Komaram Bheem is not the hero that our literatures have raved upon. Neither is he a magical superman that Indian cinema has created.
He is like the wild forest into which, far from the madding crowds of civilisation, he was born. He is the very heart-throb of the Gond Tribals, whose hearts were in the forests of Adilabad. He revolted against the injustice meted out to his brother. He defied courts and the law, choosing to depend on the wild world. He took up cudgels against Nizam Nawab's soldiers, and fighting Babi Jhari, he breathed his last.
He is Komaram Bheem: the gonds' superman at the beginning of the 20th century, and a veritable 'Bheem' in the contemporary Gond history, a great valour that stood like a rock to protect tribals. He revered the beauty of Sombai, he was a man who never knew anything other than physical labour, and he was a beacon that lighted up the dark world of the Gonds with the flames of ideologies like the very sun lighting up the wilderness.
Like all the children of wild, Bheem's younger days did not expose him to the outside world. As he came on the threshold of adolescence, he heard the plight of tribals paying unjustifiable cess. Even as an adolescent, he took to task Siddiqui, an Officer of the Nizam, and gave him a taste of his muscle. Evading the police and traversing such places as Chanda and Pune, he finally reached the Gond land to sow the seeds of revolution.
Bheem was inspired by Alluri Sitaramaraju, and his heart was aflame when he heard the death of Bhagat Singh. Realising that the time was near to revolt against the the Nizam Government's wild official injustice, Komaram Bheem became a veritable deity, raging with the fire of revolt.
Talukdar Abdul Sattar failed to bring Bheem to kow-tow his line. Abdul Sattar, well equipped with ninety policemen armed with guns, attacked Bheem, who did not have any armour to protect himself. On that fateful full moon night, hundreds of followers of Bheem, just a dozen feet away from the police force, braved the guns, only to be riddled by the bullets.
That night, the moon burnt like a flaming sun.
That night, the wild moonlight became a veritable stream of tears.
That night, Komaram Bheem became a deity to gonds.
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