Name of Fellow: Gaurav Gulmohar
Genre: Journalism
Area of Work: Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Coming from a village and belonging to a farming family at Lambhua village, Gaurav Gulmohar was attracted journalism in his 20s. Gaurav has been highlighting issues of secularism, justice, caste discrimination and community rights of Nishad community.

After moving to Allahabad from his village, he started to associate with various political and social workers, social work organisations, Gandhian organisations like Swaraj Vidyapeeth where he developed his political and social understanding.

In these organisations, he attended various workshops. Among the workshop, he attended a newspaper reading session held on every Saturday, where they used to read newspapers and discuss on the various news published in the newspapers.

During this time, he got an opportunity to work with child labour issues with Department of Sociology of University of Allahabad. Meeting the child labourers at brick kilns at Shankargarh, he was deeply concerned about them and started to think how he could highlight these issues.

While working there, he felt that he might not be able to contribute to the society by pursuing his higher studies in political science to the extent that he may be able to do by doing journalism.

He was convinced that through journalism he would be able to contribute to the society and execute his duties and roles to the towards the society.

Deciding to do Masters in journalism, he joined Mahatma Gandhi Antarashtriya Hindi University and completed his masters in 2019.

After completion of Masters, he moved back to Uttar Pradesh and started pursuing freelance journalism. He concentrates in Eastern UP and Lucknow as a ground reporter. His reportage is focused on corruption, human interest stories, Constitutional rights and violation of Constitutional rights, caste discrimination and caste exploitation. He covers those rural and grassroot stories which are not covered by the mainstream media houses.

As he is based in Allahabad presently, he is working with riverine community called Nishad. Allahabad and Gorakhpur where the majority of the Nishad population is based and these two places are centre of Nishad politics.

Nishad community is the invisible and inseparable part of Hindu fairs such as Kumbh mela. In Kumbh and Maha Kumbh fairs, the community is responsible for setting crucial parts of the temporary villages. They are responsible for the supply of pipa flower or small shops or drinking water facilities or things required for prayers and also cheap labour. The community, as riverine peoples and expert divers, are the first to dive to protect people, including devotees, who are drowning to save them or in cases, they also recover the dead bodies. However, these community workers are not recognized by the governments and hence live on the margins of the society. Understanding their issues, Gaurav started to highlight the plight of this community and devoting his time to highlight the issues they are facing in the modern world.

He also researched on the community from both Ganga and Yamuna riverine areas and intends to write a book on the community.

As Gaurav has been working for a long time with the Nishad community in eastern U.P., through the fellowship program he wants to make them aware about the Indian constitution and its values which would address the issues of equality and faternity in the community itself.

He has published two articles in Hindi— Korona Kaal Ki Kahaani— in 2020 published by Kautilya Books.

Gaurav intends to sensitise the Nishad community about the importance and necessity of Constitutional values to press for the community’s rights. He is using social media platform to engage the community with the issues of communal harmony as well. He envisages to create volunteers from Nishad community to take learnings of Constitutional values forward in participatory method.