Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India

George J. Kunnath

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract In the 1980s, Jehanabad district was the epicentre of a Maoist-led armed

struggle against landowning classes in Bihar. The Maoist cadres organized the

landless Dalit labourers against upper caste landlords around the issues of land,

wages, caste discrimination and sexual abuse of Dalit women. The heightened

period of Dalit mobilization and struggle of the 1980s, however, gave way to a

period of their demobilization in the late 1990s. In this article I explore the Dalit

experience of structural cleavages that gave rise to their initial support for the

Maoist movement as well as analyse the reasons for their later demobilization.

Central to this discussion is an analysis of the Maoist trajectories of armed struggle

and mass mobilization and its implications for Dalit participation in the Maoist

movement.

Keywords Maoist movement � Dalits � Armed struggle � Mass mobilization �CPI (ML) Party Unity � Mazdur Kisan Sangram Samiti (MKSS) �Bhumisena � Mass line � Dalit ‘regarding politics’

Introduction

The village I call Dumari in South Bihar1 has been at the centre of the Maoist armed

struggle in the 1980s. It was from Dumari that the CPI (ML) Party Unity (henceforth

PU), which later merged with the Andhra based CPI (ML) People’s War, spread its

G. J. Kunnath (&)

Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK

e-mail: gjkunnath@gmail.com

1 After the separation of Jharkhand from Bihar in 2000, the region formerly called Central Bihar has now

become South Bihar.

123

Dialect Anthropol (2009) 33:309–325

DOI 10.1007/s10624-009-9134-5

influence in Bihar and Jharkhand.2 In Dumari and the surrounding villages, the

activists of the PU organized the landless Dalit labourers against the landlords,

especially from the Kurmi caste, around the issues of land, wages, caste

discrimination and sexual abuse of Dalit women. The heightened period of Dalit

mobilization and struggle of the 1980s, however, gave way to a period of their

demobilization in the late 1990s. Why did this transformation take place? In this

article I explore the Dalit experience of structural cleavages that gave rise to their

initial support of the Maoist movement as well as analyse the reasons for their later

demobilization. Central to this discussion is an analysis of the Maoist trajectories of

armed struggle and mass mobilization and its implications for Dalit participation in

the Maoist movement.

Since the majority of Dalit men and women participated in the Maoist movement

through its ‘mass actions’—strikes, meetings, demonstrations, economic and social

boycotts of landowners—I have sought to address a significant point raised by some

scholars (Bhatia 2006; Dubey 1991; Gupta 2006) who argue that an increased

reliance on armed actions by the Maoist guerrilla squads contributed to a shrinking

space for mass participation in the movement. Gupta, for instance, points out that in

the context of severe state repression the Maoists ‘find it extremely difficult to

launch large-scale mass movements and demonstrations even in areas where they

still have considerable popular support’ (2006: 3175). Similarly, Bhatia (2006)

argues that since the armed squads operate ‘underground’, state repression results in

the activists of mass organizations, as the only ‘visible actors’ of the movement,

being arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the police. Dubey (1991: 228) observes

that the Maoist ‘military perspective’—armed actions and armed squads—has

trapped the movement in a ‘bullet for bullet’ type of engagement with state security

forces. As a result, all energy, money and personnel were concentrated in buying

arms, building squads and battling the police.

While the above assertions highlight the apparent problematic relationship

between the ‘mass’ and ‘armed’ actions, which I shall further discuss in relation to the

experience of the Party Unity in Bihar, my main argument is that the shrinking space

for Dalit participation in the Maoist movement was not the outcome of its increased

reliance on armed actions, but because of its failure to work for Dalit interests in a

sustained manner. For many Dalits, as I shall demonstrate in this article, both armed

and mass actions were central to their participation in the Maoist movement, but only

in the context of the Party’s commitment to Dalit concerns and conditions.

Revolutionary beginnings in Dumari

In Dumari, Dalit participation in the Maoist movement was closely linked to Dalit

experience of structural cleavages on the one hand, and the Party Unity’s twin

strategy of organizing mass and armed actions against landowners. The dominant

2 A further unification took place when the CPI(ML) People’s War and Maoist Communist Centre

(MCC) came together to form the CPI(Maoist) in September 2004. In this article I refer to the struggles

carried out by the PU.

310 G. J. Kunnath

123

caste in Dumari, as in various other villages of Jehanabad district, was the Kurmi.3

Some elements that made a caste dominant in a village—numerical strength,

economic power, political patronage, ritual status, education and occupation (cf

Srinivas 1987)—could easily be identified in relation to the Kurmis in Jehanabad.

In Dumari, out of 270 households, 118 were Kurmi, the largest for any single caste

in the village. The Kurmis owned more than 95% of the total land in the village.

According to my Kurmi and Dalit respondents, there were 7 households which

owned land in excess of 40 bighas (a bigha = 1/3 of an acre). The average holding

among the Kurmis was between 5 and 10 bighas. There were no landless

households among the Kurmis. Those with small holdings entered into sharecrop-

ping arrangements. With a high school in the village, from the 1970s many Kurmis

gained access to education and government employment. Among them were three

engineers, some clerks and several government teachers. A steady income from

stable jobs allowed the Kurmis to invest more money in the cultivation of their land.

They became the beneficiaries of new agricultural technologies introduced during

the Green Revolution (Das 1983; Jeffrey 2001; Prasad 1980). Furthermore, in the

absence of Brahmins, and with just two households of Bhumihars and Rajputs, the

Kurmis were also at the top of the hierarchy of ritual status in the village. Through

the 1960s and the 1970s the Kurmis thus acquired socio-economic and political

dominance in Dumari through their land ownership, high ritual status, numerical

strength, education and employment in government services.

In contrast, Dalits in Dumari and other villages lived at the bottom of caste and

class hierarchy. None of the 134 Dalit households comprising five Dalit castes in the

village—Ravidasi (Chamar), Dusadh, Musahar, Dhobi and Dome—owned any land

in the 1980s. They worked as agricultural labourers in the Kurmi fields. Their daily

wage consisted of sava ser kachi (three-quarters of a measure) of kesari, a coarse

grain with little nutritional value. Many Dalit men were bonded to the Kurmi

landowners. The mechanism of bondage worked in the following way: the landlord

advanced loans to the labourers and thus secured their services (including those of

their households) for one agricultural season. The labourers were unable to pay back

the loans because of fresh debts accumulated in order to meet consumption needs and

other expenses incurred through sickness, marriage or emergencies. The bondage

thus incurred was carried on from one agricultural season to the next; from their life

time to the next generation. Most Dalits thus lived in chronic debt and bondage.

Dalits narrated caste-based discriminatory practices that were prevalent in the

village until the beginning of the Maoist struggle in the 1980s. They said that they

were not allowed to sit on a kattia (cot) when a Kurmi landlord passed by. For them,

the most humiliating aspect of this practice was when their relatives visited the

village as even they had to get up if the malik (landlord) passed by. The Dalits were

not allowed to wear watches or sandals. They were discouraged from keeping

animals. If they did, animals were often stolen. The Kurmis also punished Dalits for

plucking chana saag (chickpea leaves which are often served with rice). One Dalit

labourer said that his wife was fined Rs. 20 for plucking chana saag. Dalits had to

3 The Kurmi along with the Yadav and Koeri castes belonged to the upper layers of the Backward Castes

in Bihar.

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 311

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depend on the Kurmi land not only for their own food, but also for fodder for the

few cattle they still managed to protect from thieves, and even to attend to the call of

nature. The Kurmis once even created a desperate situation for the Dalits by

preventing them from using their fields for the latter purposes as a punishment for

supporting the Maoists.

Like most villages in India, in Dumari relations of dominance and subordination

were often expressed through the idioms of purity and pollution because purity and

power are intimately linked in caste based discrimination (c.f. Dirks 1987; Mosse

1994; Raheja 1988a, b). In my conversations with Dalits, they identified common

sites in which practices of purity/impurity underpinned the Kurmi-Dalit relations in

the village. As labourers they all shared a common experience of being served food

in plates kept separate for Dalits in Kurmi households. The bhoj (ceremonial meal)

in Kurmi households was yet another site where the practices associated with purity/

impurity constantly reinforced caste hierarchies. Only when the Kurmis and other

upper castes have eaten were the Dalits served food.

The spatial arrangement of the village itself was another marker of Dalit

subordination. The Dalits lived in the southern periphery of the village. The Kurmis

and other upper castes lived in the centre and in the north of the village. The road

leading to the village ended at the north side and only small alleyways led to the

dakhin tola (the southern settlement/quarter). The dakhin tola was synonymous with

the Dalit settlement in every village and such spatial expressions of subordination

are prevalent all over rural Bihar and many other states in India (Daniel 1984;

Deliege 1992; Moffatt 1979).4 One of my Dalit respondents pointed out that the

direction in which the wind blew in this region is usually easterly or westerly and

rarely southerly or northerly. Therefore, according to him, by placing the Dalits on

the south side of the village, there was little danger of the ‘polluting’ air blowing

from the Dalit settlement to the upper caste section of the village.

The jajmani relations, a village-based tradition of exchange of goods and

services5 further reinforced Dalit subordination. In the Magadh region it was called

jajman-paunia (also jajman-kamin) relations. The jajmans were the dominant

cultivating castes of the village, who paid in grain for the services rendered by the

paunia or kamin (from Barber, Ravidasi, Dhobi, and Kahar castes). In Dumari, the

jajmani exchanges both reflected and reinforced the existing hierarchy and power

relations. The pauni castes often had to carry out caste-specific menial jobs for the

Kurmi and other dominant castes. The Ravidasis had to perform the ‘unclean’ job of

removing the dead cattle, and the Ravidasi women (Chamain), who worked as

village midwives, had to handle the ‘impurities’ associated with childbirth. The

Dhobis had to wash ‘impure clothes’ from Kurmi households where death or

4 In Tamil Nadu for instance, the upper caste and Dalit settlements are known by different names. Uur is

the upper caste area of the village, while ceeri or colony is where the Dalit live (Moffatt 1979; Daniel

1984). Further, upper castes impose various restrictions and exclusions on Dalits in relation to accessing

the upper caste settlement.5 Much has been written about jajmani relations (Wiser 1936; Beidelman 1959; Kolenda 1963; Parry

1979; Dumont 1980; Raheja 1988b; Mayer 1993; Fuller 1989). Many scholars stressed the harmonious

aspect of the exchange (Wiser 1936; Dumont 1980), while others saw the jajmani relations as exploitive

(Beidelman 1959; Kolenda 1963).

312 G. J. Kunnath

123

childbirth had occurred. The Kahar women were employed to do the ‘low work’ of

removing used leaf plates during ceremonial meals.

Dalits often referred to the Kurmi landlords as zamindar or malik. In this region,

these were generic terms used for all the landowning classes who employed the

landless Dalits as labourers. The use of the term zamindar, was of course related to

the ownership of land; however, it was not always associated with the size of

holdings but rather the landowner’s power to employ labourers on the one hand, and

the landlessness and dependency of the Dalits on the other. The Dalit labourers,

among themselves and their sympathisers, referred to their maliks as samant (feudal

lords). They referred to the aggressive and intimidatory attitude of the maliks in

relation to the labourers and in particular to Dalit women as samanti vichar (feudal

mentality). When I asked one of my Dalit respondents which caste he considered the

most oppressive, he first replied: ‘The Brahmins. The Brahmin boys never greet

even elderly Harijans’. But after some reflection he added: ‘The Kurmis are the

most oppressive caste. When you do battiah (sharecropping) with the upper castes,

they take into account the fertilizer and water used by the sharecroppers and

accordingly allow them to take a larger share of the produce. But the Kurmis never

do this’.6 He quoted a saying prevalent among the Dalits to emphasize his point:

‘kurmi ke panjahri mein sinh hei’ (‘the Kurmis have horns by their side, literally in

their ribs’). The saying implies that the friendliness of the Kurmi is merely a facade,

as they might stab you when you are locked in an embrace with them.

It was within the context of such deeply felt structural cleavages and exploitation

that we can locate Dalit response to the Maoist movement in the 1980s. Although,

the struggle has been primarily between Dalits and Kurmis, some Kurmi youths who

sympathized with the Maoist ideology joined Dalits. It is significant to note that the

Maoists first arrived in Dumari in 1979 on the invitation of a young man from the

Kurmi caste who had previously been a member of the Socialist Party. He said he

invited the Maoists because there were some very oppressive landlords in the village

who were exploiting both Dalits and poorer members of their own caste. He pointed

out that when the Maoists took up the issue of oppression by Kurmi landowners in

Dumari, every Kurmi household in the village barring 12 came together against the

Maoists and their sympathizers.

Many Kurmi landowners, however, claimed that Maoists had come to the village not

due to caste or class oppression but because of the infighting among the Kurmis in

Dumari. According to them, there were two factions among the Kurmis, one of which

had brought the Maoists to the village in order to establish their supremacy. They

asserted that the kisan (landowning peasants) and the mazdur (labourers) lived together

peacefully until the Maoists arrived in the village. Their slogan during the height of the

struggle was: ‘mazdur kisan bhai bhai- Naxali beech main kahanse aayi’ (‘the

landowners and the labourers are brothers; how did the Naxalites come between them’)?

In contrast, none of the Dalits I interviewed ever mentioned the factional feuds

among the Kurmis as the reason for the arrival of the Maoists in the village and the

subsequent outbreak of violence. For them, the Maoist movement represented their

struggle for izzat (dignity), land, better wages and an end to Kurmi exploitation in

6 Interview with Rajubhai in Dumari in March 2003.

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 313

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the village. They recalled their secret meetings with the Maoist activists in the

paddy fields outside the village under the cover of darkness. Gradually the venue of

these meetings shifted to the mud houses of the Dalits. The growing Dalit

mobilization eventually led to open confrontation between Dalits and their

supporters on the one hand and Kurmi landowners on the other.

The Maoist activists who came to Dumari belonged to the Central Organizing

Committee (COC), one of the many Marxist-Leninist factions that emerged due to

the continuing split within the CPI (ML) in the 1970s. Some Maoist leaders released

after the state of national emergency was lifted in 1977 sought to unify the CPI

(ML) splinter groups. In 1978, the COC merged with the Unity Organization and

came to be known as the CPI (ML) Party Unity (Louis 2002). This party, while

upholding the positive, historical role of the original CPI (ML) under Charu

Mazumdar, acknowledged past failures and tried to correct the theory and practice

of the revolutionary struggle (Bhatia 2005). The Party Unity adhered to a policy of

armed struggle, but rejected Charu Mazumdar’s emphasis on the ‘battle of

annihilation’—the killing of class enemies—as the highest form of class struggle

(Mazumdar 1969a, 1969b, 1970; cf. Banerjee 1980, 2006).7 As an alternative

position, this party followed a policy of ‘selective annihilation’ in relation to

oppressive landlords in Jehanabad, and placed greater emphasis on building mass

organizations based on the popular support of the landless labourers and marginal

peasants, while the Party itself remained an underground organization.

The Mazdur Kisan Sangram Samiti (MKSS), a front organization of the Party

Unity, was launched in 1980 to represent peasants and agricultural labourers. The

MKSS played a significant role in mobilizing Dalit labourers in Dumari by

explicitly addressing those issues which directly affected them. The organization’s

programme included campaigns aiming to i) lower the land ceiling area; ii) seize

and redistribute among the landless peasants land in excess of the ceiling area;

including government, and gair mazurua (common) land in the possession of the

landlords; iii) effectively implement Bataidari (sharecropping) laws; iv) eliminate

usury, begari (forced labour) and bonded labour; v) demand housing schemes, safe

drinking water, health care provision and other essential services from the

government; vi) ensure regular employment and the enforcement of a minimum

wages; vii) end all forms of oppression against women and ensure equal wages for

equal work; and viii) organize a Rakshadal (defence force) to protect the vulnerable

and marginalized against theft, abduction, rape and other feudal atrocities (MKSS

Report 1987: 16–21).

In Dumari people often referred to both the MKSS and the Party Unity by the

same name—the Sangathan (organization/collective). They did not draw any

difference between two organizations, although the membership and activities of the

two often differed. The PU maintained its armed squads and operated ‘under-

ground’. The members of the armed squads were drawn from different caste groups,

but majority of them were Dalits. In the 1980s several Dalit men from Dumari

7 Mazumdar (1970) pointed out that the ‘New Man’, who will defy death and will be free from all

thoughts of self interest, can only be created through class struggle—the battle of annihilation.

314 G. J. Kunnath

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worked in the armed squads. The commander of a Maoist armed squad was a Dalit

from Dumari named Rajubhai. Most Dalit men and women, however, joined the

Maoist struggle through the MKSS. Apart from its president, Dr. Vinayan, who was

from Uttar Pradesh and vice president a Kurmi from Jehanabad, most of the local

leaders during the struggle were Dalits from Dumari. The MKSS organized large

mass demonstrations and strike actions, as well as the economic and social boycott

of oppressive landlords in various villages. In some villages where there was armed

resistance from the land owners, the Party Unity supported these mass campaigns

through the mobilization of its armed squads, indicating a close interaction between

armed squads and front organization of the PU. In Dumari, the PU made its first

armed intervention in 1981 during a strike organized by the MKSS, which marked

the beginning of a prolonged armed struggle against the Kurmi landowners in the

village.

Memories of a revolt in Dumari

In the Dalit collective memory, the incident that triggered the open confrontation in

Dumari occurred in May 1981 when the labourers called for a strike at the brick kiln

owned by Munna Singh, a Kurmi landlord in Dumari. He had a notorious reputation

among the Dalits and had been accused of raping two Dalit women as well as ill

treating the labourers. Dalits claimed that he was a person of samanthi vichar(feudal attitudes and behaviour). Prior to the strike action, the Dalits had demanded

a wage rise from Rs. 10 to 25 for every 1000 bricks they made. This was the

maximum number one person could make in a day. On Munna Singh’s refusal, the

MKSS mobilized the labourers into strike action. In response, Singh brought

labourers from other villages and employed gunmen to ensure that the work at the

brick kiln was not interrupted. When the Dalits from Dumari protested and tried to

stop the labourers from working, the gunmen opened fire. Armed Maoist activists

returned fire from Dalit houses. In the ensuing gun battle, a Kurmi landlord who was

part of Munna Singh’s entourage was injured. As he was being taken to the hospital,

the Maoists killed him and hung his head on a tree at the entrance of the village. The

first blood was thus shed in Dumari and this marked the beginning of a series of

killings in the village.

In November 1981, PU cadres killed Munna Singh, the brick kiln owner. Killing

him was part of the Maoist policy of ‘selective annihilation’ targeting the most

oppressive landlords in the region. This policy, according to a Dalit Maoist activist,

increased the confidence of the Dalit labourers in the Maoist movement.

Subsequently, and in spite of the police repression and the Kurmi retaliation, the

Dalits from Dumari actively took part in various programmes of the MKSS. In

another village close to Dumari the labourers defied a ban on Dalits grazing their

cattle in fields owned by the Kurmi landlords. In a subsequent exchange of fire, the

Maoists shot dead a Kurmi landlord.

The Kurmi landowners, alarmed by the killings of prominent landlords and the

widespread incidence of strike actions, seizures of surplus land, and campaigns for

fishing rights by the Dalit labourers, formed the Bhumi Sena in 1982 in the Punpun–

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 315

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Masaurhi area of Patna district. This caste militia collected arms from landlords and

recruited Kurmi youth. It tried to gather the support of the Kurmi caste by making

the following appeal: ‘The life, liberty and property of the Kurmis are at stake. What

remains in our life if there is no prestige and dignity?’. The Bhumi Sena raised the

following war cry: ‘Naxaliyon ki ek dawai, chhah inch chotta kar do bhai’ (‘One

remedy for the Naxalites, cut them down by six inches/decapitate them’) (Louis

2002: 167). The Sena operated in Patna, Jehanabad, Nalanada and Nawada districts.

Over a period of four years (1982–1985), the Bhumi Sena murdered 65 people, set

ablaze 216 houses, and drove 325 families out of 13 villages in the Punpun,

Naubatapur and Masaurhi blocks in Patna District. It targeted not only Dalit

labourers but also members of the Kurmi caste who were part of the Maoist

movement. All Kurmi households were forced to give protection money and food to

the Bhumi Sena (CPI (M-L) Document 1986: 75).

Immediately after its formation the Bhumi Sena arrived in Dumari to take on

the Maoist challenge. With the exception of 12 Kurmi households, who were

either poor, sympathized with the Maoists, or had suffered some oppression at

the hands of dominant landlords in the village, all the Kurmis rallied against the

Maoists and their sympathizers. The Sena activists killed many Dalits. By the end

of 1982, the violence perpetrated by the Bhumi Sena forced a mass exodus of

Dalits and Kurmi Maoist sympathizers from Dumari. Some Dalits said that they

left because the Sangathan asked them to, so that its armed squads would be able

to fight the Bhumi Sena without putting the Dalits in danger. Whether the

Sangathan had asked them to leave or they left out of fear of the Kurmis, this

mass exodus stands as the most significant landmark in the Dalit collective

memory in Dumari.

With both Bhumi Sena activists and the police patrolling Dumari, the Maoists

were forced to go underground to regroup. The armed squads of the PU and the

MKSS adopted a twin strategy of killing Bhumi Sena members and imposing

aarthik nakebandi (economic blockade) on the landlords who supported the Sena. In

Dumari alone the Maoist guerrillas killed more than 16 Bhumi Sena activists. The

economic blockade consisted of labourers and share-croppers boycotting the

landlords on the one hand, and the MKSS members burning the standing crops of

Sena leaders on the other (Louis 2002: 182–183). One night in November 1984, the

Maoist cadres burned the entire harvest which the Kurmis had stored in the village

kalihan (threshing floor). According to my Dalit informants, it was this incident

which finally broke the Kurmi resolve to fight the Maoists. The Kurmis agreed to

cease all support for the Bhumi Sena. A public meeting was held in the mango grove

just outside the village in November 1984 during which the Kurmis put in writing

that they would not fight the Sangathan again. The Sangathan then imposed fines

ranging from Rs. 10,000 to 100,000 on some Kurmi landlords, depending on the

level of their complicity with the Bhumi Sena. In total the activists and supporters of

the Bhumi Sena paid a fine of Rs. 13,68,000 and surrendered 9 rifles. After the

surrender, the Sangathan sent word around different places asking the Dalits to

come back. Some returned immediately; others waited to see if there was any

further violence and returned later.

316 G. J. Kunnath

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Contesting power: Dalits and changing power relations

The events of the 1980s set in motion a gradual shift in the power relations in

Dumari. Although the initial Dalit assertions of their emerging political conscious-

ness resulted in failure and exile, their experiences and memories drove them into

greater mobilizations and collective assertions. After their return from exile, the

Dalits openly contested the Kurmi hegemony and the Sangathan became a major

player in the region. In Dumari, due to the active role of some Dalit leaders and

supporters of the Sangathan, the Dalits for the first time became significant actors in

the changing power relations. It took a while, however, for the ordinary Dalit men

and women in the village to comprehend the impact of the struggle on everyday

relations of dominance and subordination. Rajubhai pointed out an interesting

instance of this slow response:

After the return [from the exodus], the Sangathan had set the wages at 3 kilos

of paddy or wheat, replacing the earlier daily wage of sava ser kachi of kesari.

Fearing a Kurmi backlash, some labourers, however, were too scared to accept

the increased wages. They continued to work for sava ser kachi. Then the

Sangathan had to step in not only with the assurance that there would not be

any Kurmi retaliation but also employ threat of force to make them accept

higher wages.8

Other initiatives were also set in motion by the Sangathan, for instance, along

with the increase in wages, the rules governing sharecropping were modified. The

village ponds now came directly under the control of the Sangathan. Fish was to be

distributed equally. More significantly, the sexual abuse of Dalit women and other

instances of caste discrimination mentioned above came to an end. Further, during

the course of the struggle, a Dalit leadership emerged in Dumari that challenged the

Kurmi dominance in the village. Pradeep Das, a leader from the Ravidasi

community, handled the terms of the Kurmi surrender in 1984. Rajubhai, was

commanding a Maoist armed squad during the exile period. After the bhaged, he

became the head of the village committee organized by the Sangathan and handled

various disputes between the Kurmis and the Dalits. Shanti Devi, meanwhile, a

woman from the Musahar caste, became a driving force in organizing Dalit women.

Along with the emergence of a Dalit leadership, another factor that symbolized

the shifting power relations in the region following the struggle in the 1980s was the

organization of village committees by the Sangathan. The majority of committee

members were from the Dalit and the lower castes. In Dumari, 10 out of the 15

members of the village committee belonged to the Dalit castes, including 3 Dalit

women. Rajubhai was the head of the village committee which handled local

disputes and grievances for several years, and under his leadership even Kurmis

now appeared before the committee either as the accused or as victims of a dispute.

The village committee had wrested from the Kurmi landowners some of their power

to punish and make decisions on village matters. The Maoist movement, however,

could not meet the rising expectations of the Dalits. I shall discuss in a short while

8 Interview with Rajubhai in Dumari in October 2002.

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 317

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the Dalit critique of the movement and the reasons for their feelings of alienation

since the late 1990s.

The Party Unity and its mass front: open confrontations

The tension between the Party Unity and MKSS came into open when 23 of its

supporters were massacred by the police at Arwal (then part of Jehanabad district) on

19 April 1986 and its subsequent banning by the state government in August the

same year. This tension became irreconcilable due to the differing positions taken by

two of the founding members of the MKSS, Dr. Vinayan and Arvind Singh. Vinayan,

the first president of the organization,9 disagreed with the PU’s ‘meaningless

violence and undisciplined manner of peasant struggle’ (Dubey 1991: 124). He

accused the Party of conducting violent actions in the name of the MKSS and argued

that as a result, the members of MKSS were exposed to police repression and the

organization was banned. He claimed that he had to go into hiding because on one

occasion when the PU activists seized guns from the police near Dumari village, he

was implicated in the incident and an arrest warrant was served on him. Dr. Vinayan

also pointed out that the MKSS activists were arrested and imprisoned when the PU

carried out their ‘selective annihilation’ of certain landlords in Jehanabad. He

demanded a complete separation of the MKSS from the PU.

Arvind Singh, on the other hand, wanted the MKSS to be working in close

relation with the PU and its armed squads. In consultation with the PU leaders, he

expelled Vinayan from the MKSS. Singh then made the following press statement in

Patna: ‘Samiti [MKSS] has dismissed its founding president Dr. Vinayan due to his

anti-party and reformist activities’ (Dubey 1991: 123). Along with Vinayan, a few

other members were also dismissed from the organization for the same reason. The

PU accused Vinayan of taking a ‘wrong class direction’ (ibid).

The MKSS then split into two factions in June 1987, with Dr. Vinayan and

Arvind Singh becoming leaders of their respective factions. Both factions kept the

old name MKSS, although the one led by Vinayan came to be known as

Vinayangutt (Vinayan’s group) and the other as Arvindgutt (Arvind’s group). The

former moved away from the PU while the latter continued to work within its

framework. Justifying the split, Vinayan said that the MKSS earned a bad name for

the killings done by the PU’s armed squads. He admitted that the MKSS had

accepted its help, but did not approve its killings (Indian Express July 18, 1988).10

There were armed clashes between the groups led by Vinayan and Singh. One such

armed action took place in Dumari when five supporters of the Vinayangutt took

shelter in the village. In the subsequent exchange of fire, one of its members was

killed while the others ‘surrendered’.11

9 I interviewed Dr. Vinayan in June 2003 in Jehanabad. Vinayan died in 2006 after having worked in

rural Bihar for about three decades.10 Vinayan’s statement appeared in an article titled ‘Naxals Butcher 19 Harijans’ in Indian Express

(Delhi) on July 18, 1988.11 Interview with Rajubhai in Dumari in February 2003.

318 G. J. Kunnath

123

There were further splits in the Vinayangutt. When I interviewed Vinayan in June

2003, he was leading an organization called Jan Mukti Andolan (People’s

Liberation Movement) in Jehanabad, which he himself had formed. By then he

had completely moved away from Maoist politics. The MKSS under Arvind Singh,

after it was banned by the state government in 1986, was renamed the Mazdur KisanSangram Parishad (MKSP). During my stay in Dumari, all the demonstrations,

village meetings, people’s courts and strike actions were organized by the MKSP.

The organization worked in close conjunction with the Maoist party.

Urmilesh (1991) and Dubey (1991) in their works on the Maoist movement

observed that the split in the MKSS resulted more from the personal interests of the

actors involved than from the question of choosing between armed struggle and

mass actions. According to Urmilesh, although Dr. Vinayan was an effective

organizer and leading Marxist intellectual in Bihar, he wanted to be in the ‘limelight

of Naxalite politics’ (1991: 124). Dubey claimed that Dr. Vinayan had no qualms in

seeking the PU’s armed assistance whenever it suited him (1991: 253). He cited

Vinayan’s interview in the Illustrated Weekly of India, in which he acknowledged

that the initial success of the MKSS was made possible by the armed squads of the

Party Unity (ibid: 252). However, in the face of state repression, he came to

denounce armed struggle (ibid: 253).

Personal interests of leaders might have led to the split in the MKSS, but it still

places the problematic relationship between armed struggle and mass mobilization

under scrutiny. Bhatia (2006) points out that the Maoist movement’s reliance on

armed actions had a negative impact on mass mobilization. She cites a common

scenario in rural Bihar, in which the peasant front (mass organization), while

engaged in open struggles against any landlord for surplus land or higher wages,

becomes the target of state repression due to the Maoist party’s armed action against

such landlords. In such situations, the members of the mass movement often paid

the price for the actions taken by the underground party. Thus it became impossible

for the mass organization to carry out open and legal struggles. Bhatia further argues

that no empowerment of the masses took place while the struggle was too dependent

on its armed strength. The reliance on arms might create an appearance of giving

‘power’ to the masses, but when arms were withdrawn, they became more

vulnerable than they were before. The arms made people dependent on external

agencies and did not prepare them to carry forward the struggle on the basis of their

own strength (2006: 3182).

Dalits whose everyday life was directly linked to the Maoist led mass actions and

armed struggle, however, had other views. One activist who was instrumental in

establishing the Maoist movement in Dumari said to me that when the Party cadres

made their first contacts in the village, Dalits wanted to know whether the Party had

hathiyar (arms). Dalits were aware that any open challenge to the upper and middle

caste domination would eventually and inevitably result in armed violence; as it did.

There was a long and entrenched martial tradition primarily associated with the

middle and upper castes in this region. Men from these castes were recruited by

zamindars, local rajas, bandit chiefs, as well as military contractors to serve in the

Mughal and the colonial armies (Kolff 1990: 190). Even long after the demilitar-

ization of the region in 1857, the impact of the martial ethos on rural life continued

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 319

123

into the twentieth century as every zamindar maintained a posse of armed men ‘to

keep his tenants in order’ (Hauser 2004). They were called lathial or lathait and were

experts in wielding lathi—a bamboo club or truncheon six feet in length, sometimes

bound at short intervals with iron rings, forming a formidable weapon. Violence or

the threat of violence carried out by these armed men undoubtedly aided the

dominance of landlords in the region. These martial traditions linked to land, played

a significant role in the birth of the private militias formed by the landowners in the

1980s in response to the Maoist inspired Dalit challenge.

For the majority of Dalit castes, an armed option to defend themselves and

collectively challenge the upper and middle caste dominance became a possibility

only through the Maoist struggle. I never heard them objecting to the armed struggle

or the armed actions conducted by the Maoists against the police or the landlords.

They wanted the Maoist armed squads to remain in the area as they feared that the

landlords would re-establish their dominance if the Maoist arms were withdrawn.

Their feelings of alienation from the movement and demobilization were not, then,

based around the question of armed struggle, but rather on the failure of the Maoist

movement to work for Dalit interests.

Beyond armed struggle and mass mobilization: a Dalit critique

Dalits in Dumari shared with me the reasons for their discontent; and there were

many. They raised the matter of compensation for the damages they had suffered

during their exile from the village in the 1980s. After the defeat of the Bhumi Sena,

one of the surrender clauses included paying compensation to Dalits. At that time

the Sangathan had made an assessment of the damages. However, the question of

compensation was not pursued further because, as a gesture of compromise, the

Kurmis withdrew the cases they had filed against the Dalits. One of my informants

pointed out that the Sangathan collected a fine of Rs. 13,68,000 and seized 9 rifles

from the Kurmis who had been accomplices to the Bhumi Sena activities. He said

that the Sangathan could have kept the rifles, but the money should have been used

to compensate the Dalit losses.

Many Dalits said that in numerous ways they felt neglected by the Sangathan.

They reiterated that after the initial struggle and success against the Kurmis, the

Sangathan did nothing to raise wages, which for the last twenty years had remained

a dismal 3 kilos of rice or wheat. They asked what anyone could do with 3 kilos of

rice, which fetched only Rs.18 in the village market. They pointed out that the

minimum wages should have been at least 5 kilos of grain, which at least would

have marginally improved their economic conditions. They also expressed their

disappointment with the lack of development in the region. An educated Dalit man

pointed out that the Sangathan completely neglected education, and that it should

have put pressure on the teachers, local government and parents to provide better

education in the villages. He further pointed out that the Party never used its power

and influence to stop corruption at the Panchayat or Block level. The local

government officials and middlemen took 50% commission from the various

financial schemes extended to the poor peasants. He said that the Sangathan itself

320 G. J. Kunnath

123

took ‘commissions’, even from the projects sanctioned for village development such

as building roads, schools and community centres.12

Most significantly, however, the current state of Dalit discontentment with the

Maoist movement is associated with the Party’s changing policy towards the middle

castes. Dalits pointed out that in the 1980s, the movement established itself in

Jehanabad by addressing the basic contradictions that existed between the landless

Dalits and the landowning middle peasants, especially the Kurmis. In the 1990s,

however, the Party sought to enter into a strategic alliance ‘with the middle peasants’

in the struggle for state power (CPI (M-L) People’s War 1995: 9). From the Maoist

perspective, apart from creating a wider political formation for the capture of state

power, in practical terms by this alliance the movement sought to neutralize the

pressures from the contending middle peasantry. As a result the Party has now changed

its earlier aggressive policy towards this segment of the peasantry. It has also sought to

incorporate the interests of the middle peasants—in government subsidies, remission

of rents, and protection from the demands of the classes below them—in the Maoist

agenda.

In Dumari, although the above change in the Maoist policy has not resulted in a

major way the Kurmis joining the rank and file of the Party, they do not oppose it

anymore. More Kurmis now support the movement by providing food and shelter to

the Party cadres. Dalits, however, contrasted the present Kurmi support to the Party

with the committed Kurmi cadres of the 1980s who fought alongside Dalits in

Dumari. They claimed that the majority of Kurmis now supported the Party not due

to any ideological commitment to the poor peasants, but to re-establish their

dominance in the region. The Dalits accused the Sangathan of protecting the Kurmi

interests. Rajinder Das, a middle aged Dalit labourer in Dumari, said:

Now nobody is sure about the politics of the Sangathan. Earlier it was very clear

to everyone that the Sangathan belonged to the Harijans and it worked for the

Harijans. The class identity of the Sangathan was very clear then. When it

fought against the Kurmis, we knew the Sangathan was with us. Now the

Sangathan might kill us also. It does not want to annoy the Kurmis by raising the

issues of labour, wages land re-distribution any more. The Kurmis do not give

mani-bataia [sharecropping] to us. They have decided in their meetings to give

mani-bataia only to their own caste members. Even the Kurmi man who has

only one bigha of land, takes 10 bigha as bataia and keeps a Harijan as harvaha(a bonded labourer). The Sangathan does nothing about it. And because of all

these reasons, courageous Dalit leaders like Rajubhai are no more very active in

the movement and Dalits in general have become non-cooperative.13

Similar sentiments were expressed by many other Dalits. An elderly Dalit woman

from a neighbouring village, who held membership of the Maoist Party,14 was

12 Similar concerns have also been discussed in the studies on the Maoist movement by Bhatia (2006)

and Shah (2006).13 Interview with Rajinder Das in Dumari in June 2003.14 The Party membership was given only to the select few who have proved their loyalty and

commitment over a long period of time.

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 321

123

critical of the Maoist dasta (armed squads) who often stayed and ate in the Kurmi

households. She said the Dalits in her village felt much neglected. She was very

kind to me whenever I visited her. Everyone called her Chachi (aunty), so I also

addressed her in the same way. I heard from some people the legendary stories

about her participation in the struggle against the Bhumi Sena in the 1980s. Once in

a nearby village, when the Maoist cadres had engaged the Bhumi Sena activists in a

gun battle, Chachi moved on all fours to bring food and water to her comrades. Now

Chachi was greatly saddened by some Maoist cadres’ attachments to the comforts

offered by the wealthy Kurmi landlords. And this was a common complaint I heard

from many Dalits in the region. Rajubhai was rather reserved in expressing his

criticism in this regard. He said: ‘It is okay if they stay and eat with the Kurmis. But

at least they should come to visit us’. Then referring to me he added: ‘It is after a

long time someone from the Sangathan has come to the Dalit tola and even spent

time with the Doms. We are happy that you are staying with us’.15

One evening, my friend in Dumari Gola Paswan came in drunk. Appearing

unusually courageous, he said: ‘The Sangathan has become the party of the badjan[big people, in reference to the Kurmis]. I had predicted that it would happen. Now

the Kurmis have become so arrogant again that ve aasman main dhoti sukhatha hai’(‘they dry clothes in the sky’, a phrase that referred to their arrogance). Gola went

on to claim that the Kurmis were not faithful to the Sangathan. They might give

food and shelter to the comrades. But they might also act as informers to the police.

They had mobile phones and could call the police anytime. ‘That is why’, he

pointed out, ‘the Sangathan has lost more men and weapons in recent years’. He

was angry when he said: ‘Till yesterday we were fighting the Kurmis. And today all

of them are in our organization’.16

Rajubhai once introduced me to Murari Singh, one of his former comrades in

arms. Murari Singh hailed from a different village and belonged to the Bind

community, a Lower Backward Caste group. He was a member of the armed dastafrom 1980-85. Murari Singh said: ‘Earlier the labourers were totally with the

Sangathan. Now they do not feel at home in the organization because the Party

workers stay and eat with the rich. All the leadership is from that class’. I asked him

why he left the dasta. He replied:

The dasta members from the kisan (landowning peasant) families were given

more remuneration and I was given less. The Sangathan held the view that the

landless labourers are given remuneration according to the wages they

received. Whereas the squad members from the landowning classes were

given remuneration in accordance with the income they would have received

from their land. I protested that it violated the principle of equality which the

Party professed. Since I did not receive a positive response, I withdrew from

the dasta. There are also caste feelings within the Sangathan now. Recently,

Manish Pandey [of Bhumihar caste] in my village, who is a supporter of the

Sangathan, sexually assaulted a Musahar woman. But the Sangathan took no

15 Interview with Rajubhai in Dumari in January 2003.16 Statement by Gola Paswan in Dumari in May 2003.

322 G. J. Kunnath

123

action against him. However, if a person from the landless class had done

something of that sort against an upper caste woman, the Party would have

taken immediate action against him. Moreover, these days the accused persons

approach their caste men in the Party to sort out their problems.

Murari Singh asked me what he could do to revive the Party. He added that he

was always thinking about it. He asserted that Dalits were still faithful to the Party

and would never join any other organization. They were aware that if the Sangathandisappeared, the old rule of the landlords would be back again.17

Many Dalits agreed that the Sangathan had failed to prepare the Dalits to take

responsibility for themselves. Further, they pointed out, it should have included the

poor and the landless peasants when formulating policies for the inclusion of the

middle caste peasants such as the Kurmis into the Maoist movement. However, they

were quick to add that it was through their participation in the movement, that they

contested Kurmi domination and exploitation. In Dumari, Dalits contrasted their

present confidence and boldness with the earlier attitudes of submission to the

Kurmi zamindars. One Dalit labourer who had been active in the Maoist movement

summed up this new disposition in the following words: ‘Earlier we used to say to

the zamindars ‘huzur peet par mariye magar pet par nahin’ [‘hit on the back but not

on the stomach please’]. We pleaded with the landlords that they might do anything

they wished, but not take away our livelihood. And now we say, ‘tamiz se peshaaieye, nahi to zaban kheech lenge’ [‘speak with respect, otherwise we will pull out

your tongue’]. Now we live with izzat [dignity]’.18

Concluding comments

In this article, by exploring Dalit participation in the Maoist movement in Bihar, the

reasons they gave for their mobilization in the 1980s as well as their later

demobilization, I have attempted to address the apparent problematic relationship

between large scale mass mobilization and armed struggle. While acknowledging

the significance of the assertion made by Bhatia and others that the Maoist

movement, when it relies primarily on its armed strength may alienate the masses

from the movement, I have argued that Dalit participation in the movement in Bihar

is directly related to the Party’s commitment to Dalit interests. From a Dalit

perspective in Bihar, therefore, the real debate is not one of mass mobilization

versus armed action, but one about the Maoist movement representing the

experiences and aspirations of Dalit communities. I have argued that the Maoist

failure in practicing a ‘mass regarding’ politics—the central element in Mao’s

revolutionary praxis—contributed to its failure in building a mass movement. For

Mao the ‘mass regarding’ politics is based on the objective of immersing political

activists into the everyday concerns and conditions of the masses. Mao developed a

revolutionary programme centred on the concept of the Mass Line, which he

17 The interview with Murari Singh was conducted in Rajubhai’s house in Dumari in June 2003.18 Interview with Rajinder Das in Dumari village in March 2003.

Smouldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India 323

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summed up as ‘from the masses to the masses’. He insisted that the party cadres

develop action plans combining the concerns, conditions and ideas of ordinary

people with the revolutionary theory and goals, and return to them to test their

relevance in the context of the everyday life of ordinary men and women (Tse-tung

1967 [1943]: 120; 1977[1957]).19

In the context of Jehanabad the practice of a ‘mass regarding politics’ clearly

meant the Maoists giving priority to a ‘Dalit regarding politics’. In the 1980s, the

PU and the MKSS activists stayed and worked among the Dalit communities. The

Maoist movement tried very specifically to address the caste and class based

exploitation of Dalits. The result was an en masse mobilization of the Dalits.

However, in the 1990s, the movement’s failure to address the Dalit grievances in a

sustained manner, especially in the aftermath of its strategic alliance with the

landowning middle castes, together with its failure to meet the rising economic,

political and social aspirations of Dalits led to their current feelings of alienation.

When Rajubhai and others said that the Maoist Party now had little time for Dalit

concerns and that it was primarily concerned about protecting middle caste interests,

they were pointing towards the Party’s failure to practice a ‘Dalit regarding

politics’.

To conclude, I argue that the Maoist reliance on arms on one hand, and the state

repression as well as the state incentives aimed at weaning away the Dalits from the

Maoist movement on the other, had only partially contributed to the failure of the

Maoists in building a large-scale mass movement among the Dalits. For my Dalit

respondents, it was the absence of ‘Dalit regarding politics’ that led to the shrinking

of the active Dalit support base of the Maoist movement. Therefore, from a Dalit

perspective, an appropriate balance between armed struggle and mass mobilization

could only be maintained in a revolutionary praxis that incorporated Dalit concerns,

conditions and ideas.

Acknowledgemnts I extend my profound thanks to Dr. Alpa Shah and Prof. David Mosse for their

suggestions, and the editorial team at the Dialectical Anthropology for all their help.

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