk songs and sayings won’t mean much if the local crop varieties, which repeatedly crop up in the folk literature, are not saved and protected side by side.
Dahiya, who retired as postmaster in 2007, has been passionate about documenting Bagheli folk literature-songs, proverbs, folktales, legends, myths and so on. He has authored five books on Bagheli oral folk literature for MP Adiwasi Lok Kala Academy and published two Bagheli poetic collections.
Read more of this very informative and interesting piece in a report by Neeraj Santoshi published in Hindustan Times....
