This Battle Must be Won

(from Liberation January 1998)

The history of Bihar, for more than two decades, is replete with massacres. Massacres of rural poor of dalit castes by various landlord armies. In their desperate bid to suppress the ever growing rural poor uprising and to hold onto their caste-class privileges, the new classes of landlords and kulaks have frequently took recourse to this terror tactics as a means to terrorise the whole mass of people. Yet the massacre at Laxmanpur-Bathe of Jehanabad on the night of 1 December is a case apart and it rightly shook the conscience of the nation in the 50th year of Indian independence.

In all 61 persons — two thirds of whom were children, women and old persons — were butchered to death in a cold-blooded operation at the dead of night. All the victims belonged to the class of agrarian labourers and were dalits in the social hierarchy. In their struggle for socio-economic emancipation they had taken up the revolutionary banner of the CPI(ML).

The killers were men of the Ranvir Sena — an upper caste landlord army which enjoys the political backing of the BJP as well as support from a section of the RJD.

This time the target chosen was a village in Jehanabad that lies close to the districts of Bhojpur, Patna and Aurangabad. The essential purpose was to send the message across the whole of central Bihar. The time chosen was significant as the political crisis at the centre had matured and a caretaker government was in office. Thus, by effecting an upper caste mobilisation of both Bhumihars and Rajputs, it also symbolised the beginning of the political offensive by arch-reactionary forces. …

… The record was indeed created not only in terms of numbers but also in the measure of brutality and cowardice. Side by side, another record was created by the media, particularly in Bihar, which excelled in hypocrisy. Since day one, Sangh Parivar propaganda machinery swung into action and the media began playing to its tune. A prominent journalist from Patna wrote in a national daily that it was the same old story of clash between Ranvir Sena and Naxalites, the only difference being that this time Naxalites were unarmed. How cleverly the cold-blooded massacre of women and children was rationalised as a routine kind of confrontation! The same journalist in subsequent write-ups tried to rationalise Ranvir Sena as an expression of peasant’s anguish against indiscriminate Naxalite violence. This typical attitude was common to the entire upper caste journalist fraternity barring a few exceptions. The long list of upper caste villages supposedly under the threat of Naxalite revenge were boldly displayed in newspapers and cock-and-bull stories of PWG squads entering into Jehanabad were dished out. The news analysis that began with Laxmanpur-Bathe invariably ended up with concern over general deterioration of law and order and demands for action against Naxalite extremists who dare to run parallel governments and even attack the police. The news of protests were underplayed whereas the fast by BJP leaders and Vajpayee’s visit was overplayed. All this was a well-orchestrated move to divert public attention from Ranvir Sena, from its organic links with the BJP and pressurise the state administration to divert its operations against the victims themselves.

… Still the machinations of the whole range of mercenaries is not the last word in the rural poor’s march to liberty. The protest is growing fast and assuming larger dimensions.

… The massacre has generated immense class hatred among rural poor, strengthened their determination to close their ranks, and led to the growing realisation of going over to offensive actions as the best way of defence.

… With the advent of Ranvir Sena, the class war is no longer confined to this or that region of Central Bihar any more. It is engulfing the entire central Bihar. This has also created conditions for forging a broader class unity, a unity cemented by blood. The class war is also making irrelevant the false god of social justice, Laloo Yadav, who in his earlier incarnation had encouraged the growth of Ranvir Sena as a Machiavellian plot to wipe out our Party. In fact, it has turned into a Frankenstein for him and is threatening his own social base in the changed political environment of BJP’s growing political offensive.

… The challenge of Ranvir Sena, the perpetrators of the ‘national shame’, has to be met. In the concrete context of Bihar, the interests of the revolutionary peasant movement as well as the national responsibility of halting the onslaught of saffron army has merged into one and the same task — wiping out Ranvir Sena.

The rural proletariat has been shedding blood for its socio-economic emancipation and political liberty. It is our duty to organise people to avenge the death of their class brethren and for that we shall have to undertake the widest exposure campaign particularly in view of media hostility; do away with all sectarian attitudes and unite all positive social sections and political forces and raise our preparations to a higher level to deal a crushing blow to this army of butchers, of cowards. This battle can surely be won and must be won. This is the call of human progress, democracy and true nationalism. This is the call of the modern times.

Bathani Tola Massacre and Media Cover-up

(excerpts from a write-up by Comrade Vinod Mishra which appeared in the September 7, 1996 issue of Mainstream)

… Kanshi Ram as well as Ram Vilas Paswan, the two self-appointed spokesmen of the dalits, didn’t feel it necessary to even condemn the incident. VP Singh, the foremost votary of Dalit empowerment maintained a mysterious silence over the entire episode. No Muslim leader worth the name cared to visit the spot despite the fact that the Ranveer Sena is a frontal organisation of the BJP, that a considerable section of the victims belong to the Muslim community, that the immediate issue was the liberation of the Kabristan and Karbala lands and that the massacre had a strong communal overtone.

Indrajit Gupta, the Communist Union Home Minister, did fly to the spot and parroted the hackneyed phrase of lack of land reforms as the root cause of the problem and hence as the Home Minister he can hardly do anything. Gupta flew back to Delhi promising Central funds for the modernisation of the police force in Bihar and for raising new units of para-military forces as demanded by the Chief Minister and the police top- brass. One wonders whether it was really lack of arms which was the cause behind the police inaction! In Parliament, the Union Home Minister announced the formation of a task force comprising retired senior police officials to probe into the causes of the rise of extremism in Bihar. There was no word or action against the district administration for their criminal neglect of duty and even the earlier norm of setting up a judicial enquiry to probe such grave incidents was given a go-by under the cover of generalisations.

Gupta’s reference to lack of land reforms as the root cause was much acclaimed by the liberal media as touching the raw nerve of the problem. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that it was the most ridiculous of statements in the concrete context and with regard to its particular timing. One often reads editorials and social analyses that point to the lack of land reforms as the root cause behind the growth of Naxalism. Gupta was obsessed with the same concern and hence handed out the usual recipe. In his misplaced zeal of scholarly adventure he failed to grasp that Bathani Tola was the reverse case of growing feudal backlash.

In Bhojpur in general, and the main village of Barki Kharaon near Bathani Tola in particular, people relying on their organised strength and increasing political might had already snatched reforms over wages and land. The feudal backlash, emboldened by the ascendancy of the BJP in the last parliamentary elections in Bihar, was precisely meant to snatch these gains and re-establish the savarna hegemony. Incidentally, Ranvir was a Bhumihar hero of yesteryear who fought against Rajput domination and, therefore, Rajputs were generally wary of joining the Ranvir Sena. At Barki Kharaon, the unity between the two castes was effected by the BJP elements using the convenient communal pretext as the current struggle there was over Kabristan and Karbala lands which have been forcibly occupied by savarna landlords; the confrontation has its genesis in 1978 itself when Yunus Mian defeated Kesho Singh in the Panchayat elections for the post of mukhiya, and then the subsequent razing to the ground of the Imambara.

Bathani Tola is a typical case of open class war which, though rising at grassroots, is defined by the parameters of political struggle at the top, a typical case where caste as well as communal antagonisms – the two major social parameters of contemporary Indian society – are blended within the framework of class struggle. It is no accident that the revolutionary Left and the communal fascist forces of the extreme Right stand face-to-face in a headlong battle in this class war which has engulfed the entire district of Bhojpur and is fast spreading to other parts of Bihar. Neither is it incidental that with the outbreak of open class war the centrist and social-democratic forces have turned impotent often adopting a neutral position that only goes to benefit the predators.

This class war, which subsumes within itself the issues of caste and communal discriminations, is at the same time the negation of the post-modernist agenda for which the priority is the other way round.

The media cover-up as well as the silence of all the proponents of Dalit and minority empowerment has to be seen against this backdrop.

If the 25 years of the history of Bhojpur is any guide, the struggle has never stopped half-way here. The rural poor, compared to their position 25 years ago, have snatched socio-economic gains and have advanced politically to a considerable extent. No Bathani Tola is going to make them surrender even a small bit of their gains. The battle, therefore, goes on and shall continue till the last vestige of feudalism is ultimately razed to the ground.