NEW DELHI: The People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PURD) has demanded a ban on the “black laws” like the TADA in Bihar as well as full disbursement of ex-gratia payment for Dalits killed and compensation to families whose houses have been plundered.

They have also sought an end to “fake encounters” by the police and action against personnel involved in torture and killing of people in custody.

This follows a PUDR fact-finding team which toured the districts of Patna, Jehanabad and Gaya between March and April this year, stagehand “caste-wars” “in Bihar disclosed an organization

Spokesman while releasing the report here .

They presented their report, entitled ‘Bitter Harvest; The Roots of Massacres in Central Bihar,’ giving details of the social contradictions in the region to show that the reality “is rooted in the brutal manner in which power is exercised and maintained in rural

Bihar  the forms in which such domination is contested and the violence on the attempts to crush any challenge to the existing balance of rural power.”

The report finds the battle clearly drawn. On the one side are the private Senas of the rural elites and “ranged against them are the Marxist-Leninist groups who are organizing the rural poor as land payment of fair wages and a right life with dignity.”

And the intervention of the Government and the political parties has “at best, been partisan in favor of the elites.”

It is generally assumed that the instances of rural violence in Bihar are manifestations of a caste war, or else, instances of atrocities on the Dalits. Since the Tishkora incident of January 19,1951, in which 14 people were killed, a total of 120 lives have been lost to date.

A leader of the struggle of rural poor is the restoration of dignity of the female agricultural laborers. “The habitual rape and investment by the village elite is being forcefully challenged by the peasant organizations. In Gaya, for instance, the DM stated that the MCC has put a virtual end to this.

To respond to the growing organizations, the rural elite has formed various private senas. The senas have grown unchecked due to political patronage, states the report. “Ram Lakhan Yadav, at one time both a Congress MLA and a Janata Dal MP, is a patron of Kisan Sangh; Congress MP ‘King’ Mahendra and BJP leader Tilak Singh are associated with the Swarna Liberation Front, and Vijay Singh, brother of Tamil Nadu Narain Singh, is the founder of the Sunlight Sena.” The Government’s role has come in for sharp criticism. Of the Rs 1 lakh amount announced for the family of the deceased, the full amount has gone only to the victims of one massacre out of a total of 24 massacres. The police pickets setup after an incident are situated “only in the houses of the elite or in schools run by them.”

Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 28, 1992