Javed Iqbal: Bhagalpur riots, 25 years later - Once Upon A Mass Grave..
In India ,
massacres aren’t forgotten, they’re nationally integrated into collective
amnesia. In October 1989, Parbatti, a locality in Bhagalpur town in Bihar, saw
a well full of bodies cut into pieces, which local reporters were quick to
announce were the bodies of Hindu students murdered by Muslim mobs, when they
were eventually identified as the family members of Mohammed Javed. All twelve
of them. There were never any ‘200 students murdered’; that was a rumour, for
which the 1995 Riots Inquiry Commission Report by Justices Ram Chandra Prasad
Sinha and S Shamsul Hasan explicitly blamed the administration, the press and
the police for disseminating false information in an already communalized
situation.
What happened on the 24th of October 1989,
one afternoon in Bhagalpur
town, could be described as a riot but what followed for the next month was
nothing but an organized massacre of one group. For weeks in Bhagalpur ,
there were preparations made for the Ram Janmabhoomi. An active
Vishwa Hindu Parishad was conducting collections of bricks, with eet
poojas across the district. All were to converge on the 24th of
October for a Ramshila procession in Bhagalpur
town. The situation was already communalized, with police encounters of Muslim
criminals, a murder of a Muslim auto- rickshawalla, skirmishes over Moharram and
Dusehra, resentment against beef eating, and a brewing gang war between what
were described as Muslim and Hindu gangs, politically patronized and vying for
control over Bhagalpur, which had a strong aspirant Muslim middle class.
And it
was under this backdrop that the administration and the police allowed the
Ramshila procession to march through Tartarpur, a Muslim locality, where they
were screaming slogans like ‘Baccha baccha ram ka, baki sab haram
ka.(We are all children of Ram, the rest are all illegitimate) and ‘Jai Ma
Kali, karo Tartarpur Khali (Praise Kali, goddess of destruction, empty
Taratpur).’
Around the Muslim
English School
“There could be miscreants who might be Muslims or Hindus or
both. The total analysis of the evidence certainly creates an aura of doubt
over the whole episode notwithstanding the real evidence. It may be some
miscreants of doubtful communal hue may have thrown bombs, some stones, and
crackers to create mayhem but nothing more can be said.’
‘In the ultimate analysis we feel that the first bombing
from the Muslim school appears to be doubtful, except some miscreants may have
thrown some missiles and crackers from somewhere in the vicinity to create
mayhem as stated above.’
It didn’t matter then. The local press and parts of the
national press spread the news even though there was also no clear evidence
that bombs were thrown onto the ‘Ramshila’ procession of ‘bhajan singing
peaceful marchers’. The Commission would point out the lack of injuries that
could be caused by shrapnel or fire; as for the peaceful marchers, many
witnesses such as Kapildev Mandal pointed out that the procession was led by
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, that was armed with
swords, lathis, spears and pharsans. Kapildev sticks to his testimony even
today, but like many others, refuses to name the people he saw in the
procession.
Over the next few weeks, organized mobs of thousands would
burn over 250 villages down, and mass killings would take place across the
district, with the official dead around a thousand (with 90% Muslim), with some
estimates that the number was higher. Two villages, Logain with around 118 dead
and Chanderi with around 70 dead, would receive decent press coverage over the
years, and with strong witnesses they would see prosecutions over a decade and
more later. As per documents maintained by a businessman in Bhagalpur , there were also the killings at
Bhatoriya, which had 85 dead, Rasalpur, with 30 dead, Padghari with 27 dead,
Chajghora with 25 dead, and Silampur-Amanpur with 77 dead. All of these
killings saw prosecutions, bails, and settled cases with killers roaming free.
There was also a pattern around Bhagalpur : the high death tolls were all
indicative of people huddled together, en masse, in a house where they felt
they would be secure, when the mob would descend upon them. Elsewhere the
killings were random and unplanned – the murder of passengers thrown off trains
coming into Bhagalpur ,
acts perpetrated by both Muslim and Hindu gangs according to Deepak Kumar
Mandal, a member of the Socialist Unity Center of India. Others mention how the
displaced Hindus settled into Ramnagar and the displaced Muslims settled into
Islamnagar, yet no one seemed to know where those villages/localities are.
Everyone has a story of their own, one story about what
happened, where they were, whether they ran, or whether they stood their ground,
and when it comes to those who were responsible for the riots and pogroms,
unanimously two names always feature in every conversation: Kameshwar Yadav who
is now in prison and Mahadeo Singh who has passed away.
It is an open secret that Kameshwar Yadav, one of the main
accused of multiple killings across the district, was not just patronized by
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on whose support he ran for the assembly seat for
Nathnagar in 1990 on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket, but he was also protected by
Lalu Prasad Yadav for more than a decade after the riots. It was only Nitesh
Kumar’s government that started to open these so-called cold cases, that had
him prosecuted, that had Bhagalpur
shut down with protests against his arrest, for four days. Yet many of the
accused in other cases still roam free. It is also an open secret that many of
the Muslims who faced violence in the riots voted for Shanawaz Hussain of the
Bharatiya Janta Party, for two Lok Sabha terms in a row, but abandoned him on
his third for he hadn’t fulfilled promises they hoped he would fulfill. In the
2014 Lok Sabha elections, he lost by 9,485 votes to Rashtriya Janta Dal’s Bulu
Mandal.
His fortunes were further scuttled by businessman Aman Khan,
who has been leading, and organizing protests for proper compensation for the
riot victims, both Hindu and Muslim, and claims it was his work that got Nitesh
Kumar’s government to release funds for the families of those killed. He boasts
that his house has hosted the likes of Rabri Devi to Nitesh Kumar, and that he
got people to vote for Shanawaz Hussain for two terms and abandoned him on the
third for he didn’t work for the people. He had shifted to Upendra Kushwaha’s
Rashtriya Lok Samata Party but after he joined Narendra Modi, he claims,
‘Humne usko tata bye bye kar diya.’ (then I left his party)
It is an open secret that Bhagalpur is a violently communal society,
that the wounds of 1989 still define social and economic parameters, a society
of communities drawn across religious lines, and the myths that spread in 1989
are still parts of two parallel collective consciousnesses. There are those who
can forget and those who have no choice but to remember: the haves and the
have-nots of memory, the upstairs-downstairs of nostalgia. The myths have been
integrated into the mainstream, and like an inconvenience, the memory of the
acts of killing, the loss of loved ones, continue to challenge the myths. Yet,
there is no public space, no debate, no conversation; it’s business as usual.
There was a small event held in Bhagalpur town in October to remember what
had happened, but it was almost a private affair, only a handful of victims
were aware of it.
***
Professor Vilakshan who teaches Ambedkarite thought in Bhagalpur was then part
of a leftwing student movement. He remembers the day he confronted a ‘Hindu’
mob that was congregating in Bhagalpur :
‘Why are you spreading the riots? Who gave you this money? Who will benefit?
The upper-caste people, the Rajput-Brahmins and the Bhumihars, nothing will
happen to them. Aur yeh Musalman kaun hai? Un mein se 90% Musalman hum
hi logo mein se, hamare quam se, in loge kabhi hum logo ko yeh samaan nahi
diya, who musalman ban gaye. Aap unko maar ne jaa rahe ho?’ (And who
are these Muslims? These are people from our own, who left Hinduism because
they never got anything from it. And you’re going to kill them?)
He eventually realized that it was Mahadeo Singh who had
organized the people. ‘Mahadeo Singh, was a man of all parties, but in the
beginning, he was mostly with the Congress. He used to organize dacoits, and on
the silk business, he and his people had the biggest competition with Muslim
businesses.’
Whatever semblance of justice there was escaped Mahadeo
Singh, a man known for his involvement in the riots. The then Superintendent of
Police Dwivedi who was also indicted by the First Commission of Enquiry is
currently Additional Director General of Wireless and Technical services.
During the peak of the riots, he was about to be transferred out of Bhagalpur
just on the onset of the riots, a decision made by then Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi; but after protests by the plainclothes police, Vishwa Hindu Parishad
and other members of the Sangh Parivar, that decision was overturned.
***
To the survivors of 1989, the memories are clear, the names
of lost ones etched painfully, the desire for apt compensation is as strong as
a desire for justice; a hopeless hope. The report from another Riots Inquiry
Commission headed by Justice NN Singh was meant to engage with those realities
but has, till date, only come up with extensions. Most speak with the
realization of how the year ruined them and their families, with the
displacement, the disenfranchisement: the ghettoisation that has led to a
continuation of a communal society – just a month ago, a moharram procession
in Gowradi led to clashes, and inter-religious couples continue to face the
wrath from the so-called ‘love-jihad’ brigade.
The television media is quick to remind them of the Sikh
pogrom of 1984 and the violence in Gujarat of
2002 yet the absence of their tragedy has not gone unnoticed to them. Not a
single person said that the rioters, the killers, weren’t their neighbours; yet
most wouldn’t wish to identify them. There is a fear to speak, to talk about
what the present tense surrounds them with. With all the recent upsurges of
‘Love Jihad’, any conversation about inter-religious marriages has witnesses
and survivors who wish that I turn the recorder off.
Write about it, but don’t take my name.
M says, ‘In Bhagalpur , just
two months ago, there were people who came from Ranchi
and Hyderabad
who beat up a Muslim boy in Nathnagar for marrying a Hindu girl.’
‘People were marrying of their own accord,’ he says, ‘but
they call it Love Jihad… and there’s so much politics about it, so much
politics, you wouldn’t believe.’
‘If there were inter-religious marriages, there would never
be any riots.’
There is even a stronger history to it, just in 1995, a few
years after the riots, a young Muslim man from a known Congress family was shot
at the chowk for marrying a Rajput girl from a prominent family of Bhagalpur . And the re-run
of the riot his mother feared, was then averted when the Rajput girl went back
to her home. His killers were never punished, and they continue to be
neighbours of the only Muslim house in the locality which is falling apart.
‘I don’t know why he married her, or why she caught my son,’
Said his mother.
After the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Babri Masjid
issue, the administration was swift to order the police to deploy themselves
around Bhagalpur ,
and seven policemen stayed at their house for protection. Nothing happened that
day.
‘It were the Muslims who’re to blame for what happened.’
Said her daughter about 1989, ‘Why did they throw bombs at the Ramshila
procession?’
The myths around what happened in 1989 still permeate most
conversations; there were bombs, and the Congress who were in power were
entirely to blame, and it destroyed them entirely. They haven’t won a single
seat since 1989. Yet for some, the memory of what
happened continues to be a thorn to the mainstream narrative.
‘I still remember what the BSF commander said when we found
my father’s body,’ says Wasif Ali, (82), a retired professor from the
Agricultural University of Bhagalpur. Wasif Ali’s family started to leave Parbatti a full month
before the full-blown riots of October 24th and the pogrom that
followed. He himself barely escaped being caught by a mob a few weeks earlier.
‘Laal scooter walla jaa raha hai, maar usko,’ He recalls, as a mob
that had congregated at Parbatti tried to accost him as he was travelling by.
That was all before the 24th, and yet the administration didn’t take
any preventive actions.
It has now been three months since he got a stroke, sixteen
years since he retired from teaching, and twenty five years he fought for
justice in whichever way he can. It took him a mere five minutes to begin telling
the story of the riots, with each pause between words like little flashbacks to
an imagery of trauma only he had seen. He speaks in a calm baritone, slowly, in
impeccable Urdu, over the sounds of a television report talking about Narendra
Modi and a kitten meowing intermittently.
He recalls how everything was turning communal a whole month
before October...
