Eelchand, Advocate, Dang Unit
Eelchand is from Nirgumal village in Dang district, Gujarat. He identifies himself as a lawyer who is always willing to help the poor and show them the proper direction. Even before he became a lawyer and became part of an organization, he was seen as a community leader and all village events would be held with his input.
Eelchand has always been involved in social work, but his reason for studying the law was very personal, inspired by the oppression of his own family, which he had seen from a young age. He shared how his family would constantly be tormented by the upper caste members of the village and many times male members of their family would be rounded up and taken to jail for frivolous complaints. He saw knowledge of the law and its application as the best way to protect his family from such prosecution and shared that his standing in society as a lawyer has led to an improvement in his family’s social status and the oppression faced by them has ended
His experience of discrimination has been both personal as well professional. Apart from the personal discrimination shared above, he informed how he had seen discrimination in Dang, against the STs and even within them. There is no social interaction between people from different caste backgrounds and there is no unity or a common identity, which contributes to the backwardness of the people. In terms of success in his work, he shared an experience of how he had filed an application for allotment of land, which had belonged to his ancestors and on which his family had been farming. However, he got a negative reaction at the district level and from the collector. Confident in himself, he took the case to the high court level and has been able to get an order declaring the land to belong to his family.
Eelchand views the state as a structure which is either used or misused by human agents. He has good relations with the judiciary as well as the officers in his arena of work. His relations with the police are not very good, due to the attitude of the police while his family faced corruption, along with other issues such as corruption, inefficiency and laziness that he experiences. Within his community, he is seen as good person, always working for the community and willing to help people.
Eelchand shared that he felt very apprehensive about the new government structure and feels that with the history of violence and divisive politics attributed to the current political outlook, as well as their less than impressive record on civil and political rights, the work that is being done by our organization may be actively discouraged