"He has ceased to be!"

     The dead parrot sketch is one of the most famous sketches produced by the British comedy group Monty Python. In it a man tries to convince a clerk that the parrot the he was told was asleep when he bought it, was, in fact, dead. While Monty Python is known for their absurd sense of humor, sometimes real life imitates their art in strange ways. At least that must be the way a man in India felt we he found out that he had been declared dead by his government while he was still very much alive.

     The fact that dead sometimes doesn't really mean dead came as a shock to Lal Bihari when in 1976 he discovered that, according to government records in his native India, instead of walking around on top of the ground, he was supposed to be six feet under it. In a bid to take over a small parcel of land, his uncle had bribed officials to declare Bihari as deceased, so that the land could be signed over to him. One would think that simply being alive would be more than enough evidence to prove that you are not dead. However, the wheels of the Indian government, unfortunately like most, turn slowly, and while he waited, one of the first things Bihari learned about being one of the dead among the living was that he was not alone.

     While he was working on his case, Bihari discovered that there were other people who like him were alive, but were officially dead. Many of them were "dead" because, like Bihari, a relative had bribed an official in order to take over their land. The reason that this became such a problem was that as the population exploded in India, the land that was there was there was being split up between more and more inheritors. Some families were left with no more that a basketball court size parcel of land to make their living on. Under pressure, some started having distant relations and other members of their family that couldn't defend themselves, such as absentee land owner's (as Bihari was), widows, the elderly and anyone else who was vulnerable declared dead. Once that was done, the land that once belonged to their family members was signed over to them.

     Seeing that there were others like himself, Bihari created the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People. The group hoped draw attention to themselves and have the government declare that it's members were in fact alive. Bihari tried everything he could think of to get attention for himself and his group. He organized public funerals for himself and others, ran for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had him declared dead , threatened to commit murder, insulted the judges he was called before, threw leaflets at legislators and more. Bihari tried everything he could do to get his name on the official records. In an attempt to gain some profit from the whole ordeal, Bihari tried to get his wife a widow's pension. He was denied, as the officials who had and continued to declare him dead, refused to declare his wife a widow. Finally, after 19 years, those same officials declared Bihari alive in 1994.

     While he was understandably pleased to have his status corrected Bihari was also pleased with what he started with his Association of Dead People. ''In pursuing my battle, I had developed quite an identity,'' he recalls proudly. ''I became the leader of a movement. I knew I had other dead people to save.'' And while many of the members of the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People are still officially deceased, by 2004 4 of it's members had managed to have themselves declared alive.




1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bihari
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_the_Dead
3. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054133,00.html
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/24/world/azamgarh-journal-back-to-life-in-india-without-reincarnation.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm