Land and caste

Editorial-Statesman 6th October 2009

Resurgence of Bihar’s tragedy

IT is sheer coincidence that the massacre of 16 farmers in Bihar’s Khagaria district comes in the aftermath of the army and air force gearing up for an offensive against Maoists this winter. Seventy-two hours after the outrage, the involvement of the extremists is still conjecture. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is right in deciding to take a call on the suspicion before confirming the connection; thus far he has pointed merely to a “local criminal gang”. There are no giveaways such as handbills and pamphlets; yet if indeed the Left radicals are involved, it points to the extension of their operations to riverine north Bihar from the traditional bastions of south and central Bihar.
Indubitable is the resurgence of the caste conflict after a gap of ten years. Once a sinister aspect of Bihar’s social structure, Friday’s gut-churning revival has quite totally stunned the political class, the administration and the class groups. The manner of the butchery ~ dragging out the villagers from their homes at an inhospitable hour, lining them up, tying their hands and then pulling the trigger ~ used to be the standard modus operandi to settle the state’s land-related conflicts. It recalls the Ranvir Sena’s battles with the landless up until the mid-nineties. The victims of Khagaria were predominantly Kurmis (the Chief Minister’s caste) and to a lesser extent the Koiris ~ between them the Lav-Kush caste combination and incidentally the JD(U)’s major support base. They were involved in a land dispute with the Dalits though the administration is yet to establish whether the latter had the support of Maoists. Land and caste had been a scourge in Bihar long before Left radicalism became a forbidding challenge. This time, the tragedy deepens because the subaltern has killed another subaltern. For at stake were 150 acres of sandy land the 200 landless Kurmis and Koiris had bought from upper caste landlords who have shifted to urban areas. The landless Dalits were intent on recovering the land. It wasn’t, therefore, a direct encounter between the landless and the Ranvir Sena of the affluent landed gentry. Nonetheless, the outrage has dealt a mortal blow to Nitish Kumar’s support base. It devolves on the parties and the government to heal the wounds of the system’s own creation. This isn’t the moment for sniper attacks on the law and order situation by the likes of Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan. As regards the government, the suspension of the district’s police brass is a stereotyped response. It must admit to its failure to implement the D Bandopadhyay Land Reforms Commission’s report which suggested: (a) new legislation to protect sharecroppers; (b) a cap on land ceiling at 15 acres; and (c) computerised land records. The ground realities will have to change and literally so. To speculate on Maoist involvement will only obfuscate the land-caste scourge, as direly fundamental as it is traditiona