Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence: Naxalites and Hindu Extremists in India [1 ed.] 9780415624831

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List of Abbreviations A i

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

List of Abbreviations A iii

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Naxalites and Hindu Extremists in India

A

Chitralekha

LONDON NEW YORK AND NEW DEHLI

iv A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

First published 2012 in India by Routledge 912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2012 Chitralekha

Typeset by Star Compugraphics Private Limited 5, CSC, Near City Apartments Vasundhara Enclave Delhi 110 096

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-62483-1

List of Abbreviations A v

For Baba

List of Abbreviations A vii

Contents List of Tables List of Abbreviations Glossary Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Why Compare Naxalites and Hindu Extremists?

ix xi xv xvii xix

1

2. Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand: Historical Context, Ideology, Organisation Structure and Dynamics

55

3. Committed, Opportunists and Drifters: Redescribing the Naxalites in Jharkhand and Bihar

79

4. Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad: Who are They and Why are They Ready to Kill Muslims?

125

5. Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat: Sardarpura and Palla

208

6. Conclusions

249

Bibliography About the Author Index

312 320 321

List of Abbreviations A ix

List of Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Tundi Census Profile: Life Conditions/Banke Bajar Census Profile: Life Conditions/Mahuadabr Census Profile: Life Conditions/Hariharganj Census Profile: Life Conditions/Khelari Census Profile: Naroda Ward in Ahmedabad District Census Profile: Sardarpura Village/Mehsana District Census Profile: Palla Village/Sabarkantha District

3.1 Naxalites/Committed: Socioeconomic Profile 3.2 Naxalites/Opportunists: Socioeconomic Profile 3.3 Naxalites/Drifters: Socioeconomic Profile 4.1 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Mob Leaders: Socioeconomic Profile 4.2 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Killers: Socioeconomic Profile 4.3 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Rioters: Socioeconomic Profile 4.4 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Local Supporters: Socioeconomic Profile 4.5 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/VHP Instigators: Socioeconomic Profile 4.6 Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/RSS Instigators: Socioeconomic Profile 5.1 Hindu Extremists/Mob Leaders/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile 5.2 Hindu Extremists/Killers/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile 5.3 Hindu Extremists/Local Supporters/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile 5.4 Hindu Extremists/VHP Ideological Instigators/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile 5.5 Hindu Extremists/RSS Ideological Instigators/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

32 35 37 38 40 44 47 49 84 91 96 137 151 167 179 185 202 213 217 223 233 237

x A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16

Hindu Extremists/Rioters/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile Hindu Extremists/Local Supporters/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

241

Naxalites: Reason to Join/Engage in Violence Hindu Extremists: Reason to Join/Engage in Violence Naxalites: Definition of Good Life/Occupational Alternatives Hindu Extremists: Definition of Good Life/ Occupational Alternatives Naxalites: Age of First Ideological Association/ Organisation of First Association Hindu Extremists: Age of First Ideological Association/ Organisation of First Association Naxalites: Feelings on Killing for Cause Hindu Extremists: Feelings on Killing for Cause Naxalites: Education Profile Hindu Extremists: Education Profile Naxalites: Media Habits Hindu Extremists: Media Habits Naxalites: Definition of Enemy/Interaction with Enemy Hindu Extremists: Definition of Enemy/Interaction with Enemy Naxalites: Standard of Living Hindu Extremists: Standard of Living

254 256

246

262 264 268 269 271 279 290 291 294 295 298 300 303 304

List of Abbreviations A xi

List of Abbreviations ABVP AJSU AMTS BA BJP BSF BSP CC CCOMPOSA

Akhil Bhartiya Vishwa Parishad All Jharkhand Students Union Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services Bachelor of Arts Bharatiya Janata Party Border Security Force Bahujan Samaj Party Central Committee Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia CPI (M) Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI (Maoist) Communist Party of India (Maoist) CPI (ML) Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) CPI (ML) Liberation Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation CPN Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) CRPF Central Reserve Police Force CRZ Compact Revolutionary Zone FIR First Information Report FM frequency modulation GoI Government of India GPCR Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution IB Intelligence Bureau IED Improvised Explosive Device IPF Indian People’s Front ISI Inter-Services Intelligence JMM Jharkhand Mukti Morcha KHAM Kshatriya–Harijan–Adivasi–Muslim KLO Kamtapur Liberation Organisation LLB Legum Baccalaureus (Bachelor of Laws) LRGS Local Regular Guerrilla Squads LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam MBBS Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery

xii A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

MCC MCCI MKSP MKSS MLA MP MSS NDFB NGO NHRC OBC PGA PLGA POTA PTC PU PUDR PW PWG RC RIM RJD RSS SAC SAIR SATP SEZ SIT SRGS SSC TADA ULFA UN UNESCO UNHCR US

Maoist Community Centre Maoist Communist Centre of India Mazdoor Kisan Sangrami Parishad Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Samiti Member of Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti National Democratic Front of Bodoland non-governmental organisation National Human Rights Commission Other Backward Class People’s Guerrilla Army People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army Prevention of Terrorism Act Primary Teaching Certificate (course) Party Unity People’s Union for Democratic Rights People’s War People’s War Group Regional Committee Revolutionary Internationalist Movement Rashtriya Janata Dal Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Special Area Committee South Asia Intelligence Review South Asia Terrorism Portal Special Economic Zones Special Investigation Team Special Regular Guerrilla Squads Secondary School Certificate Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act United Liberation Front of Asom United Nations United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United States

List of Abbreviations A xiii

VHP VRS WASP WPRM ZC

Vishwa Hindu Parishad Voluntary Retirement Scheme White Anglo-Saxon Protestant World People’s Resistance Movement Zonal Committee

List of Abbreviations A xv

Glossary atankvad atmayikta bal dasta behn chintan bhai chori daru dasta/dalam desh bhakti dharmic vichar gali garibi hafta Hindu Bodh Samanvay Hindutva

Id izzat jan adalats kafir kalyug kar sevak karyalaya khet majdoor kheti krantikari lathi Mahabharata mandal mandir

terrorism interpersonal, communitarian bonds Naxalite child squads/training groups sister introspection brother theft liquor Naxalite armed squad love of one’s own country religious view street poverty colloquial for bribe Hindu Buddhist Integration The ideology driving Hindu nationalism in India that views Hinduism not as the religion of India’s majority community but as the defining core of its national identity. important Muslim religious festival honour, respect people’s courts held by the ultra left in their strongholds infidel the worst epoch in the history of humankind with evil presiding supreme according to Hindu religious texts volunteer to religious cause work centre field labourers agriculture revolutionary stick Hindu religious epic gathering temple

xvi A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

masjid naam namaz nasta natak Naxalites pan pracharak pramukh prathana rakhi raksha bandhan Ramayana rathyatra roti samaj samvad sanskar sanskriti sarkar sarpanch satyug savarna shakha shastravad swayamsevak tai thana hamla tola toofan vibhag wallah/s yatra zameen

mosque name reading of the Qu’ran as prayer snack drama/theatre Left extremists in India, who trace their lineage to the peasant uprising of May 1967 in Naxalbari in West Bengal against oppressive agrarian relations. betel leaf eaten as condiment in India full-time, generally unmarried, members of the RSS head prayer sacred thread tied by sister on brother’s wrist Hindu festival celebrating the bond between brother and sister Hindu religious epic Hindu religious procession Indian bread community discussion values culture, values government village political head the epoch or period when truth would prevail according to Hindu religious belief ritually pure (Brahmins) localised, community-based training unit of right-wing political institutions/parties in India scriptural rites volunteer sister attack on police station mob colloquial for riots in Gujarat divide person/s journey land

List of Abbreviations A xvii

Preface T

hrough the several years that it has taken for this work to become a book, I have encountered a spectrum of expectations and concerns about the subject(s) it deals with. As it finally goes to print — at a time when one half of the field I lived and worked in has turned into a war zone — I think it necessary to clarify what the book is not about. This book is not a statement on what the Naxalites in India have or have not achieved. It is not intended to offer any new evidence about the larger validity, or irrelevance, of their practice to the real and urgent causes they espouse, or of the integrity (if I may put it as such) of its core leadership. Over the last year, there have been some significant inputs into the public domain in this regard (see Navlakha [2010] and Roy [2010] for a broadly sympathetic perspective; also see Mukherji [2010] for a thoughtful counter to Roy [2010]). What this book does is flesh out in more depth, and (hopefully) clarity, the psycho-social histories of those who actually make up the armed movement. It should be instructive to those who wish to learn more about what actually mobilises young people to bloody their hands in this war, and be ready to die. I have often been asked whether these findings (gathered from a study mainly in Jharkhand seven years ago) hold good to understand the ongoing armed struggle in Chhattisgarh. I believe that they are deeply relevant. The Naxalites work for and within a highly mobile organisation. Many senior cadres I met in Jharkhand had been recruited in other states, and are likely (if alive) to be at the forefront of its new epicentre. Some had, at the time of fieldwork, already been intimated of a ‘transfer’ to Chhattisgarh. At this stage, I would only caution the reader that the reasons that drive young people to join the Maoists are not uncomplicatedly co-terminus with hunger and poverty. As a corollary, the local issues of the predominantly adivasi people of Chhattisgarh must also not be easily conflated with the ‘Maoist’ cause. I have to also admit that this book may be of no immediate use to the many concerned citizens still fighting to secure justice for the victims of the Gujarat riots in 2002. While I lived and worked with the perpetrators — many of whom are at the forefront of controversial cases which are currently sub judice — the book works with aliases. While I have retained real locations, and often political positions held by my respondents, it is only so far as they are useful to contribution to knowledge. This is, as I

xviii A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

see it, in keeping with the larger ethical premise of this work. What this work does is flesh out the real people who actually made up the killing mobs. It demystifies the ‘mobster’, and includes his standpoint and life history in the understanding of what made it possible for ordinary people to bloody their hands in the unenvisageable brutality of the 2002 riots. While constructed from within the life-world of the perpetrators of violence — as different from a top–down macro-structural perspective on the ubiquitous ‘Hindu–Muslim riot’ — I hope the chapters on Gujarat also offer a relevant window to those seeking to view the complex mosaic of interrelated structural factors that make the riot possible. Finally, since this work can hardly claim to be free of the standpoint of the researcher, let me make my own ideological position (as much as it is visible to me) clear. I was, and remain, sympathetic to the Naxalites: not to the formal ideology of Naxalism, nor to its top-rung leaders, but to the many young cadres I met during my fieldwork — not ideologues on a mission, not mercenaries, just aspiring young people with no real choices. In Gujarat, on the other hand, I entered the field with deep prejudices. I had been through disturbing accounts of survivors and witnesses to the macabre events of February and March 2002, and often before I met my respondents, I ‘knew’ them. In the course of my own work with the perpetrators of violence in Gujarat, some of this ‘knowledge’ was reinforced; but much was also overwritten. Though some of those I met and engaged with in depth at the time will perhaps never be my friends, there were other micro worlds (rioters in Danilimda in Ahmedabad, Bhil youth in Palla, the Patel community in Sardarpura, student rioters in Sardarpura, and so on) which I entered without much conscious effort, and became part of in time. Nevertheless, through the long and arduous journey of writing this book, I have made every attempt to transcend, or epoche as Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann (1973) may have put it, the gravitating compulsions of both the life-world I belonged to prior to my induction into the field, and those of the worlds I lived in later. I hope that effort is visible in the pages ahead.

List of Abbreviations A xix

Acknowledgements T

o my respondents, many of whom put much at risk to share their ideas with me. They, I know, would rather go unnamed. To Dipankar Gupta — brilliant teacher, doctoral supervisor and now friend — I cannot pretend to estimate the extent of his influence on my ideas. Omita Goyal for believing in the book. Its anonymous reviewers, for useful comments that forced me to clarify many of my arguments. The editorial team at Routledge without whom the book would not have looked the same. Colleagues at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, particularly Denzel Saldanha and Mohammad Irshad, for some thought-provoking discussions. Sarita Rani, for her vibrant interest and painstaking inputs. Prakash Andrews, for some rare books. To Baba for perspective and integrity; Ma for her faith; my wonderful children, Nivan and Vanya, for their untiring love. Most of all, to Pavan — this work could not have been done but for his tenacity. I am not sure I could have been as brave or generous.

Introduction A 1

ONE A

Introduction: Why Compare Naxalites and Hindu Extremists? Naxalism and Hindutva: two larger than life, contemporary movements

in India that between them conjure up some of the most horrifying images of mass violence in the last half decade. The two are powered by diametrically opposing weltanschauungs, one driven by religious or cultural nationalism rooted in a specific territory, the other rejecting any relationship between religion and mass politics, privileging class solidarity of the international proletariat over national consciousness. One justifies murder, arson and rape as compelled by the angst and accumulated ethnic grievance of rioting mobs. The other kills under the aegis of a bitter class struggle that has reached a flashpoint with the Indian state. Can there be any doubt that people join and kill for Naxalites and Hindu extremists in widely disparate contexts?1 Jopan Manjhi2 was a trusted ‘hardcore’ cadre of the (then) Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Jharkhand. At 28 (in 2003 when this researcher met with him), he had lost count of the number of times he had bloodied his hands in violence. This included everyday ‘action’ against erring citizens in his jurisdiction3 (ranging from decapitation to chopping 1. I use the term ‘Hindu extremists’ as specifically denoting those, not just inspired by Hindu nationalist ideology, but also willing to engage in violence in its name. This distinction is necessary as I see it, because firstly, all ‘rioters’ — even in a Hindu mob — may not be Hindu nationalists; and secondly, all Hindu nationalists may not be willing to engage in violence in the name of the cause. I will detail the constitutive elements of what I see as ‘extremism’ in a more nuanced manner in the pages ahead. 2. Names of respondents have been changed to protect identities. 3. Jan adalats or people’s courts held from time to time by the ultra-left in their ‘liberated areas’ in India often command more respect than the local administration.

2 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

off a hand here and a foot there), handling levy defaulters, ‘raids’ on police pickets and thana hamlas,4 countering police operations and, during a stormy period in the mid-1990s, rival Naxalite groups. Suresh Bhai was, on the other hand, an upcoming Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in Ahmedabad. At 43 (at the time this researcher met him), he represented the party in a senior leadership position at the local level. It hadn’t come easy. He’d experimented with the army, a sales job, and at the time of my fieldwork, had recently set up a legal practice. A late entrant into politics, he knew he couldn’t let opportunities pass him by. By the evening of 27 February 2002, when he took a few significant calls from his bosses, he was ready and waiting, even excited. He is rather proud to have instigated and led a murderous mob the next day in Naroda Patia in Ahmedabad which killed more than 200 Muslims,5 and burned, hacked, maimed and raped countless others. The differences in the life histories of the two men are stark. One is a captured guerrilla whose loyalties are still with the radical ultra-left in India. The other belongs to the extreme right. One left behind a mud-andthatch house and a small patch of agricultural land in a village in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand to kill for an organisation that promised to eventually provide for a more equal and just world. The other grew up in a middle-class Brahmin home in Ahmedabad, acquiring his current conviction that he has helped do away with a small number of the kind of people his country is better off without. Manjhi knows he faces death even as he kills. Suresh Bhai sees no point in sacrificing precious Hindu lives when there are more pragmatic possibilities. Manjhi has been caught by the police, inhumanly tortured and at the time of fieldwork was serving a rigorous sentence in a dingy jail in Jharkhand. Suresh Bhai lives in the fair comfort of an upper middleclass residence in Naroda, dividing his time between his newly flourishing legal practice and demanding political career. Manjhi quoted often from Marx and Mao but fell silent when asked about the meaning of his everyday practice, or the real chances of its success. Nevertheless, his ideological vulnerability, even diffidence, had no bearing on his intention to return to the party. Suresh was completely self-assured and harboured no uneasiness at all.

4. While raids on small police pickets are handled by local squads, attacks on larger fully-equipped police stations (thana hamlas) are generally led by experienced leaders, often also enlisting support of the nearest platoon. 5. See Sabrang (2002b).

Introduction A 3

So why compare Manjhi and Suresh Bhai? Given the entirely divergent ‘literate’6 ideologies that power the Naxalite movement and Hindu extremism in India, or the unique historical contexts in which they were formulated, does it make sense to compare Naxalites and Hindu extremists? This book contends that it does. Dismantling popular (urban, metropolitan) conceptions that left extremism in India was on its last legs, the ‘Red Corridor’ has, over this last decade, spread vastly beyond its original areas of operation. It poses on the one hand ‘amongst the biggest internal security challenges ever faced by our country’,7 and on the other, involves the concerns of some of the poorest and most underprivileged people in the country. Hindu extremist organisations, driven by an ideology that harnesses the interests and the passions of people across a wide range of socioeconomic and demographic categories, also engage today with a steadily growing support base in India as well as outside. The strength and network of this support base was particularly manifest in the retributive attacks that targeted and killed several hundreds of Muslims after 58 Hindus, mainly kar sevaks (volunteers to a religious cause — in this case Hindutva) returning from the disputed religious site at Ayodhya, were burnt alive at Godhra in February 2002. While there are good indications that the ‘riots’ that followed in several districts across Gujarat were in fact a state-sponsored pogrom,8 the state is no stranger to Hindu–Muslim violence; it has never been much of a task to whip up a killing-mob. Located from the standpoint of the perpetrator, this book approaches, explores and reconstructs the context to both left- and right-wing violence from within the life-world of the ‘extremist’. Drawing from extensive anthropological fieldwork, first with the Naxalites across seven districts in Jharkhand and Bihar, and later with participants in the 2002 riots in Gujarat, it searches for answers in the unheard voices of Naxalite armed cadres, and Hindu Rioters.9 In context not insignificantly changed 6. Rabindra Ray (1998: 43–48) uses this term to differentiate between the docu mented, codified ideology of a movement and the meaning it holds at an existential level for its participants. 7. Indian Premier Manmohan Singh in August 2006; also see The Economist (2006: 30). 8. See Sabrang (2002b); Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a). 9. While ‘Rioter’ is used later in this book as delineating a distinct category of participants in the 2002 violence against Muslims, I have also used the term — as here — in its generic sense to connote all of those who are part of a rioting mob.

4 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

from the agrarian unrest and peasant consciousness that swept through Bihar and Jharkhand in the 1980s and 1990s, who really are its Naxalites today? Are they young people fighting against desperate odds for a larger cause? Modern-day mercenaries employed by an international nexus? Neither? What really is their ideology, how is it constructed and why are they prepared to die for it? Who is the Rioter in Gujarat? What makes it possible for him to burn, pillage, rape, and kill? What is the immediate context within which he finds it possible to act? What’s in it for him? How does he rationalise his practice? Most significantly, what is to be learnt by comparing Naxalites and Rioters? Is there a certain core context needed to foster (any) extremist ideology? What are the conditions in which ‘extremism’ is formulated and practiced? The book categorises a sample of 40 Naxalite armed cadres into three motivational profiles: Committed, Opportunists and Drifters. The Drifters make up by far the numbers of Naxalite armed cadres and reflect their changing spirit. The study in Gujarat located and spoke with a core sample of 25 participants in the 2002 violence against Muslims, including the categories of Mob Leaders, Killers, Killer–Rapists and Rioters. The larger sample of 39 Hindu Extremists includes two critical additional categories: Local Supporters and Ideological Instigators.10 To state the obvious, it is the Rioters — those who participate in loot, arson, maybe even murder and rape but are not front-liners — who make up the numbers of a rioting mob. From the perspective of its foot-soldier, the book bridges hitherto sacrosanct boundaries between left extremist and communal violence in India, making available a whole new dimension to the study of social mobilisation and the politics of identity. With far reaching implications, it discovers deep commonalities in the life-worlds and aspirations of those motivated to kill in the name of a cause in ostensibly radically disparate contexts. Its findings open up a new window to understanding not just the historical and formalised ideological contexts to left- or right-wing

10. It did not make analytical sense to include other peripheral categories of say, village supporters or political supporters, etc. in the sample of left extremists as there were significant qualitative differences in the worldview and long-term goals, as well as practice of ‘hardcore’ cadre. As a closely banded, armed guerilla group, core participants have an unequivocal commitment to the goals of the Naxalite organisation, implicitly including the possibility of having to kill, and maybe die for it.

Introduction A 5

violence in India, but the unread fascinating particularities of immediate, local contexts that inspire ordinary people to extraordinary violence. It contends that these two very different kinds of ‘extremists’ — ultraleft and Hindu nationalist — are in fact organised, inspired and enabled to kill in the name of a cause in similar ways. Despite the entirely different locations of Jopan Manjhi and Rajesh Bhaiya and the stark disparity between their life-chances, there were certain critical common, minimum factors in their life contexts that made it possible for both to actually kill in the name of a cause. The study finds uncanny similarities in the formative life-worlds of the Naxalite and the Hindu Extremist, in the minute, granular details of the real contexts that enable people, not so different from any of us, to bloody their hands in a violence that confounds all apparent rationalisation. The thesis of the book is not to dismiss, or trivialise, the deep differences in the social contexts that foster left- and right-wing extremism in India, but to contend that there are certain base structures common to both these contexts that are integral to bring in the numbers and fill up the ranks of those readied to kill. It is these base structures that enable extremist organisations to mobilise hundreds and thousands of faceless foot-soldiers in the name of a larger cause, be it the armed resistance of a left-wing guerrilla movement or a rioting mob. The purpose in this book is to describe and contextualise these structures as they emerge in narratives of the Naxalites and the perpetrators of the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Finally, this book is a window to the hitherto unread aspirations of those mobilised to kill in the name of a cause. Within these life-worlds that (as the book argues) enable, or make it easier for people to kill the (constructed) other without guilt, the book goes on to seek answers to the related (but different) question of why people who kill in the name of a cause finally do so. What it is that actually drives them? What’s in it for them? Do those who kill in the name of a cause kill with ideological zeal, for hope of quicker consummation of larger ideological goals? Do most kill for lucre or other material gains? Or do they espouse violence because they were ordered to (see Milgram 1974; Browning 1992)? This researcher met with as many as 39 perpetrators of the most brutal crimes against Muslims in Gujarat. Are many of these men and women in fact sadomasochists, victims of their own psychological drives (see Fromm 1941; 1977)? How far does psychographic profiling such as that of the fascist ‘authoritarian personality’ (Adorno et al. 1950) actually help understand what drove thousands of young people to such extraordinary violence across Gujarat? And what of the 40 armed cadres of the Maoist

6 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Communist Centre of India (MCCI) and People’s War (PW) whom I met across different ranks? Are they ‘true believers’?11 The chapters ahead that deal first with the Naxalites, and then with perpetrators of violence in the 2002 riots across metropolitan, rural and tribal Gujarat, grapple with these questions in an appropriately nuanced manner. For now it will suffice to say that the book argues that the numbers of both Naxalites and Hindu Extremists (Drifters in Bihar and Jharkhand, and Rioters in Gujarat) are made up of entirely ordinary people, not so different from young people in a hurry one meets in contexts closer to our own lives. Difficult as it is to accept, the findings of this study indicate that the majority in fact joined these ‘extremist’ organisations almost as a quasi occupational choice, to fulfil psycho-social needs as ordinary and as universal as recognition, sense of achievement, social status, izzat (honour) in one’s peer group and samaj (in one’s own community, not the hated other) and so on. Bajrang Dal recruits — for instance across Naroda Patia or Danilimda in Ahmedabad, Sardarpura in Mehsana and even Bhil youth in Bhiloda — had been carefully wooed into the ‘job’ with a heady package of instant social recognition, prestigious positions in the organisational hierarchy, fancy designations, money, etc. The book shows how, paradoxically, entry to the extremist group often becomes for participants the means of access to the public sphere, and, as such, performs as sites for the construction or reconstruction of the individual identities of participants along pathways not always predictable by the imperatives of the group itself. Questioning even the politics of Naxalite identity as we know it, narratives of guerrillas I met — including those who joined from the most oppressed classes — often ruminated with urgency, and poignancy, not so much on the formal struggle for equalisation of group identity and resources as on a deeply individual quest for recognition and self-actualisation.

11. For Eric Hoffer, the ‘true believer’ — the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause — dominated the active revivalist phase of a social movement (Hoffer 1951: xi–xiii). As he saw it, when a movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an enterprise (ibid.: 13). The sample of Naxalites in this study may in fact be a good template to test Hoffer’s thesis on the driving forces that attach people to social movements over different time–space coordinates, as it includes those who had in fact joined the movement in its earliest phase.

Introduction A 7

It is still true that left extremists continue to work by an organisational code of ethics that is impressive even with its aberrations, as much as the fact that these are men who live closely with the ever present possibility of death. Nevertheless, this study found that the Naxalites in Bihar and Jharkhand were not quite selfless heroes laying down their lives for a noble cause. Neither were the rioters in Gujarat all ugly psychopaths. Findings in the course of fieldwork in fact led increasingly to a sense that some of the logistics involved in getting people to a stage where they were actually willing to kill in the name of a cause were surprisingly common across apparently disparate contexts. Briefly then, these are some of the core ideas that emerged from the study: Most people who killed in the name of a cause did not doubt its veracity.

At the outset it seemed like there was a certain kind of hardened/ impenetrable conviction in those who had bloodied their hands in violence against a collective, ideological enemy. It included ‘knowledge’ that the enemy (upper-caste/police/Muslim) was potent, demonic, sly, almost composed of substances biologically different from those they were made of.12 It was this enemy who was really responsible for all the wrong that had been done to them. There was no possibility of a fair rapprochement and it was best to do away with him. I heard an uncannily similar explanation from a former MCC man serving a life sentence for brutally decapitating Rajput women and children in Dalelchak Baghaura in Aurangabad district of Bihar, and from a man accused of ripping open a pregnant Muslim woman in Ahmedabad, throwing her foetus into a fire before burning her to death. In both cases, I was told the enemy had to be taught a lesson; this was exactly what they had done to ‘us and our women’13 over the centuries, and if ‘we didn’t do this now, we wouldn’t have been alive’ to tell the tale.

12. So far, these findings are quite closely in line with Sudhir Kakar’s thesis on the process that enables ‘demonology’ of other ethnic and religious groups. While Kakar writes mainly with reference to the Hindu upper-caste child (Kakar 1990: 138), I found that the construction of the other, or the ‘making of the (changing) enemy’ in fact occurred for even the Naxalites in strikingly similar conditions. 13. Source: Personal interview, Gaya, Bihar, 2003; personal interview, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 2003.

8 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Both were rather proud of what they had been able to do for their community. Neither showed any regret. This kind of conviction is not gathered in a hurry. It is well in place by early childhood, often initiated at home, but ‘completed’ in organised forums.

Manjhi for instance joined the MCC when he was 10 years old. He attended their meetings, liked their guns and learned to appreciate their hard and fast ‘justice’. They were the Robin Hoods who had rescued his family from a land dispute with relatives that would have left them destitute. In the next few years, he knew what life on the run looked like, had acquired some ideological and arms training as well as a matriculation degree. At age 15, he left with them for good and has never looked back since. Suresh Bhai had been attending the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakhas (local community training units) since he was 8 years of age. His father had told him this was the nationalist organisation to be part of. He liked the fun and games there and was drawn to the passionate talk about national heroes and the dark intruders who came from outside and enslaved us. Although he is since moved around quite a bit professionally, he has remained in close touch with the Sangh. When he was between jobs, they were there for him like a family. Around that time, they also gave him a big ‘post’ of considerable responsibility within the organisation. A few years later, he moved to the BJP with their blessings.14 Not all Naxalites meet their Robin Hoods at the age of 10 and not all Hindu extremists join the RSS when 8 years old. But a great many, certainly the larger majority of both Naxal and Hindu extremists that I met over several months spent in Jharkhand, Bihar and Gujarat had found their ideological moorings in their early teenage years or sooner. Take some top line figures such as these. Eighteen out of a total sample of 40 armed cadres of the MCCI and the PW15 had been regularly 14. During fieldwork in Gujarat, this study observed political aspirations, or ‘political security’ often played some part in the decision to send one’s children to RSS shakhas. Such hopes are not always belied as ground-level recruitment to the BJP is in fact routed through the Sangh. The BJP’s electoral mobilisation relies heavily on the remarkably huge cadre and support base of the Sangh and its offshoot organisations as well. 15. This sample consists only of men (and a few women) who have killed for the cause. It does not include active supporters or members of other than Naxalite armed groups in the region for instance.

Introduction A 9

associating with Naxal parties by the age of 16, and another ten by the age of 18. As many as eleven armed cadres joined the party by the age of 16 – another eleven joined before they turned 20. To put the figures in context, as teenagers or even before, as much as 70 per cent of the sample (28 out of 40 Naxal armed cadres) had been consistently exposed in organised forums to the idea of a cause/enemy worth killing for. At least half the sample (20 out of 40 cadres) met with had also decided to kill for this cause before they turned 18. If we remember that this sample does not include members of the bal dastas16 of both parties, it is only too evident how early in life these ‘choices’ are actually made. The numbers in Gujarat do not tell a very different story. Of a total sample of 40 Hindus involved in the violence against Muslims in the postGodhra riots of 2002, as many as 24 (60 per cent of the sample) recalled regular association with RSS/other Sangh Parivar shakhas by generally much before the age of 16. Given that as many as 12 respondents in the sample in Gujarat declined to speak on the subject (of association with organised ideological forums), it seems likely that the real figure of those exposed to Hindu nationalist ideology in early childhood could be even higher. To be really convinced, it is important that at this stage there are not too many conflicting voices around to confuse us.

I found Naxalites (and their mass base) in Bihar and Jharkhand, as well as Rioters in Gujarat — not just in adivasi dominated or other villages but also in Ahmedabad city — living almost unbelievably insulated lives. Respondents in Bihar recalled seeing the ‘partywallahs’ around their village as children, going to their meetings, listening to their fiery speeches, reading their pamphlets, and in some cases joining them without quite knowing what it was going to be about. This point is almost self-evident with the bal dastas, though I have no personal experience of these. In Gujarat (at the time of fieldwork in 2003), my respondents, their families, neighbours and ordinary people everywhere recounted the same gory ‘Godhra stories’ (of 2002 riots fame), a popular one for instance about the Hindu women who had been pulled off the ill-fated train, raped, mutilated, and thrown into a pond in Kalol. They would share and discuss ‘facts’ and figures about the Muslim baby boom, forced marriages and abductions in city colleges, and of horrifying Muslim brutality in all previous riots. I eventually managed

16. These are organised Naxalite training groups for children below the age of 12. Despite several attempts, I could not gain access to these child squads.

10 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

to trace most of the Godhra stories to Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar, both leading regional dailies in Gujarat. These ‘stories’ (including the one about the rapes in Kalol) had long since been discounted by the police, and much earlier by the national media, but the counter versions (unfortunately published mainly in national dailies in English) had never reached most of these people. This study found that the legitimacy, spread and sheer power of regional dailies/television ‘news’ as a medium of state-instigated propaganda actually went a long way in explaining the pervasive absence of guilt and regret in Gujarat. In both cases — the Naxalites in Jharkhand/ Bihar and Rioters in Gujarat — I found that the men who killed (and those who supported them) rationalised their actions not by personal experience but with ‘knowledge’ received from what they believed to be highly legitimate sources. In both these contexts, I found no flow of alternate, dissenting knowledge. Significantly, however, ‘belief’ was rarely the reason people killed.

If most of those who killed in the name of a cause — Naxalism in Jharkhand and Bihar, and Hindu nationalism in Gujarat — in fact did not doubt the cause, this study found very few respondents had actually killed for, or because of the cause. Even in a single close-knit family for instance, by and large exposed similarly to available ideological forums, not all the brothers joined the Naxalites, or killed their Muslim neighbours. For example, I lived in a Patel household in Sardarpura village in Mehsana district of Gujarat where, out of a large family of several brothers, only one (the youngest sibling) had actually participated in the killings in 2002. Several other members of that household (most of them well settled, some even working in nearby cities) had attended the RSS shakha in the village. None of them regretted the killing of 38 Muslims17 in the village. They saw no reason though to take unnecessary risks and had been content to watch. Their youngest brother who did join the killing mob — who in fact was among those who spearheaded it — had failed the intermediate exams the previous year. Uninterested in kheti (agriculture), and still not in any ‘service’ either, he was at the receiving end of his family’s impatience — and an ideal typical pick-up for the Bajrang Dal shakha in the village. It seemed to me that on 3 March 2002, he took advantage of a lifetime opportunity, not as much to rid his village of Muslims as to assert his ‘worth’ to the rest who watched. Over the course of that bloodthirsty evening, 17. The official number of dead in Sardarpura is 38. The real figure, locals say, is higher.

Introduction A 11

the ‘heroic’ actions of the unemployed, prodigal wastrel in fact earned him a transformed status in the eyes of the familiar crowd around him. In Bihar and Jharkhand too, this study found the reason young people — not all of them poor or underprivileged — joined the movement had, in the final call, more to do with izzat than zameen (land) or roti (bread). But izzat was not so much about the respect or honour demanded from the enemy or the hated other: it was also about the recognition that was sought from one’s own peers, amongst one’s own community in locations which have not been able to provide ambitious young people with sufficient alternate avenues of peer approval and self-fulfillment. Strange as it seems, in these circumstances, joining the MCC of India in Jharkhand was in fact often not motivated by very different aspirations from those that attracted people to the Bajrang Dal in Gujarat. It doesn’t help that, as my findings show, these political ‘choices’ are often made at an average age of 12–15, an age at which young people, in their own recall, found guns and the power that came from holding them undeniably attractive. My findings are perhaps specially relevant in the context of the evidently changed socioeconomic composition of Naxalite cadres in Jharkhand — by far the majority of MCCI and PW cadres I met were from economically comfortable families, often middle or upper caste. The book does indeed bracket away some evident differences between the two movements to make its case. The base distinction between the contexts of Naxalism in Jharkhand and Bihar, and Hindu extremism in Gujarat is most obviously reflected in the inability of this study to distribute those who kill for Naxal parties and for Hindu extremist groups in identical analytical categories. As mentioned before (and discussed in chapters ahead), Naxalites are distributed into Committed, Drifters and Opportunists, and Hindu extremists into Mob Leaders, Killers, Killer– Rapists, Rioters as well as Key Instigators and Local Supporters. Examining Naxalites and Hindu Extremists fit a common frame of reference would have greatly inhibited a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of participation in the two movements, which should now emerge in the chapters ahead. Nevertheless, if the intention in this work was to delineate the context in which people become willing to kill for a cause, at the end of the road it seemed to me that if you started early enough —and you were the only one talking — you could probably get people to believe in killing for your cause almost anywhere. It was clear, however, that where people had more to lose, you still had to offer more to get them to actually do the killing. Most Naxalites, as some of them put it, had not very much to lose in the first place. The Naxal organisations took care of your essential needs and

12 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

held out the promise of power, status and adventure. Life is hard but not that much harder than conditions back home — and it may not last — but while you live, you live like a man. In Gujarat, the impetus to get people to transcend belief for practice was more complex. Given that ideological programmes of Hindu extremist organisations have been largely urban based and have targeted the relatively better off (as compared to the Naxal support base) middle and lower middle class, it is true that so far they have managed to get people to kill for them only when they could guarantee punitive immunity (see Gupta 2002: 4615). The last decade, though, has seen strategic change with the RSS and its associate organisations moving deeper into rural, tribal and other severely economically depressed areas as well. Much like Naxal organisations, they have made fresh inroads into areas uncluttered by previous political ideas, and with people whose threshold for transcending ideology into practice is likely to be much lower than its traditional support base. These organisations have so far not really asked their men to be ready to die for the cause, but as the findings of my fieldwork indicate, even that strategy may be up for change.

Delimiting Extremism The book uses extremism as an analytical framework to compare narratives of actors of violence in domains often assumed to be incomparable in academic discourse: Naxalites studied hitherto within the framework of peasant rebellion or social movement, and Hindu Rioters viewed mostly under the broad rubric of ethnic violence premised mostly on ascriptive difference18. It is premised on my view that ‘extremism’ is at its core described by the willingness to use violence against, and even kill, the enemy in the name of a larger, mass cause, and in a significant sense therefore

18. ‘Ethnic’ has been used to straddle a broad repertoire of collective identities premised on ascriptive difference, and has been used interchangeably with communal, racial, religious, sectarian, linguistic, tribal, etc. See Horowitz (1985); Tambiah (1996) for discussions on this usage. The broad banner use of the term has been contested though, for instance, in terms of a distinction that needs to be drawn between (ethnic) violence that calls on loyalties to the nation state, and others (Gupta 1996).

Introduction A 13

straddles the practice of both the Naxal guerrillas and Hindu Rioters. Defined as such, the term covers not just Naxalite and Hindu nationalist violence in India but an entire gamut of armed movements for self determination, racial and fundamentalist violence, and several other violent antagonisms premised on religion, caste, class, etc. There is no disputing that such delimitation, or for that matter any claim to a unitary core to ‘extremism’ itself, would be a deeply contested project. Despite its overuse in popular discourse, it is also perhaps amongst the most under-theorised concepts of political sociology, often used to denote or substitute any in a broad spectrum of terms such as radicalism, fundamentalism, fanaticism, terrorism and so on. Take for example Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter (2002: 263–65) who, seeking to illustrate that ‘extremist violence is not indiscriminate or irrational’, go on to state that their aim is to show that ‘terrorist [emphasis added]organizations often pursue their goals in rational and strategic ways, and to offer a plausible explanation for why a small group of radicals [emphasis added]is sometimes able to convince a majority of peace-seeking individuals to return to conflicts.’ Among the earliest to put forth a coherent thesis on the subject, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab (1970) describe extremism as an ‘impulse [emphasis added] which is inimical to a pluralism of interests and groups, inimical to a system of many nonsubmissive centers of power and areas of privacy’ (cited in Mulloy 2004: 18).19 As Michi Ebata (in a study of right-wing extremism) put it, extremism has in fact been used to describe

19. Lipset and Raab (1970) initially posited a three stage explanation of extremism. In the first stage, certain groups suffer from ‘social strains’ caused by deprivation, or threatened deprivation of once-held power and status. A process of ‘ideological projection’ occurs by which these groups try to explain ‘what is happening in a way that is satisfactory to them’: a process of ‘status substitution’ where the ‘cultural trappings of a group stand in for the group and become invested with special significance’. The third stage involves ‘backlash targetry’ where the extremists identify the people or groups from whom their ideological or cultural projections need to be protected or preserved. In order to be a successful scapegoat, the chosen people/groups must have an appeal to both the elite/mass elements of the extremists. The key to the creation of a mass movement (which for Lipset and Raab should be the ultimate aim of any political group) is a marriage de convenance between a displaced elite and an unstable mass. European immigrants as they see it served this purpose for the Ku Klux Klan: they represented radicalism or socialism to the business elites, and Catholicism to rural Protestants (cited in Mulloy [2004: 23]).

14 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

a wide range of phenomena ‘from skinhead youths to football hooligans, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militia groups, extremist fringe political parties, and more successful radical political parties. . . It can refer to an ideology, a form of observable behavior, various kinds of political activities, or personal attitudes and dispositions’ (Ebata 1997: 12). Most theses on the subject, even if they do not explicitly theorise it as core to extremism, do seem to accept violence as somewhat of a given. For Lipset and Raab, the operational heart of extremism is the repression of difference and dissent, the ‘closing down of the market place of ideas’ (quoted in Mulloy 2004: 18). At the same time they posit the ‘use of violence . . . is implicit and explicit in monistic political movements’ (ibid.). Extremism, as they see it, means going beyond the limits of the normative procedures that define the democratic political process: it is the manner of their politics, rather than the content of their programs or their beliefs per se, that distinguishes extremist political actors from their mainstream counterparts. And, one area in particular where extremists are regarded as ‘going beyond the limits’ (quoted in Mulloy 2004: 19) is their apparent willingness to engage in violence as a means of achieving their aims. In the context of her study of the extreme right, Ebata too accepts that: ‘In contrast to mainstream norms and standards, violence is not unthinkable but is a “legitimate” option and necessary strategy for the extreme right’ (ibid.). Those such as Tore Bjorgo (quoted in Mulloy 2004: 19) believe it a mistake to assume all (right-wing) extremists are violent. While agreeing that acceptance of violence as a legitimate way of acting can be one of the basic elements of a right-wing extremist orientation, he argues that violence and terrorism do not follow automatically from holding a rightwing extremist worldview. ‘Although many right-wing groups propagate violence and hate, what can account for the often noticeable gap between their extremely violent rhetoric and their actual behavior in terms of violent acts?’(ibid.). Bjorgo suggests that for violence to occur, an extremist group ‘will normally have to go through a radicalization process whereby the enemies (they identify) are progressively delegitimized and demonized, and the threat (they feel) becomes perceived as acute’(ibid.). But if all (right-wing or other) ‘extremists’ are not willing to use violence, what is it that particularly describes them? If what Bjorgo posits indeed be the case — that the ‘extremist group’ has to go through a ‘radicalization process’ for violence to occur — it is not quite clear what would then describe the extremist in the first place, before he is ‘radicalized’

Introduction A 15

(ibid.). As it seems to me, it is in fact that element of more than just radical thought that makes an extremist: put another way, the extremist is the radical who has already said no to the possibility of discourse as a means to the consummation of cause and therefore yes to violence. It is in fact precisely this inbuilt dispensation towards violence in ‘extremist ideology’ that accounts for why the ‘extremist’ is often viewed in a pejorative light, while the radical is not. Most extremists are also likely to be (seen as) radicals — actors whose ideas are outside the cultural or political mainstream of a given society — but not all radicals are ‘extremists’. For instance, activists fighting for gay or lesbian rights even in the 1990s in India were liable to be labelled radicals; writers and poets such as Salman Rushdie, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, and even the poetess Kamala Das have all been seen as radicals in their local contexts of origin. It goes without saying that what is radical today may well be assimilated, even mainstream, tomorrow. It is not the same for an ‘extremist’ group. To become ‘mainstream’, it generally has to abjure violence and visibly distance itself from its past. The CPN (Maoist) in Nepal or the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [CPI (ML)] Liberation in Bihar are good examples of left extremist parties that entered the political mainstream in this manner. Fundamentalism, also often conflated with ‘extremism’ in popular discourse, is too widely contested a concept in itself to do justice to here (see Marty and Appleby [1991] for a cross-section of views; also see Gupta [1996] for an interesting take on its analytical problems). It will suffice to say for purposes germane to this study that ‘fundamentalists’ — who aspire to bring ‘all of life under God’s rule’ (Ammerman 1991: 50) — may indeed also turn ‘extremist’, or become willing to kill to preserve the order. Nevertheless, it is as clear that the core tenets of fundamentalism per se are unique, and by no means coterminus with extremism. By the same rationale, fanaticism — which accentuates the purity and infallibility of a given (religious or other) doctrine — is not extremism either. ‘Terrorism’, used in more recent times to refer to the organised use of violence by armed militia groups against the state and its representatives to achieve radical political objectives, would by the premises in this study hold as a contemporary manifestation of extremism.20

20. For discussions on terrorism, see Chalk (1999: 151–67); Primoratz (1997: 221–33); Sprinzak (2000: 66–73); Weinberg (1991: 423–38). Also see Euben (2002a: 4–35; 2002b: 365–76) for perspectives on jihad.

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As a corollary, I would argue that extremists include those also willing to die, as suicide bombers and participants in most armed, underground movements who face the ever present threat of death even as they kill. It does not however include those who only die for a cause. As I see it, this third category of actors of violence — those who do not take lives but only give up their own (Tibetan self immolators or, closer to home, students protesting against Mandal commission recommendations in the 1980s, or say even a Narmada Bachao Andolan activist) — are not extremists in the same sense. While all of the above categories of people fighting in the name of a cause (those who kill/those willing to die even as they kill/those only willing to give up their own lives) have given up on the possibility of rational discourse or negotiation; in the case of the last, the enemy has not (yet) been ‘naturalised’ into the hated, biological other. There is in fact the implicit hope of reconciliation or of winning over the other by putting moral or ethical pressure on them. The intention to die —as in a hunger strike — is tactical, intended to draw attention to the rightness of the cause.21 On the other hand one can hardly kill the enemy to draw his attention to the moral rightness of a cause: more plausibly, one kills on giving up on other discursive means of consummating the cause. Needless to say, this too is a working definition and does not deny that ‘extremism’ must perforce be a nebulous term, relative to each society’s proscription of what, to begin with, counts as legitimate violence, and what does not. To stretch Benedict Anderson’s brilliant and visionary thesis on nationalism (Anderson 1983), one could for instance argue that willing recruitment to national armies, and popular civilian endorsement of war against ‘enemy’ countries is only made possible by successful inculcation of an ‘extremist’ ideology of sorts, where entire nations can see each other as the naturalised other that cannot be won over by discourse.

21. The threat of death and actual loss of lives has of course also been used from time to time as a short term strategic weapon to coerce, or intimidate the (political) enemy into willingness — as perhaps in the case of some of the recent suicides in the name of the struggle for Telengana, or Gorkha states in India. Nevertheless for those actually willing to give up their own lives in the name of a larger cause — but not ready to take any — the ‘enemy’ in picture is still not a ‘naturalised other’. See Hoffer (1951) for an interesting take on who is willing to die for a larger cause, and why.

Introduction A 17

Revolutionaries and Rioters: Perspectives and Problems In her seminal book States and Social Revolutions, Theda Skocpol (1979) points out that the major theoretical approaches to revolution22 all — with some variations — assume a purposive view of the revolutionary process. According to this shared view, changes in societies give rise to grievances, disorientation, or new class or group interests and potential for collective mobilisation; then there develops a purposive, mass-based movement that, coalescing with the aid of ideology and organisation, consciously undertakes to overthrow the existing government and perhaps the entire social order; finally the revolutionary movement fights it out with the authorities or dominant class, and if it wins, undertakes to establish its own authority and program’ (ibid.: 14–15). Relative deprivation theorists such as Ted Gurr posit for instance that ‘the primary causal sequence in political violence is first the development of discontent, second the politicization of that discontent, and finally its actualization in violent action’ (Gurr 1970: 12–13). For systems/value consensus theorists such as Chalmers Johnson, revolution is ‘the purposive implementation of a strategy of violence in order to effect a change in social structure’ (Johnson 1966: 57). Political-conflict theorists like Charles Tilly (1978), focusing on the final phase of the ‘purposive’ revolutionary process — the clash of organised revolutionaries competing for sovereignty with the government — also depend on the psychological and ideological causes highlighted by relative deprivation and systems theorists in order to explain the emergence and popular

22. Skocpol groups significant theoretical approaches to understanding ‘revolution’ into four families: ‘Marxist’ (that understand revolutions as classbased movements growing out of structural contradictions within historically developing and inherently conflict-ridden societies), ‘aggregate-psychological’ theories which explain revolutions in terms of people’s psychological motivations for engaging in political violence ( Davies 1962; Feierabend et al. 1972; Gurr 1970; Schwartz 1971), ‘systems/value consensus’ theories that see revolutions as violent responses of ideological movements to severe disequilibrium in social systems (Johnson 1966; Parsons 1951; Smelser 1963), and ‘political-conflict’ theories which argue that conflict among governments and organised groups contending for power must be placed at the centre of attention to explain collective violence and revolutions (Oberschall 1973; Russell 1974; Tilly 1978). See Skocpol (1979: 6–14).

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support of the revolutionary organisation (see especially ibid.: 202–9). Finally, Marxists too see the emergence, albeit through prolonged preparatory struggles, of an organised and self-conscious ‘class-for-itself’23 as the necessary intermediate condition for the development of a successful revolutionary transformation out of the contradictions of a mode of production.24 Skocpol’s case is that all the above (purposive) approaches suggest that societal order more or less rests upon a consensus of the (lower-class) majority that their needs are being met, and as a corollary, withdrawal of this support is sufficient condition for revolution. Pointing out that such consensual or voluntaristic conceptions of social order or change are belied by the prolonged survival of blatantly repressive political regimes, she argues that social revolutions should be analysed instead from a structural perspective: with special attention devoted to international contexts and to developments at home and abroad that affect the

23. For Marx, the ‘class-for-itself’ has political self-consciousness and organisation, as opposed to the ‘class-in-itself’, constituting of people who though similarly situated with respect to property relations in the production process lack political consciousness and organisation (Marx and Engels 1968: 171–2). 24. The key ideas of the Marxist theory of revolution are best represented in the works of Karl Marx himself. The source of a revolutionary contradiction in society, according to Marx, is the emergence of a disjuncture within a mode of production between the social forces and social relations of production. ‘At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production . . . with the property relations within which they had been at work before . . . Then comes the period of social revolution’ (Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in Feuer [1959: 43–44]). For Marx, revolution is accomplished through class action led by the self conscious, rising revolutionary class (the bourgeoisie in bourgeois revolutions and the proletariat in socialist revolutions). Once successful it marks the transition from the previous mode of production and form of class dominance to a new mode of production — in which new social relations of production, new political and ideological forms, and the hegemony of the newly triumphant revolutionary class, create appropriate conditions for the further development of society (Skocpol 1979). Subsequent Marxist theorists of revolution include technological determinists such as Nikolai Bukharin (1969), political strategists such as Lenin (Tucker 1975) and Mao (Schram 1969) to Western Marxists such as Georg Lukacs (1971), Antonio Gramsci (1971) and structuralists such as Althusser (1970: 87–128).

Introduction A 19

breakdown of the state organisations of old regimes and the build-up of new, revolutionary state organisations (Skocpol 1979: 5). With a meticulous and compelling comparison of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, she argues it is only [emphasis added] because of possibilities thus created that revolutionary leaderships and rebellious masses contribute to the accomplishment of revolutionary transformation (ibid.: 17). While Skocpol’s stated thesis is to move away from simplistic analysis of revolutionary situations as ‘caused’ by activities of angry or frustrated masses (or by their leaders), her own insistence on a rigid correlation of revolutions with (already) emerging politico-military crises of state I think essentialises an otherwise compelling comparative (transnational) sociohistorical perspective. Going strictly by Skocpol’s definition of social revolutions for instance — ‘rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures . . . carried through by class-based revolts from below’ (Skocpol 1979: 4) — the Naxalites despite their years of struggle and sacrifice in the name of a larger ideological cause, would not count as revolutionaries.25 By Skocpol’s definition, their movement is in fact not even a rebellion. For Skocpol, rebellions may involve the revolt of subordinate classes, but, even when successful, do not eventuate in structural change (ibid.); structural changes in caste–class relations on the other hand would count as amongst the Naxalite movement’s most significant successes in areas of its influence.26 However my dispute with Skocpol’s thesis is not really with how she delimits ‘revolution’, or that she sees changes in structures of (state) governance as integral [emphasis added] to such definition, but that in

25. While the Naxalite movement has over the last half decade visibly transformed (even if much remains to be done) class structures in its earliest strongholds, it has had no impact at all on state structures —including in central Bihar and Jharkhand, regions that have seen Naxalite politics for nearly half a decade now. The erstwhile Naxalite party CPI (ML) Liberation (or Ma-le as it was called colloquially) was for instance for much of the last half decade at the forefront of (what I would term) revolutionary activities that, though they did not completely overturn the class structure, visibly altered class relations in the region. By the late 1990s, Ma-le also virtually disbanded its armed dastas and became ‘open’ in a sincere bid to enter and impact electoral politics in the region but lost to the mainstream Rashtriya Janata Dal. 26. For a more nuanced discussion on such changes in Bihar and Jharkhand, see Chitralekha (2001).

20 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

her project to take an ‘impersonal and nonsubjective viewpoint’ of revolution (Skocpol 1979: 18), she not just excludes perspectives of ‘revolutionaries’ themselves (which in any case may have been hard to access given the historicity of her case studies), but summarily dismisses its relevance. As she sees it in fact, any valid explanation of revolution depends upon the analysts ‘rising above’ the viewpoints of participants to find important regularities across given historical instances (ibid.). Skocpol’s case is that in historical revolutions, differently situated and motivated groups become participants in a complex unfolding of multiple conflicts that are in turn shaped by existing socioeconomic and international conditions. The logic of these conflicts, she points out, have neither been controlled by any one class or group, nor given rise to outcomes fully foreseen — or perfectly serving the interests of — any of the groups involved (ibid.: 17–18). Citing the historian Gordon Wood, she quotes the purposes of men, especially in a revolution, are so numerous, so varied, and so contradictory that their complex interaction produces results that no one intended or could even foresee. It is this interaction and these results that recent historians are referring to when they speak so disparagingly of these “underlying determinants” and “impersonal and inexorable forces” bringing on the revolution. Historical explanation which does not account for these “forces” which in other words, relies simply on understanding the conscious intentions (italics mine) of the actors, will thus be limited (quoted in Skocpol 1979: 18, from Wood 1973: 129).

There can hardly be dispute that any attempt to understand revolution from (as Gordon Wood puts it) the ‘conscious intentions’ of its participants is likely to be a limited, if not misleading exercise. Dipak Gupta, seeking to examine why certain societies are more prone to genocide and mass murder also points out that it is in fact impossible to peer into anybody’s psyche to see whether a participant is a ‘true ideologue’ or ‘motivated by greed’. ‘We are exceedingly complex beings. None of us understands even our own complex motivations enough to clearly classify them’ (Gupta 2001: 87).27 I would also agree with Skocpol that a top-down structural analysis drawing from comparative data across (international) contexts would provide significant understanding of the kind of dynamics that actually bring in revolutions. But while sharing her concerns on the 27. Gupta nevertheless (as he puts it, for illustrative purposes) classifies participants in what he calls ‘collective madness’ into three groups: believers, mercenaries and captive participants (Gupta 2001: 86).

Introduction A 21

seemingly fractured nature of factors that enrol its participants, I would think it perhaps no less than arrogant to believe that the (ever-changing) dynamics of a ‘revolution’ can be truly understood without engaging with its foot soldiers (preferably across different time–space coordinates), no matter how incoherent their motives may seem at the outset, and from the ‘outside’. More recently, Stathis Kalyvas, pointing to the interaction between political and private identities and actions in civil wars, addresses a concern quite similar to that of Skocpol. ‘Civil wars are not binary conflicts, but complex and ambiguous processes that foster the “joint” action of local and supralocal actors, civilians and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their diverse goals. It is the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives that endows civil wars with their particular and often puzzling character, straddling the divide between the political and the private, the collective and the individual’ (Kalyvas 2003: 475). Recognising that ‘the motives underlying action in civil war are inherently complex and ambiguous’, Kalyvas suggests however that (instead of ignoring it) it is necessary to ‘theorize this more complex understanding of civil wars so as to incorporate it into systematic research’ (ibid: 476). I would add that ethnographic research, which ventures into the phenomenological life-world of the participant in violence (who Skocpol would rather ‘rise above’), would hardly stop short at documenting the ‘conscious intentions’ (as Wood seems to believe) of actors. Also while it is in fact not always possible for us to clearly categorise (even) our own motives (Gupta 2001: 87), that should not be reason to believe it impossible to gain insight into (the complex) motives of others. As Alfred Schutz (Schutz and Luckmann 1973) had pointed out, that is in fact where the advantage of the standpoint of the social researcher lies: immersed in a life-world (in this case, that of participants in violence), nevertheless capable by way of epoche of nuanced understanding of the real processes, the motivating forces that drive ordinary people to violence in these worlds.28 28. Alfred Schutz’s seminal work, The Structures of the Life-world (Schutz and Luckmann 1973) drew attention to how everyday life intrinsically involves the suspension of doubts concerning the reality of the world. It invokes a kind of epoche, the bracketing out of a critical attitude. The endeavour to explicitly focus on that implicit epoche, is tantamount to adopting a second epoche and establishing a critical phenomenological attitude. This epoche of the ‘natural’ epoche has the force to make it possible to undertake the description of the world as taken for granted in everyday life.

22 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

‘Riots’ again have been studied extensively by social scientists over the years, mostly within the ambit of ‘ethnic’ violence (case material for which over the last half-decade has sadly often come from the subcontinent): ranging from micro studies of specific episodes of violence (for instance, Breman 1993; Engineer 1992), comparisons across time and space (see particularly Tambiah 1996),29 analyses of collective violence in relation to the historical, political, economic, social or religious contexts of such violence (Breman 1999; Gupta 1982, 1996; Horowitz 2002; Varshney 2002), theorisation of the experience of survivors (see particularly Das 1990), psychoanalytic perspectives (Kakar 1990) to theorisation in terms of mob psychology or crowd behaviour. While the rioting mob has over the ages captured the imagination of lay people, artists, writers and philosophers,30 it was Gustave Le Bon’s Psychologie des foules, published in 1895 and translated as The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Le Bon 1960) that really brought it into the social sciences domain. Le Bon (a physician by training) who witnessed with horror and incredulity the marauding mobs that ravaged Paris in 1789, came to the conclusion that under certain circumstances, ‘an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed’ (Le Bon 1960; 23–24; quoted in Tambiah 1996: 268). Le Bon goes on to describe the heterogenous crowd as follows: ‘Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think and act were he in a state of isolation [emphasis added]’ (Le Bon 1960: 27). Over the years, and across a wide spectrum of scholarship,31 there has been little disagreement with Le Bon’s conception of the existence, 29. Also see Gupta (2001) for a more panoramic analysis of what he terms as ‘collective madness’ across the world. 30. See an interesting discussion on this in Gupta (2001: 38–40). 31. Well-known theorists who have dealt with the subject include the likes of Gabriel de Tarde, Elias Canetti, George Rudé and Sigmund Freud. (Le Bon attached the crowd to the phenomenon of the leader, a theme that Freud developed as the central theoretical issue of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.)

Introduction A 23

and overriding nature of the ‘collective mind’ of the rioting mob: as a new entity that can (and does) supersede the individual judgement of its participants. Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar states for instance that mobs provide ‘striking examples of the massive inducement, by group processes, of individuals towards a new identity and behavior of the sort that would ordinarily be repudiated by a great majority of the individuals so induced [emphasis added]. They illustrate, more clearly than in any other comparable social situation, the evanescence of rational thought, the fragility of internalized behavioral controls, values, and moral and ethical standards’ (Kakar 1990: 142). Contemporary theorists such as Stanley Tambiah have added much to our understanding of the circumstances in which the politicisation of ethnicity occurs in contemporary plural societies, and as a consequence, the politico-economic purposiveness and directedness in the actions of crowds. Nevertheless, Tambiah has no dispute with Le Bon on the unique and overpowering characteristics of the rioting crowd. Quite in line with Le Bon’s thesis, he posits for instance that rioting crowds, even when organised and led, become ‘aggregates of deindividualised equals’ (Tambiah 1996: 278). His stated project in fact is to take the understanding of crowd formation32 and crowd behavior to ‘still another analytical and interpretive level, which concerns the processes by which individual participants merging into crowd formations experience and manifest certain heightened psychic states and convulsive behavioral impulsions’ (ibid: 266). Dipak Gupta, in a wide ranging study of genocide and mass murder across continents, also seeks to understand the phenomenon of what he calls collective madness: ‘an extreme case of a group of people’s collective identity gone wild . . . a condition where individual identities are submerged into a larger collective’ (Gupta 2001: 11). Based on extensive 32. See Tambiah (1996) for some fascinating insights into the patterns and processes that describe the making of a riot. He uses for instance concepts like focalisation and transvaluation to describe how particular incidents and local conflicts build up into a massive avalanche called ‘ethnic riots’; nationalisation and parochialisation to show on the other hand how nationally mounted issues at focal centres have their dispersed and fragmented manifestation in local places in terms of local cleavages; patterns of routinisation and ritualisation of collective violence to draw attention to some of the organised, anticipated, programmed and recurring features and phases of seemingly spontaneous, chaotic and orgiastic actions of the rioting mob (Tambiah 1996: 266, 230).

24 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

analysis of such violence in many parts of the world, including former Bosnia, the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, the Cultural Revolution, etc., Gupta argues that these acts of unspeakable savagery are neither acts of individual passion or anger, nor done entirely for profit, nor reflective of a bunch of crazed psychopaths. ‘These are situations where a group of people working for a shared ideology know of no boundaries to achieve their shared goals . . . In times like these, we kill other human beings, not because they have done something personally to offend us, but because [emphasis added] their very existence as members of a particular group poses an affront to us’ (ibid.: 9).33 But is that in fact true? How do we know that ‘mob behavior’ (Kakar 1990) is of a special sort that would in ordinary circumstances be actually repudiated by the majority of the individuals who make up the mob? Does the mob turn ordinary men into Frankensteins, morphed into distorted brutality overnight, or does it function more as a forum that provides quick, easy and risk free opportunity to realise already existing needs or desires? Do participants in a mob actually subscribe to a shared ideology? If they do, how does it happen that a large group, composed of people from perhaps diverse backgrounds, and imaginably, more diverse life histories, actually come to share ‘ideology’? How do we know whether people kill other human beings in a mob because (as Gupta seems to believe) their very existence offends us? Could it be that most people in the mob — while they may in fact believe the hated other is best done way with — are still motivated to bloody their own hands in violence by quite different reasons? It is close to two decades now since Jonathan Spencer (1992: 267) pointed out the absence of ‘evidence on the ideas and explanations of the rioters, the social composition of the crowds, the central organizing symbols for their actions’ (citing Das [1990: 28–29], who identified the following as priority areas for further research). Yet — not dissimilar to the near invisibility of the ‘revolutionary’ in studies of revolution — the standpoint of the perpetrator of ethnic violence is still hardly heard in 33. Like Gupta, Israel Charny in a book titled How can we commit the unthinkable? (Charny and Rapaport 1982) also sought to understand the genocider, who ‘commits to death helpless masses of men, women and children without mercy’ yet is perfectly sane in psychiatric terms (ibid.: 10–11). Charny’s thesis was along similar lines: that in the ‘intoxication of group experiences, many people virtually surrender their entire individuality to the group. They are now no longer themselves, and therefore available to conformity to any instructions they are given’ (ibid.: 118).

Introduction A 25

available discourse on such violence. Across a fairly diverse pantheon of work, the ‘rioter’ is veritably faceless, submerged and addressed if at all as already deindividualised component of a larger than life collective. And, in the absence of documentation of the perspectives and life histories of rioters themselves, any surmise on the social, political, economic and psychological dimensions of their participation in the mob, remains incomplete, even conjectural. The contention in this book then is that across a broad spectrum of work on contexts that spawn left- and right-wing extremism in India, there has been relatively meager space accorded to the original voices of perpetrators of violence. The core interest in this book is to reconstruct the immediate, and more significant longer term context that makes participation in such violence possible, with specifically these voices. It makes an attempt to penetrate the life-world of the doer, or participant in ‘extremist violence’, and flesh him (or her) out as active agent of his own practice rather than as passive cog in an already moving wheel of revolution/ethnic violence. As such, the book locates and brings in the standpoint of the foot-soldier of Naxalite/Hindu extremist violence into available discourse on the subjects. What is the everyday, working context within which ordinary people are led to such extraordinary acts of violence? Who really are these people and how do they rationalise their own practice? Who is their enemy, when and how did they identify him and why does he need to be killed? What’s in it for them? Answers to such questions — from the perspectives of perpetrators of violence themselves — should add significant insight to the knowledge of how, when, and in what conditions people become ready to kill in the name of a cause. While, as discussed in the previous section, ‘extremism’ found its place in (American) political theory by the middle of the last century,34 concern with the (pathological) individual as actor of mass violence was already there in the work of Sigmund Freud. Freud was the first modern psychologist who investigated the realm of human passions — love, 34. What D. J. Mulloy (2004) calls the ‘orthodox approach’ to the study of right-wing extremism in the United States emerged by the 1950s. It had mainly two strands, the first of which was concerned with causality — with identifying and explaining causes of political (right-wing) extremism either on individual (why certain individuals join such groups) or social basis (what are the underlying causes for formation of such groups). The second strand was mainly concerned with identifying characteristics of ‘extremists’ (Hoffer 1951; Hofstadter 1964). See Mulloy (2004) for a comprehensive discussion of the-oretical approaches to right-wing extremism in America.

26 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

hate, ambition, greed, jealousy, envy; passions which had previously been dealt with only by dramatists and novelists became, for Freud, the subject matter of scientific exploration. By a brilliant theoretical tour de force, he enlarged the concept of sexuality (libido) to such an extent that all human passions (aside from self preservation) could be understood as the outcome of one instinct. Love, hate, greed, vanity, ambition, avarice, jealousy, cruelty, tenderness all were forced into the straightjacket of this scheme and dealt with theoretically as sublimations of, or reaction formations against, the various manifestations of narcissistic, oral, anal, and genital libido. In the second phase of his work, Freud took a decisive step forward in the understanding of destructiveness, recognising that life is not ruled by egoistic drives for food and for sex, but by two passions: love and destruction. Still bound by his theoretical premises, he called them ‘life instinct’ and ‘death instinct’, and thereby gave human destructiveness its importance as one of two fundamental passions in man (Fromm 1977: 28). In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud categorically states, ‘I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man’ (Freud 1972: 59). Freud in fact concluded Civilization and its Discontents with the hope that ‘one day some-one will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities’ (ibid.: 81). About a decade after (the first edition of) Civilization and its Discontents was published, Erich Fromm pointed out that psychological forces are in themselves socially conditioned, as much as that the human factor is one of the most dynamic elements in the social process. In his seminal and much acclaimed work, Escape from Freedom, Fromm argued that the key problem of psychology is that of the specific kind of relatedness of the individual towards the world and not that of the satisfaction or frustration of this or that instinctual need per se . . . The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed and biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man (Fromm 1941:12).

Fromm used the ideal type of what he calls the ‘authoritarian character’ to analyse the psychology of Nazism.35 Later in another brilliant work,

35. Fromm shows that Hitlers’s personality, his teachings and the Nazi system expressed an extreme form of the character structure he calls ‘authoritarian’ — the essence of which is described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and

Introduction A 27

Fromm went on to clarify the nature of what he calls the ‘necrophilous’ (love of the dead) passion, and the social conditions that tend to foster it (Fromm 1977: 33). There have been some valid concerns about psychological or sociological reductionism in sociopsychological approaches to extremism. Mulloy, for instance, points out that there is a tendency in this kind of research to marginalise the extremists under consideration. Under the terms of such analysis “extremists” are often reduced to being mere representatives of a certain cultural or psychological “type”. They are people who react “differently” to social stress or “lack” something such as democratic commitment . . . They become members of a “lower” occupational, educational or socio-economic group, or are part of a “common substratum”. The problem is not that these explanations, either separately or in toto, are completely inaccurate. It is that, to a large extent, they do not take account of the extent to which the same might be said of members of the political mainstream. Nor do they consider the more complicated relationship which might exist between extremists and mainstream culture (Mulloy 2004: 25).36 masochistic drives. Sadism is understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power, and participating in its strength and glory. Both sadistic and masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone, and his need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness (Fromm 1941: 221). T. W. Adorno et al. (1950) also dealt with the subject in The Authoritarian Personality, an influential book first published in 1950. The book identified a personality type defined by certain key traits: conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotype, power and ‘toughness’, destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity and exaggerated concerns over sex. The book saw authoritarianism as the result of a Freudian development model, in which excessively harsh and punitive parenting causes children to identify with, and idolise authority figures. A major hypothesis of the book is that the authoritarian personality is pre-disposed to right-wing ideology and is therefore receptive to fascist governments. 36. Some like John George and Laird Wilcox (1996) are concerned that such approaches can lead to the ‘dehumanizing’ of extremists. However, their own summary of ‘the most common motives’ people have for becoming political extremists is hardly helpful: ‘To experience a sense of moral superiority . . . To exercise power over others . . . To lose oneself in a movement . . . Propaganda addiction . . . Envy. Jealousy. As a substitute for one-to-one relationships’ (quoted in Mulloy 2004: 25).

28 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

However, while this book locates itself, and originates out of the narrative of the perpetrator, it is not intended to explore the individual psychological profiles or personalities of a few charismatic leaders or ‘authoritarian’ personalities. Neither does it set out to demonstrate, as Milgram (1974) did in his fascinating experiments with authority and violence,37 how men act in certain situations. Though it emerges from the standpoint of the perpetrator and in fact takes the individual as starting point, the project in this book is then not as much to document a set of essentialised ‘characteristics’ of the ‘extremist’, but rather to reconstruct — to borrow a term from Fromm (1941, 1977) — the ‘social character’ of the life-world he inhabits.38

The Field and Problems of Method Fieldwork for this study was completed over 2003, first in Jharkhand and parts of Bihar, and later in Gujarat.

Jharkhand and Bihar I worked mainly in Dhanbad, Giridih, Ranchi, Palamu and Latehar districts of Jharkhand, and in addition, Gaya and Aurangabad districts of Bihar, generally covering several villages within a single block in each district. The first leg of fieldwork (in Gaya, Aurangabad, Dhanbad and Giridih districts) was in retrospect perhaps richer as a learning pad than in its effective contribution to the research.

37. Stanley Milgram’s series of experiments in Yale University (with forty male subjects between 20 and 50 years of age from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds) proved a compelling correlation between violence and conformity to authority (Milgram 1974). Also see Fromm (1977: 80–86) for an interesting review and criticism of Milgram’s method, and conclusions. Milgram’s work influenced the work of renowned scholars who worked on violence. See particularly Browning (1992). 38. For Fromm, the concept of ‘social character’ is based on the consideration that each form of society (or social class) needs to use human energy in the specific manner necessary for the functioning of that particular society. Its members must want to do what they have to do if the society is to function properly. This process of transforming general psychic energy into specific psycho-social energy is mediated by the social character. The means by which social character is formed are essentially cultural (Fromm 1977: 339).

Introduction A 29

Despite considerable prior planning and repeated difficult travel to remote areas, things initially did not pan out as I had hoped. To begin with, the crackdown on Naxal insurgency had been greatly intensified post the formation of Jharkhand, and was by the time of fieldwork a major focus area for the state police. This restricted ability to network with members of these organisations, less still build trust to the degree required for this work. Given the specific objective of the study, it was wasteful to prolong work in any one village — Naxal dastas (armed teams) are highly mobile and rarely spend more than a night at a stretch in any single location. As a result, my efforts were spread out in several directions all at once, adding up to many more wasted trips than meetings with MCCI or PW cadres. While I finally could not meet with a dasta at all in this first trip to the region, I did manage to meet several cadres individually, from across different kinds of association, and levels of leadership. They included: 1. Pre-arranged ‘interviews’ with senior ‘front’ organisation leaders 2. Cadres who had been recently arrested and were out on bail/those who had left the armed cadre/surrendered — the text of some of these narratives were very different from the more guarded versions that I got from ‘interviews’ 3. MCCI/PW cadre in jails Nevertheless, learning at this stage fell significantly short of potential on account of what were (in retrospect again) costly methodological errors. While still testing ground for work in Dhanbad for instance, I felt it would be a good beginning (and effective utilisation of time and limited resources) to try and meet with the relatively more accessible leaders of ‘front’ organisations of the MCCI. My efforts at this stage were channelled through a familiar and comfortable network of regional news reporters, as well as non-governmental organisational (NGO) workers. This at the outset, as I came to understand, could not have been a more wrong approach. At this stage I met and ‘interviewed’, among others, the top rung leaders of Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti (MCCI front) in Dhanbad district; for instance, cadres, who though they may not have formed a critical part of my core sample (those engaged in violence for a larger cause), would have contributed significantly to my learning of the (changing) ground realities of Naxalism. What I got however were (rhetorical/jargonised) ‘interviews’. The men and women whose world I was trying to penetrate also had conceptions about worlds outside theirs, and if I came to them

30 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

‘packaged’ as part of one of those ‘worlds’ (media/activist/intellectual from Delhi, and so on), speech/action was preselected and addressed to me as a member of that world.39 It was then almost impossible for our communication, distorted as it already was, to arrive at any modicum of ‘truth’ in the limited timeframes in which we spoke to each other.40 I was tempted into carrying my recorder with me for some of these first few meetings. However, as I realised, people working with an armed guerrilla organisation — even those who said they had no objections to a recorded interview — have learnt to be acutely guarded, and do not forget they are being ‘recorded’. Predictably my learning here was limited. It was as important, I realised, to reinforce my independent unattached identity (that of a researcher) in ways other than verbal. To cite an example, in these early days in Giridih/Dhanbad districts, I was unfamiliar with the region and travelled at short notice to remote

39. I found Erving Goffman’s ideas (1956) on the constant dramaturgical ‘performances’ that human beings engage in to unwittingly, or intentionally define situations for those who observe the performance extremely useful to make sense of my early interactions with the Naxalites. In this light I would also problematise ‘interviews’ of top rung Naxalite leaders (Myrdal and Navlakha 2010). Also view an influential article in the public domain by Arundhati Roy (2010), whose narrative is based in great part on the author’s own (brief) interaction with, and understanding of the (participants of) a Naxalite dasta in Dantewada. Roy was specifically invited to view/interact with members of the dasta by the Naxalite organisation/leadership. To reiterate a point I will make again later (Chapter 1, note 41), I found very deep differences between what Naxalite (armed cadres) said/communicated elsewise in an organisational setting — within a dasta for instance — and when met with individually, outside the organisational context through kin, family, and friends. While what worked best for me may not hold elsewhere — I found my actual (or ‘true’) standpoint as only a researcher — seeking more than anything else to understand ‘Naxalites’ as individuals with independent psycho-social life histories and needs brought me closest to the granular and fractured realities that motivate young people to join, work, kill and die for the Naxalite cause. 40 Jürgen Habermas’s thesis on truth and communicative rationality (see Habermas 1984) is perhaps directly relevant (even if not quite as Habermas may have intended it to be understood) to the issues that any researcher hoping to faithfully document realities of the subject’s life-world — more so when they are not necessarily immediately available to the subject himself as a conscious, unitary perception — must grapple with. Integrity of intention I found went a long way to listen in to the multiple, internally conflictual realities of the ‘Naxalites’.

Introduction A 31

locations in taxis that were paid by the day, presenting as I saw it then, a safety net to exit quickly if things turned difficult. Not surprisingly, initial fieldwork done in this manner — in key MCCI strongholds like Pirtand in Giridih district for instance — was unfruitful. It took these first few failed trips for me to realise that I was unlikely to make any headway if I wasn’t prepared to at the least travel like the people I wanted to meet did. Among my biggest regrets in this leg of fieldwork remains the failed opportunity in Tundi in Dhanbad district (see Table 1.1). Much of my work here was done in villages like Sheetalpur (Maniadi panchayat), and notably in Navada, a small tribal village ahead of Sheetalpur. The trip to Navada was made specifically to try and meet alleged MCCI cadre Navjyoti (name changed), who had been captured by the Jharkhand police a few weeks before I met her. She had managed to get bail, after human rights organisations intervened to protest against the inhuman torture she underwent in police custody. This first meeting with her (I later met her again in Dhanbad city, where she had come to attend the hearing of her case) was also my first meeting with a woman cadre of the Naxalite groups. Though Navjyoti finally did meet and speak with me in Navada, promises of further meetings were again abruptly cut back after she spoke to her lawyer in Dhanbad (who warned her about my friends in the media in the city). Luckily these were errors I could correct in relatively early stages of fieldwork. I never used a recorder post those early ‘interviews’. Though occasionally I did jot down notes as we spoke, it was only after a much higher degree of trust had been established. Even so I learnt much more by continuing to talk/listen much after the pen and pad had been conspicuously put aside. After this first leg of fieldwork, I avoided meeting Naxalite cadres through organisational networks, especially those of the media. Even when I went on to obtain initial information and locate many of those in this sample through people they trusted — generally family members — I was always aware that I was being studied as much as I was studying them. And, though I could not turn the clock back in Dhanbad/Giridih, I also went on to only use trains and more often (the sadly ramshackle and unpredictable) state buses to reach my destinations — and to leave them — through the rest of my fieldwork. Occasionally I had the comfort of travelling on bikes, when I was being escorted by (often well-off) people associated with the party. While many of those I met in the course of my fieldwork did not quite understand what kind of work a ‘researcher’ does and why, I avoided the more hazardous pitfalls of being seen as a media person or worse still a police/CBI spy. In this trip

Dhanbad Urban

Tundi

DISTRICT

C.D.BLOC

22371

226929

201010

Rural

Total/Rural/ Urban

Rural

C.D. Block - Tundi 0001

Area name

Dhanbad Rural

DISTRICT

427939

63400 51%

680878 54%

598068 52%

22,613 100%

Total number of households

124126

1255358

1141744

4,383 19%

Permanent

60726 49%

574480 46%

543676 48%

2397102 1278946 1118156 53% 47%

TOT_M TOT_F

Dhanbad Total

TOT_P

DISTRICT

No_HH

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Tundi

Table 1.1: P_ST

P_LIT

13,127 58%

45280 36%

800854 64%

547730 48%

32787 52%

491198 72%

369385 62%

860583 67%

M_LIT

5,103 23%

Total

4,816 21%

287 1%

Non-serviceable

53759 43%

313158 25%

350900 31%

664058 28%

20988 35%

27033 5%

78887 15%

105920 9%

0 0%

Unclassifiable

32771 52%

286125 42%

272013 45%

558138 44%

TOT_WO TOT_WO TOT_WO RK_P RK_M RK_F

Temporary

12493 21%

309656 54%

178345 33%

488001 44%

F_LIT

Serviceable

Type of census houses

51886 42%

32002 3%

Semi permanent

13642 11%

213419 17%

169550 170727 15% 15%

382969 202729 1348584 16% 8% 56%

P_SC

32 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

3,089

14%

22,613

100%

Total number of households availing banking

14%

3,202

Radio, Transistor

5%

1,131

Television

1%

126

Telephone

42%

9,544

Bicycle

3%

684

Scooter, Motor Cycle, Moped

0.3%

71

Car, Jeep, Van

53%

11,990

None of the specified assets

Number of Households (No_HH); Total Population (TOT_P); Total Population Male (TOT_M); Total Population Female (TOT_F); Population Scheduled Caste (P_SC); Population Scheduled Tribe (P_ST); Population Literate (P_LIT); Population Literate Male (M_LIT); Population Literate Female (F_LIT); Total Population Workers (TOT_WORK_P); Total Workers Male (TOT_WORK_M); Total Workers Female (TOT_WORK_F).

Rural

Total number of households

Note: All tables in Chapter 1 are based on Census of India (GoI 2001).

Abbreviated:

C.D. Block Tundi 0001

Area Name

Total/Rural/ Urban

Availability of assets

Introduction A 33

34 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

however, it was a later (brief) detour to Bihar (Gaya and Aurangabad) that I really learnt more from — in particular, a relatively unplanned journey from Dhanbad to village Banke Bajar in Gaya district, an epicentre of the Naxalite movement till as late as the end-1990s (see Table 1.2). Finally, this first leg of research in Dhanbad, Giridih, Gaya and Aurangabad also included several trips to central jails in these cities, a decision that actually got taken by default. At this stage, I found I was spending more time in the city than in the ‘field’ — ‘waiting time’ that I was finding difficult to utilise to the optimum. The decision to therefore try and speak with MCCI/PW cadre in jails turned out to be a good one and added much depth to the study, becoming in fact a part of my research schedule in every district I went to later. Particularly in Bihar, where I found the movement very evidently thinned out by the time of fieldwork, visits to Gaya and Aurangabad central jails provided opportunity to speak with those who had joined and killed for Naxal groups in the 1990s. However, as cadres I met in jails had mostly been brutally tortured — and often still had cases pending — it took several visits and much persuasion, and even then only a few people really shared their lives with me. But for those that did, I learnt much more than I had hoped for, not least because here I had time on my side. In a second trip to Jharkhand, I worked in Palamu and Latehar districts, and later in Khelari in Ranchi district. I travelled extensively to different blocks within these districts depending on information on where I could meet with a dasta. I began work in Daltengunj city of Palamu district, travelling initially to nearby villages like Garde, one of the few villages in which CPI (ML) Liberation still had an armed dasta. This village which is distinctly divided into two tolas — Rajputs and Brahmins versus the Dalits — was an epicentre of the Liberation’s activities in the 1990s. I then moved on to Chandova block of Latehar district, without very much success. Although Chandova was a strong MCCI foothold with frequent dasta movement in some of the villages, I could not meet with them here. I did however gain some insight by speaking with locals including an ex-cadre of the MCCI (expelled from the party for corruption and misconduct), cadres of Sangharsh Jan Mukti Morcha (another ‘underground party’ influential in Latehar, Lohardagga and Gumla districts of Jharkhand)41 and the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU). 41. While this member claimed it was an anti-MCC front, it was nicknamed by locals as the chor ucchakka (thieves and upstarts) party.

C.D. Block - Banke Bazar 0014

Area Name

C.D. Block - Banke Bazar 0014

Rural

Total/Rural/ Urban

Rural

Total/Rural/ Urban

15048

C.D.BLOC Banke Bazar Rural

Area Name

66748

Urban

DISTRICT Gaya 49242 49%

222573 47%

P_ST

P_LIT

M_LIT

F_LIT

15%

100%

2,004 13%

15,098

100%

26%

3,974

2%

335

Television

80%

12,008

33629 34%

22325 44%

1%

129

Temporary

4%

642

Serviceable

35%

5,227

Bicycle

23205 45%

102457 40%

747014 49%

849471 47%

2%

258

Scooter, Motor Cycle, Moped

1%

140

0%

0

Unclassifiable

11640 24%

17569 8%

410599 28%

428168 25%

1%

88

56%

8t,507

Car, Jeep, None of the Van specified

Non-serviceable

34845 35%

120026 25%

1157613 39%

1277639 37%

TOT_WO TOT_WO TOT_WO RK_P RK_M RK_F

Availability of assets Telephone

5%

782

Total

11304 23%

304269 179617 124652 64% 71% 56%

Type of census houses

263 0%

692 0%

Semi-permanent

39220 39%

55174 12%

974501 2253 1101184 733403 367781 33% 0% 37% 48% 25%

Total number of Total number households availing Radio, of households banking Transistor

2,308

Permanent

51112 51%

253376 53%

15,098

Total number of households

100354

475949

444220 2997479 1538787 1458692 51% 49%

Rural

DISTRICT Gaya

P_SC

510968 3473428 1792163 1681265 1029675 2945 1405453 913020 492433 52% 48% 30% 0% 40% 51% 29%

Total

DISTRICT Gaya

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M TOT_F

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Banke Bajar

Table 1.2:

Introduction A 35

36 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Among the deepest insights for this study were obtained in Mahuadabr village in Latehar district. The trip to Latehar — intended to be just a short detour from Palamu — in fact turned out to be perhaps the most significant phase of my work in Jharkhand. A remote village of barely 35 households set in the midst of mountainous, heavily forested terrain, Mahuadabr was an easy stopover for ultra left dastas. The majority here were Dalits, about 25 households. The rest included a few Rajput families — breakaway units from the same household — and tribal households (mainly Oraons and Kharwars). Given that life for its inhabitants was hard — with no electricity, limited water resources, no public healthcare, no secondary or high school — predictably it was also fertile recruitment ground for Naxal parties. Most significant, Mahuadabr was a good prototype of the kind of life conditions within which young people from even ostensibly ‘prosperous’ families were now joining ultra-left parties. Some of these young people (I met and spoke in depth with) were already commanders with the MCCI/PW by the time of fieldwork (see Table 1.3). Before I left Palamu district, I made a last trip to village Kotila in Hariharganj block. Kotila was among the most remote — and poorest — of the villages I travelled to in the course of my fieldwork, presenting, like Mahuadabr, a bleak picture of regions that did not in any way seem to belong on the map of an ‘almost developed’, shining India (see Table 1.4). The last bus en route to this destination (starting from Daltengunj city) still left my escort and me 13 kilometres away from the village. It took several hours of dirt-track trekking, and it was close to midnight by the time we reached it. My escort (MCCI commander posted in Chhattisgarh who had been asked to go into ‘hibernation’ for a while) had been informed of a wedding in this village, which the local dasta had been invited to. Given the timing of our arrival, my ‘influential’ escort was however met with distrust, and even more so was I. Eventually, I managed to (by then desperately) win a degree of credibility with one of the men questioning me, a young man from a Lohar family who had worked a while in Calcutta. Perhaps to check on the background details that I had provided, he spoke to me in Bengali. It broke the ice somewhat, and I was asked me to take rest for the night in their hut. I was woken up a few hours later (3 a.m.) by a knock at their door. The men I had come so far to meet were there, but again, it took almost an hour of hard questioning, a thorough search of my belongings, examination of identity proof, before we spoke of anything else at all. To my regret, my interaction even thereafter was mainly with

Rural

Total/Rural/ Urban 3,299 29%

11,392

100%

Total number Total number of of households households availing banking

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Mahuadabr

C.D. Block Mahuadabr 0015

Area name

Table 1.3

28%

3,225

Radio, Transistor

6%

633

Television

1%

138

35%

3,932

Telephone Bicycle

4%

440

Scooter, Motor Cycle, Moped

Availability of assets

1%

99

Car, Jeep, Van

57%

6,442

None of the specified assets

Introduction A 37

TRU

Total

NAME

LEVEL

DISTRICT Palamu

P_SC

P_ST

2,983 22%

100%

Permanent

13,563

Total number of households

3,038 22%

13,563

100%

6%

787

Total

F_LIT 511427 47% 484346 48% 27081 41% 21238 46%

282231 28% 278363 29% 3868 7% 11676 28%

1%

110

0%

0

Non-serviceable Unclassifiable

793658 38% 762709 39% 30949 25% 32914 37%

TOT_WO TOT_ TOT_ _RK P WO_RK M WO_RK F

Availability of assets

5%

677

Serviceable

Temporary

510338 239955 47% 24% 462199 205504 45% 22% 48139 34451 73% 59% 22485 11089 49% 26%

M_LIT

26%

3,568

4%

476

2%

224

35%

4,709

2%

261

1%

70

56%

7,600

Radio, Scooter, Motor None of the Transistor Television Telephone Bicycle Cycle, Moped Car, Jeep, specified assets

72%

9,793

Semi-permanent

Total/Rural/ Total number Total number of households Urban of households availing banking services

C.D. Block Rural Hariharganj 0002

Area Name

C.D. Block Rural Hariharganj 0002

Area Name

Total/Rural/ Urban

750293 36% 667703 34% 82590 66% 33574 38%

P_LIT

Type of census houses

352829 2098359 1084417 1013942 539701 392325 52% 48% 26% 19% DISTRICT Palamu Rural 333134 1973266 1018043 955223 523802 388428 52% 48% 27% 20% DISTRICT Palamu Urban 19695 125093 66374 58719 15899 3897 53% 47% 13% 3% C.D.BLOC Hariharganj Rural 13512 88067 45727 42340 31495 473 52% 48% 36% 1%

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M TOT_F

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Hariharganj

Table 1.4:

38 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Introduction A 39

the leader of the group who let me have little conversation with the other men with him. These men were fully armed, and made sure I knew it. They left soon thereafter, but they had made it clear that I was to start the trek back at the crack of dawn and I had little choice but to do so. Though I gained much from my first encounter with a dasta, it wasn’t quite the granular life histories I was looking for. More than the firsthand observation of a slice of the MCCI’s organisational dynamics, or the structural dynamics of its dastas, this first meeting in fact reinforced for me that my research objectives were unlikely to be fulfilled by investing disproportionate time on trying to meet with functioning dastas. The sheer rigidity of hierarchies within the dasta, the discipline with which these hierarchies are maintained, and the consciousness of being watchfully observed by one’s peers, worse still seniors, made it unlikely that I would break through too many barriers of programmed speech and protocol here. I was more convinced than ever that I was better off trying to meet cadres on a one-to-one level.42 The last leg of my research in Jharkhand took me to Khelari in Ranchi district (see Table 1.5). Khelari’s rich coalfields and richer coal mafia provided for a happy nexus between the coal industry (black), political parties and the MCCI (PW did not have a presence here). In the early days of my stay here, I met some of the MCCI’s ‘associates’: businessmen who enjoyed a mutually profitable relationship with the party. I realised that senior party members not only personally profit from the levies (locally called PC for percentage) paid to MCCI by the black market, but that many are part of the black market themselves. Several senior cadres placed by the party in the coal belt had made their fortune here through side businesses, eventually going on to buy huge properties in Khelari, even in Ranchi. Most of those who managed to pull it off did so with the blessings of political bigwigs, mainly the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — Dileepji (alias) for instance. After a long innings with (then) MCC — including a prestigious stint as platoon 42. I found significant differences in what the Naxalites said in an organisational setting — within a dasta for instance — and when met with individually, outside the organisational context through kin, family, and friends. (As such I would also, for instance, problematise Joyce Pettigrew’s study [1995] of Sikh militancy in Punjab in 1984–92. Pettigrew’s documentation of voices of Sikh guerillas — that address the relationship between state atrocity and ethnic unrest — are recorded by the spokesman for the erstwhile ‘Council of Khalistan’ in the absence of the researcher.)

Total

Total/Rural/ Urban

Khelari (CT) Urban

Town - Khelari (CT) II District Ranchi 14

Area Name

TOWN

18783

1,673

50%

100%

3234 17%

53743 5%

48%

1,606

10890 58%

701680 72%

798861 44%

1%

41

Total

F_LIT

4180 47%

1%

18

Serviceable

Temporary

6710 67%

405082 296598 78% 65%

515082 283779 56% 32%

920164 580377 64% 43%

M_LIT

Type of census houses

4266 23%

200382 20%

Semi-permanent

8805 47%

457192 47%

Permanent

9978 53%

3,320

Total number of households

3301

977821 520629 53%

964242 53%

Urban 168879

90373 5%

DISTRICT Ranchi

890896 49%

Rural 336629 1807243 916347 51%

P_LIT

DISTRICT Ranchi

P_ST

Total 505508 2785064 1436976 1348088 144116 1164624 1500541 52% 48% 5% 42% 54%

P_SC

DISTRICT Ranchi

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M TOT_F

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Life Conditions/Khelari

Table 1.5:

1%

23

798 9%

41142 9%

351740 39%

392882 29%

0%

0

Unclassifiable

4402 44%

218013 42%

466009 51%

684022 48%

Non-serviceable

5200 28%

259155 27%

817749 45%

1076904 39%

TOT_WO TOT_WO TOT_WO RK_P RK_M RK_F

40 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Introduction A 41

commander — Dileepji was transferred to the coal belt. Today, he is the RJD’s Prakhand Adhyaksh (chief) in Khelari. The MCCI does not seem to have objected either, as I was in fact able to meet other cadres, and later also their dasta in the region only with his help. Thanks to Dileepji’s continuing credibility with MCCI, my second meeting with a Naxalite (MCCI) dasta was a friendlier interaction than the previous one in Palamu. This dasta which had made a stopover on the outskirts of Khelari, was accompanied by a senior leader of sub-zonal rank. He spoke at length to me, and after some persuasion, also allowed me to speak privately with a woman commander in the dasta. Though I could not speak with other members of the dasta, it was evident that their lives were as harsh as that of dasta cadres I had met anywhere else. I was left then with a puzzling picture of two MCCI’s in Khelari: the first of a corrupt organisation that runs not much better than a criminal mafia, and on the other hand, the lives of its armed cadre, foot-soldiers who continue to traverse bleak, difficult terrain in highly unfriendly conditions in the belief that in an unfair order this is where their best chances lie. This time, I did not even know which village I was in, as Dileepji who escorted me there evaded queries about our location. (I also felt probing further could trigger off undesirable suspicion about my ‘motive’ yet again. The village that harbours a dasta is often persecuted by police much after the dasta has strapped on its backpacks and moved on.) At the end of my fieldwork in Jharkhand and Bihar, I had reason to be worried about the quality of the data that I had collected. Most often the people I met spoke to me against several odds, and at great risk to themselves. We were always pressed for time as they were not be in any one place for long, and would not always take me where they went, though I did learn a lot in the waiting periods by living with the families of some of those involved. The bigger issue perhaps was that these months in Jharkhand and Bihar were easily the most challenging and most exhausting period of my own life so far. I took some time getting acclimatised to functioning, for instance, with an average of four to six hours of sleep a day, often walking several kilometres at a stretch. When in a village, people I lived with were almost always touchingly hospitable within whatever means they had, which was more often than not barely enough to make their own ends meet. I think what worked for me was that I tried not to be a ‘guest’ and helped around — as inconspicuously as possible — with the backbreaking work that women never seemed to see the end of in these homes. After some initial hiccups, I gave up all inhibitions on using the khet as a toilet or having a public bath under

42 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

a chappakal. I eventually also reconciled myself to the lice in my hair, something that was probably inevitable in the conditions we were living in. Some experiences in this period were more unpleasant — with one group, for instance, I was physically searched (fortunately by a woman) as they were convinced that I was a CBI implant. While I never carried my mobile/recorder to the villages, another group was concerned that my watch could have a transmitter installed, and I had to come back another day to another location. Not everyone was ready to believe that I was a harmless researcher; most people in fact kept asking me what my ‘motive’ really was. In these conditions, I could not always jot down narratives as they were spoken to me (leave aside use a recorder) as people were wary once I started taking notes. Many a time I realised it was more fruitful to simply listen, look around and observe as much as possible. I tried maintaining a semblance of structure by filling in a ‘diary’ every night, but this was also frequently not possible, especially with attempts to meet with Naxalite dastas in forested terrain. A major lacuna in the study is that at the end, I managed to meet only two women Naxalites, though both were hardcore cadre of the MCCI. I also could not meet with the bal dastas of either the MCCI or the PW. Given the level of police vigilance by then, none of the dastas I met let me stay with them, or even in the region for too long at a stretch. Given that the intention here was to be able to put together a representative life context, experience, and perspective of those who had killed for the Naxalite cause, it would perhaps not have been useful to restrict this study to a single dasta. As discussed before, people within a group as tightly bound as the dasta are highly guarded by organisational norms and hierarchies and would not risk speaking their mind (out of turn) in the presence of group members, more so in the case of junior cadre. While I would probably have learnt a great deal about the organisational dynamics of dastas if I had stayed longer with any one group, in all likelihood I would not have acquired the granular life histories I needed to understand how individual men become willing to actually kill for a cause. Nevertheless that I could not be with any one of my respondents for a more prolonged period of time is a significant drawback of the study. If I had started out then with the hope of eventually being able to ‘immerse’ myself in the life-world of the Naxalites, to have lived a slice of their life as they do, and to therefore be able to feel myself in their shoes, I am not sure that I succeeded. What makes my data worthwhile, I think, is that I managed to get more than the ‘interviews’ I had to be content with the first few times I met most cadre. Across locations, what people

Introduction A 43

said to me and what I learnt over time was often startlingly different from what we began with.

Gujarat My field experience in Gujarat could not have been more different from previous conditions of work in Bihar and Jharkhand. To begin with, all three locations worked in Gujarat — Ahmedabad, Sardarpura, Palla — had by far superior quality of life both in terms of basic amenities such as water, sanitation, healthcare, electricity, etc., as well as in terms of type of homestead, ownership of white goods and so on. Average levels of schooling/higher education were also significantly higher across all three regions of fieldwork (urban and rural) in Gujarat than in Bihar and Jharkhand. I started work in Naroda in Ahmedabad, possibly the worst-affected site in the 2002 violence with the highest toll of lives across the state.43 About 15 kilometres away from the city, the (small but pucca) Muslim settlements here — mainly in Naroda Patia, also in Naroda Gaon — are situated along the Narol highway. These settlements housed about 10,000 Muslims, mainly poor migrants from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, and reportedly a few families of Bangladeshi origin. These Muslim settlements are right in the midst of large Hindu localities. Naroda Patia, for instance, is encircled by Bapu Nagar (which has a thriving Vishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP] Karyalaya) on one side, Naroda Gaon (Patel dominated) on another, and Charanagar (home to the Charas, an Other Backward Class [OBC] community) on a third front. The area had not been affected by riots in previous years (see Table 1.6). My work in Naroda was greatly enabled by my acquaintance in the field with a reporter working for a leading Gujarati daily (identity withheld). This reporter, a Sangh Parivar favourite — and front line bystander to the butchery (near and around his home) in Naroda on 28 February 2002 — agreed to support me in my project of documenting the perspective of those who killed Muslims on the day. I subsequently stayed for extended periods with his family at their Naroda residence, an experience that located me as a researcher completely within the inner circle of those involved in the 2002 violence. I met with ideological instigators, mob leaders, killers and rapists, VHP appointed lawyers defending the ‘innocent 43. At least 200 people were estimated to have been killed here after being hacked, burnt, gang raped. See Sabrang (2002b).

125184 11% 495581 11%

551861

Ahmedabad Rural

52% 48% Ahmedabad Urban 927926 4663533 2473431 2190102 53% 47%

DISTRICT

DISTRICT

Naroda (OG) Urban - Ward

WARD

44554

20519 46%

24035 54%

2%

936

11%

461593

6%

271

11%

461864

P_LIT

M_LIT

F_LIT

387280

214665

73%

63%

2872

78%

74%

1834

68%

50%

1038

0%

55

1%

81%

36277

73%

84%

20175

78%

78%

16102

68%

39784 3097295 1750093 1347202

0%

7

1%

39791 3100167 1751927 1348240

1% 52% 64% 39% 42701 3410195 1931015 1479180 1% 73% 78% 68%

15334 601945

58035 4012140 2318295 1693845 1% 69% 75% 62%

P_ST

30%

13334

32%

1344413

34%

1559

32%

1345972

44% 1496723 32%

512642

2009365 35%

TOT_ WO RK F

9%

7%

147

52%

12549

52%

4%

785

9%

1173098 171315

57%

1412

52%

1174510 171462

55% 33% 1299682 197041 53% 9%

332541 180101

1632223 377142 53% 14%

TOT_WO TOT_WO RK P RK M

Note: Equivalent indices of standard of living as highlighted in Bihar and Jharkhand are not available in the 2002 census report for Gujarat.

9158

45%

55%

47% 2068

2483

53%

Ahmedabad Urban 836222 4215497 2235966 1979531 City 53% 47%

4551

TALUK

1001

Ahmedabad Rural City

TALUK

837223 4220048 2238449 1981599

Ahmedabad Total City

601125

TALUK

222662 1152986

620765 11%

Ahmedabad Total 1150588 5816519 3074556 2741963 53% 47%

P_SC

DISTRICT

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M TOT_F

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Naroda Ward in Ahmedabad District

Table 1.6:

44 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Introduction A 45

Hindus’, and perhaps most disturbing for me — BJP/VHP ‘insiders’ in the media (including the reporter who helped me) — those who had had the power to harden propaganda and rumour into irrevocable ‘truths’ and did it. In this period, I also met and spoke at length with two persons who, by their own accounts, were at the front end of a 15,000 to 20,000 strong mob that attacked a housing complex, Gulberg Society in the Chamanpura area of the city. While the official figure of dead here was 59, eyewitness accounts as well as the First Information Report (FIR) lodged with police put the figure at 70. This complex of bungalows and apartments occupied mainly by middle-class Muslim families was possibly the first of a series of sites that were surrounded by killing mobs across the city in the days following the Godhra tragedy. Eyewitness accounts indicate that the main target of attack here was the Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Ehsan Jafri, who was brutally hacked and burnt alive. The list of dead however includes many from nearby poor Muslim settlements who had sought protection in Jafri’s home from the rampaging mobs. Later I met with Hindu Rioters from old city areas of Ahmedabad like Danilimda, Behrampura and Shahpur Darwaza, where the post-Godhra violence was of much lower intensity. In these locations with sizeable Muslim population, I found that people from both communities had been affected in the 2002 violence. In Danilimda for instance, Muslims are in the majority with a population of 34,000 versus a Hindu population of 31,000. In Shahpur Darwaza on the other hand, all houses lining a main road belong to Muslims and this road is the only connecting passage for Hindus living in inside localities. Hindus, who had little choice but to use this thoroughfare even during the riots, were outnumbered here, and though not in significant numbers, suffered loss of lives and livelihood.44 However, though Muslims here were relatively sheltered either by sheer numbers or by advantage of location, even here I found it was mainly Muslim settlements, shops and businesses that bore the brunt of rampaging mobs. The losses here though were more in the nature of homes and livelihoods, than of lives. 44. A memory that somehow persists to date is that of a Hindu vegetable vendor I met during one of my visits to Shahpur. Perhaps mistaking me for a government or NGO representative empowered to help riot victims, he followed me for quite some while, refusing to believe that there was nothing I could do. Both his sons, one of whom was a toddler, had gone missing in the violence on the day. More than a year after the 2002 violence, he was still desperately looking for them.

46 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

In addition, I met with Mob Leaders and Ideological Instigators living in some other, upper middle-class areas of Ahmedabad city. The second leg of my work (now in rural Gujarat) took me to Sardarpura (under Vijapur tehsil) in Mehsana district of Gujarat, a small village that came into public glare after 33 Muslims were electrocuted to death here in an organised attack on 1March 2002 (see Table 1.7).45 This nondescript village (that does not span more than a kilometre and a half) has about 800 households, around 50 per cent of who are from the Patel community. Muslims — mainly Pathans and Sheikhs (Ghanchis) as well as some Memons — comprised about 20 per cent of the population before the attack, but less than half lived in the village at the time of fieldwork. In addition, there are about 40 Thakore households. Rawals, Dalits and Waghris also have a sizeable population in the village. There are also a few families from other castes like Brahmins, Darjis, Prajapatis, Suthars, etc. Sardarpura, I found, was a prosperous village. While the village roads and public spaces were in crammed and unsanitary conditions, the houses were mostly pucca, large and well lit. While many homes in the Patel and Pathan46 localities were equipped with television sets, radios and music systems, modern kitchen amenities and often, refrigerators; even less affluent areas such as Dalit or Thakore localities had mostly self-owned pucca homes, though most did not have agricultural lands attached to the homestead. The Waghri homes however (seven families) were semipermanent structures with tin roofing. The Sheikh locality, the main target of attack in the 2002 violence was at the time of this field study completely burnt down with no remnants of previous habitation.47 Villagers said it had been the poorest section of the village with a cluster of semi-permanent

45. While 33 dead is the official figure released by the Gujarat government, Hindus living in Sardarpura — including some of those who killed their Muslim neighbours — themselves cite a much higher number of Muslims killed on the day. 46. It was, however, not feasible for this study to do a primary survey of the standard of living of Muslim households in the village without hampering the core objectives of this study. 47. While it was the Sheikhs who ultimately bore the brunt of mob fury on the night, it was actually the landed and affluent Pathans who were the originally intended target. The Pathans however called for, and managed to procure police protection in time, whereon the mob turned towards the hapless Sheikhs.

Mehsana Total 364447

Mehsana Rural 283029

Mehsana Urban 81418

Sardarpura Rural (Chee)

DISTRICT

DISTRICT

DISTRICT

VILLAGE

398

2004

411717

1426175

1837892

981 49%

51%

195121 47%

688929 48%

884050 48%

1023

216596 53%

737246 52%

953842 52%

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M TOT_F

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Sardarpura Village/Mehsana District

Table 1.7: P_ST

12%

238 0%

0

31909 4530 8% 1%

116688 4445 8% 0%

148597 8975 8% 0%

P_SC

39%

786

303867 74%

884357 62%

1188224 65%

P_LIT

F_LIT

53%

541

25%

245

170821 133046 79% 68%

527805 356552 72% 52%

698626 489598 73% 55%

M_LIT

45%

892

132782 32%

695737 49%

828519 45%

56%

572

110058 51%

402400 55%

512458 54%

33%

320

22724 12%

293337 43%

316061 36%

TOT_WO TOT_WO TOT_WO RK_P RK M RK F

Introduction A 47

48 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

and makeshift homes. The single permanent (one room) house in this locality — where 33 Muslims had huddled together for shelter and were electrocuted to death by a Hindu mob — had been sealed by the police. Agriculture — mainly cotton, castor, bajra, and also vegetables like tomatoes and chillies — was the core source of income for most in the village. The Patels owned most of the land, tilled by themselves (mainly by the Patel women) as well as by hired labour. The Pathans also had large landholdings, but did not work their fields themselves. Waghris as well as some Rawals made a living by peddling vegetables cultivated on small plots of land leased out for about `5,000 annually. Thakores and Dalits either worked on land taken on batwara (sharecropping) or as khet majdoor (agricultural labour). The Sheikh Muslims who were killed were also agricultural labour. An estimated 20 per cent of the village — mainly Patels and Pathans — commuted to work in nearby cities and towns every day, mainly government jobs or small businesses. In addition, milk was a key economic driver in Sardarpura. About 400 families contributed to a village cooperative set up in the mid-seventies,48 mainly Patels, and also some Thakore and Dalit families. The cooperative management had 11 members, two of whom were women. In fact, as was envisaged at inception, it was mainly women who worked with the cooperative on an everyday basis, bringing in milk in hygienic conditions and in time for the daily collection. However, as the current chairman of the cooperative admitted, the milk business had contributed more to women’s workload than to their financial empowerment. At the end of the month, it was mainly men who came to collect the money.49 My final destination in rural Gujarat was Palla in tribal-dominated Bhiloda taluka in Sabarkantha district (see Table 1.8). There were eight Muslim (Ghanchi) families in this village, whose homes, shops and fields were burnt down. Their lives were spared as the (Bhil) sarpanch of the village sent them to Tintoi, the closest Muslim majority village. 48. Mehsana is the country’s biggest producer of milk, contributing as much as 1.3 million litres every day. The cooperative in Sardarpura (Sri Sardarpur Dudh Udpadak Sahakari Mandali Ltd. formed in 1976) is one of the many village cooperative societies that send milk to the Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation. 49. The average workday of a Patel woman here is densely packed from the early hours of the morning to fairly late into the night with housework and farming work. Ironically intended to augment women’s incomes, and their ‘share of power’, the additional burden of running Sardarpura’s flourishing dairy business — gai bhais (cows and buffaloes) work as they call it — has in fact only further upped their share of labour.

Rural

2018

Palla

VILLAGE

396

39852 206168

Bhiloda

TALUK

Rural

44264 225129

DISTRICT Sabarkantha Urban

1035 51%

103829 50%

117267 52%

983 49%

102339 50%

107862 48%

905115 49%

355583 1857402

DISTRICT Sabarkantha Rural

952287 51%

399847 2082531 1069554 1012977 51% 49%

TOT_F

DISTRICT Sabarkantha Total

No_HH TOT_P TOT_M

NAME

LEVEL

TRU

Census Profile: Palla Village/Sabarkantha District

Table 1.8:

186 9%

11538 6%

16319 7%

157006 8%

173325 8%

P_SC

P_LIT

M_LIT

F_LIT

278 14%

114007 55%

9631 4%

1252 62%

121103 59%

158745 71%

751 73%

73179 70%

90274 77%

501 51%

47924 47%

68471 63%

410611 1012810 630929 381881 22% 55% 66% 42%

420242 1171555 721203 450352 20% 56% 67% 44%

P_ST

692 34%

86092 42%

70749 31%

869688 47%

940437 45%

502 49%

49818 48%

58141 50%

501063 53%

559204 52%

190 19%

36274 35%

12608 12%

368625 41%

381233 38%

TOT_WO TOT_WO TOT_ RK_P RK_M WO RK_F

Introduction A 49

50 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

At first glance, Palla and its adjoining cluster of quaint, highly picturesque villages visually dominated by bright cornfields held no indication of the unrest that had swept through the region barely a year before time of fieldwork. The region was dotted frequently by traditional (Bhil-Hindu) ritual activities and gatherings. The Bhils here make an event of all Hindu festivals — Diwali, Holi, etc. — but the celebrations they say have a uniquely Bhil flavour. The Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti for instance is celebrated with an old Bhil custom of catching a bird they call devli pakshi, and feeding her ghee and gud (clarified butter and jaggery). The bird is then set free by a respected village elder and watched carefully. If it sits on a green tree, the Bhils can safely assume the coming year would be a good one. If it flies off only to sit on a stone or on a dry tree, it augurs a bad omen. This study also found customs and rituals around birth, marriage, death, etc. in the village to be a fusion of Hindu and Bhil tradition. Around the time of fieldwork for instance, a (Bhil) respondent (in Dhandesan) had a death in the family. Twelve days later, hundreds of near and distant relatives from Dhandesan, Palla and other adjoining villages had gathered there to mourn the bereavement. While men attended (in a group with their heads covered as a mark of respect), it was a huge congregation of women assembled there to wail that was the striking feature of this community’s ritual mourning ceremony. Though Bhiloda taluka has over 50 per cent tribal population (Bhils),50 Palla itself has a fairly diverse populace. Thakors (OBC) make up well over a third of Palla’s total population — about 600 families in all. Brahmins, Patels, Sutars, Lohars, Chamars, Darjis, Prajapatis and Rawals are the other major castes present here. While there are only three Bhil families in Palla itself, another 25 families live in a border village called Gudh Palna (or Gunia Kuan), which for all purposes is considered part of Palla. A group of villages closely adjoining Palla like Dhandesan, Dhuleta Palla, Ode, Bornala have nearly 100 per cent tribal population. Apart from the eight Muslim families in Palla, none of these adjoining villages had Muslim residents.

50. There are actually three different sects within Bhils in Sabarkantha district of Gujarat: Bhils, Dungri Garasia Bhils and Garasia Bhils. While Bhils in Bhiloda and Meghraj talukas are Dungri Garasias, Vijaynagar taluka has Bhils, Garasia Bhils and Dungri Garasias. A fourth taluka in Sabarkantha district — Khedbrahma — has only Garasia Bhils.

Introduction A 51

Almost all families in Palla have some cultivable land of their own (between an acre to a maximum of five or six acres) — with the exception of the Thakores who have very little land and the Rawals, who have none. Agriculture — mainly corn and vegetables — is the main source of livelihood in the village. Wheat is also grown sometimes if the rains are good. Cultivation is in the main dependent on self-owned wells, as the government provides only enough water for drinking purposes. In addition, quite a few families in the village, including the Bhils, have family members in government service (mainly class IV jobs in the army, police and commando forces, forest department, etc). The Thakores and the Rawals work as khet majdoor (agricultural labour). The Rawals also make a living by peddling vegetables. Like the rest of Bhiloda, Palla has access to electricity, and is connected to the state telecom network. The village also has regular access to regional newspapers and television (often shared between homes). Palla also has its own high school (from class fifth to twelfth), arguably the best in the taluka. The literacy rate here residents say — as in most villages in the taluka — is as much as 75 per cent (65 per cent for women),51 much higher than the national average of 36 per cent. Bhiloda taluka actually has a host of primary schools, most of which are trusts started by influential tribal families, run on government grants. Children generally attend the village primary school; as a consequence most children here have studied till at least the seventh grade. Most of those who can afford it nevertheless still send their children to adjoining talukas like Modasa, where the quality of schooling they say is better. In Gujarat the single biggest question of method for me as a researcher was one of ethics. Though I did not conceal my identity or the subject of my research, Hindu perpetrators of violence in these riots spoke to me on the premise that I was seeking to understand their side of the story. While their assumption was in fact true, I was still always conscious that it also implied — and those who spoke to me had relied on — an empathy which was not there. Through the months of fieldwork in Gujarat (starting from early days of work in Naroda) this feeling of subterfuge, of living a lie even if I did not in fact lie about my work, persisted.

51. Literacy figures for Bhiloda taluka are higher (80 per cent) going by the 2001 census. Literacy rate for Palla village on the other hand could be lower (51 per cent in the 2001 census).

52 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Fairly early on in my fieldwork in Ahmedabad, I found myself struggling to — more than anything else — put away, or at least put into perspective, my own horror and often, sheer incredulity at what I was hearing. For instance, in those early days in Ahmedabad I met Mukesh Rajput (name changed), a front-liner in the 20,000-odd strong mob that attacked Gulberg Society in Chamanpura. Despite my (perhaps naive) wish to be a ‘value neutral’ researcher/receptive listener, I was very disturbed when I heard his (initial) narrative — a triumphant boast of exactly how he and a few others tortured and hacked Congress MP and Gulberg society resident Ehsan Jafri to pieces before finally burning him alive. I had previously met Jafri’s widow, spoken to his daughter and young son — who had been struggling against huge odds in his efforts to identify and nail his father’s killers. Faced with Rajput’s happy ‘confession’ (the gory details of which are irrelevant to this study) I battled at the time with which was the more valid set of ethics, that of a human being helping another secure justice for his brutally murdered dead father, or that of a researcher who had promised her respondents complete anonymity in exchange for knowledge. For better or for worse, I chose the latter, moving on from the events of 28 February 2002 to questions important to this work: questions such as who Rajput was, what got him here, why he found it so easy to kill Muslims, and why he had no guilt whatsoever. The (remaining) meeting with Rajput and other participants in violence in Naroda and Gulmerg contributed, in retrospect, to some of the most significant insights I would ever get in the course of this study into who the ‘Hindu extremist’ really is, and what makes him/her ready to kill Muslims. Extended acquaintance and proximity with those involved in the violence in Naroda (or with events that led up to it) continued however to tear into my notional ‘detachment’ as researcher, until it completely cracked in the end. Once my own standpoint was evident, those who had so far helped me turned hostile, and my work in Naroda ended — not in a pleasant manner. Still fresh from time spent in Bihar and Jharkhand, I could not help remembering that there — once the obvious barriers of suspicion had been bridged — I had been treated with regard, even chivalry, and often addressed as didi (elder sister) as the Naxalites I found were wont to address most women. In Ahmedabad, in hindsight, I was perhaps viewed more with curiosity than hostility. But, perhaps by factor of the selective profile of people I was by and large interacting with, in this city my gender identity as a researcher definitively mattered, made me subject to experiences that were probably a little uglier than may

Introduction A 53

have been the case if I was not also a woman. Despite the severe hardship of circumstances in which I worked in Bihar and Jharkhand, it was Ahmedabad where I felt stressed, and finally fell physically sick. Later in Sardarpura and Bhiloda, I again met and worked with some of those whose worldview and politics I could not find it in myself to agree with, and whose hospitality I was discomfited by. For instance in Sardarpura, I lived with a section of the Patels (five brothers who lived in nuclear households but in close proximity to each other), some of who were themselves involved in the violence. After some initial misgivings, they were gracious to me and made sure I was comfortable. Despite knowing of my research objectives, some of their family members trusted in my integrity as a researcher (and commitment to ensure anonymity of respondents) enough to speak at length about what happened in the village on 1 March 2002. One of these brothers, a teacher in the local high school for instance, said he did not agree with his brothers but had had no say in the events of the day. With him I went often to the local school, and some of my most valuable learning in Sardarpura came from this opportunity to interact regularly with school-going children in the village. Here, more than anywhere else, there were times I found myself talking more than listening, desperate to convince, to hold up another face of the ‘truths’ (justifying the 2002 violence) these children spoke so passionately about. What were meant to be group discussions often turned into bitter arguments between the children, and sometimes I found myself unable to hold on to the role of detached listener and got as passionately involved in the discussions as they were. However finally, as in Ahmedabad where so many ‘cases’ remained incomplete, where I had to often leave field areas in a hurry, discard potential projects, in Sardarpura too, at the end of the road, I finally felt unsafe. There were several who did not trust that I would use the information I had collected only for academic purposes. The few times I tried to speak to the Pathans for instance, I saw suspicion on even the faces of my immediate (Patel) hosts. I lived here with an uneasy sense of always being watched and the feeling that it wouldn’t take much for the tide to turn against me in this village. The only comfort, perhaps, is that if I did not always say the whole truth, I also never lied. Not in Ahmedabad, when things were going quite well in Naroda, and the Gujarati daily reporter (whose family I was living with at the time) said, ‘People are saying I should not trust you. Whose side are you really on?’, or when a senior office bearer of the VHP (who called himself the international leader of Hindus today) enquired in the course of a hitherto amicable conversation about which university I was

54 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

from, and (once I answered) threatened to have me beaten up, or in Bhiloda when Deepak (rioter in 2002 violence) surrounded by his friends and supporters, asked belligerently, ‘First you tell us what you think about Muslims’. I said what I believed, and what stays with me is that in both Sardarpura and Bhiloda (perhaps not as much in Ahmedabad) I found some spaces still open to discourse. While my personal concerns as an individual did not allow me to leave those valuable spaces untouched, I had to believe that the work that brought me there was neither that of law enforcer, nor of a journalist. The premise on which people opened up their worlds to me, allowed me in was that I was a researcher and my task would end with contribution to knowledge. All identities of those I spoke with in the study are therefore concealed. In retrospect, by the end of my work in Gujarat, I was still perhaps more immersed in the field than I had realised or thought possible. Fieldwork over, I found myself speaking with officials in the know, looking up police records, verifying ‘data’ I had accumulated from my Hindu respondents through the course of my study about perennial Muslim wrong doing in the city, Muslim ‘bad characters’, and the numerous atrocities committed by Muslims on Hindus in previous riots in Gujarat. However, I found most of what I had heard — and somewhere accepted as at least part truth — to be finally not much more than a conjectural history of Muslims in Gujarat with little backing in police or other official records.

A

Introduction A 55

TWO A

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand: Historical Context, Ideology, Organisation Structure and Dynamics T

his chapter provides a brief overview of the circumstances that fostered the Naxalite movement in Bihar and Jharkhand, as well as of recent critical changes in the direction of the movement. It includes a brief note on Naxalite ideology,1 organisational structure and dynamics today.

Naxalism in Bihar and Jharkhand: A Brief History Left extremism in India grew out of the Naxalbari uprising of May 1967 in West Bengal, a localised struggle against oppressive agrarian relations. The peasants of Naxalbari — and the CPI (ML) revolutionaries who organised them — however touched the hearts of the downtrodden as well as middle-class students and youth across India. The spirit of Naxalbari, influenced by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, was in fact part of the unprecedented global youth revolt of the late 1960s extending from Asia to Latin America and from Europe to the United States. Along with the CPI (ML), another breakaway faction of the original Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M), called the Chinta group

1. This note on Naxal ideology describes what Rabindra Ray called the ‘literate ideology’ of the Naxalites. Ray’s argument was that the literate ideology of the CPI (ML), or the meaning that the literature of the CPI (ML) tended to convey to an observer on the purely linguistic level, was different from the meaning it ‘contained’ at an existential level for the participants (Ray 1998: 43–48). The concern of my own research is with the latter.

56 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

(later Dakshin Desh) built a revolutionary base in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, and later in Bihar. This group was later renamed the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).2 The 1970s also saw the CPI (ML) in Bihar fragment into several militant groups, significant among which were the CPI (ML) Liberation, the CPI (ML) Party Unity, and the CPI (ML) People’s War. In areas mobilised by these groups, over time the poor wrung substantially better wage rates and working conditions.3 However, Naxalite attempts to redistribute land met with less success. MCC cadres relate for instance how they ‘snatched’ (possession of) as much as 10 million acres of cultivable land in Jharkhand alone, most of which was lost later or (as a result of ineffective redistribution) reduced to no-man’s-land.4 Nevertheless, if sections of the poor in Bihar and Jharkhand do have some land today, it is in good part due to Naxalite activity in the region. Their efforts in this direction were at least more sincere than the half-hearted implementation of land ceiling laws by the state. Most visibly though, it was the Naxalite call for izzat,5 their demand for the dignity of the poor and the socially oppressed that impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Left extremism in Bihar and Jharkhand radically altered the consciousness of the oppressed in these regions.

2. It was renamed the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) after merging with the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Maoist) in 2003. This was a strategic move that gave the former MCC a hitherto unavailable presence in the north-western Indian state of Punjab. At the time of my fieldwork (in 2003), many cadres continued to refer to the party as MCC, and that discrepancy of nomenclature may be reflected in the text ahead. 3. Studies in Bihar estimate, for instance, that between 1970–71 and 1988–89, wages for male labour increased by 56 per cent and by as much as 70.8 per cent for female labour (Sharma and Kumar 1995: 513). Another study in 1998 in rural Patna and Jehanabad reported a threefold hike in the wage rate in Naxal-organised villages (PUDR 1998: 4). 4. Source: Author’s personal interviews with MCC cadres in Daltengunj jail, Jharkhand, 2003. 5. The struggle for honour, dignity and social status has in many ways been the pivotal element of Naxalite mobilisation over the years. While popular political speech in the region has expressed the conflict primarily in terms of caste identities — placing caste at the centre and property relations or class in a derivative or secondary position — Naxal groups themselves theorise the class aspect as primary and caste as super structural (ibid.: 4–5).

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand A 57

By the turn of the 1990s however, the ‘revolution’ in Bihar and Jharkhand had assumed a different form. Naxalite killings through that decade were almost entirely retaliatory in nature. The dynamics of this neoNaxalism in the plains of Bihar was closely related to the emergence of the Ranvir Sena, a private army launched by Bhumihar landlords in Belaur village of Bhojpur district in August 1994, after their rivalry with Naxalites in the area reached a flashpoint. The Sena, an ‘all-forwards’ combine of Rajput, Bhumihar, Brahmin and even Kayastha interests (the last in a string of upper-caste private armies that sprang up in the region), became infamous for the unparalleled savagery of its Harijan massacres in the 1990s. In a land where physical violence was arguably among the most generalised and legitimate modes of social intercourse, both the private armies and the Naxalites invariably chose soft targets to make their point. Although the dispersion of the focal point of armed violence in the region was viewed with some optimism,6 subsequent Naxalite activities have been neither really germane to the original cause of land reform, nor pointed towards any coherent alternative agenda. Besides the gruesome massacres — including those of women and children — in the name of a caste-war,7 Naxalite parties in Bihar and Jharkhand have been accused of personal vendetta (Pathak 1993: 100–103), political patronage (Baweja and Jha 1999: 27–28), land feuds between middle-level farmers (Ninan and Ahmed 1987: 91; Pathak 1993), bloody inter-group clashes (Zahir 1997a), and a ruthless extortion mafia (Zahir 1997b: 32–33). Apart from annual ‘levies’ extracted from landed families to silence land and wage disputes, huge sums of money to the tune of several millions have been regularly collected by Naxalite groups from local businessmen, road and construction contractors, mining and other public sector majors (ibid.). Revolutionary groups have also seen a flush of ‘short-term’ cadres, many of whom possess more land than their class enemies (Pathak 1993: 100–103).8 6. Arvind Das for instance saw the approach of the ‘neo- Naxalites’ towards social violence as a good demonstration of the Gandhian mode of ‘decentralization of power’ (Das 1992: 107). 7. The pattern of inter-caste killings that especially targeted women and children of the ‘other’ caste started in fact much before the Ranvir Sena–MCC face offs. In 1987 for instance, in an attack spearheaded by the MCC in Dalelchak Baghaura in Aurangabad district, a houseful of Rajput women and children were made to place their necks on a rudely improvised chopping block, and beheaded one by one (Ninan and Ahmed 1987: 86). 8. Pathak’s observation is also supported by findings of my own fieldwork in the region, and is discussed ahead.

58 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

However, on the other hand, if it is difficult to reconcile the increasingly petty transactions of violence with the history of Naxalbari, infighting, organisational rivalry and corruption are not foreign to revolutionary movements. For reports that slammed the MCC as little better than a well trained band of hired killers working at the behest of a powerful lobby of ‘backward’ neo-capitalist farmers (Pathak 1993), or on evidence of their growing extortion mafia, party functionaries point out that revolutions need money too (Zahir 1997). From an organisational perspective in fact, and through the periods of seeming disarray, Naxal party literature has consistently reflected on concerns such as the struggle against the Ranvir Sena,9 breakdown of relations with rival groups (Das 1992: 128–31), and even the need for revolutionary groups to work together.10

Current Scenario The caste wars as well as the internal conflict and confusion of the nineties is now quite a thing of the past.11 By the end of the millennium, the Party Unity merged with the CPI (ML) People’s War (PW), and the Liberation had almost disbanded its armed guerrilla operations to enter electoral politics. The MCC and the PW in Bihar and Jharkhand continued to grow significantly in strength and spread despite law and order ‘packages’ amounting to several thousand million rupees disbursed by the central government from time to time to deal with ‘infested areas’ (Chitralekha 2001: 12–13). Since 2001, the MCC and PW shared manpower, resources and skills. Some of the areas of my personal fieldwork (in 2003) were, in fact, already manned by joint dastas of the two groups. In 2004, this working alliance between the (renamed) MCCI and the People’s War was consolidated by the announcement of their merger into a single entity called the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)]. The ‘Red Corridor’12 has now spread well beyond original areas of operation: recent estimates by the end of 2009 indicate Naxalite presence 9. See Lal Chingari (1997: 42–43). 10. Ibid. 11. Inter-group killings and skirmishes as well as civilian killings had dipped radically by the time of my fieldwork (source: Interview with R. C. Kaithal, InspectorGeneral, Naxal Operations and Law and Order, Ranchi, Jharkhand, May 2003). 12. The Red Corridor, or the Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ) refers to joint efforts by the Naxalites and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to create a corridor of influence from Nepal through Bihar and the Dandakaranya region to Andhra Pradesh. The purpose of the CRZ is reportedly to facilitate transportation of arms and quick retreat passages. See Jha (2003).

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand A 59

in 20 states in India.13 Fatalities from Naxal conflict have almost doubled since the time of my fieldwork: from 513 deaths in 2003, the total count of dead in 2009 was 997.14 At the time of my fieldwork, Jharkhand was the epicentre of the strongest consolidation of Naxalite strength and activity until then.15 Between 2001 and 31 January 2005, Maoist violence accounted for 652 deaths in Jharkhand, as compared to 540 in the neighbouring state of Bihar16 and 509 in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. In terms of fatalities, 2009 became the bloodiest year yet for Jharkhand, second only to Chhattisgarh among states worst affected by left extremism.17 The conflict in the region had however deviated quite radically from the original Naxalite agenda. From a movement driving local allegiance around issues of land re-distribution, fairer wages and human dignity, it was now ‘re-positioned’ as an ‘international struggle’18 pitched almost entirely against the police and state apparatus.19 There are at least three 13. See Singh (2009). 14. The numbers of those dead in 2010 was already at 956 (till October 3): 514 civilians, 240 security forces and 202 Naxalites (SATP 2010). 15. Jharkhand’s geographical location, particularly its proximity to Naxalite strongholds in Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, contributed to Maoist consolidation here. As many as 21 districts of Jharkhand share borders with other states, making it easier for them to escape into contiguous districts after striking in Jharkhand and vice versa. Arrests and seizures by security forces indicate that the Maoists use the porous border of Garhwa district, which shares a border with Bihar, for acquisition and transport of material, including small arms, explosives, medicines and uniforms. In the south, Maoists shuttle between Jharkhand and Orissa in order to escape the police dragnet in both states, while eastern borders are used for transportation of arms and manpower from West Bengal and Assam. 16. Bihar has seen a steady worsening of Maoist-related violence over the past five years, after an earlier peak in 2005, when a total of 106 persons were killed. Total fatalities have, since, climbed from 40 in 2006, to 49 in 2007; 71 in 2008; 78 in 2009; and 53 in 2010 (till 5 September 2010). See Sahni (2010). 17. In 2009, Jharkhand witnessed a total of 215 fatalities in as many as 381 incidents of Naxalite-related violence (till 25 December) (Singh 2009). However, figures for 2010 (till 3 October), indicate highest casualties in West Bengal (380 deaths), followed by Chhattisgarh at 282. Jharkhand with 120 deaths was the third worst-affected state (SATP 2010). 18. Source: Interviews with MCCI/PW cadres, Latehar district, Jharkhand, 2003. 19. Besides narratives of respondents, perusal of (unpublished) police records (2002–2003) of those killed by Naxalites in some of the districts I worked in

60 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

significant triggers that have worked to alter the profile of the Naxalite struggle in the region over recent times.

Widening Base of Discontented/Blurring Boundaries Between Enemies and Comrades While decades of Naxalite mobilisation ensured the near complete absence of alternate employment, farm productivity in the region remained more or less stagnant.20 No thorough land reform has ever been attempted in Bihar and Jharkhand: the average size of an operational holding is much below the national average.21 The technological improvement of agriculture — indicated by the consumption of fertilisers, number of diesel or energised pump sets, tractors, etc.— is low,22 and agricultural surplus under such conditions has been obviously limited. The daily wage across central Bihar and most of Jharkhand, even in organised villages, was at the time of my fieldwork (in 2003) between `25–`45 a day, much below the then official minimum rate of `64 a day. However, I found the issue had been shelved by both the MCCI and the PW in many villages where farmers actually did not have the capacity to pay much more. The caste and social background of the dominant landowners has also widened over the years, and there are not very many archetypical ‘landlords’ left in Bihar and Jharkhand today.23 Middle castes like Yadavs, (in Jharkhand) also seemed to indicate an visible shift in the profile of the Naxalite ‘enemy’ at the time. Far from landed zamindars or upper castes, I found that most of those killed were either police personnel, or more surprisingly, dalits or adivasis. While Naxalite cadres I met with justified the killings (of dalits and adivasis) on grounds of their being (police) ‘informers’, local police cadre (also interviewed by me) said that most of those killed were neither informers nor involved with the party. In their view, Naxalite power was being increasingly used in the region to settle petty personal disputes and vendetta. 20. Chitralekha (2001: 99–101). 21. Chitralekha (2001: 99–101). 22. Ibid. 23. A government estimate in August 1995 placed the total number of ceiling surplus landowners in Bihar (then including Jharkhand) at 750, of whom 35 were reportedly ‘big landlords’. However, the CPI (ML) Liberation held that there was as much as 1.8 million acres of ceiling surplus land in Bihar. The Bihar government claims to have acquired close to 0.4 million acres of such land of which, at least on paper; 0.26 million acres has been distributed to various landless families over the years (Ghosh 2000: 25). By this estimate, about 1.4 million acres of ceiling surplus land is available for redistribution in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand A 61

Koeris, Kurmis, etc. who have had an increasing presence in Naxalite parties, including in senior leadership positions, also own a significant share of the land pie.24 In such circumstances, the Naxalites have perhaps had not much choice but to realign their stance to aggressively posit an ‘unjust and corrupt state apparatus’ as the real enemy of the masses.

Formation of Jharkhand as an Independent State At the time of my fieldwork, the evident disaffection of Maoists with local, immediate issues of poverty and deprivation was linked in great part to the formation of Jharkhand at the turn of the millennium. Logistically, sharply heightened surveillance on Naxalite activity in the (newly-rich) state forced these groups into a pitched battle for survival with security forces, further marginalising their already weakening mass front activities.

Deepening Ties with International ‘Terrorism’ Growing domestic and international operational ties between the Naxalites and other armed guerrilla movements25 as well as with strategic border countries,26 contribute significantly to sustain the shift in operational focus.27 Faced with a weakening platform for grass-roots engagement, shrinking bandwidth of ideologically-committed leadership and a harsher than ever security crackdown, the party’s reliance on international extremist groups for know-how, arms and funding has deepened. Recent years have seen Maoist groups in India link up with major international armed movements to form front organisations such as the 24. Studies in late 1990s estimated that over 20 per cent of those owning between 5–10 acres of land, and nearly 12 per cent of those with over 10 acres were from upper middle castes like Yadavs, Koeris, Kurmis, etc. In central Bihar, however, as much as 80 per cent of cultivable land continued to be in the possession of upper castes (Bhumihars and Rajputs). Dalits, who constituted about 38 per cent of the population in these districts, were mainly landless (PUDR 1997: 15). 25. Source: Interview with Anil Palta, Superintendent of Police, Palamu, Jharkhand, May 2003. A few (senior MCCI) armed cadres I met in the course of my research also mentioned ideological and operational links with other (intraand extra-national) armed movements. Also see Jha (2002). 26. Some interviews with key MCCI cadres in the course of my fieldwork reiterated links between Pakistan backed entities (including the ISI) and left extremist groups in India. 27. For the CPI (Maoist)’s perspective on these links, see People’s March (2004a).

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Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA), the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), the World People’s Resistance Movement South Asia (WPRM South Asia), etc. In fact, a few cadres, even at the time of my fieldwork (in 2003), rationalised their practice as contributing to the (cause of) liberation of the international proletariat.28 Among those whom the CPI (Maoist) counts on today as associates in the ‘revolutionary movement’ are Maoist parties in Nepal, Peru, Philippines, Turkey as well as ‘peoples struggles’ (in United States [US] government parlance Islamic terrorist groups) in Iraq and Afghanistan.29 Given that most of these are also guerrilla struggles against existing states, not surprisingly, the CPI (Maoist) has reiterated its support for ethnic groups that wish to secede from the state, both in other countries, and in India. In its own words, it intends to ‘support the struggle of the nationalities for self determination, including the right to secession’.30 Besides a long-standing relationship with the (erstwhile) Liberation Tigers of Tamil

28. Source: Interviews with Naxalite cadre in Jharkhand and Bihar, 2003. In 2003, however, prior to the formation of CPI (Maoist) — though loyalty to ‘international revolutionary causes’ had already entered local party propaganda (and parlance) — MCCI/PW party manifestos stood by the original Naxalite agenda. 29. See People’s March (2004a). 30. Ibid. At the first ‘Unity Congress’ after its formation in September 2004, the CPI (Maoist) reportedly declared its sympathy and support to ‘various nationalities’, including those in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, declaring: ‘This Congress reaffirms its whole-hearted support to all these nationality movements and their right to self-determination, including the right to secession.’ The Congress noted further that ‘it may be necessary to form a separate organization to take up the nationality issue, and we should form such organizations in accordance with the concrete situation’ (Dash 2010). Compare this, for instance, to the erstwhile CPI (ML) Liberation’s stance on similar issues. In 1990, in a public rally in Delhi, the (then) Indian People’s Front (IPF) stated categorically that it was against any form of secessionism, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. Expressing ‘deep concern over the increasing menace of communalism’, it also criticised the Congress for ‘satisfying vested interests’ and the Janata Dal for trying ‘to capitalize on the minority vote bank.’ Significantly, though the party drew support mainly from agricultural labourers and poor peasants — mostly Dalits — it assailed the ‘Dalitism’ of Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), declaring that ‘the neo-Brahmins emerging among the Dalits are as much a target of our movement as the forwardised backwards’(Singh 1995:127–28).

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Eelam (LTTE),31 Naxalite groups have also developed domestic associations with organisations such as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) (Dash 2010) and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) (Jha 2002).32

Naxalite Ideology and Current Agenda33 In 2003, a PW Bihar–Jharkhand State Youth Committee member in Palamu district of Jharkhand delineated to me a tripartite Naxalite agenda (based as he said, on the PW’s application of Marxist/Leninist/Maoist thought in Indian conditions) as follows:34 Stage 1: Samantvad Virodhi Ladai (struggle against large landowners) is at the village level. This stage, as the party saw it, had been accomplished in the villages of Bihar and Jharkhand. Stage 2: Doosra Vyavastha (parallel government) is the currently ongoing stage of the struggle. It includes attempts to establish alternative structures of administration, army, parallel courts, schools,35 etc. Stage 3: Elaka Var, Satta dakhal (territorial capture, political replacement) is the ultimate goal. This refers to the final objective — to attack cities by first encircling the villages, and thereby crush the ‘capitalist system’ 31. According to media reports, the LTTE supplied the PWG with guns and ammunition (the transfer reportedly happened on the coastline in Krishna and Guntur districts in Andhra Pradesh). The LTTE is also known to have imparted training in using IEDs to the PWG. See TOI (2004). 32. Some analysts see the CPI (Maoist) strategy as an effort to rope in subnational armed groupings in the country’s ‘periphery’ into a pan-Indian consolidation of violent anti-state movements, particularly in India’s troubled north-east. In a recent circular (issued in May 2010), the Intelligence Bureau (IB) confirmed Naxalite plans to reach out to other ‘terrorist’ and separatist groups in the country, including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Assam and the Hurriyat Conference in Jammu and Kashmir (Dash 2010). 33. This section puts together the party line, collated mainly out of information provided by the CPI (Maoist) in a press release to announce the merger of MCCI and PW. See People’s March (2004a). 34. As discussed in previous sections, by 2003, both MCC1 and PW were already engaged in a high-pitched battle against the state police forces, with vastly reduced attention to grassroots mobilisation of any kind. Even at the time, however, neither Naxal party literature nor narratives of senior ideologues with whom I spoke included any reflection on the visibly changed direction of the movement. 35. In 2003, the PW for instance ran six ‘schools’ in Palamu district alone.

64 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence for good. This stage, he said, was still some way off, and could be as much as 20–25 years ahead. There had been much thought, he added, on what this stage would envisage. For instance, it could include putting pressure on even police officials to leave the present government and join theirs. It would include elections. The details however, he said, were still nebulous, in Vinod Mishra’s (late Liberation leader and major figurehead in the Naxalite movement) words (as quoted to author by the PW state youth committee member) ‘to be decided as we move ahead’.

The CPI (Maoist) — formed out of the merger of MCCI and PW in 2004 — reiterated soon after that the path recommended by Mao of a ‘protracted people’s war’ (as opposed to the Soviet model of armed insurrection for the seizure of power) would dialectically resolve the contradiction that emerges between the development of productive forces and relations of production.36 Broadly in line with Maoist–Leninist ideology, it confirmed its intention to ‘unify with other genuine Maoist parties in the country . . . struggle against imperialism, feudalism and the comprador bureaucratic bourgoisie . . . support the working class movement . . . struggle of the nationalities for self-determination including their right to secession . . . ’37 and so on (People’s March 2004a). Notwithstanding, the CPI (Maoist) may have travelled quite some distance away from the original Naxalite goals. Its current manifesto for change, for instance, hardly dwells on the bitter local concerns that drove the Naxalite struggle of the late 1960s and 1970s, sharing significant common ground on the other hand with agendas of other paninternational (and anti-American) armed groups. The CPI (Maoist)’s documented inventory of tasks in 2004, for instance, included: ‘continue to expose and resist the expansionist designs of the Indian ruling classes along with their imperialist chieftains, particularly the US imperialists . . . stand by the side of the Nepali people led by the CPN (Maoist), and vehemently oppose the Indian expansionists and US imperialists from intervening in Nepal with their military might . . . support the people’s war led by the Maoist parties in Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and elsewhere . . . stand by the side of the Iraqi and Afghan people in their mighty struggle against the US imperialist-led aggression and occupation’ (People’s March 2004b). Analysts such as Ajai Sahni (2007b) go so far as to describe the real Maoist ‘agenda’ now as a strategy ‘to fish in every troubled Indian water . . . 36. See People’s March (2004b). 37. See People’s March (2004a).

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exploit every potential issue and grievance to generate a campaign of protests and agitations.’ ‘The principal vehicles for these “partial struggles” are “front” or “cover” organisations of the Maoists themselves’, and ‘a range of individuals and organisations best described, in a phrase attributed to Lenin, as “useful idiots” — well-intentioned people who are unaware of the broader strategy and agenda they are unwittingly promoting through their support to specific and often unquestionably admirable causes’ (ibid.). Sahni quotes ‘the Political and Organisational Review of the erstwhile’ CPI (ML) and PW — which united in September 2004 with the MCC to create the CPI (Maoist), for instance noted: Cover organisations are indispensable in areas where our mass organisations are not allowed to functions openly . . . There are two types of cover organisations: one, those which are formed on a broad basis by ourselves; and two, those organisations led by other forces which we utilize by working from within without getting exposed (Sahni 2007b).

Sahni (ibid.) writes that at least two recent causes that were embraced by the CPI (Maoist) in this ‘cynical strategy’ include the caste conflict in Khairlanji and the escalating tensions and violence over the displacement and Special Economic Zones (SEZ) issues, including Singur and Kalinga Nagar. The role of ‘Maoist provocateurs’ in both cases, he points out, were discovered much after the event (ibid.).38

Organisation Structure39 The organisation structures of MCCI and PW were modelled along similar lines, with demarcation between political and military wings. The leader of the smallest unit in the political function was an ‘area in-charge’, and his military counterpart ‘area commander’. While leadership and operational responsibility stayed separate for military and political functions higher up, both wings reported to the ‘Central Committee’ (CC), the highest governing body vested with decisive power on both ideological and tactical fronts.40 38. See Sahni (2007b) for a more detailed analysis. 39. While organisational structure and dynamics was not the focus of this study, I gathered some understanding of these aspects, mainly through life histories of individual cadres. 40. The PW Central Committee comprised 21 permanent members and six alternate members, while the MCCI had a seven-member CC. The CC of the CPI (Maoist) is headed by Muppala Lakshman Rao alias Ganapathy, ex-general secretary of PW. The ex-general secretary of MCCI, Kishanji continues as member of CC.

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Following the merger of MCCI and PW, the core structure of the newly formed CPI (Maoist) is not essentially different. Recent years have seen rapid integration of the two parties at lower levels, and unification of their armies as well as mass organisations.41 Significantly, the CPI (Maoist) has now established Regional Bureaus across a mass of nearly two-thirds of Indian territory. These regions are further sub-divided into state, special zonal and special area committee jurisdictions, where the processes of mobilisation have been defined and allocated to local leaders. There are at least five regional bureaus, thirteen State committees, two Special Area Committees and three Special Zonal Committees in the country. While this structure of organisation reflects current Naxalite organisational consolidation, there are reports of preliminary activity for the extension of their operations to new areas including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Meghalaya.42 In 2004, the CPI (Maoist) also articulated a new strategy to target urban centres in their ‘Urban Perspective Document’, drawing up guidelines for ‘working in towns and cities’, and for the revival of a mobilisation targeting students and the urban unemployed. Two principal ‘industrial belts’ were identified as targets for urban mobilisation: Bhilai–Ranchi– Dhanbad–Calcutta; and Mumbai–Pune–Surat–Ahmedabad.43

Political Wing There are back office teams running (now) the CPI (Maoist) at a micro level, forming data generation as well as decision-making groups on local matters: propaganda (including hosting classroom learning sessions for its own armed cadres), networking with mainstream politics,44 liaison, levies and other financial dealings, etc.. Besides routine assistance such as organising village meetings, ferrying arms and working as couriers, front organisations

41. See People’s March (2004a). 42. A Naxalite ‘leading team’ has reportedly also visited Jammu and Kashmir to assess the potential of creating a permanent party structure in the form of a State Committee to take the Maoist agenda forward in the State. See Sahni (2007b). A few MCCI cadres in my sample said (in 2003) that the party had a presence in Kashmir, but I could not verify, or confirm this (anecdotal) passing on of ‘information’. 43. See Sahni (2007b). 44. State intelligence reports indicate, for instance, that the CPI (Maoist) has been fielding relatives in village body (panchayat) elections in a parallel move to capture local democratic space.

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of the Maoists are used to win over the local populace. Developmental activities such as setting up schools and building small earthen dams have been undertaken by them in the interiors of these states. Members include cadres in ‘open’ fronts such as labour unions, youth and women’s fronts.45 While each local group reports to an ‘area in-charge’, the hierarchy progressively includes Squad Area Committees, District or Division Committees, Zonal or State Committees, Regional Bureaus, Special Area Committees (SACs) and finally the CC at the apex. Members of Central, Regional, Zonal or State Committees oversee strategic as well as tactical functioning of the organisation.46 The CPI (Maoist) has streamlined its structure in recent years, towards creating greater efficiency in operations. The erstwhile Jharkhand–Bihar–Bengal RC of the MCCI for instance was dissolved soon after merger with the PW in 2004, and two RCs have since been formed, one for Bihar–Jharkhand and another for West Bengal. Under the new dispensation, in order to provide safe passage to the Maoists operating in Bengal during encounters and combing operations, the Ghatshila Subdivision in East Singhbhum District in Jharkhand was placed under the supervision of the Bengal RC.

Military Wing The armed force of the CPI (Maoist) is now a formidable strength to contend with. Formed out of the merger of the guerrilla armies of the PW and the MCCI — the People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) and the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) respectively — the joint army operates under the name of PLGA since 2 December 2004. 45. Key MCCI fronts in Bihar/Jharkhand included Naujavan Pratirodh Sangharsh Manch, Krantikari Buddhijeevi Sangh, Krantikari Sanskritik Sangh, Krantikari Chatra League, Communist Yuva League, Nari Mukti Sanghathan and Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti. PW fronts in the region were Lok Sangram Morcha, Mazdoor Kisan Mukti Morcha, Jan Mukti Parishad, Mazdoor Kisan Ekta Morcha, Bharat Navjawan Sabha, Mazdoor Kisan Sangrami Parishad, Shramik Sangram Manch, Nari Mukti Sangharsh Samiti, Sangharsha Jana Mukti Morcha, Democratic Students Union, All India People’s Resistance Forum, etc. 46. Boundaries between armed and political fronts were known to have been more porous in MCCI. It depended essentially on a 4-tier leadership, with the CC at the top and Zonal Committees (ZCs) at the bottom. An SAC and Regional Committees (RCs) occupied the middle rung. Zonal Committee and Regional Committee members were equipped with armed squads. Its CC and SAC members generally lived in cities.

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The merger had serious implications in all states facing the Maoist threat, and significantly upped the firepower, battle ability and levels of modernisation of the two groups. Arms seizures since in Jharkhand alone have been good indices of the sheer volume of arms and explosives available to the Maoists. Besides the evident profusion of landmines,47 a wide range of sophisticated devices including Claymore mines, camera flash, mobile phones and radio detonation devices are in use now. Two ‘technical wings’ have been set up in Jharkhand for its north and south zones on an expenditure of over `2 million, and the recent sophistication of explosive devices, increasing use of information technology tools, use of frequency modulation (FM) radio devices (to intercept security forces’ communications) are good indicators of its achievements.48 In its annual report on terrorism (2008), the US Department of State remarked that the CPI (Maoist) had also increased the ‘sophistication of attacks’ by using satellite phones and IEDs.49 Styled on the pattern of similar guerrilla forces in Turkey, Philippines and Peru, the PW guerrilla force, PGA, functioned under a single operational command, the Central Military Commission, headed by the General Secretary of the CC.50 Parallel to political committees at each level, the PGA was also structured into military commissions at state and zonal (certain regions within or across states are demarcated as special guerrilla zones) levels. Regional Military Commissions supervised a group of State Military Commissions or Zonal Military Commissions. Each Regional Military Commission reported to the Central Military Commission. The PW had an estimated 3,500 armed cadres and around 3,000 firearms, including a large number of rifles of AK variety, light machine guns, self-loading rifles, carbines, .303s, grenades, revolvers, pistols, and

47. Recent years have seen increasingly effective landmine and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks by the Maoists. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 442 persons have been killed while 422 received injuries in a total of 380 incidents of landmine explosion set off by the Maoists since 2005. Of these incidents, 52 were major (comprising of three or more fatalities). Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (the two worst affected states) together account for 329 (74.44 per cent) of these fatalities. See Singh (2010b). 48. See Sahni (2007a). 49. See TOI (2008b). 50. Even as recently as 1997, the PW was known to have had only about 30 dalams (armed groups) of 15 people each (Prasad 1997). The PGA came into existence in December 2000 in Bihar and Jharkhand (and a month later in Andhra Pradesh) by a radical reorganisation of PW’s existing guerrilla force.

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landmines technologies. In addition, it also had a technical squad, which manufactured 12-bore guns and ammunitions, repaired all kinds of weapons and assembled grenades (SATP 2012). The PLGA51 of the MCC was again divided into different types of armed groups, and like the PW, its main force consisted of highly trained and experienced ‘Platoons’, which could operate across districts, zones, even states.52 Local dastas which roam smaller territories (generally a cluster of villages) were used for attacks on small police pickets, landmine attacks, etc. The MCC had also developed a strong secondary force of local squads, as well as a people’s militia consisting of village defence squads.53 While some estimates pegged the total number of MCC squads at 500 full-timers and more than 10,000 members,54 its real strength in recent times was probably much higher. At the time of my fieldwork (2003), a senior commander of the (newly renamed) MCCI for instance estimated that their total armed strength was as much as 17,000 cadres. This included village squads, a strong network of supplementary women’s forces55 and bal dastas (child squads)56 across India. 51. The main fighting force of MCC was over the years composed of its ‘lal dastas’ (red squads), supported by ‘marak dastas’ (hit squads) for special operations. Restructuring of the ‘Red Army’ (as its armed wing was then called) into the PLGA saw much refurbishing and realignment of these forces. 52. MCC platoons were highly mobile and designed to move in fast to required locations for major operations, such as thana hamlas (attack on police station). In 2003, the (renamed) MCCI had nine platoons in Bihar and Jharkhand alone (source: Interview with ex-platoon commander in Jharkhand, 2003). 53. MCC leaders (in Jharkhand) at the time of my fieldwork said the network of village militias — each consisting of a handful of villagers invested with basic training in handling small arms — was an investment which along with their regular force would facilitate their long-term goal of capturing state power. 54. See Singh (1995: 122). 55. The MCCI women’s front, called Nari Mukti Sanghathan (Women’s Liberation Union) has been highly active in Jharkhand, particularly in the districts of Chatra, Palamu, Garhwa and Giridih. While the women’s front is expected to assist the party in non-military operations such as cultural activities and propaganda, women cadres from the Sanghathan may also be trained for the armed dastas. Directly controlled by the top leadership of MCCI, it had four units in one ‘Circle’— the territory controlled by an Area Commander. Each unit comprised of 15 young girls who had been imparted training for several months in small arms handling, detonator charging and shooting to kill. Most critically, they were taught the art of deception and distraction to assist the armed squads in operation. 56. Bal Dasta operations have been confirmed in several areas of Jharkhand such as the villages of Kuthwalia and Kurkheta, Suru Nawada under Kunda

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The CPI (Maoist) has since continued to steadily strengthen all three forces of the PLGA — Basic, Secondary and Main forces. The main fighting force of the outfit continues to be the Platoon, comprising 25–30 highly trained guerrillas organised into sections and sub-sections. Platoons are headed by commanders, supported by deputy commanders and each section is led by a section commander and a deputy section commander. There are two categories of platoons — the (regular) Military Platoon and the (temporary) Protection Platoon. During meetings of (armed) Naxalite cadres in large numbers (for political or military purposes, or the annual marriage ceremony organised by the party for its cadre for instance), Protection Platoons are quickly organised from amongst the already existing (military) platoons/other armed cadre. These temporary Protection Platoons (as the name indicates) are created to provide ‘cover’ (in Naxalite lingo), or in other words to guard against both police and civilian surveillance. Once the meeting (or ceremony) is over, the protection platoon disbands, and rapidly disperses to return to the (often farflung) folds of its old (military) formations. Soon after its formation, the CPI (Maoist) had stated that developing its platoons’ higher formations under an established command and control system would be a major focus area for the organisation.57 The armed squad (dasta/dalam), comprising 15–20 cadres in each ‘area’, continues to be their secondary fighting unit. The strength of a squad is however varied, as is its type. It includes Special Regular Guerrilla Squads (SRGS) in districts that do not have a military platoon, and Local Regular Guerrilla Squads (LRGS) that have limited operational jurisdiction across a cluster of villages. Further down the hierarchy is the Self Defence Squad, comprising 10–12 cadres, while the People’s Militia Squad that operates at the village level occupies the lowest rung. In addition, it also

and Lawalong police station of Chatra, in large areas falling under Bhandariya and Manjhiara police station areas of Garhwa districts, and in the interiors of Giridih district as well. Armed initially with wooden guns and later with kattas (country made pistols) and odd rifles and muskets (mainly discards from the actual Red Squads), the Bal Dasta is expected to act like scouts and guards than to be a constituent of the attack party. Members of the child squad are all under 15 years of age. High performers in the Child Squads (after putting in some years of labour as general workers) could potentially graduate to join the ‘Reserve Party’ that backed the actual strike group in an operation. 57. See People’s March (2004b).

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has action teams and special action teams to undertake activities such as reconnaissance of a target (person or location), killings, abductions or damage and destruction of property. An ‘action team’ typically consists of two or three cadres.58 Soon after its formation, the CPI (Maoist) had stated its intention to build a ‘vast base of the people’s militia . . . a wide network of part timers’ that would ‘facilitate the party to exist deep within the masses’59 and it seems to have kept its promise. Official estimates of ‘hardcore’ armed cadres suggest a tripling of numbers from about 100 to over 300 in Jharkhand over the 2005–2007 period,60 and expansion of mass mobilisation activities across the state, creating a wider militia and sympathiser base.61 The CPI (Maoist) has also divided the entire state of Jharkhand into two zones: for both military operations and levy’ (taxes paid to Naxalite groups)62 collection.63 These zones are divided into 12 or 13 sub-zones and 58. See http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/pwg.htm (accessed 14 November 2011). 59. See ‘Left-wing Extremist group: Communist Party of India – Maoist (CPI-Maoist)’. http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/ CPI_M.htm (accessed 30 November 2011). 60. See Sahni (2007a). 61. Bihar and Jharkhand indeed have in recent years witnessed repeated ‘swarming’ operations with several hundred Maoists orchestrating single attacks. The first of these occurred on 11 November 11 2005, when over a 100 Maoist cadres attacked a Home Guards Training Centre in Panchamba in Giridih district. The year 2007 alone saw three such attacks (ibid.). 62. Naxalites have over the years extracted levies from road contractors, contractors for forest products like tendu patta (leaves of the Diospyros Melanoxylon plant), bamboo and wood. (Article 60 of the ‘constitution’ of the CPI [Maoist] in fact lists ‘membership fees, levies, donations, taxes, penalties and wealth consficated from enemies’ as principal sources of revenue.) They have also been reported to have made deals with poachers, smugglers and liquor and timber runners in the forests. In areas under their control, Maoists secure large revenues from iron and coal mining companies as well as levy ‘tax’ on small enterprises, such as spinning mills, beedi units, rice and flour mills, grocery, medical, cigarette and liquor shops, and private doctors. All ‘illegal’ operators, including private schools operating in villages and district towns, are also reportedly coerced into paying. Other major sources of funding are poppy or opium cultivation, and ganja or cannabis (Singh 2010a). In Jharkhand, police documents suggest that a section of contractors, transporters and businessmen involved in illegal mining pay over 400 million rupees annually as ‘levy’ to the CPI (Maoist) in the State (ibid.). 63. These include the North Chottanagpur zone and the South Chottanagpur zone. Collection of levy (‘tax’ paid to Naxalite groups) has traditionally been the

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each sub-zone is further divided into ‘areas’ headed by ‘area commanders’. This realignment has possibly further consolidated existing elaborate machinery for collection of levies in the state.64

Recruitment, Growth and Attrition Recruitment The CPI (Maoist) does not find it difficult to acquire new recruits in Bihar and Jharkhand: the many remote and underdeveloped villages here continue to provide a steady supply of cadres. Front organisations such as Krantikari Kisan Committee (Revolutionary Farmers Committee) and Nari Mukti Sangathan (Women’s Liberation Union) continue to play a major role in penetrating new areas and facilitating the recruitment process.65 Officials in Jharkhand say the average age of Naxal armed cadre has dipped significantly in recent years66 as a result of frequent child recruitment in recent years. In recent reports that seem to reinforce this study’s findings in 2003 in Jharkhand, officials say there is a massive drive for child soldiers in the Bastar region of Chattisgarh, as well as in Naxal strongholds

responsibility of the military wing. These collections are made at a local level, generally by area commanders, and routed via sub-zonal and zonal commanders to the CC. Significant percentages I found were often siphoned off by commanders at each level. 64. CPI (Maoist) networks of revenue generation are estimated to extend across 223 districts (of a total of 636 districts in the country). On 29 November 2009, Chhattisgarh Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan claimed that the Maoists annually extort up to 20 billion rupees across India. Earlier, documents and hard disks seized from Misir Mishra, a CC member of the CPI (Maoist) arrested in Jharkhand in March 2008, revealed that the CPI (Maoist) collected over 10 billion rupees in 2007, to which Bihar and Jharkhand’s contribution was 2 billion and 750 million rupees respectively (Singh 2010a). 65. The CPI (Maoist) has also set up military training camps in several areas, including the Martolia Hills in Ghatshila subdivision of East Singhbhum District, several locations in the Jhumra Hills of Bokaro, the Saranda Forest in West Singhbhum District, the Gurpa Forest in Palamau District, the border region of Hazaribagh and Chatra, the Baruhatu and Shilaghati Hills of Ranchi, the Madhuban Hills of Giridih, and some places in Latehar and Garhwa districts. 66. Source: Interview with Superintendent of Police, Lohardagga (Jharkhand), May 2003. Also borne out by findings of my personal fieldwork in the region, as will be discussed ahead.

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in Orissa (Kumar 2008). According to them, Maoist rebels are targeting children in the age group of 12–16 years — and significantly — focusing on school drop-outs. A February 2010 UNESCO Report titled Education under Attack 2010 in the section on India notes: ‘In 2008, in Chhattisgarh, Maoists were reported to have used children under 12 “in droves”. Children, aged 6 and above, were indoctrinated and trained as informers; then, from age 12, were recruited into the ranks and trained to use arms and explosives’ (UNESCO 2010: 193).67 The CPI (Maoist) has also been accused of abduction of minors — much like CPN (Maoist) of Nepal, or the LTTE (SAIR 2005). The CPI (Maoist) soon after inception reportedly introduced a ‘one-memberfrom-one-family’ campaign to expand its base in rural areas. A United Nations (UN) report on Children and Armed Conflict in 2010 also expressed concern over the use of minors by Maoists in Chhattisgarh, noting that youngsters were being abducted and forcibly recruited from schools (UN 2010). The Report noted that India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has stated (in its submission to the Supreme Court in August 2008) that the Naxalites forced many families to send at least one adolescent boy or girl to join their ranks (ibid.). However, while police in Chhattisgarh describe the burgeoning numbers of the very young in the Naxalite forces as a ‘forced recruitment’, I found most young people — and definitively the ‘school dropouts’ — had been quite in awe of Naxal muscle and clout in the region, and did not need too much persuasion, let alone coercion, to join. This will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 3.

Growth Upward mobility for fresh recruits into Naxal parties is painstakingly slow and performance based. As a senior cadre of the MCCI told this researcher, it takes 10 years to ‘make’ one hardcore cadre of the party.68 Though the dastas can sometimes include young people with only a few weeks of military training, at this stage, their job description is little more than that of physical labour. Young recruits are expected to carry (extra)

67. The UNESCO report also observes that ‘Government-backed Salwa Judum vigilantes have used children to attack Naxalite-influenced villages, and state police have used child recruits for anti-Naxalite combing operations’ (UNESCO 2010: 193). 68. Source: Personal interview, March 2003.

74 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

baggage,69 armaments, etc., for the dasta as well as perform any other chores that may be required.70 After a minimum of six months with the party, recruits are assigned a military uniform, and with it, official status as a party cadre. Sophisticated arms are generally not assigned to cadres before a minimum working period of two years with the party. After the minimum period of two years, a cadre can be made an area commander of a cluster of villages, generally excluding his home village. Every posting is generally for a period of a year and a half to two years. Transfers may be across villages, districts, even states. However, the first posting as area commander for many young people can be indefinitely delayed. Growth to higher positions in the party structure is based on the party’s assessment of the cadre’s capabilities and leadership potential as well as performance on field. Transfer to the party’s platoons is highly coveted by cadres and seen as the ultimate recognition of a cadre’s capabilities. The platoons are constituted of the party’s tallest (minimum height requirement for entry is five feet, five inches), most physically fit and best marksmen. Further promotion to zonal, regional and (for the chosen few) SAC levels is even slower, and seen (by cadres) as unpredictable. However, for the many who stagnate at area commander or lower levels, there are also a select few who do get recognition and remarkable growth, up to the highest echelons of the party hierarchy in the same span.71

Attrition Attrition levels of Naxal groups in Bihar and Jharkhand are, according to officials, higher than before. At the time of my fieldwork, senior police personnel in Jharkhand estimated that at least 40 Naxalite cadres had 69. Personal baggage, including clothes, hygiene products, party literature and arms, are carried in a backpack by every cadre regardless of rank. 70. Many MCCI/PW cadres interviewed during my personal fieldwork recalled this period as the toughest, and most confusing period of their lives as Naxalite cadres. Most dropouts from Naxal groups, too, are at this stage of association. For a more recent account of child dropouts from the CPI (Maoist), see The Hindu (2004). 71. Nathuni Mistri for instance (Bengal–Bihar–Jharkhand SAC member arrested in 2002), joined the party in the 1980s as just another bottom-rung cadre from a landless family in Aurangabad. Mistri, it is believed, shot to fame in the party after he engineered the gruesome Dalelchak Baghaura killings of 40 Rajput women and children in Bihar in 1988.

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand A 75

quit the armed dastas between January 2000 and May 2003 alone.72 Nevertheless, police officials admit, most of those who quit were relatively new recruits and not hardcore cadres, or ‘full timers’ as the party refers to them.

Organisational Culture: Core Values73 Passion The organisation urges comrades across the party to cherish the ‘revolutionary spirit of daring to go against the tide’.74 The initial years of training that make a hardcore cadre also include efforts to instil this sense of pride.75 Quite a few amongst the junior cadre who spoke with this researcher did in fact speak with pride of being a ‘krantikari’ (revolutionary). Not too many senior cadres shared the same fervour.

Integrity A new ‘Constitution’ outlining the organisational principles of the party (based on the Bolshevik principles of ‘democratic centralism’) demands that all members of the CPI (Maoist) be ‘principled, selfless, courageous, dedicated, modest, hardworking and fully committed to the cause of the Indian revolution’. Further, the party requires that all members ‘put the interests of the Party and the people before their own personal interests’.76 The MCCI and the PW had also put in systems in place whereby every cadre had to give the party hesaab (account) of their financial expenses. While such accounts had to be filed regularly by even CC members, checks and balances on financial dealings did get less stringent for those with position and seniority. On the whole, Naxalite cadres in Bihar and Jharkhand have demonstrated integrity in their working context, more strikingly so in comparison to other mainstream political parties in these states. In recent

72. Source: Personal interviews, 2003. 73. This section is based on insights from my personal fieldwork as well as information available in party literature, press releases, etc. 74. People’s March (2004b). 75. The oral histories of many cadres interviewed in the course of personal field work, especially of relatively younger cadre, included references to such training. 76. People’s March (2004b).

76 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

years however, and especially in Jharkhand, these values have been called into question repeatedly, with allegations of corruption and exploitation levelled against both middle-rung and senior cadre. While the monthly ‘salary’ of an area commander for instance was at the time of fieldwork (2003) not more than `500 (based on hesaab or remuneration of actuals), many cadres admitted that they could siphon off (variable) additional income from levies collected for party funds. Moreover, the organisation often pitches in upfront to help the cadre’s family with critical financial needs. Both MCCI and PW have however also been known to press charges, demote, even expel members found guilty of gross misappropriation of party funds. In 2002 for instance, the MCCI expelled Bharatji, alias Mohanbabu, a senior CC member on charges of swindling of party funds and sexual exploitation of women cadres.

Universalism The CPI (Maoist) believes that its goals and interests are truly universalistic, and transcend boundaries of nation, ethnicity and gender.77 In recent years, it has also reiterated its participation in, and commitment to, several international forums with what it sees as similar interests. However, there is not very much information available on the real ethnic distribution of its ranks and leadership. Out of 40 MCCI and PW armed cadres spoken to by this researcher, only one was Muslim. Again, according to the findings of this study, the leadership of the MCCI and PW in Bihar and Jharkhand consisted predominantly of the influential middle castes, mainly the Yadavs and Kurmis, followed by Rajputs and Bhumihars. Cadres from these castes had also risen to leadership positions such as deputy area commander, and area commander relatively quicker than their dalit and tribal counterparts. The party nevertheless denied such correlations and ascribed these disparities primarily to the generally better educational status of the upper and middle castes. While the new CPI (Maoist) leadership in Jharkhand and Bihar continues to be dominated by Yadavs, it also still attracts cadres of diverse ethnic identity in its ranks. Recent years have reportedly seen the entry of several new commanders from the Dushadh and Harijan communities, with significant followings of their own.78

77. See People’s March (2004b). 78. Among others, Bhageran Paswan and Sitaram Ravidas are the new influential representatives of these communities in the party. See Cherian (2005).

Left Extremists in Bihar and Jharkhand A 77

Role definition for women cadres of Naxal groups is again known to have been gendered over the years where, along with wielding guns, women cadres (specifically) were trained in maintaining and running community kitchens and mobile medical units (see Chaudhuri 2001). Over the last half century, Naxalite women had also not been known to have gained entry to either the MCC’s or PW’s senior leadership committees. Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police Shirish Jain puts it more bluntly when he says that women were inducted into Naxal ranks purely to take care of the sexual needs of male cadres. This view — based in most part on initial arrests (and accounts) of women Naxalites — is however fast changing. Now police intelligence shows that in the Dandakaranya region (on the border of Maharashtra and including parts of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh), as much as 60 per cent of cadres are women. And more significantly, as many as 10 women hold leadership positions — including dalam (equivalent of Jharkhand’s dastas, or regiments) commanders, and even regional committee members — something the Naxalite movement has never seen before. Police officials, however, believe the current visibility of women leaders in the party is part of a process that started 10–15 years back: while women were brought in primarily to help with domestic and sexual needs of the male dastas, many of them showed a spark, and were accordingly moved on to other responsibilities. Quite a few of these women also married senior Naxalite leaders, and found it easier to reach the top themselves (Kaushik 2007). My findings in Jharkhand seemed to reinforce that women are getting their share of the sun in Naxalite groups today. While some male cadres did recall interactive periods with the women’s front as a ‘relief’ as the women would then cook for everyone, many more said they were expected to — and used to — do their own personal chores (cooking, cleaning, washing personal utensils and clothes, etc.). Both the women armed cadres I met and spoke with (one of whom had recently been arrested) had been inducted through the MCC women’s front Nari Mukti Sangh, but were later put through a military training as rigorous as for any of their male counterparts. By the time of my fieldwork, both were ‘hardcore’ cadres of the MCCI. While one of these two women cadres had been captured by the Jharkhand police, the other, as an ongoing commander of a dasta, was in an evident position of authority over other (mainly male) members of the group.

78 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Compliance, Discipline and Hierarchy In accordance with the needs of a guerrilla party, deference to hierarchy and strict compliance with stated norms and regulations of the organisation is given high priority. While the party puts much store by equality and the dignity of labour, accounts of cadres (as well as party documents themselves)79 indicate that allocation of labour even outside the ‘workplace’ and outside of ‘working hours’ is also distributed definitively by rank, sometimes by gender and age.80 While there are inbuilt systems in the party that allow cadres to express concerns, these are more in the nature of questions put across to the CC, replies to which arrive by due process. Debate and dissension of opinion on matters of party ideology and tactics are generally discouraged. There have, nonetheless, been instances when senior cadres of the party have rallied support around specific issues, even without the mandate of the CC. The expulsion of Bharatji, the MCC general secretary (CC member) in 2002, for instance, was a consequence of such organised dissent. Such instances are rare, and the party makes every attempt to discourage pluralism of thought or opinion around critical issues, less still the formation of cliques or factions.

A

79. Refer, for instance, to the CPI (Maoist) account of life at a secret commune organised to announce its formation (People’s March 2004b). While ‘little children’ go about their duties with ‘clock-work precision’, and ‘cultural artists, the doctor and her [emphasis added] assistants would be seen serving food during meal-times’, there is no similar mention of other male armed cadres, less still senior party leaders (all male) rendering similar service. 80. Observations during my personal fieldwork with MCC dastas reinforce this conclusion. Though the party norms insist on parity for all, the commander was rarely seen serving his men (or women), whereas his team would generally organise/ cook for him. Outside operational hours, women, even if they were armed cadres, would often take on ‘women’s tasks’. Child associates of the party or members of bal dastas are often little more than errand boys.

Introduction A 79

THREE A

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters: Redescribing the Naxalites in Jharkhand and Bihar∗ C

ontemporary discourse on the Naxalites1 is more fractured than ever before. For many people, they evoke a great deal of nostalgia. They were the ‘students of excellent attainments’ who shunned brilliant academic careers to join the revolutionary left (Pandey 1985: 110–12), young people full of idealism and commitment (Bhatia 1998b), the kind of people ready to ‘die for a cause’ (Gupta 2002: 4615). The poor mobilised by them wrung substantially better wage rates and working conditions, some land, and more than anything else izzat, the Naxalite call for dignity of the poor and socially oppressed that radically altered the consciousness of the oppressed. The Indian state on the other hand, after years of abysmal neglect and with its back now against the wall, says Naxalites are terrorists, and must be dealt with as such. Civil rights activists and concerned academia warn that such posturing would amount to brutal repression of a shining India’s forgotten subaltern voices. But while there has been much discourse on Naxalism in the public sphere as well as in more rigorous academic work (see Banerjee 1984; Bhatia 1997, 1998a, 2005; Chakrabarty and Kujur 2010; Das 1983, 1992, 1998; Pandey 1985; Ray 1998), we are hardly closer to understanding the armed movement. Bela Bhatia, for instance, in a study based on extensive personal fieldwork in central Bihar in the mid 1990s notably draws attention to *This chapter is adapted from an article previously published in Contributions to Indian Sociology, 44(3): 299–329, 2010. 1. Naxalites trace their lineage to the Naxalbari uprising of May 1967 in West Bengal, a localised struggle against oppressive agrarian relations.

80 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

the need to develop an understanding of the movement by incorporating the ‘point of view of the participants’ (2005: 1536). She argues that people join these parties for ideological and non-ideological motives. Amongst the former, those who join with full knowledge of the party’s ideology and agenda are ‘informed revolutionaries’ while those with an urge to fight against injustice are ‘instinctual revolutionaries’ (ibid.: 1540). While leaders at the block level and above, she says, are generally informed revolutionaries, people also join (generally the open fronts) to fulfil personal needs, survival, opportunism, etc. (ibid.: 1540–41). Given that Bhatia posits ‘a large majority of the cadres . . . who comprise the backbone of the movement’ are ‘instinctual revolutionaries’, it would seem the vast majority of participants in the Naxalite movement are ‘revolutionaries’ of some kind or the other (ibid.: 1540). But is that in fact the case? Are those (leaders or otherwise) who join with ‘full knowledge’ of Naxalite (formal) ideology (ibid.) necessarily motivated by that ideology? Can knowledge of, or even belief in ideology be conflated with commitment to cause? Are the young people who make up the numbers of the movement today mostly driven by the urge to fight against injustice? Or is there something missing in our understanding of the men and women still willing to kill and die in the name of the Naxalite cause? This chapter looks closely at the lives and choices of armed cadre of the MCCI and PW,2 searching for answers from the standpoint of footsoldiers of the Naxalite movement.3 It is based on findings of my own fieldwork across Jharkhand and parts of Bihar in 2003. According to the findings of this study, very few Naxal cadres killed because they believed in the Naxalite cause or killed for the cause. By far, the majority of armed cadres I met had, in fact, willingly killed for Naxal parties, for reasons that had little to do with ideology and social change. Yet, not very many could be called mercenaries either.

2. MCCI and PW merged in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist). 3. Apart from academic interest, such inclusion has bearing for effective intervention in areas affected by left extremist violence. While Naxalite strongholds indeed continue to be the poorest and least empowered regions of the country (see GoI 2008), the findings of my study indicate significant differences in the socioeconomic profile of the mass base within which Naxal groups work, and the profile of its hardcore cadre (also see Chitralekha [2009]).

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 81

So who then are these ‘Naxalites’? Why do they join the party? How do they rationalise the murder of thousands of ‘class enemies’, including women and children? This chapter distributes a sample of 40 Naxalite armed cadres4 into three ‘motivational profiles’ that help understand who they are and what drives them to join and become willing actors of violence. The categories are, to begin with, defined by commitment to the Naxalite cause, and termed as Committed, Opportunists and Drifters.5 Commitment to the ideological cause is high in the Committed, dips significantly in Drifters and is absent in Opportunists.6 4. This core sample includes only armed cadres: those who had explicitly engaged in violence for the Naxal cause. However, the study spoke additionally with several top-rung leaders and members of MCCI/PW front organisations (MCCI’s Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti, for instance), other militant groups in the region (Sangharsh Jan Mukti Morcha, Ranvir Sena, etc.), mainstream political parties, etc.. 5. Committed, Drifters and Opportunists describe in an ideal typical fashion the core, defining trait of the relationship that armed cadres I met had with the Naxal cause, and (Drifters/Opportunists) are not termed as such in any pejorative sense. Alternate stratification of samples by rank, or role in the organisation was not useful as there was significant variation in the kind of (motivational) factors that drove cadres within a single rank, such as area commander, or even at sub zonal and zonal levels. There was also high variation in motivation of cadres from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. On the other hand, categorisation of samples by commitment to ideological cause — if a more subjective assessment — is based entirely on the detailed narratives of armed cadres themselves and draws attention to the key driving forces behind the Naxalite movement today. While these motivational profiles are, in the main, also indicative of the reasons these men joined the movement to begin with, this study found that motivational factors for some had changed during the time spent in the party. For clarity, therefore, these profiles are best seen as indicative of current or ongoing motivational forces driving the movement. 6. ‘Committed’ here is not co-terminus with commitment to the party. The MCCI and PW were highly trained, closely banded organisations that maintained stringent secrecy rules and codes of conduct. As a rule, most hardcore cadres would not defect easily. The Committed again cannot be identified purely by willingness to die for the party, as the possibility of violent death is implicit here in the nature of the work itself. Even the Opportunist plays with the possibility of death as he negotiates what he wants out of the movement and its affected parties (the state, the poor, etc.). Nevertheless, there is a qualitative difference in the manner in which death is perceived by the Committed, something that will be further explored in the section ahead.

82 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

The intention here is not to detail what makes a cadre a Committed one, and another an Opportunist or Drifter. As I hope to clarify in sections ahead, commitment to the cause was not really co-terminus with location, socioeconomic profile or even (early) age of joining. For instance, while most Committed cadres had indeed experienced or witnessed class oppression, so had very many of the ‘Drifters’. Again, while most Committed cadres joined the party relatively late, so did all Opportunists. Determination of what makes a cadre ‘Committed’, and another a ‘Drifter,’ then, cannot be located entirely in a social context; there is an evident element of individual psychological predisposition, which is, however, not adequately explored within the realm of this work. What is significant for this study is that even within the same social context, only a few seem to be Committed cadre, while many more join and work as Drifters. The Drifters constitute the majority of Naxalite armed cadres (well over half the sample in this study) and reflect the changing face of the movement today. Very few of these men (and women) had suffered caste oppression — many were in fact from middle or upper castes. Most had land enough for subsistence or more. Yet, significantly, across socioeconomic strata, agriculture was not seen as a desirable livelihood. By far, the majority had met with the Naxalites in their early teens or before, a time when association with the ‘party’ was macho, prestigious and promised quick rewards. In an arena presenting no roadmaps for ideological or life alternatives, their decision to join (and mostly remain with) Naxalite groups was in many ways a quasi-occupational choice. The interest here is to deconstruct what the Drifters describe as their ideas, as well as in the light of their narratives, to revisit the paradigm within which the movement continues to be viewed, especially in sociological discourse. But first, it is necessary to take a quick look at the Committed and Opportunists.

The Committed All 40 armed cadres in my sample had engaged in violence/killed in the name of the Naxalite cause but only eight (a fifth of the sample) in fact killed for it, or because of it. These few men whose violent practice was driven by Naxal ideology are categorised as Committed. These cadres joined Naxalite parties in the 1980s or early 1990s, mostly in their late teens or early twenties. Most were dalit or of backward caste, and had experienced or closely witnessed poverty and class oppression. Their narratives carried ideological zeal, dedication to a larger cause that survived through, or perhaps sustained them through very hard

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 83

circumstances. These few men had willingly made personal sacrifices for the cause, endured sustained hardship, and if called for, would not hesitate to die for it.7 For the Committed, killing the ideological enemy was an act of faith absolved of guilt, narrated often as privilege in the line of duty (see Table 3.1).

Mostly Late Associates Of eight Committed cadres, only one had joined8 (MCC) in childhood. Jopan Manjhi of village Gangapur (under Katras Thane) in Dhanbad district of Jharkand started working for the MCC when he was 10 years old. Initially in awe of the ‘partywallahs’ who supported his family in a (land) dispute with relatives, he says he was later drawn to the ‘samajik’ (socialistic) vision of Marx and Lenin. Before he turned 15, he had left home for good. At the time of his capture and arrest in 1996 (when he was aged 21) he was a senior commander in charge of two districts in Jharkhand. In Dhanbad jail at the time of fieldwork, Manjhi was one of the rare men that the party was actively trying to get back into its fold.9 At one level, Jopan is deeply trusted, a ‘hardcore’ cadre of the party, an ‘insider’. The prolonged dehumanising existence in jail, as he sees it, has only made him a stronger cadre of the party. ‘I like to endure, I enjoy this struggle . . . I want to do it the hard way.’10 Yet at another level for early associates of Naxal parties such as Jopan, commitment to the Naxal cause is hardly chosen. Jopan is almost completely unexposed to the world outside the party, and shies away from facing, or dealing with, contradictions

7. In line with views that may see left extremists as quite different from mobsters in riots (Gupta 2002: 4615), the left extremists indeed factored in the ever imminent possibility of death into their work in a manner absent amongst rightwing extremists. However, it was only a small fraction of the total sample (those I call ‘Committed’) who went beyond a pragmatic acceptance of death as a work hazard, and willingly embraced the possibility of death as sacrifice for a larger cause — an indication perhaps of sweeping changes in the movement over the last decade. 8. ‘Joining’ the party is referred to as indicative of age of leaving behind family/ home/village for good to be part of a Naxalite dasta — as different from age of association, which is much lower for most in this sample. 9. Manjhi, an MCCI top rung leader said, was a rare cadre who, despite sustained interrogation and inhuman torture, had not ‘talked’ to the police. 10. Source: Personal interview, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, 2003.

MCCI

MCCI

Jailed

MCCI

CPI(ML) Liberation

7 Kalu Mahato

8 Shyamji

SC

OBC

Intermediate (failed)

Middle School

Intermediate

Middle School Graduate

Matriculate

Matriculate

Matriculate

Education

Note: All tables have been compiled by the author unless specified otherwise.

M Dalit

Armed Cadre M Kurmi

Ex-cadre/ Undisclosed Active Supporter

Jailed

6 Sadanand MCCI Mahato

Current

Area M Unavailable OBC Commander Chief M Dalit Unavailable Coordinator, Revolutionary Students League Zonal M Kurmi OBC Committee Member

Jailed

SC

SC

SC

Caste type

Armed Cadre M Dalit

M Dalit

M Dalit

Caste (as Sex narrated)

Jailed

Sub-zonal Commander Ex-cadre/ Area Active Commander Supporter

Jailed

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Naxalites/Committed: Socioeconomic Profile

3 Pranav PW Vidyarthi 4 Videsh PW Pal 5 Ramji MCCI

1 Jopan Manjhi 2 Anil

Alias

Table 3.1

39

45

33

30

40

30

57

27

Medium Agriculture (self-owned)/ Sakshartha Vahini

Medium

Medium

Married

Married

Married

Married

Marital status

Illiterate

Illiterate

Illiterate

Illiterate

Education of spouse

Occupation of spouse

Place of origin — village/ district

Peshahar (Block Manatu), Palamu Santi (Block Imamganj), Gaya Agriculture Garde, (self-owned) Palamu

Agriculture (self-owned) +Rice Mill+Shop Agriculture (self-owned)

Unavailable Gangapur, Dhanbad Low Agriculture Married Illiterate Agriculture Banke (self-owned + (self-owned Bajar, sharecropping) +share Gaya cropping) Low Single Ramnagar, Jehanabad Medium Married Illiterate Agriculture Makhra, (self-owned) Aurangabad Medium Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable Narkopi, Dhanbad

Medium

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

84 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 85

in the worldview or the practice of the MCC.11 Partly seeing it as treason of sorts, he also perhaps recognises that such deconstruction could tear away legitimacy from work that he had not just killed — and risked his life for — but outside which he knew no other.’12 He insists he trusts the MCC leadership and has full faith in the Naxalite agenda, based, he said, on reading of the history of politico-economic changes in ‘successful’ communist regimes of the world.13 Apart from Manjhi, all of those categorised as ‘Committed’ entered the party in their late teens to early 20s. They were mostly from similar socioeconomic background. Many were students when they met the party and worked with front organisations before they joined the armed dastas. For instance, Sadanand Mahato, of Manatu in Palamu district of Jharkhand, joined a MCC front with ‘friends’ (much the same as many Drifters) after his intermediate14 in 1988. Initially, he did not know he was associating with a banned

11. Manjhi was, for instance, reluctant to discuss allegations of MCCI’s mutually profitable working relations with regional political parties in power. ‘These decisions are taken by the central committee.’ He was defensive that the party not only took levy from landed people, businessmen, but even from contractors of development projects. ‘If the bourgeois administration can take PC (acronym for ‘percentage’ of development contract money), so will we . . . It is not as if we have done nothing for development . . . we give farmers seeds, we handle the sale of tendu leaves to their advantage . . . wherever we are active, it is those districts that have seen development.’ To a suggestion that the MCCI could clamp down on corruption instead of becoming part of it, he was silent for a while, before responding: ‘I have taken action against such people in the past. In Hazaribagh district, we cut off both hands of one man for taking percentage . . . But we have to often live in the homes of these big people . . . for protection . . . we can’t turn against them completely.’ 12. Jopan’s self-conscious knowledge of his own vulnerability is quite different from Hoffer’s true believer’s unwillingness to ‘qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause’ (Hoffer 1951: 84). 13. Jopan (much like his peers) had not been instructed about more recent politico-economic changes in countries that had inspired the MCC in the past: ‘Well, I don’t know much about all this . . . we were not informed about any changes in China . . .’ 14. Mahato was keen on graduation in Daltongunj college of Palamu but could not obtain admission on account of corrupt practices there. Like Mahato, most late associates (among the Committed and especially the Drifters) are educated at least till the intermediate, many up to graduation and ahead.

86 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

guerrilla party (he joined their armed cadres in 1995). ‘I wanted to give the competitive exams but didn’t have the money. These people said you are educated, yet you are doing nothing for the people . . . I had already read a lot about Marxwad (Marxism) in college . . . slowly we drifted away from the mainstream . . .’15 At the time of his arrest in 2001, Mahato was a senior ideologue of the party at the ‘All Jharkhand’ level. Most Committed cadres had matriculate, or higher degrees (Manjhi, too, was a matriculate by the time he left home for good to work with the party as a ‘full-timer’), and had seen worlds outside the party. Anil, of Banke Bajar village in Gaya district of Bihar, had little formal education but had been a Border Security Force (BSF) jawan posted in Bangladesh in 1971. These men found it easier to recognise and rationalise contradictions in their practice. Mahato had had differences with the party even before his capture. ‘There were things very wrong within the MCC . . . people who have destroyed the party . . . they are helping those who have oppressed us . . . in Khelari (MCCI bastion in Ranchi district), Lallan Singh who killed people by tying them to electricity poles . . . MCC tied up with him.’16 Unlike Jopan, Manjhi is not threatened by the changing context of his practice; in fact, he eagerly initiates discourse on the subject. When ‘meeting time’ in jail was over, he handed me a scrap of paper with a few words hastily scribbled on it ‘Marxwad kyo fail hua?’ (Why did Marxism fail?), followed by his home address. With higher expectations from the party, and a stricter code of conduct for themselves,17 late associates (or those who joined the party when relatively older) amongst the Committed are also more vulnerable to disillusionment. Unlike early associates like Manjhi who rarely leave the party, a significant number of Committed late associates eventually quit. Although at the time of fieldwork Mahato said he would return to the party, Anil had already surrendered in court, and was being tried for multiple cases of ‘murder and dacoity.’ While he still stood by the MCC, and was regarded in Banke Bajar (Gaya) as their man, he could not identify with them. ‘Things have changed within the party itself . . . the middle 15. All unaccredited quotes in this book are from personal interviews conducted by the author during the fieldwork. 16. Source: Personal interview, Banke Bajar, Gaya, 2003. 17. Late associates amongst the Committed are also less likely to help themselves to the party’s resources and power in the course of work. Partly perhaps because early associates often join the movement from poorer, more exploited backgrounds, the temptation to draw a degree of personal benefit is higher in them.

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 87

rung is very corrupt today . . .’ Shyamji, a compatriot of Mahato in this sample, had joined the (erstwhile) Indian People’s Front (IPF) in the early 1990s (when he was 27 years old), and went on to join the ranks of its armed cadres. But at the time of fieldwork — although he continued to provide strategic help to the occasional CPI (ML) Liberation dasta around his village (Garde, about 30 km. from Daltengunj city in Palamu district) — he had withdrawn from action. ‘People are now joining for immediate gain . . . and obviously the poor man will have more attraction to opportunities for corruption. I understand the dreams of the poor . . . I was only the third Harijan boy to get a matric degree in this area. But this is not for me any longer. I have always demanded honesty.’

Memories of Zamindari The Committed include four armed cadres from Jharkhand, and another four from Bihar. Though they had all killed for the ‘Naxalite cause’ with similar zeal, it is difficult to pin down the ‘enemy’ in narratives of armed cadres from Jharkhand: variously conceptualised as the big zamindar, the brutish police, the corrupt contractor, the partisan state, etc., among others. Even Jopan Manjhi, desperately poor at the time of joining the party — and a cadre of senior rank in the MCC — is silent when asked against whom his battle was directed. He says finally, ‘Our enemies are those who have black money, those who nurture big bellies — who else? Those who snatch away even one square meal from the poor . . . we are against them . . .’ On the other hand, narratives of cadres in Bihar — most of whom joined in the 1980s or early 1990s — carry vivid memories of zamindari oppression that override all others. Oppression, for them, is a deeply remembered personal experience of social and economic subjugation at the hands of the landed, dominant castes in the village, and the enemy is the zamindar, located firmly in an exploitative agrarian context. Anil, for instance, was 25 when he joined the MCC in the first flush of the movement in Banke Bajar in Gaya during the early 1980s. ‘I was the zamindar’s own man and therefore myself was not in the same situation . . . but he was vicious with others . . . Since I came to my senses, this is what I saw . . . if I am a poor man, you don’t allow me to reap my crops, you misbehave with my family, with female members . . . obviously I will join . . .’18 He vividly recalls the day he took part in his first ‘action’ against the archetypal, wicked landlord — a thrilling, heady experience, fraught

18. Source: Personal interview, Banke Bajar, Gaya, 2003.

88 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

with no unease whatsoever. ‘The landlord was overconfident that no one will be able to harm him . . . because his crime was that he had humiliated our women, we cut off his penis and put it in his own mouth . . . we left him like that . . .’19 Pranav Vidyarthi, with whom I met in Aurangabad jail — in possibly the most appalling conditions I had seen in various jails through my fieldwork — started work with Sangram Samiti, a front organisation of the CPI (ML) Party Unity (later a part of PW) soon after his matriculation in 1989. He joined their armed cadres after his ‘first murder’ of a member of the upper-caste army, the Bhoomi Sena. However, Pranav, who says he grew up in a ‘period of oppression’ in Jehanabad district of Bihar, experienced and narrated oppression differently from his peers in Jharkhand. Front organisations of Naxalite parties were particularly active through the 1980s and 1990s in parts of Bihar like Jehanabad, Gaya, Aurangabad, etc., and Pranav, for much of his childhood and a great part of his youth, was intimately associated with the struggle to acquire and redistribute gair mazurua (village commons) and ceiling surplus lands in and around his own village. Unlike cadres from Jharkhand, the years of bloodshed have had for him a core and local agenda, which he recounts fervently in the following terms: ‘Aisan gaon banavan jai/ Jahan sapno me julmi jamindar na rahe/ Sabke bharpet mele khana, aur rahe ke thekana/ Koi koi ke kuboliya bolen har na rahe/ Jahan sapno me julmi jamindar na rahe . . .’ (let us make a village/ where even in your dreams there is no cruel landlord/ where everyone has enough to eat, and a roof over his head/ where no man can talk down to another man/ where even in your dreams there is no cruel landlord).

Killing without Regret, Death as Martyrdom For Committed cadres like Anil or Vidyarthi, knifing the zamindar was not just an action leading to freedom from oppression, but also a direct and physical symbol of newly-won power and strength. For Mahato, killing was a privilege in the line of duty. He recalled entering the armed cadres ‘with gusto’. ‘I was so happy the first time I got a gun . . . I didn’t take long to learn. I asked questions . . . they said nothing has ever changed without guns. Many people died . . . we took it in our stride as part of the struggle.’ Even Jopan Manjhi, who had been much younger than Mahato when first handed a gun, reiterated, ‘I have never felt confused about what I am

19. Ibid.

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 89

doing, not even the first time I had to kill’. No stranger to violence even as a child,20 Jopan joined the party without too many complicated thoughts. Whatever few inhibitions he may have still had were dissolved in the long years of training that went into making him a ‘hardcore’, and by the time of fieldwork he had killed more times than he could remember. As he put it, ‘bahuto ko cheh inch chota kiya (we beheaded many)’.21 The Committed cannot be identified by willingness to die, as the imminent possibility of death is factored into the very nature of Naxalite work. Even the Opportunist negotiates with this probability as he negotiates what he wants out of the movement and its affected parties (the state, the poor, etc.). However, it is the Committed who go beyond pragmatic acceptance of death as a work hazard, and willingly embrace death as sacrifice for a larger cause, leading to a martyrdom which is not an otherworldly reward, but constitutes the elevation of an ordinary cadre into an idealised hero within the party.22 As Manjhi remarked, ‘I am 20. Normalisation of violence for respondents (even if as witness to, or as object of violence — as for less privileged cadres such as Jopan) will be discussed in more detail ahead. 21. Manjhi did not speak to this study for several initial visits till he had verified for himself (mainly through jail staff he trusted) my background and motives. 22. ‘Rewards’ of martyrdom for the Naxalite is, as such, quite different from those promised to the suicide bomber owing allegiance to some Islamic extremist groups, for instance, for whom the death of the physical body is paradoxically sought to be rewarded by promise of ‘this-worldly rewards’ such as houris (commonly believed to be beautiful women), jannat or the pleasures of heaven, etc. (See Engineer [2010] for an interesting perspective on the true Koranic meaning of ‘hur’: morally pure men and women who will be companions of those who enter paradise [jannah]. Engineer [ibid.], whose take is that the popular belief on ‘houris’ is used by vested interests to recruit young people to die in the ‘cause of Islam’, quotes from the Qur’an [56: 22–26] to clarify how the discourse on ‘hur’ [houris in popular parlance] has, in fact, no reference to sex or lust, but rather richness of soul and moral purity [ibid.].) For the Naxalites (those I call Committed), martyrdom is linked to the hope of a just world, yet ‘immortality’ is sought, if at all, in the symbolic, more nebulous, and somewhat paradoxical terms of retrospective honour and recognition in the world left behind. Manjhi’s willingness or ‘choice’ to die can, nevertheless, hardly be understood in terms that would attempt to explain even martyrdom or political suicide — the literal end of an actor and of his, or her, very capacity for agency — by ascribing needs and benefits that fit the logic of instrumental rationality. As Roxanne L. Euben points out, if rational behavior is defined in terms of acting to achieve a desired end, and if fundamentalists conceive of martyrdom as the ‘price’ for salvation, even self-sacrifice can be construed as an

90 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

a highly respected cadre. If something happens to me, they will make me a martyr.’23

The Opportunists Nine Naxalite armed cadres — about one-fourth of the sample — are categorised as ‘Opportunists’. Mostly from well-off upper- or middle-caste households, these men join late (mostly mid-to-late 20s, some even in midlife)24 and associate with Naxal parties with clearly formulated personal agendas.25 Most are with the party for the short term, and are likely to defect or betray. Of his compatriots, the Opportunist is least likely to die for the movement (see Table 3.2).

Not Victims of Oppression None of the Opportunists had suffered social or economic oppression. Out of 9 armed cadres, 7 were from well-off upper- or middle-caste households. Most had prior familiarity with use of arms, and physical violence expression of rational, self-interested behavior (Euben 2002a: 7). Euben herself, in a larger nuanced discussion on ‘killing and dying for politics’, describes ‘jihad’ as: ‘neither simply a blind and bloody-minded scrabble for temporal power nor solely a door through which to pass into the hereafter. Instead it is a form of political action in which . . . the pursuit of immortality is inextricably linked to a profoundly this-worldly endeavor — the founding of a just community on earth’ (Euben 2002b: 367). 23. In this context, read Eric Hoffer (1951) on dying and killing as ceremonial performance, or make-believe, particularly indispensable to mask the grim reality of death for actors in the case of armies. Hoffer writes that to our real, naked selves, there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for (ibid.: 65–67); When the individual (cadre) faces torture or annihilation, his only source of strength is not in being himself, but part of something mighty, glorious and indestructible. ‘Faith here is primarily a process of identification; the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal. Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one’s religion, nation, race, party or family — what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?’ (ibid.: 63). 24. There are no ‘early associates’ amongst the Opportunists. 25. Even Committed cadres and Drifters — barring few exceptions — often leverage the party to improve their family’s standard of living, or secure what they believe is rightfully theirs. For Opportunists, however, association with Naxalite parties is an informed choice based specifically on the perceived opportunity to make big money.

MCCI

6 Dileepji

MCCI

9 Dinesh Yadav PW

8 Pappu

7 Nathu Mahato MCCI

Jailed

Current

Ex-cadre/ Active Supporter Ex-cadre

Ex-cadre/ Expelled

MCCI

5 Mohan

MCCI

Jailed

3 Baiju

4 Keshwar Singh MCCI

Jailed

Ex-cadre/ Expelled Ex-cadre/ Active Supporter

MCCI

Deputy Area Commander Zonal Committee Member

OBC

OBC

M Yadav

M Yadav

M Rajput

Middle School

Primary School

Matriculate (failed)

Matriculate

Matriculate

Matriculate

Education

OBC

Middle School

Middle School General Matriculate

OBC

OBC

M Kumhar OBC

M Yadav

Armed Cadre M Kurmi

Platoon Commander

Area Commander

Associate

Armed Cadre M Kurmi

SC

SC

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

Zonal M Dalit Committee Member Armed Cadre M Dalit

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Naxalites/Opportunists: Socioeconomic Profile

2 Sailendra Ram MCCI

1 Vijay Singh

Alias

Table 3.2:

34

23

27

34

30

68

31

29

34

High

High

Medium

High

Medium

High

Medium

High

Low

Married Illiterate

Married Illiterate

Police Informer

Married Illiterate

Married Primary School Single

RJD Leader Married Illiterate

Police Informer

Navi Nagar, Aurangabad Soleh, Daltonganj 24 Parganas

Place of origin — village/ district

Agriculture Makan, (self-owned) Giridih Lalgadh, Palamu Agriculture Panki, (self-owned) Palamu

Agriculture Baghaura, (self-owned/ Aurangabad supervises) Housewife Rakshi (Block Chandova), Latehar Housewife Shanti, Latehar

Agriculture (self-owned +labour) Agriculture (self-owned) Housewife

Marital Education of Occupation status spouse of spouse

Agriculture Married Standard 9 (self-owned) Police Married Literate Informer/ Naxal Supporter (dual roles) Married Illiterate

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 91

92 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

as a legitimate means to secure personal goals.26 For these men, refuge from the law is often an important incentive to join. Twenty-three year old Pappu, for instance, is from an influential Rajput family in Lalgadh, Palamu. They own more than 35 acres of land, and have their own bandhua (bonded) labour to work on it.27 Pappu left his village in the year 2000 to escape the police dragnet after he tried to murder the killer of his elder brother. His family made a lot of its money from thekedari (government-contracted work), and Pappu says his elder brother himself had had to commit five or six murders to keep such contracts coming. He joined MCC the same year, after a few months in a government job secured for him by his father with a `35,000 donation.28 After two years as an ordinary cadre of the MCC, he was made a deputy commander and, at the time of fieldwork, he had just been promoted to the rank of area commander, with a transfer to Chhattisgarh. Pappu evinced dissatisfaction with his ‘job profile’, as up to the time of fieldwork he had not been able to make more than a couple of hundreds every month on the side. However, he said he would stay with the party — he was by then wanted by the police in a few more cases (other than his first murder) and besides, had hopes of still making money with the party in times to come.

Personal Connections Opportunists often rely on family connections or other ‘influence’ to preclude them from the Naxalite parties’ otherwise stringent rules of justice and fair play.

26. Mohan, an ex-MCC cadre (expelled on grounds of corruption) was quite amused when I tried finding out more about the psycho-social aspects of his acclimatisation to arms and violence after joining the armed cadres. ‘In kalyug (ongoing — morally most depraved — state of civilisation in Hindu mythology), one already knows how to operate a gun.’ Opportunists like Nathu Mahato (also a surrendered MCC cadre and police informer) say they were ‘horrified’ and ‘pained’ by the violence in the party. ‘Twelve Ma-le men were lined up (in Vishnugarh, Hazaribagh district) and shot in the stomach . . . I could not eat for two days.’ In a few minutes, his narrative veered however to his own wish to ‘finish off’ a particularly troublesome enemy — an MCC commander — with a knife, not a gun. 27. Ironically, putting an end to bandhua or bonded labour has, from the outset, been on top of the Naxalite agenda in Bihar and Jharkhand. 28. He left the job as they refused to grant him leave for the festival of Holi.

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 93

Baiju, for instance, was introduced to this researcher as an ‘influential’ ex-MCC cadre by a police inspector in Giridih district of Jharkhand. The inspector, himself unashamedly corrupt, claimed to have been instrumental in Baiju’s surrender to the Jharkhand police and political apparatus in the then chief minister Babulal Marandi’s much publicised amnesty programme in 2001. Baiju’s own version (narrated later in more comfortable circumstances) was quite different. ‘I am now actually more useful to the party . . . I was a spy for the Topchachi attack . . .29 If they (the party) call me on a date30 even now, I have to go. I have in fact just returned from organising the annual wedding ceremony31 of the party . . .’ On the one hand, then, retaining a working relationship with the MCC, Baiju poses at the same time as a police informer. ‘If I don’t report to them, they will put more cases against me . . . But I have never told them anything really big . . . the MCC has killed people suspected of telling on them several times’. Thirty-one years old at the time of fieldwork, Baiju is, nevertheless, quite confident that ‘family connections’ will keep him safe.32 The truth is that my father-in-law is now a senior man in the special committee. No one will harm me in any way. I anyway want to get out of all this but I have to have enough money for that. I tell my wife, see some people have 100–200 acres of land, what do we have? I take care of her . . . recently I gave her 2.5 lakh (a quarter of a million) from the

29. In November 2001, 13 policemen were killed by the (then) MCC in a daring attack on a police picket in Topchachi (Giridih district of Jharkhand). 30. Both MCCI and PW work on the basis of a carefully organised system of networking and, therefore, accountability, which requires cadre in-charge of specific areas to report regularly to their immediate superior. These meetings are at prearranged time and location, and are colloquially referred to by cadres as ‘dates’. 31. Every year, sometime in April or May, a few boys and girls in the MCC (now part of CPI [Maoist]) are married off to each other. Baiju said the affair cost them close to a million rupees in 2003. 32. Baiju began his ‘career’ with Naxal groups with the help of these connections. At age 18, he joined ‘Avinashda’, an IPF — erstwhile CPI (ML) Liberation — leader, to ‘take revenge’ against the MCC for‘humiliating’ his father (a government servant) in a land dispute. However, when Avinashda himself fell out with IPF and joined the MCC, Baiju did not hesitate to move with him. According to Baiju, Avinashda was, at the time of fieldwork, a member of MCCI’s Bihar–Bengal–Jharkhand SAC.

94 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence committee money I had with me . . . Ever since our son was born, I anyway wanted an easier life. Some of my saathis (mates) came to warn me. I told them who is leaving you . . . I will stay with the party as an open front. When I have invested so many years, why not a few more. Nageshwarda (a senior MCC cadre) has also offered me 10 lakh (one million) from the committee fund. I may start a business with it.

Stepping Stone to Political Power/Career While (documented) Naxalite ideological goals are nowhere on the agenda of the Opportunists, they often use the party to drive local power equations to their advantage. As Baiju said: Sometimes you have to demonstrate your power in other ways . . . like in May ’95 thirteen people were killed by us in Jhumma gaon in Hazaribagh. They were not really zamindars but were of a different point of view from us. This man whom we targeted was a Bhumihar . . . he actually did not have much land. The problem was that in this village, his family had aligned the lower castes with them . . . forwards and backwards had joined hands . . . so with him, his ‘body guards’ also died. See, the bullet cannot discriminate. This family had arms and was not with us. We had to finish them. One massacre is enough . . . till 50 kilometres away, the terror is there.

While those like Pappu and Baiju view the MCC as a goldfield with potential access to big money, there are others who see the party as a quick route to mainstream politics. Several in this category are from the Yadav caste, and make the most out of active working connections between the party and mainstream political parties like the RJD with a strong Yadav base. Some of these men also eventually leave the Naxalites to join parties like the RJD as office bearers. Dileepji (of Yadav caste), for instance, held high positions in the MCC, such as platoon commander in Giridih district, and later in Koderma. In a ‘bright career’ with the MCC spanning several years, he also made a lot of money and managed to buy property in both Khelari (where this study met with him) and in Ranchi city. When the going got too hot with a heavy police raid on his residence in 2001, he joined the RJD as their Prakhand Adhyaksh (local head). He said the MCC had murdered countless people who had tried to leave them but wouldn’t harm him as he continued to be ‘useful’. While it is the MCC–RJD connections that are more infamous, links with political parties are not restricted only to them. Dinesh Yadav of PW, a much-wanted zonal commander captured by the Jharkhand police

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 95

in 1999 and housed as a high-security prisoner in Ranchi jail at the time of fieldwork, talked to this study in some detail about the PW’s high principles versus the corruption and organisational chaos in the MCC. Over time, however, he revealed that he himself now had several options open to him, including a mainstream political career, details of which he said he would discuss more frankly when released — which he expected to be soon.

The Drifters Well over half the total sample (23 of 40) can be seen as Drifters — men and women whose narratives described joining a Naxalite party as an ‘occupational choice’ of sorts, taken in the absence of more attractive work-life options. For most, the process involved little planning, evaluation or conscious decision, most in fact having ‘drifted’ from attending party meetings ‘along with everyone else’ to ‘supporting’ the party, to one day enrolling in its armed cadres. A majority had used the party’s clout to resolve land and other petty disputes (with relatives/peers/neighbours) following which they got more involved. Yet these foot-soldiers must by no means be viewed as transient participants of the movement. Once in, Drifters are loyal to the party, willingly kill for it and may even die on the job. But unlike the Committed who are here because they believe in what they are doing, Drifters stay because they believe there is nowhere significantly better to go. In this section we also look at narratives of armed cadres Sailendra Ram, Vijay Singh and Dileep Yadav. While they are termed as Opportunists in the current context (see Table 3.2 for their profiles), their narratives are included here to understand the context that enables the seemingly ‘natural progression’ of some who join as (late associate) Drifters into the ranks of Opportunists, who then exploit without a qualm a cause once close to their own lives (see Table 3.3). So who really are these Drifters? If it is not the ideological cause they are killing for, what is it that really drives them to a life of unending violence and uncertainty? What is it in this ‘work’ that makes it worth their while?

Many Early Associates, Few Oppressed Unlike the Committed, almost half of the Drifters joined in early childhood. As many as 11 of the 23 armed cadres categorised as Drifters joined Naxal parties between the ages of 10 and 16. Like Jopan Manjhi, most

MCCI

MCCI

MCCI

6 Chandra

7 Romeshji

8 Siyaram Manjhi

MCCI

12 Raghunandan PW Yadav

11 Sunilji

9 Manilal MCCI Mahato 10 Kumar Singh MCCI

MCCI

5 Suraj Yadav

Jailed

Current

Ex-cadre/ Active Supporter Ex-cadre/ Expelled Current

Current

Jailed

Jailed

Armed Cadre

M Yadav

Armed M Kurmi Cadre Sub-zonal M Rajput Commander Undisclosed M Rajput

Undisclosed M Dalit

Sub-zonal M Oraon Commander

Armed M Yadav Cadre Undisclosed M Ghatwar

M Dalit

M Kahar

F Dalit

F Santhali

Caste (as Sex narrated)

Armed Cadre Area Commander State Youth Committee Member Ex-cadre/ Armed Active Cadre Supporter

MCCI (Nari On Bail Mukti Sangh) MCCI (Nari Current Mukti Sangh) PW Current

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Naxalites/Drifters: Socioeconomic Profile

4 Vilas Paswan MCCI

3 Suresh

2 Isha

1 Navjyoti

Alias

Table 3.3:

OBC

Matriculate

Graduate

Matriculate

General General

Illiterate

Graduate

Intermediate

Postgraduate +LLB Matriculate

Graduate

Intermediate — Ongoing Graduate

Literate

Education

OBC

SC

Adivasi

OBC

OBC

SC

OBC

SC

Adivasi

Caste type

35

25

43

33

36

47

28

36

27

25

18

21

Married

Married

Married

Agriculture/ Single Sakshartha Vahini

Single

Single

Single

Marital status

Medium

High

High

Low

Married

Single

Agriculture Married (self-owned) Married

Medium Agriculture Married (self-owned)

Medium

Medium

High

High

High

Medium

Low

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation Occupation of spouse

Navada, Giridih Sunduru, Lohardagga Chattarpur, Palamu

Illiterate

Middle school

Illiterate

Agriculture Naro, (self-owned) Dhanbad Housewife Fursuri, Lohardagga Madanpur, Aurangabad Agriculture Sahobigha, (self-owned) Jehanabad

Bhurwa (Block Patan), Palamu Literate Housewife Baghaura, Aurangabad Illiterate Agriculture Maniadi, (self-owned) Dhanbad Matriculate Agriculture Lohardagga (fail) (self-owned + labour) Matriculate Agriculture Naro, (self-owned) Dhanbad

Education of spouse

Place of origin — village/ district

96 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Current

MCCI

20 Turi

MCCI

MCCI

22 Nagarjun

23 Pandeyji

21 Chander RanaMCCI

Jailed

MCCI

19 Harihar Paswan

Armed Cadre

M Dalit

SC

Armed M Unavailable OBC Cadre Deputy M Unavailable Unavailable Area Commander Armed M Dalit SC Cadre

General

General

General

Armed Cadre Ex-cadre Sub-zonal Area in Charge

Jailed

M Bhumihar

M Dalit General

SC

Ex-cadre/ Armed M Unavailable Adivasi expelled Cadre On Bail Area M Unavailable Adivasi Commander

Jailed

18 Mohan Lohar MCCI

MCCI

17 Manishji

MCCI

15 Nilesh

On Bail

PW

14 Brijesh

Area M Rajput Commander Current Area M Rajput Commander Ex-cadre/ Armed M Rajput Active Cadre Supporter

Current

16 Piyush Nath MCCI

MCCI

13 Rinku

Middle school Postgraduate + PGD (Business Mgmt and IT)

Matriculate (failed)

Unavailable

Illiterate

Middle School

Unavailable

Standard 9

Middle School Middle School Intermediate

28

35

35

27

45

25

22

35

21

17

16 Single

Single

Mahuadabr, Latehar Mahuadabr, Latehar Ranka, Palamu

Married

Single

Medium Police Informer

Medium

Medium

Married

Married

Married

Medium Unemployed Married

Medium

Low

Agriculture Single (self-owned)/ BDO contracts Medium Agriculture Married Illiterate Housewife Sheetalpur, (self-owned) Dhanbad Medium Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable Hazaribagh

High

Medium

Medium

Dhammi Simmi (Block Navi Nagar), Aurangabad Illiterate Agriculture Rafiganj, (self-owned Aurangabad +share cropping) Unavailable Unavailable Pirtand, Giridih Illiterate Agriculture Chunukdia (self-owned) (Block Tundi), Dhanbad Illiterate Agriculture Lesliganj, (self-owned) Palamu Middle Housewife Ara (Block School Panki), Palamu

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 97

98 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

went on to become ‘full-timers’, or ‘hardcore’ cadre of the party. Given that all but one (Jopan Manjhi) of the Committed cadres in this sample were ‘later associates’, and that the Opportunists include no ‘early associates’, it would seem that most of those who join Naxalite parties early, in fact, associate as Drifters. Of these 11, only two — both from Bihar — had memories of zamindari/ caste oppression. Both of these two ‘early Drifters’, who joined to escape or avenge social injustice, killed for the party willingly, but not with any larger cause in mind. Mohan Lohar, for instance, joined the MCC when he was 14 (in 1992), studying in the local school in village Dhammi Simmi in Navi Nagar, Aurangabad district. He rarely attended class though. ‘Hamko padhai me mann nahi lagta tha . . . Rajput ladke waha bandook lekar aata tha . . . ham ka kare? Apna lathe lekar jaye ka? (I had lost interest in studying . . . the Rajput boys used to bring their guns to the school. What should I have taken — my grazing stick?)’. Munna (in Aurangabad jail at the time of fieldwork) asked angrily what good all this ‘writing’ would do. ‘People like us are born to suffer and then die . . . the conditions inside my cell are so bad that someone like you would not be able to stand for a minute there . . . and people like you call us Naxalites?’33 He said he would go back to the party once freed. ‘My future is the same Naxalbari, what else? A poor man who has also not studied . . . do you think he can think carefully about what he is fighting for and why . . . he just takes the first offer that comes his way to fight the system’. Harihar Paswan, another jail inmate from Aurangabad district, says he was 12 years old when he ‘ran away’ with the ‘party’ way back in the 1970s. Paswan recalls that he hated the indignity of being forced to work in people’s homes. ‘I would try to get some work outside, and earn enough money to dress well . . . they could not tolerate this and beat me up. I retaliated as strongly . . .’ Paswan says that when he returns to the (now) MCCI, he will first avenge himself on the policemen who captured him and tortured him in custody. ‘Jo hamko peeta hai, barvaad kiya hai, uska to ham swagat nahi na karenge mithai se (those who have beaten me, destroyed me, I am obviously not going to greet them with sweets)’. Unlike Jopan Manjhi who also joined early, but stays with the movement in the belief that he contributes to a worthwhile cause, early Drifters like Mohan Lohar and Harihar Paswan— though hardcore cadre, 33. Most left extremists met with preferred the term ‘krantikari’ or revolutionary to ‘Naxalite’ which carried negative connotations, associated perhaps with (derogatory) upper-caste and police usage.

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and unlikely to leave the movement — profess a loyalty that is in part driven by early association and stringent training, but mainly a perceived closure of options. While the economically and socially disadvantaged amongst early Drifters share, for instance, the anger of Committed early associates like Jopan against a blatantly unfair system, they do not share his drive and commitment to the Naxalite agenda of change. Narratives of early associates from an oppressed background are, in fact, often riddled by perception of closure, and despair.

Most Early Drifters from ‘Prosperous Households’ The remaining nine early Drifters in my sample — including two women cadre of the MCC — joined Naxalite parties in different districts of Jharkhand between the mid-1990s to just after the turn of the century. Seven are, by their own account, from ‘prosperous households’. Four are upper castes (Rajputs). So who are these ‘prosperous’ Drifters? Why are children from erstwhile ‘enemy’ families joining Naxalite parties? Manishji,34 deputy commander of an MCCI dasta35 I met with in the early hours of the morning in Kotila village (Hariharganj block, Palamu district) left home (in Hazaribagh district) for good in 1995. He recalls that he was 14 years old at the time and had had ‘no problems of his own’. Like most other early associates I met, Manish said he was just influenced by ‘partywallahs who used to come and go’, and joined to help his ‘poorer brothers’. Palamu (where I met Manish) was even till the early 1990s fertile ground for the Naxalite struggle for land redistribution. The region by the time of fieldwork, however — post several bloody wars between the armies of the landed classes36 and the Naxalites — did not have very many large landowners left. In these circumstances — more so, given the state crackdown on ‘liberated areas’ following the formation of Jharkhand — the ‘Naxalite struggle’ is since then essentially a battle against the police. Even amongst Drifters then, cadres who joined the movement in Jharkhand 34. Naxalite commanders are commonly referred to with the prefix ‘ji’ attached (to original/pseudonym) as a mark of respect. This practice is adhered to both within the party itself as well as by local communities within which they work. 35. The dasta had stopped in Kotila, an MCCI stronghold, to ‘attend’ a wedding feast to which they had been ‘invited’ (through a network of informers). It was around 3 a.m. in the morning when we met. 36. The Sunlight Sena in Palamu for instance was created primarily by Muslim landlords to counter the Naxalites.

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conceptualised the ‘enemy’ differently from (generally older) recruits from Bihar. Manish, like most other ‘early associates’ to Naxal parties in Jharkhand (including, as discussed earlier, Committed cadres like Jopan Manjhi), was at a loss to describe the party’s agenda or rationalise his allegiance to killing for it in contemporary times. He said, for instance, that the party’s enemies were zamindars, but could not explain what ‘work’ the party then did in Kotila, an MCCI stronghold — and where his dasta was based then — a village that very obviously had none.37 Rinkuji on the other hand joined the (then) MCC from one such zamindar family. Sixteen years old at the time of fieldwork, he was already ‘area commander’ of a cluster of villages in Latehar district of Jharkhand. His family, of Mahuadabr village in Latehar, had a large pucca house, 30 acres of land and rare amenities like a self-owned well. His father had a permanent job as a teacher in the city, and his three brothers and one sister were all attending school. They were Rajputs, the dominant caste in the village. Rinku’s relatives in the village said he left with the dasta because ‘for young boys here, there was nothing else to do’. Another MCCI cadre said Rinku had taken the party’s help to get someone beaten up, and subsequently joined them. He added that Rinku stuck on because he enjoyed the power and the privileges that came with the (MCCI) job. Rinku’s younger brother — by default now the jaunty local dada of the village — said he joined the party shaukiya (of his own wish) because he enjoyed being with them. Though his immediate family did not live in Mahuadabr anymore, Rinku came into the village to meet this researcher late one night.38 His own version of events that led him to join the MCC was as follows: 37. Sunilji, his commander, added quickly that there were some zamindars in nearby villages. 38. Eventually, Rinku agreed to take me with him to meet his sub-zonal commander/other members of his dasta (subject to the sub-zonal’s permission). His Mausi (mother’s sister) warned me to be up at the crack of dawn if I wanted to leave with him as he wouldn’t wait. I was intrigued to find that this slip of a boy, whom I was having a hard time registering as an area commander of the MCC, slept lightly, and was up and ready to leave before the first light of day. Rinku was not chivalrous. He didn’t seem to make too many concessions for my slower pace (though, maybe, in fact he did), and didn’t offer me a helping hand up the hilly terrain. He was brusque and used fairly crude language in his interactions with his peers and local people. When he stopped at a local chai (tea) shop, neither did he offer to pay, nor did the storeowner ask for money.

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 101 I studied in the village school here till seventh class. Then I joined the party . . . I was 12 years old then. They used to come to the village to hold meetings . . . they would call us and talk about Chandrashekhar Azad, Khudiram Bose, Marx, Lenin . . . they said let’s fight for the poor, make a new world order . . . I had no second thoughts. What could be better than a krantikari? Agriculture was not for me . . . and what good is it to be a teacher or a doctor?39

Rinku’s home village is, in many ways, prototypical of the kind of life conditions within which young people from even ostensibly ‘prosperous’ families join ultra-left parties today. A remote village of barely 35 households set in the midst of mountainous, heavily forested terrain, Mahuadabar is an easy stopover for ultra-left dastas. The majority here are Dalits — about 25 households. The rest include a few Rajput families — all breakaway units from the same household — and tribal households (mainly Oraons and Kharwars). Given that life for its inhabitants is hard — with no electricity, limited water resources, no public healthcare, no secondary or high school — predictably, it’s also fertile recruitment ground for Naxal parties. An extended stay here also provided me with an inside view of the impoverishment of even landed families in Jharkhand, changes that account in good part for the rising number of so-called ‘forwards’ amongst Naxal cadres. The family I lived with for several days in Mahuadabr, for instance, was of Rajput caste, descendants of Narhar Singh, who ruled a large province in Palamu. The 1857 revolt saw them lose their kingship in lieu of five villages, and post-independence, they were left with about 150 acres of land, of which 50 acres again was lost to erstwhile raiyats or tenant farmers. At the time of fieldwork, Chandrahar Singh (name changed), one of four grandsons of the former king — and grandfather of PW cadre Brijesh40 whom this researcher met with later — had 25 acres of that land.

39. Source: Personal interview, Mahuadabr, Latehar, Jharkhand, 2003. 40. After joining the PW, Brijesh (according to his family) had worked in Latehar, Gumla and Lohardagga districts. When I met him, he was reluctant to divulge much about his current territory, but said that he was a troubleshooter of sorts and moved rapidly from assignment to assignment. Though I do not know the logistics of how my hostess actually communicated with her son (or for that matter if I only chanced to meet Brijesh), I was to realise on various occasions that far left parties command a phenomenal intelligence network in these regions.

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The Singh household was, however no better off for that historical lineage, nor even for being in possession of 25 acres of land — no small ownership in a region where most people survive on a fraction or less of that. After an unfriendly house call from partywalas41 in the mid-1990s, they increased the rate for majdoori (wage labour) on their fields. From a daily wage of two kilos of dhan (paddy) plus two meals, the rate was increased to three kilos of rice plus two meals. Singh admitted that the sarkari (official) rate was `64 a day, but said he simply did not have the resources to pay more. As I saw for myself in the course of my extended stay with them, the family was finding it difficult to make ends meet. Low rainfall and poor alternate irrigation facilities42 compounded by inability to pay for wage labour had, over the years, reduced most of their fields to wastelands. The rice they procured from their rain-fed fields — even in a good season — barely lasted a few months, and dwindling income had taken its toll on basic nutrition and healthcare, among other things.43 In these circumstances, Brijesh’s family was in many ways better off after he joined the PW. Most definitively, they had benefited financially from his new connections. His elder brother had recently managed to set up a motor (bikes) repair and spare parts shop in a neighbouring town. Their sister could be married off a year before with an adequate dowry. His mother said they had been facing penury and humiliation at every front — including disputes with relatives — and Brijesh’s decision changed everyone’s stance towards them.44 41. Term locally used to refer to the MCCI or PW. 42. Due to a small dam in the village, the water situation here is, in fact, better than in many neighbouring areas. Chandrahar Singh told me that after suffering from drought for years, they took the initiative to call in engineers at their own cost in the mid-1960s. The dam was completed in 1984. Several tribal groups, however, lost land in the process, for which they were compensated only in part by the government. 43. At the time of fieldwork, PW cadre Brijesh’s mother and her two youngest sons (aged 10 and 11) had been suffering from low-grade fever for many months. Every other month, they bought small doses of medicines for malaria (as advised) from the local public health center, a government facility that is supposed to provide free medical care. The family was aware that they needed better treatment, but could not afford the trip to Daltongunj, the nearest city. 44. She pointed out that it was no great life that he had left for. On several occasions, especially mealtimes, she remembered that her son could be roaming hungry. ‘He has a hard life . . . who is giving these boys good food to eat? All they get are stale leftovers from every house . . .’

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Rinku’s or Brijesh’s involvement with the MCCI, then, provide indicators of the rapidly changing profile of the Naxalite armed cadres in recent years, which has seen an influx of young people from landed, relatively well-to-do and even upper-caste families into these parties — families that, ironically, would not so long ago have been at the receiving end of the wrath of the Naxalites. In the late 1980s, two of Brijesh’s own uncles for instance were tortured and brutally hacked to death by the Party Unity (PU) in full sight of immediate family members. But in current circumstances, Brijesh’s grandfather does not think it strange that his own grandson should join those who were his family’s bitter opponents not so long ago. He sees it as only natural that young boys get attracted to the Naxalite parties that frequent these remote villages. Unlike Brijesh’s mother, he also believes that, in the final take, his grandson joined the PW because it gave him a stature that he found exciting at his age. ‘The school here is only till the eighth,45 and the quality of education is very poor . . . the boys have nothing else to do . . . naturally, they get excited by the aavo-bhaav (demeanour) of the Naxalites.’46 If early Drifters like Harihar Paswan and Mohan Lohar joined Naxal parties in a bid to escape a life of extreme deprivation and indignity, Manish by his own account with no such immediate troubles then, seemed to have joined almost unthinkingly, eager to escape the rut and excited at the prospect of the unknown. Even if from landed, relatively betteroff families, Rinku or Brijesh also did not see a future for themselves in their current circumstances. Joining the MCC or the PW, on the other hand, brought instant rewards, both social and economic.47 Those who joined Naxalite parties from higher socioeconomic status families also seemed to have a quicker — and easier — growth trajectory within the organisation. Rinku said new recruits with his background could, for

45. While there is a school in the neighbouring village till the 10th grade, it caters only to children from adivasi families. 46. Brijesh himself, when this study finally met him, was guarded and sharply questioning of this researcher’s motives. He stayed only the night, and left before daylight the next morning, refusing to take me with him. He said he was working on a special mission and the timing of my visit was not appropriate. (As I was to find out later, Brijesh was part of a team that triggered a landmine blast in the nearby Barasan forest area that afternoon.) 47. The decision to join the ranks of Naxal parties here was, again, often triggered (as for most armed cadres met with by this researcher) by petty family/ peer disputes in which they had sought the party’s help.

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instance, be assigned a position in the party hierarchy — to begin with generally that of deputy area commander — after as little as two years of training. At time of fieldwork, both Rinku and Brijesh were also assigned duties in local squads that operated in a cluster of villages in Latehar itself, allowing them many more opportunities to use their new found power on home ground. For those like Manish, Rinku, or Brijesh, then, life on the run with the Naxalites does, in more ways than not, seem to actually live up to the promise of immediate power and adventure. Rinku and Brijesh — from a relatively pampered upbringing — did find the transition from life as village bully to life as guerrilla difficult. Rinku admitted I was a little anxious after I joined . . . scared of the police . . . but they explained everything to me. I still wasn’t very happy the first few months . . . it was hard and no party gives you arms-training initially . . . that was later.

Nevertheless, becoming area commander after about four years with the MCCI, he doesn’t think he’s got a raw deal. ‘We communists get a lot of respect from the people . . . anyway, it’s not as if all of us will get jobs now if we leave the party . . .’ Though the agenda of larger good or change is, if at all, couched in rhetorical terms for them, most early Drifters, in fact, seem to stay on with the party long after the first flush of life-change has faded and lost its charm. Even the not so distant possibility of death is discounted or romanticised. As Manish left Kotila gaon to continue his trek through several kilometres more of rough terrain — to ensure that the dasta was out of the village before dawn — his parting words were an upbeat ‘jindagi rahi, to fir milenge (see you again, if I am alive)!’ Sixteen-year old Rinku, too, is flippantly dismissive that he may be killed. He says breezily: If we die, what is the problem? But if we leave the party, the police will certainly hold us under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) . . . so what dreams, my dreams have been fulfilled . . . I will never bow my head to the police . . . I would prefer to die in an encounter.

Women Drifters The Drifters in my sample include two women — both early associates of the party who went on to become ‘hardcore’ armed cadres of the MCC in Jharkhand.

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Contrary to this researcher’s assumptions (based on initial interviews with regional police force, news reports, etc.) that women who joined Naxalite dastas were victims of social oppression, exploitation, even desertion, the narratives of MCCI cadre Navjyoti (name changed) and Isha defied simplistic interpretation. Neither Navjyoti nor Isha (met with in different districts of Jharkhand) had been victims of zamindari or caste oppression, nor had they suffered atrocities at home. While they were far from well-off, it was not poverty that led them to the MCC either. In fact, there seemed fundamentally more in common than different between the contexts that drove Rinku, or Brijesh to kill for Naxal parties, and these girls. One of the two women — Navjyoti — had been ‘captured’ by the Jharkhand police on charges of being a key MCC operative in the 2001 attack on Topchachi police picket (13 policemen were killed here in one of the most audacious attacks on Jharkhand police forces). This researcher met with her a year later in Navada, a tribal (Santhali) hamlet in the western Tundi ravines bordering Dhanbad and Giridih districts of Jharkhand,48 where she had spent her childhood, and where she met with the MCC. Out on bail only after NHRC intervened against the inhuman torture she underwent in police custody,49 Navjyoti was hostile and denied any knowledge of the ‘MCC’.50 Over a length of time, however, she did speak to me — not about the party but about herself, her life experiences, and aspirations — providing some brief glimpses into the kind of forces that possibly drew 48. This first meeting with her at her home (I met her again in Dhanbad city, where she had come to attend the hearing of her case) was also my first meeting with a woman cadre of Naxalite groups. 49. Following prolonged third degree torture in police custody, Navjyoti developed, among others, a fist-deep wound in her back that later turned life-threatening. Her condition was recognised as serious only after maggots appeared in the wound. 50. I met Navjyoti in my first leg of fieldwork in Jharkhand, where I made several costly methodological errors, including travelling from Dhanbad city to Tundi district in a hired car (I subsequently used only unobtrusive, local modes of transport, mainly state transport buses). As it was, Navjyoti had received prior information about my ‘movements’ and was completely on guard by the time I reached her home. Tensely poised, surrounded by those she trusted, she shot a volley of questions at me with an authority that belied her age, relaxing only when certain (and obviously surprised) that I had arrived alone and carried no arms, cameras or recorders.

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her into the (then) MCC. The youngest of three sisters (both of whom were married), she reminisces that she had thought she might become a ‘leader’. Ham soche achha hai, kuch seekh rahe hai . . . leader bhi bann sakte hai (I thought it’s good, I am learning something . . . I may even become a leader).51 Those who had known her before she left home — including a teacher associated with the national literacy mission — remembered how she became close to the partywallahs: ‘She had a good voice and was useful for the Nari Mukti Sangh . . .52 she got a lot of attention from them . . . derived a sense of importance’. This teacher believes she had had a different ‘bent of mind’ from other girls — including her own sisters — and it was the MCC’s recognition of her ‘self worth’ and promise of empowerment that led her to join them. Not too different from her male compatriots, it seemed likely Navjyoti also saw the movement as an avenue leading to opportunity and recognition. And, despite the brutalising experience of capture, torture and subsequent near-total closure of options, the spark to overcome her life conditions had survived. As I was to leave, Navjyoti said: I will never forget what these people (police) did to me. But now I have to think about what I should do next. If I have the support of more women like you, I can do a lot even now . . . If you have come so far to meet me, I too can come to Delhi with you.53

Unlike Navjyoti, who did not have much formal education, MCCI commander Isha was a high school student when her parents filed a

51. Source: Personal interview, Giridih, Jharkhand, 2003. 52. Nari Mukti Sangh is known to use locally relevant media of folk song and dance to disseminate MCCI propaganda, and to widen support base for the organisation. 53. Navjyoti made a poignant picture as she stood alone by the road that led my car away from Navada, watching for at least as long as the car was in sight. Trapped by the police under POTA and deserted by MCCI (barring rare exceptions — such as Jopan Manjhi — Naxal parties are known to swiftly withdraw from association with captured cadres), Navjyoti was cornered from all fronts when we met. By the time I met her again — this time in Dhanbad where she had come to attend the hearing of her case — she had been advised against talking to me by her lawyer, who was acquainted with my ‘media friends’ in the region. As a methodological correction, I stayed completely away from the media in subsequent stages of fieldwork.

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‘case’ against her with the party. Isha who said her father was a ‘farmer’ in Sunduru village of Lohardagga district, recalled walking six kilometres each way to attend school in an adjoining village, and then again attending ‘coaching’ after school, sometimes without lunch. Her family did not have too much land but there was, as she put it, ‘enough to eat’. Isha, whom I met along with her dasta in Khelari in Ranchi district giggled coyly (and at the time I thought a little incongruously) when I asked what the ‘case’ was then about. She finally said her parents had objected to her ‘affair’ with a boy of another caste. ‘I used to say I would marry only him even if I die.’ Isha said that when the party summoned her for an ‘enquiry’, the (then) commander ‘Shyamji’ spoke at length with her and asked her to get involved in Nari Mukti Sangh activities. Why she actually joined the MCC dasta however is not entirely clear from her narrative. ‘Mother, father said if you marry him, we will do this to you . . . do that to you . . . I told the commander, now I won’t live at home. Either you take me with you or I will run away.’ Yet while Isha insists she left home because she was not prepared to give up her love, she recalls with pride how she was especially appreciated by the commander. ‘I was even asked to give talks in various meetings.’ Once she joined the armed cadres, she went through a period of intensive training. I found it hard to learn the firing positions . . . sitting, standing positions . . . fire straight at the target. At first I felt uneasy . . . how to eat, how to sleep, how to bathe. One day I got makkai (corn) fodder to eat. I refused but Kuldeep bhaiya (MCC’s sub-zonal commander in the region, with whose consent she spoke with this researcher) said, learn to eat whatever you get.

When this researcher met with her, Isha was a ‘confirmed’ — and evidently influential — cadre of the party. ‘Now I have a uniform, a gun . . . people have even published about me in the press . . . I have never given any interviews but they must have seen me in jan adalats (kangaroo court sessions held by Naxal parties) or other meetings’. Isha had more or less severed ties with home. ‘I went home once, stayed for an hour and left. My mother cried a lot, she said you went away in anger . . .’ Asked about the boy she had wanted to marry , who — according to her was the reason she joined the party — she said she ‘did not know about him’. ‘Now I don’t think of him. I am too involved here.’

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She was open to building conjugal ties within the party. ‘If seniors (in the party) say marry, I will.’54 It was not, however, a matter of importance any longer for her she said, unlike for her other women colleagues, many of whom, she added derisively, join MCCI only to find mates. ‘Sometimes, soon after they get married, women leave the Nari Mukti Sangh. Doesn’t it prove they came here only to marry in the first place?’ Isha admitted most women in the party — even in her own dasta — joined only when all doors closed for them. ‘They are very poor . . . some have no parents. They come because the party is a different society . . . brotherhood, equal rights . . .’ She herself, however, had an edge over them. ‘The other girls here are very jealous of me. The sub-zonal gives me a lot of importance. He makes me conduct most of the meetings here.’ In fact, life had pretty much come full circle for Isha. At the time of fieldwork, she would often arbitrate meetings like the one called by her parents to rein her in. ‘The villagers here complained about one boy and girl recently. I called them and warned them that no such complaint should come in the future.’

Late Associates The remaining 12 (of 23) Drifters are ‘late associates’: 10 joined between ages 17 and 25, two in their late 30s. As many as 10 (of these 12) ‘late Drifters’ joined from economically comfortable households, and eight were from upper and middle castes. All but two of them are from Jharkhand. For these men — including the few from poorer households — joining the MCC or PW was much more clearly a pragmatic occupational alternative, often an outcome of real or perceived failure of other avenues of achievement or ‘profitable enterprise’. Most are at least matriculate several were students/unemployed when they joined front organisations, but went on to become hardcore armed cadres. Suresh for instance, 25 years old, and a pure science graduate was, at the time of fieldwork, one of five members of the Bihar Jharkhand State Youth Committee of PW.55 His family, consisting of a widowed 54. Annual group marriages were organised by the MCC to keep the morale of its cadres high. Subsequently, cadres could however be posted in different dastas, even in different districts/states. 55. After repeated attempts to contact him through common friends, Suresh finally met me one evening, at a location of his choice. He was cautious and guarded, though I was told I had already been ‘observed’ (and assessed). The tone of his narrative changed as the hours went by, with the latter part of his story quite at odds with his earlier narrative.

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mother and four sisters, lived in Daltonganj city in Palamu district of Jharkhand. Besides their modest home in the busy interiors of the city, the family owned an acre of land in the nearby Chattarpur village, as well as a thriving poultry business. They belonged to the Kahar (OBC) caste. He joined the CPI (ML) Liberation youth organisation ‘Inquilabi Naujavan Sabha’ in the city while doing his intermediate, but quit after three years to join PW in 1996. I had different dreams. I wanted to become a crorepati (multimillionaire) . . . Soon after college, I took the help of the MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) and started a loan banking company. The company was doing well, collections were good, but the Bihar government banned it in 1994 . . . In the same period, I was seeing a girl in Madhya Pradesh . . . they forced her to marry another man. I wanted to kill the man she married, even got the arms . . . but she said what has happened has happened. I was depressed . . . and angry. I had lost my dreams of being a big businessman . . . lost in love . . . I joined PWG (People’s War Group) on the rebound.

However, Suresh admitted in a later meeting that joining the PWG was not quite as impulsive a decision as he had made it out to be. While hard luck at work and in love probably did precipitate the move, he had been evaluating the shift to a hard-line party for some time. ‘Actually, people were not so scared of Ma-le. See, the PW or the MCC . . . people are terrified of it, and become ready to do whatever you say . . . Whoever joins the party gets a place in society, grows politically . . .’ As it did for most Drifters (including early associates like Brijesh), Suresh’s move into PW had an immediate impact on the quality of life of his family, financially and otherwise. Because I am with the PW, I could marry off two of my sisters. I had to give dowry for both of them and all the commanders in my area helped me . . . my third sister is marrying now into a family much better off than us. I feel they had a motive to send the proposal . . . our protection maybe.

Much like Suresh, Pandeyji, a Bhumihar youth from Panki (village) in Palamu and a postgraduate in History, had also been looking to ‘make something’ out of his life when he met the party. I was drifting around after matric, doing nothing for a while. Those days, big (MCC) names like Vinod Yadav Vidrohi, Jugal Pal, Gopalda, Gautam Paswan used to come to our area . . . I was very attracted to their speeches. In one meeting, they asked me to speak . . . everybody left but they asked me to stay back and we talked . . . I later attended a Central

110 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Committee level meeting in Balunath (in adjoining district of Latehar) . . . they said you must contribute . . . I had doubts as I was Bhumihar, but they said we are not forward virodhis (enemies of upper castes), we are against oppressors . . . they also said they would help me study further — they don’t stop people from studying as it works for them.

Piyush Nath of Sheetalpur village (Tundi block in Dhanbad district) had a similar story. Initially only one of many ‘bekaar (unemployed) friends’ who would attend meetings called by the MCC, he got close to the ‘partywalas’ and eventually joined them. Nath had been arrested by the Dhanbad police a year before we met, and had spent several months in jail. On bail at the time of fieldwork, he regretted that if he had not had so much time on his hands to while away, he may not have got involved with MCC. Two of those categorised as ‘late Drifters’ were in their late 30s when they joined Naxalites.56 Both were unemployed when they met with the (then) MCC, started out by helping the party as ‘supporters’ (and in turn taking their ‘help’ in various matters), finally becoming ‘full-timers’ to evade arrest. From relatively well-to-do families, they rose quickly in the party hierarchy (much the same as the late Committed or, as will be discussed ahead, even Opportunists) — as a factor of prior work/life experience and ability to contribute more to the party. Romeshji, who this researcher met with near the Barasan forest area (Mayapur village in Latehar zila) of Jharkhand, was, for instance, nearly 40 years old when he joined the MCC dasta. At the time of fieldwork — after about seven years of joining — he was a commander of sub-zonal rank. Born into a (relatively) prosperous tribal family in a village in Lohardagga district (earlier within Ranchi district) in Jharkhand, Romeshji completed his intermediate from Lohardagga. But after several failed attempts to secure employment with the Bihar police (he could not put together the required bribe money) he abruptly left for Delhi one day with some friends, seeking greener pastures. After a few years of hard labour, he finally got a ‘prestigious job’ as a ‘machine operator’ in the Wazirpur industrial area in Delhi, and in some years became

56. Though the ‘late Drifters’ were much older than their compatriots when they ‘joined’ Naxalite groups, their association with MCC/PW was generally longer. As many as 10 (of 12) late Drifters had, for instance, attended Naxalite ‘party meetings’ in their village by the time they were 16 years old.

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a permanent employee, as well as a trade union leader. The factory, however, closed down, and he had to return to his village. Around this time he got involved with the Oraon Sarna Samiti, an adivasi revival organisation, and eventually, because of his growing support base in the region, with the Congress party and then with the (then) MCC. By ’95 MCC started getting interested in me . . . they would call me to jan adalats,57 etc. . . . I didn’t think so much. I felt if I help them they will help me . . . anyway even if I didn’t go, it wouldn’t have been safe for me.

Because of his growing links with the Naxalite party, police surveillance was mounted on him, and he finally left home to become a ‘wholetimer’. I had enough land58 — that was not the problem . . . but I had brought VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) of about `45,000 home; that money was almost over. The police would anyway have killed me . . . I thought I might as well join them.

Despite some initial teething troubles, his education and diverse experience was valued in the party, and he made it through the ranks relatively quickly. By the time of my fieldwork, Romeshji was a senior cadre, equipped to defend the party’s programme in current times. ‘Now if the party wasn’t there, this very place would be a paradise for dacoits and thieves . . . we have saved the forests and guaranteed safety for women . . . do these things have no value?’ He rejects the suggestion that the MCCI leadership is corrupt. This is an international struggle . . . I know how much money I myself spend . . . do you think at the central committee level, they won’t need

57. Jan adalats, set up by Naxalite groups to deliver a rough and ready justice gained momentum across ‘liberated areas’ in the 1990s. These forums have operated in a much subdued fashion — if at all — with deeper penetration of police forces into erstwhile Naxalite strongholds after the formation of Jharkhand. 58. Romesh again, like the majority of cadres this researcher met with, had more than enough land for sustenance but had never seen agriculture as preferred ‘employment’.

112 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence money? MCC59 has 17,000 armed cadres;60 doesn’t it take money to sustain this force . . . and senior people obviously need more funds at their disposal.

Like other Drifters, Romeshji cannot say what the ‘international struggle’ aims to change. ‘I don’t study anymore, how can I know?’ Nevertheless, he is loyal to the party, and takes pride — much in the manner of any successful professional — in his role in it. ‘Don’t you realise there is politics even in MCC? I have struggled very hard to reach this level. I can lose it all with one mistake.’61 Much like Romeshji, Kumar Singh — from an affluent Rajput family in Lohardagga district of Jharkhand — also joined the armed dasta to escape arrest (in his case on charges of murder). Singh was 43 when this study met with him along with his dasta in the coal rich Khelari region of Ranchi district. He said he wished that he had handled his life differently, but saw no other future for himself other than in the party. ‘With so many cases now and the police after me everywhere . . . this life has to be with the MCC . . .’ In just six years of coming on board, Kumar too was, at the time of fieldwork, a commander of sub-zonal rank (he was 37 when he joined), and admits life in the MCCI is easier for ‘people like him’. ‘In my opinion, the upper castes are mainly educated, often more intelligent, and when they come to the party, they grow faster . . .’ He adds: It is not the same for the poor people who join us. These boys join because of unemployment, nothing else . . . there are no options here for them . . . no means of education, no irrigation facilities, no system of justice, police repression . . . if there were choices, people wouldn’t be here . . . everybody wants a free and relaxed life, who wants this?

59. Though MCC had been renamed MCCI by the time of fieldwork, many respondents — especially cadres who had joined the party before the change — continued to refer to it by its previous name. 60. While the figure Romeshji quotes far exceeded alternate official reports of MCCI armed strength, the estimate seemed probable if considered to include — as apart from the highly trained and armed platoons — village squads spread densely across several states in the country. 61. Romeshji refused to give in to this researcher’s requests to meet with the rest of his dasta (which could not have been far from where we had met). ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you. But how will I explain my actions?’

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Most late Drifters too, much the same as those who joined early,62 used the party’s clout to resolve land and other petty disputes (mostly with peers and relatives) before joining the armed dasta. Kumar Singh for instance began ‘supporting’ the MCC to engage their support in a bitter quarrel over land with his own family. Pandey and Piyush Nath both said they may not have finally joined the party had they not taken the party’s help to resolve a land dispute.

Late Associate Drifters More Likely Dropouts Most Drifters find actual transition to guerrilla life hard. But while those who join early tend to stay on with the party, the late Drifters include a significant number of dropouts. Pandeyji, for instance, recalls that once he was in the party, his view of it changed too. Initially I used to see everything from their perspective, then I saw that just like Islam says there is no other God, MCC insists that we say nothing but their point of view . . . they talked of Lal Salaam (‘red handshake’ signifying communist brotherhood), shaking hands with all — but I saw a lot of disparity in the party. Lower-level workers are treated differently . . . some dalals (brokers) in the villages entertain and feed the MCC, and then get their enemies killed by the party by calling them informers . . . I was taken on a mission to kill someone and I realised later it was a case of personal vendetta.

Pandey adds with conviction: I know MCC will be a worldwide organisation one day . . . Ranvir Sena63 is only a virodhi sangathan (defensive group) and will be finished off . . . But it was not for me. They thought let this man continue carrying a gun for me, so what if he has the potential for so much more . . . there was too much hierarchy . . . they do not tolerate dissent. See, the central committee people will never get caught . . . they will always send the poor kind of people to get killed instead. 62. Both Rinku and Brijesh had used their emerging ties with the party to swing pending personal disputes in their favour. Rinku, for instance, took the party’s help to attack someone who had beaten up his younger brother. Brijesh’s increasing clout with the PW almost automatically, as his mother puts it, silenced an ugly family dispute with his father’s brothers. 63. Private army launched by Bhumihar landlords in Bhojpur district in August 1994, after their rivalry with Naxalites in the area reached a flashpoint.

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Nevertheless, besides being disillusioned, Pandey — like most others who joined the armed cadre from relatively comfortable backgrounds — found the going simply too hard. I was finding this life very tough. Food and water is erratic, you never know when and where you will sleep . . . MCC rules say that you have to do your own work, cooking, washing utensils . . . everything — though often the cooking would be done by women cadres of the Nari Mukti Sangathan . . .64 In 1996, I got jaundice. They called a doctor to the jungle but I had to go home to recover. Some villagers told the police I had come home, and I was arrested. When I was in jail, the MCC only sent me enough money for sabun, tel and khaini (soap, hair oil and tobacco) . . . no money to fight my case . . . I had heard about TADA65 cases, where people are detained for 10–15 years. I thought my life would be destroyed so I left them . . . I became a police informer.

Suresh, too, admits that he uses his position as a senior front organisation leader to come back to the city every four or five days. ‘People’s War has been telling me: become underground now or you will get caught by the police . . . but I find it very difficult after a few days . . . walking long distances, carrying heavy loads, no food, no bath . . .’ For Romeshji, there was no choice but to learn the new life. ‘I used to fall sick and my legs were always aching . . . I missed my wife and sons. I was older than them (the cadres) . . . some people from Bengal told me then, learn to walk or wear chudis (bangles).’

Killing not Problematised As discussed, killing was for most Drifters bereft of the triumph and vindication that described the practice of the Committed against zamindari. The modalities of killing itself had also changed for the Naxalites by

64. See Chapter 2 for more on gendered roles of cadre in both MCCI and PW. 65. (The) Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987, commonly known as TADA, was the first and only legislative effort by the Indian government to define and counter terrorist activities. Formulated in the backdrop of insurgency in Punjab, the Act was criticised on various counts by human rights organisations and political parties. It was permitted to lapse in May 1995, though cases initiated while it was in force continue to hold legal validity. For the full text of the Act, see http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/document/ actandordinances/Tada.htm (accessed 20 August 2011).

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the time of my fieldwork. From the direct and physically tactile method of the 1980s and 1990s (as when a peasant cadre would slit the throat of a landlord), the usual practice in Jharkhand (as now in Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, etc.) was ‘killing from a distance’ — for instance, by shooting at the enemy, or triggering a bomb. The post millennium generation of Naxalites (mostly Drifters like Brijesh, Rinku, Nilesh, Isha, etc.) had, in fact, seen far greater dependence on methods of attack which did not involve direct combat, such as landmines and other explosives. Yet, paradoxically, the guns remained the best perk of the ‘job’. Killing was either adventure or non-event, but mostly unmarked by trauma or regret. Manish, unselfconsciously proud of a gleaming, closely-strapped machine-gun, admits, for instance, that he ‘liked holding a gun at 14 and even now’. Even Pandey, neither happy with the MCC’s organisational culture, nor the hardship involved in the job, had fond memories of his acquaintance with arms in the party. ‘They gave me arms training . . . I enjoyed it . . . but when you can cut open a man with a knife, why waste a bullet . . . it used to cost `60 a piece even in 1995.’ Quite evidently, the Drifters are not driven by compulsion, or coercion. Nor is their evident willingness to kill programmed by conformity to authority alone.66 It is as difficult to see these young boys and girls — even if they killed without ado or regret — as extraordinary (destructive) psychological types.67 As Brijesh’s grandfather put it, ‘there are differences in all my children . . . he (Brijesh) was always a rebellious child . . . in a hurry to get everything, for himself, and for us.’

66. Stanley Milgram’s path-breaking and controversial experiments (1974) established a decisive correlation between obedience to (perceived) authority and the capability to inflict violence. Holocaust theorist Christopher Browning’s influential book Ordinary Men (1992) in a similar vein dealt with the question of how ‘ordinary Germans overcame reluctance and inhibition to become professional killers’ (Browning 1996: 15). Tracing the path of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from their first orders at Jozefow, Poland, to the Erntefest massacres, Browning reveals the transformation of ordinary Germans into cold-blooded killers. However, my findings with the Naxalites are quite different from Browning’s. The battalion’s first mass execution duty at Jozefow, Poland, for instance, left the men ‘depressed, angered, embittered and shaken’ (Browning 1992: 69), but very few Naxalites had misgivings about violence. 67. In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm relates the ‘obsession with violence and destruction’ among some ‘revolutionaries’ with a (destructive) ‘necrophilous passion’ (1977: 33).

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Though they killed neither in anger nor for hatred of the other, the Drifter’s narratives, in fact, indicate significant acclimatisation to, and legitimisation of, violence as means to an end even before joining Naxalite groups. Within a larger ethical framework, the capacity to use violence was already desirable as indicative of strength and power while values of tolerance and non-violence were seen as the equivalent of weakness. Suresh had been in awe of ‘partywalas with guns’ since he was small. ‘When I was eight or nine years old, PU dastas used to cross my village. I was afraid but thought I would like to be like them one day. Now the whole city knows Suresh works for PW. I have no qualms killing for PW.’ Many, in fact, had had prior familiarity with use of firearms in interactions within the family circle. To cite just one example, Nilesh, who joined at age 13 from a Rajput family (in Ranka, Palamu) ‘had full arms training at home’ even before he started ‘going with MCC.’68

Some Late Drifters turn Opportunists69 Unlike Opportunists, while most late Drifters actually do join with some empathy for the Naxalite cause, they have neither the ideological conviction of the Committed, nor the impressionability or (depth of) training of early Drifters. Quite a few late Drifters lose sight of the original cause, give in to ‘corruption’, and move into the ranks of Opportunists. It is the poor who seemed most vulnerable to this slide. Sailendra Ram, for instance, a senior MCC commander forced to ‘resign’ from the party on charges of corruption and malfunction, belonged to a Dalit family in village Soleh in Palamu. He recalls that with

68. Nilesh, who started hobnobbing with the local dasta at age 13, found the work ‘exciting’ but dropped out a few years later to meet ‘family responsibilities’. At the time of my fieldwork, he continued to support the local dasta in multiple ways, from hosting lavish meals for them to occasionally providing shelter, to paying 7 per cent — percentage of earnings from (generally road or other infrastructure building) development contracts with the office of the BDO (Block Development Officer) — or what is called levy (‘tax’ imposed by Naxalites) in the region. (The Naxalites justify taking levies by pointing out that BDO contracts are in themselves procured with bribes, so if the BDO can take money, so can the ‘party’.) 69. While all ‘motivational profiles’ discussed above — premised on the cadre’s ongoing relationship with the ideological cause — are theoretically porous, potentially allowing movement of cadres from one category to the other in different time–space coordinates, the shift into Opportunism, in fact, seems most likely to occur from Late Associate Drifters into Opportunists.

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about seven bighas of land,70 there was never enough to feed everyone and he had to work as a mazdoor (labourer) even as a child to supplement the family income. In 1993, he became associated with Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti (an MCC front) as they were snatching and redistributing surplus lands in his village among the poor. A few years later — he recalls that he was about 18 years old at the time — he left home with the dasta ‘to prove a point’ after a petty fight at home. In 2002, when this researcher met with him in Daltongunj city where he now lived with his wife and children, he said he left the party as he did not agree with their style of working. However, close friends of his said that during his tenure with the MCC, Ram made several million rupees in the name of collecting levy for the party. ‘He was earlier very poor, but now owns a house in this city . . . though he was himself a victim of oppression he started enjoying his power too much . . .’ Ram, then, who in the current classification is seen as an Opportunist, seems to have joined the party as any other Late Drifter, seeking escape from his current circumstances without really evaluating what he was getting into. However, somewhere along the way, he shifted categories. Different from Drifters — who if ambitious, still measure success and growth primarily by power and prestige acquired within the party — Ram moved into the ranks of Opportunists who exploit the party for quick gains. Vijay Singh, former zonal committee member of the MCC — and a high security prisoner in Latehar jail at the time of my fieldwork — has a similar background. Originally from a Dalit family in Navi Nagar, Aurangabad (once the epicentre of zamindar–Naxal conflict) Singh, too, amassed considerable personal wealth in his years with the MCC. However, unlike Ram, Singh had become too powerful to evict on grounds of corruption, and was therefore betrayed by some of his own peers in the party, facilitating his capture in 2001. He was subsequently broken down under severe torture, and, thanks to his confession, the Jharkhand police recovered as much as 22 lakh rupees from an underground bunker. The Latehar jail superintendent recalled that when he was first brought in, both his legs were broken and it took months of treatment before he could walk again. Due to his ‘high security’ status, this researcher could meet with Vijay only in the presence of the jailor. Though he was initially predictably hostile, he narrated his story in some detail over a period of time. 70. Though measurements of the bigha vary in size from one region to another in India, it was standardised under British colonial rule in Bengal (both in Bangladesh and in West Bengal) at 1,600 square yards (0.3306 acre or about a third of an acre).

118 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence We had 4–5 kattas of land . . . no dignity, nothing at all . . . When I was small, the zamindar’s men would give me roti (bread) and salt and tell me, this is it, now eat it up fast . . . By the time I was in the ninth class . . . I had realised that nothing would become of me like this . . . I even went to the colliery at Dhanbad but there were the same problems even there . . . I completed my matriculation . . . everyone has dreams of becoming a doctor, engineer . . . don’t you? But in these areas, nobody lets you do anything even if you want to . . . then in 1988 I met the party.

For an ambitious and frustrated Vijay, MCC was — as for most Drifters — in effect, the first available forum for personal achievement. His experience of hardship also gave him an edge over many others, including late Drifters from more well-off families who, despite initial promise (of ‘superior intellect’ as Kumar Singh claimed, for instance), just could not cope with the physical and emotional stress of guerrilla existence. ‘I have moved around in these jungles since I was born, lived in these conditions for as long as I can remember . . . for people like us this hardship is no big deal.’ In time, with quick progression in the party hierarchy, it also became a tempting stepping-stone to long-desired power and wealth. While his experience of oppression lent, at the outset, an empathy with the Naxalite cause, he had never seen himself as personally committed to the ‘larger good’ of his people, and did not relate his own accumulation of wealth to the continuing deprivation of the poor. As he saw it, he had, in any case, only taken a slice out of the money of the rich.71 The transition from Late Drifter to Opportunist was, therefore, not ridden with any troublesome ethical barricades — only the (initial) fear of retribution if caught swindling party funds. Without the ideological conviction that held together Committed cadres like Jopan Manjhi or Sadanand Mahato in similar circumstances — or the brash confidence of better-connected fellow Opportunists like Dinesh Yadav — Vijay Singh (in a manner reminiscent of early Drifters Mohan Lohar and Harihar Paswan, etc.) is embittered by his experience

71. Several cadres spoken with used this argument to rationalise ‘levies’ or taxes imposed on government and private contractors, public and private industry in the region, even the landed, etc. This argument however obfuscates a graver reality — that Naxal levies have only compounded existing corruption — and in direct relation to the lives of the poor deeply impacted the quality and pace of any development or industrial activity in the region.

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of arrest and imprisonment. ‘You have to undergo the mental torture of a jail to know . . . all ideology is wiped out.’ Even ex-MCCI cadre Dileep Yadav who used his position in the MCC to amass significant wealth — and later joined the RJD to dodge the law — had, at one time, seen the worst of poverty. His narrative to this researcher — a nuanced, if often self-contradictory, account of his relationship with the MCC — provides some insight on the kind of context that enables the seemingly ‘natural progression’ of some who join the party as (late) Drifters into the ranks of Opportunists, who then exploit, without a qualm, a cause once close to their own lives. Yadav remembers that when he was about 12 years old, he lost his elder sister to sickness. ‘We managed to get a doctor to write a prescription but couldn’t buy the medicines. She died in front of my eyes.’ At 15, he was sent to (then) Bombay along with six other boys from the village with a dalal (tout) where he was hired as daily wage labour at `6.40 a day. Though he finally found a job as a watchman in a company where he was much better paid, he had to return to his village soon after (in 1989) to attend to his ailing father. Dileepji was about 20 years old, and running a rations shop, when the (then) MCC called its first baithak (meeting) in his village in 1990. He recalls that the very next morning, the zamindar’s arms were snatched, and 10 days later in a jan adalat, his father got back 15 acres of land that had been in the zamindar’s possession since independence. He subsequently supported the MCC for four years through their ‘open’ front, ‘Jan Pratirodh Sangharsh Manch’, and in 1994 was asked by the MCC to take charge of their armed unit in Barwadih in Palamu. He recalls that he was initially not happy with the change. ‘I felt very uneasy . . . I had also got married and had an attachment to my family . . . I thought why should I do this with my own hands?’ Despite the misgivings, he did join them, ‘I had an empty mind . . . monetary situation was also bad . . . the ration shop had already shut down,’ and was for some time happy. ‘After only a year and a half I was transfered to Giridih as platoon commander . . . I was very happy to be promoted72 to this big post . . . only the best men make it to the platoons.’ 72. Drifters’ narration of relationship with the party and their successes and failures in it, such as Dileepji’s casual reference to a ‘promotion’, are entirely different from highs and lows of a corporate workplace. This study found that by far the majority of Drifters — and to an extent even the Committed — seek a sense of achievement and fulfilment within the ‘workplace’ of the party.

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Dileepji too, then, seems to have ‘joined work’ with a Naxal group — much the same as many other late Drifters — not as an active and thought-through choice but almost experimentally. While he was not particularly committed to Naxal ideology, he quite enjoyed the job, and moved quickly up the organisation ladder. ‘Initially I had a zest for it . . . they used to say we will liberate Hindustan . . . though I never took levy for myself, the party helped me . . . got my younger sister married, helped my family monetarily and in other ways.’ However, some time thereafter, dissatisfaction seems to have set in, though Yadav is not very clear about the chronology of events. He says he was already ‘disillusioned’ by the kind of people who were being taken in by the party — ‘Bhumihars, chors, dakus (upper castes, thieves, dacoits)’ — but that the turning point really came in 1997 (barely three years after he joined the armed cadres, and less than a year after he was promoted to the rank of platoon commander). In 1997, there was a huge baithak (meeting) in Parasnath Pahadi in Pirtand (mountain ranges in Giridih district of Jharkhand). After what I saw there, I began to hate myself. I felt this is not helping the country but destroying it. There were many foreigners . . . boras and boras (sacks) of marked notes were being sent with them — a lot of money was being sent to Nepal . . . some of our leaders were giving too much respect to these foreigners.

Yadav says he questioned people in the party about where all this money was going. I said that I work so hard, go through so much trauma, why are we then not given hesaab (accounts) of where all the money we gather for the party actually goes . . . We ourselves are made to give hesaab of every paisa spent . . . when I joined in 1994 I was earning only `75 a month, even then I had to give hesaab . . . But they didn’t like it. They said these are the people who have developed this sangathan (organisation) in India.73

The sequence of events after that is unclear in Yadav’s narrative. He says he told the party that he wanted to quit, but they refused. ‘Anywhere if a commander tries to back out, the party throws allegations of fraud 73. Yadav, a Drifter turned Opportunist, quite likely uses this as a retrospective justification to posit (perhaps as much to himself as others) an ethical reason for leaving the party.

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against him, makes it difficult . . . I can give 10 examples of a commander who left and the party killed him . . .’ Nevertheless, he left the platoon soon thereafter, based himself in Khelari and continued (as he still does) to ‘support the party from the side.’ Though Yadav says that, during these years, he made his living from ‘thekas’ (government contract work) organised by friends, his ‘friends’ say he made a fortune by siphoning off huge ‘levies’ collected in coal-rich Khelari in the name of the party.74 (His new role as levy collector was, in fact, according to them the reason why the MCC allowed him to leave the platoon in the first place.) By his own admission, Yadav — despite his new official status as an RJD office-bearer acquired to evade arrest in 2001 — continued to ‘provide support’ to the (renamed) MCCI. Glaring inequities between the ‘literate ideology’ and practice of MCCI — and other Naxal groups today — seemed to be something almost every cadre spoken with by this researcher had confronted in his tenure with the party (Ray 1998: 43–48). But while later associates amongst the Committed chose to stubbornly stick it out (like Sadanand Mahato) or quit (like Shyamji), Yadav, who joined as a later Drifter, simply moved into the ranks of the Opportunists himself.75 ‘I began to feel that there was too much exploitation within the party . . . koi khat raha hai, koi parde ke aad me kama raha hai (someone slogs, someone else makes all the money secretly).’ He adds scornfully, ‘You know who gets izzat (respect) in the party . . . the absolute fool’.76 Yadav, who could not study much because of upper-caste oppression in his village, says that now his biggest dream is to educate his children.

74. See Chapter 1 for more on the nexus between the coal industry (black), political parties and the MCCI (PW did not have a presence here). Several senior cadres made their fortune here through side businesses, eventually going on to buy huge properties in Khelari, even in Ranchi. Most of those who managed to pull it off did so with the blessings of political bigwigs (mainly RJD), and paradoxically the MCCI as well. I was in fact able to meet other cadres, and later also the MCCI dasta in the region, only with Yadav’s help. 75. As discussed earlier, early associates — both amongst Committed and Drifters — rarely leave the party. 76. The objects of Dileepji’s contempt are those often referred to as ‘bandookdharis’, forming the bulk of the rank and file of the armed dastas. Most join the party early and from poor families, and despite years of work as highlytrained ‘full-timers’, rarely reach senior leadership positions.

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In addition, he wants to move (his family) to ‘the city’ (Ranchi). ‘If I stay in the village (Khelari), they (MCCI) will never set me free’.

Conclusion As opposed to the dominant conception of Naxalites in both lay and academic discourse as landless agricultural labourers or poor peasants, the majority of the MCCI and PW armed cadres I met were, in fact, from landed families. While some were dalits and adivasis, the majority were middle and upper caste (refer Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 for details). Their stories warn against easy essentialisation of Naxalites into carry-over categories from past discourse on the subject: rich–poor, landed–landless, Dalits–upper castes and so on. Area commander Brijesh was a Rajput and had 25 acres of land. Yet his family was finding it difficult to make ends meet. Oraon sub-zonal commander Romesh had about the same, but preferred to work in a factory in Delhi. For him, agriculture was never an option. MCC commander Isha, whose father was a (dalit) ‘farmer’, had ‘enough to eat’. Yet she doggedly walked six kilometres to school each way every day in pursuit of ‘other dreams’. Navjyoti, an alleged MCC hardcore from an impoverished (Santhali) tribal family had wanted to be a ‘leader’. Land or no land, rich or poor, it was really aspirations as ordinary and universal as recognition, achievement, status, power play (with peers and community not class enemies) and izzat that finalised choices for most. In a changed sociopolitical context, however, izzat was not so much about honour or dignity demanded from the hated other, as much as the respect sought amongst one’s own peers, or one’s own community, in locations which have not provided ambitious young people with other avenues of self fulfilment and peer approval. It doesn’t help that, as my findings show, these political ‘choices’ are often made at an average age of 12–16 years, when young people in their own recall found guns, and the power that came of holding them, undeniably attractive.77

77. None of my respondents were ‘children’, though many were under 18 years of age. But, as evident, most had met, and often joined Naxal parties when they were children. Out of my sample of 40 armed cadres, 18 had been associating with Naxal parties by age 16, and another 10 by age 18. To put the figures in context, as much as 70 per cent of sample had been consistently exposed in organised forums to the idea of a cause/enemy worth killing for as teenagers and

Committed, Opportunists and Drifters A 123

Do these findings amount to saying that any armed movement may likely have more Drifters than Committed or Opportunists? Or for that matter, 10 years earlier, would my own findings in the region have been different? To answer the second question first: given that 10 years ago the movement was running with a powerful local cause, it was perhaps easier to conjure up sentiment. The proportion of those ideologically committed may then have been higher in the heyday of the movement. Yet, it is as clear that commitment to a larger cause (as different from only belief in that cause) is not really determined by caste, class, life experience or even (early) age of joining. While most Committed had experienced class oppression so had very many Drifters. But, despite having experienced ‘oppression’ much more closely than Jopan, neither Harihar nor Mohan Lohar is dedicated to the ‘Naxalite cause’ the way Jopan, or for that matter, Pranav Vidyarthi is. If most Committed joined the party relatively late, so did all Opportunists. Determination of what makes a cadre Committed, and another a Drifter, in fact, cannot be located entirely in social context — there is an evident element of individual psychological predisposition outside the realm of this work. It seemed to me that Naxalite groups (as possibly others that may have widely disparate ideologies) gather a great many young people in their net, and when they find it, tap and channelise innate potential//bent of mind/sincerity towards their cause very effectively. As is evident from their narratives, both Jopan and Sadanand initially joined for reasons not very different from those that drew in the Drifters. What distinguishes the Committed Naxalites, then, is a quality as distant from Hoffer’s fanatical true believer (Hoffer 1951: 82–86) as from Fromm’s sado-masochistic authoritarian leader (Fromm 1941: 221) — their subsequent sincerity to the cause espoused.78 even before. At least half the sample had also decided to join before they turned 18. If we remember that this sample does not include members of bal dastas of both parties, it is only too evident actually how early in life these ‘choices’ are made. See Rosen (2005) for an unsettling view of child soldiers across Sierra Leone, Palestine and Eastern Europe during the Holocaust — not just as passive victims but as actors of rational choices. Also see Trawick (2007) for a compelling account of the lives and agency of children in an LTTE stronghold in war torn Sri Lanka. 78. What I see as Jopan’s and Sadanand’s ‘psychological predisposition’ to be ‘Committed’ Naxalites is as such quite different from a pre-programmed willingness to die, or a ‘revealed preference for martyrdom’ (Binmore 1994; cited in Euben 2002a: 7).

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Ultimately, what is of significance is that, although those who kill for (hope of consummation of) the larger cause are few and far between, many more join and work as Drifters. Perhaps these findings are also reason enough to ask if indeed any armed movement, be it the Zapatistas in Mexico, Hamas in Palestine, left-wing rebels in Peru, or for that matter the LTTE, may never have found its numbers, never have become a ‘movement’ without successfully tapping its Drifters. Kalyvas makes an interesting case for the interaction between political and private identities in civil wars, pointing out that ‘political violence’ is not always political, and ‘identities and actions cannot be reduced to decisions taken by the belligerent organizations . . . ideologies derived from the war’s master cleavage’ (Kalyvas 2003: 487). In the context of the Naxalites, I would only add that the motives of the Drifters must not be read as ‘private issues’ on the periphery, but as a real and deeply poignant politics of recognition that in fact drives the movement today.

A

Introduction A 125

FOUR A

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad: Who are They and Why are They Ready to Kill Muslims? T

his chapter delineates a brief history of Hindu extremism in Gujarat. It then goes on to describe different categories of actors amongst those termed as ‘Hindu Extremists’ in Ahmedabad. Different from the previous case of left-wing extremists, the sample here is distributed by ‘role-play’ (based on description by participants themselves) in a specific episode of extremist violence: the 2002 riots in Gujarat. The kind of role played in violence is used as starting point for analysis, as it had significant correlation with factors that motivated participation in violence, such as socioeconomic background, psychographic profile, depth of formal association with an ideological cause, relationship with, and position in, organisations espousing that cause etc.1

A

Hindu Extremism in Gujarat: Background and Current Dynamics This section provides a preliminary profile of the history of Hindu extremism in Gujarat, traced from the more extensively documented

1. The assumption here is that while left-wing extremists in India work within, and for, closely banded organisations, the identities of those who kill in riots are more dispersed.

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trajectory of communal violence2 in post-independence Gujarat. The attempt to locate the links can only be tentative, as the available history of communal violence in Gujarat has, if at all, only cursorily addressed the subject of identity of the actual perpetrators. In the absence of any record of the voices of participants in violence, references to their political or ideological affiliations are often conjectural. I found, however, that the majority of my own respondents (who were participants in the 2002 violence in Gujarat) were leaders or cadres of Hindu nationalist organisations like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, the Durga Vahini, etc. This section, therefore, also examines the growth of these organisations in Gujarat, and their relationship to riots in the state. Let us begin with a brief glance at the origins of Hindu nationalism in the pan-Indian context. Created in 1925 in the state of Maharashtra, the RSS — which views Hinduism not merely as the religion of India’s majority community, but as the defining core of its national identity — is generally regarded as the institutional core of Hindu nationalism. The ideological trend, however, dates much further back. Hindu revivalism in the second half of the 19th century, viewed as a way to resurrect India’s cultural pride, was among the earliest ideological oppositions to British rule. While the national movement was dominated by the secular ideology of the Congress party, there were several parties representing Hindu nationalism in the political arena as well (see Varshney 2002: 57). After independence, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh — renamed Bharatiya Janata Party after 1977 — became the principal patron of Hindu nationalism in electoral politics. Its fortunes, along with the presence of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics, declined after Gandhi was killed on 30 January 30 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, and an erstwhile member of the RSS. The Indian government placed a ban on the activities of both organisations. The RSS, however, won back its legal status a year later. In 1964, it set up the VHP, which in turn set up several sister outfits, possibly the most productive of which

2. ‘Communal’ here refers to religion as perceived ascriptive difference between communities. In India, the term has become synonymous with confrontational politics between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority (Breman 1999: 260). See Gupta (1996) for an alternate thesis that would, however, view Hindu–Muslim conflict in India as ‘ethnic’ (bringing in loyalty to the nation state as a point of contest) and not ‘communal’.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 127

have been its militant wings, such as the Bajrang Dal (1986) and the Durga Vahini (1992). However, prior to independence, Hindu nationalism was only one of several powerful ideologies competing for political space. In Gujarat, the most significant of these was the Gandhian philosophy of negotiating change through peace and nonviolence. Gujarat was Gandhi’s home state, and after he returned from South Africa in 1915 until he left for the Salt March of 1930, Ahmedabad was both his work-base and home. During this period, he established and nurtured a wide spectrum of civic and political institutions, which attracted and continued to influence a huge mass following over several decades. Although Gujarat has been seen as the rightist stronghold since independence (Engineer 1992: 1641), for nearly three decades thereon, communal riots in the state — including the partition riots — were neither remarkably intense nor frequent. The first major riot in Gujarat occurred in 1969, the precursor of a bloody history of violence that persists to date. There are some indicators of the growing influence of the RSS/Jan Sangh in the state, such as, a big rally led by the RSS in 1968 in which speeches on why India was a Hindu nation were given and listened to by large audiences, or the agitation against cow slaughter by ‘Hindu religious leaders’ a year before (Varshney 2002: 265). Some studies point to the Jan Sangh’s widening support base about that time amongst the Patels, then a rapidly rising caste eager to consolidate its bid for power and privilege (Engineer 1992: 1641). There are also reports that say the Jansanghis were on the streets during the 1969 riots, shouting slogans, calling the violence a reprisal for partition, and that the riots that followed in quick succession in Vadodara were the firstever planned riots in India.3 While it would seem then that the 1969 riots were indeed used by the Jan Sangh to spread its roots in Gujarat (ibid.), there is no evidence that the Jan Sangh was either actually responsible for the riots, or that its cadres were key perpetrators of violence. The VHP had been established barely some years earlier and was, at the time, known to be concentrating its efforts mainly in the north-eastern states against Christian missionaries. The Bajrang Dal had not yet come into existence. The next major bout of communal rioting in the state began in March 1985, when a prolonged anti-reservation agitation was re-channelised into Hindu–Muslim violence. The violence began as a reaction to 3. See Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a: 13).

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the KHAM (Kshatriya–Harijan–Adivasi–Muslim) policy adopted by the Congress, which was the ruling party at the time. Conceived of as a vote block of some OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, the combination was unmatchable in terms of electoral arithmetic and swept the Congress to power in the 1985 polls.4 While all the opposition parties lent their support to the anti-reservation stir, the BJP may have been seen by some scholars as responsible for the agitation taking a communal turn (Engineer 1989: 256).5 The caste agitation also coincided with the establishment of the VHP in the state (followed soon thereafter by the Bajrang Dal), conceived with the specific agenda of wooing the lower castes into the programme of Hindu unity. The early 1980s also saw the beginnings of political mobilisation by the Sangh Parivar, such as rallies posited around powerful Hindu symbols like Ganga jal and the Bharat ekta yatra in 1983. However, it was early days for these organisations in Gujarat; dalits and, less still, adivasis were not yet party to the Sangh agenda. The last phase of the anti-reservation agitation stir in 1985, in fact, saw an adivasi backlash in some areas that in recent times witnessed the same adivasis partnering with the Hindutva protagonists against Muslims. In Bhiloda (an adivasi-dominated taluka in Sabarkantha district that saw considerable violence against Muslims in 2002), for instance, adivasis had attacked and robbed Patels living in the neighbouring village of Takatunka (Concerned Citizens Tribunal 2002a: 14). Communal violence in the state continued through the late 1980s, with as many as 106 incidents recorded between 1987 and 1991. While political rivalry and conflicts during elections were responsible for about 40 per cent of these riots, religious processions apparently triggered

4. The Bakshi Panch identified over 80 backward castes for reservation, including 22 Muslim castes. More than 70 per cent of Gujarat’s population comprised of these castes, including the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes — and if Muslims were included, about 80 per cent of the population came under these categories. 5 Some of those in my sample (participants in 2002 violence) also spoke of their engagement in previous riots, including those in 1985. The Sangh’s involvement in the 1985 violence came across clearly in these narratives as well. Even so the Sangh can hardly be held solely responsible for the turn of events; a faction of the then ruling party also encouraged the violence (both caste and later communal) with a view to dislodging the chief minister. See Engineer (1989) for a fuller picture of the political dynamics behind the 1985 riots.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 129

another 22 per cent of such clashes.6 However, these years also saw the Sangh launch the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ campaign, with a major focus on mobilisation in Gujarat. It was from Gujarat that the BJP stalwart L. K. Advani launched his Somnath to Ayodhya ‘rath yatra’ in September 1990 — an effort that left major violence in its trail, with Gujarat being no exception. This period also saw the beginnings of a more concerted effort by the Sangh to make inroads into rural and tribal areas, resulting in the first-ever instances of tribal participation in communal violence. Stany Pinto (1995) describes how VHP workers made token monetary collections towards the Ramshilapujan in Ayodhya in 1989 from adivasi households in some talukas of Bharuch in Gujarat, as a symbol of their being Hindu and of their allegiance to the temple cause. Inflammatory speeches against Muslims were made en route. For the first time, Navratri garbas were organised in some of these areas under the sponsorship of Sangh Parivar organisations (ibid.: 2417). Following Advani’s rath yatra (which had passed through several of these adivasi-dominated villages) and his subsequent arrest in October 1990, adivasis from Valia, Dediapada and Sagbara talukas of Bharuch district were incited into participation in several incidents of rioting, looting and arson against Muslims in these areas (ibid.: 2417–18). The campaign culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, an event in which the contingent of kar sevaks7 from Gujarat was possibly the largest from anywhere in the country. The violence that followed across the country was at its fiercest in Gujarat, spreading even to rural areas that had, in the main, been unaffected till then. This time, cities like Surat, hitherto untouched by communal violence, saw the worst rioting in the state.8

6. See Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a: 14). 7. The term kar sevak has its origins in the Sanskrit words kar (hand) and sevak (servant). Although the term has been heard in the public domain most frequently in the context of Hindutva, a kar sevak may be a volunteer for any religious cause. After Operation Blue Star in Punjab, for instance, Sikh kar sevaks gathered to rebuild the Sikh holy shrine Harmandir Sahib. 8. After the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992, Surat experienced the horrors of communal violence for the first time since 1927–28, breaking a calm of well over 60 years. In the ghastly riots that lasted for five days, 197 people were killed, 175 of whom were Muslim. Of the many riots that broke out in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri mosque, only (then) Bombay’s violence surpassed the brutality and losses witnessed in Surat (Varshney 2002: 239).

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There are insightful studies that have probed into the political, and the socioeconomic backdrop against which these ‘riots’ took place and found willing participants in their brutal orgies of violence. Notably, Jan Breman (1993) details the exploitative capitalist framework of the city of Surat within which thousands of footloose, mostly migrant labourers work and live in sub-human conditions. It is an aggressive, harsh milieu in which violence of all shades and gradations is the order of the day. Breman explores how parts of Surat became an ideal setting for the easy recruitment of willing hands for the killing gangs in 1992. But while he does describe the social identity of the rioters — based on survivor and other eyewitness accounts — we do not know whether these labour migrants were also associated with Hindu right-wing organisations. Neither do we know details of associations; for example, if at all, which ones, since when, what level of contact, and so on. While Breman does seem to believe that the Surat riots were pre-planned, coordinated and controlled by workers of the BJP,9 his work does not provide an understanding of how the migrant workers — from groups as diverse as the kathiawadi diamond cutters, the UP bhaiyas or the Oriya malis — actually came to participate in such unimaginably cruel violence, no matter how dehumanising their own conditions of existence may have been. Such information becomes all the more pertinent in light of the fact that undeniably — and as Breman himself points out — not every one of these men, not even every bachelor amongst them, was party to the violence.10 So what was it that actually made things different or easier if you like, for some of these migrants? If

9. Intriguingly, the 1992 riots were relatively not as bad in Ahmedabad, which was generally the epicentre of communal violence in the state. The absence of any convincing explanation for the break in trend lends credence perhaps to the view that communal ideologies — like most other ideologies — are ‘hatched’ by vested political interests and broadcast below, sometimes taking root, at other times dissipating without ‘concrete action prescriptions’ (Gupta 1991: 573). At any rate, historical aberrations such as these reinforce the complex multiplicity of factors that go into making even a ‘planned’ riot actually take off. 10. Most of these migrant workers in Surat did not come from the immediate hinterland of the city but hailed from regions like Saurashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. They were mainly young males between 15 and 25 years of age — those who were married had also usually left home without their family. Only a small minority of this footloose proletariat enjoyed the benefits of a permanent job, and protected conditions of work: most were temporary and underpaid hands in the informal sector economy, earning their pay under miserable

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 131

they had already been dehumanised — by factors independent to those that triggered the current violence, as he would seem to suggest — into ready, willing hands in these riots, would they have then been as readily available participants in violence against, say, Parsees or fellow Hindus? Or did their life circumstances also include a simultaneous process of the vilification and abstraction of specifically Muslims into a faceless hated other? If yes, then what did this process actually entail? The relationship between communal riots and Hindu extremist groups in the state is observed more clearly in the 2002 riots. These riots erupted after a decade-long relative lull that was punctuated by stray incidents of violence against Muslims on different occasions.11 The violence in 2002 was ostensibly ignited by the attack on Sabarmati Express at Godhra station on 27 February. The train, whicht also had on board a group of kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, was pelted with stones by a large crowd of local Muslims who had gathered around the station. Later, a carriage of the train was set on fire, killing 58 passengers, several of whom were women and children. Although the tragedy had been preceded by several acts of harassment and terrorising, both of Muslim vendors at the station and of Muslim passengers aboard the Sabarmati Express, by unruly kar sevaks travelling in the train, nothing of what preceded the attack on the train was either published in the mainstream regional dailies of Gujarat, or got any press elsewhere. The attack itself, on the other hand, was swiftly publicised by the regional media as a deliberate and preplanned

conditions, far away from home, and detached from family life. Accommodated in densely packed tenements and sheds during their off-hours, they were forced to live a beastly existence in a macho milieu dominated by drunkenness, gambling, fights, etc. — a milieu in which the powerful seek out and discriminate against the weak and vulnerable. Perhaps it was no coincidence then that many victims, eyewitnesses and other insiders spoke emphatically of the bachelors among the migrants who committed the atrocities (Breman 1993: 738–39). 11. In 1999, for instance, violence erupted in Ahmedabad during the Kargil war with Pakistan, when Muslims were projected yet again as being pro-Pakistan and anti-India. In 2000 again, Muslim property running into tens of millions of rupees was looted or vandalised all over the state in ‘retaliation’ for the killing of Amarnath pilgrims by militants in Kashmir. In addition, this period also saw violence against Christians in South Gujarat, particularly in Dang, Surat and Valsad districts — seen by some scholars as the culmination of years of effort by the Sangh Parivar to divide the tribals of the region into two camps: Hindu and Christian (Concerned Citizens Tribunal 2002a: 15).

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attack by Muslims on innocent pilgrims returning from Ayodhya. The state government itself, within hours of the tragedy, made ominous references to the ‘ISI’12 hand behind what it labelled as an act of ‘terrorism’. While the terrible violence that followed in retribution against the Muslim population of Gujarat was justified by the state government as a ‘natural’ outbreak of anger of the Hindu masses, independent reports13 have documented details of extensive planning and preparation, by the Sangh Parivar, that account for the sheer scale and brutality of the violence. These reports also point to how public space in Gujarat has been systematically controlled in recent years, especially since the BJP government led by Narendra Modi took over in September 2001. Steady state support has since been extended to activities of Sangh Parivar organisations, and posts in the bureaucracy, police and educational institutions have been filled by individuals committed to a communal worldview. In addition to the consistent inflow of hate (Muslims) literature across Gujarat, sustained efforts have also been made to penetrate the adivasi belt, with organised induction and training programmes, distribution of trishuls, swords, etc., at ceremonial functions and other venues.14 Most significantly, these reports have detailed — based mainly on witness testimonies and FIR reports — names of key perpetrators of the violence which engulfed 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts between 28 February– 2 March 2002. While many of those named are BJP/affiliated organisation office-bearers, most others indicted are also closely associated with these organisations. Given that ‘mobs’ numbering anywhere between 2,000 to 15,000 people gathered across the state at strategically ‘weak’ Muslim minority locations, equipped with trishuls, swords, agricultural instruments along with abundant stocks of petrol, gas cylinders, sophisticated chemicals, and often, free flowing alcohol and foodstuffs — all within a period of 72 hours — reports that indicate a carefully laid out plan behind the attacks seem credible. Going by the evidence collated

12. Reference to ‘Inter-Services Intelligence’, intelligence agency of Pakistan headquartered in Islamabad. 13. See Sabrang (2002b); also see Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a, 2002b). 14. Though the objectives of my work were different, much of what these reports point towards was also reinforced during the course of my own fieldwork in Gujarat.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 133

by independent fact finding missions in Gujarat in the wake of the violence, then, the links between Hindu extremist organisations and the 2002 ‘riots’ in Gujarat are clearer than ever before. The following section delves into the life histories, worldview, and rationalisation of practice of those who took part in this violence.

A

Who are Hindu Extremists and Why are They Ready to Kill Muslims? The Naxal sample of 40 armed cadres consisted exclusively of those who had engaged in violence in the name of their cause.15 In a study of ultra-left extremism, it did not make analytical sense to include in the sample other peripheral categories of, say, village supporters, political supporters, etc., as there were significant qualitative differences in the worldview and long-term goals, as well as in the practice of ‘hardcore’ cadres. The Naxalites are a closely banded group requiring participants to make an unequivocal commitment to the goals of the organisation, implicitly including the current or potential possibility of having to kill, and perhaps die for the cause. People grow up the ranks, as well as across wings of the party, and it is probably safe to say that one is not quite a core, trusted member of the party if one has never killed for it.The case with right-wing extremism in Gujarat was quite different. Here, I met and spoke with a core sample of 25 actors termed as Participants:16 local perpetrators of violence against Muslims identified from across three categories of ‘role-play’ in the 2002 riots.

15. In Jharkhand and Bihar, I also met, and spoke at length with, senior leaders of important front organisations of Naxalite groups, cadres of rival groups and other political parties, etc. While their case details are available for perusal in the master data sheet, these respondents have not been included in the main sample and analysis. 16. This sample was initially traced, in the main, from victim testimonies and thereon supplemented by further references provided by those with whom I spoke. A large proportion of the comprehensive sample includes those whose accounts include candid references to their role in the riots. However, even from those whose narratives did not include direct accounts of their own participation, this researcher gained much insight into their worldview and the process of its formation.

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1. Mob Leaders (instigated, led the killing mobs/sample five) 2. Killers and Killer Rapists17 (killed/raped and killed in the riots/ sample 11)18 3. Rioters (participated in arson and looting/sample nine) However the complete sample of those termed as Hindu Extremists (total number now 39) included two critical additional categories besides the Participants: 1. Local Supporters (provided ethical endorsement, therefore legitimacy to the violence at a local community level/sample five) 2. Ideological Instigators (responsible for instigation of violence over wider term and scale/sample nine) I found that the understanding of what happened in Gujarat, or why Hindus killed Muslims across locations in Gujarat, was incomplete without delving into these additional categories. If the Gujarat riots could not have happened without those called Participants, they also would not have happened without the intervention of Local Supporters, or the more long-term efforts of the Ideological Instigators. While most Participants were, in fact, members of Hindu nationalist organisations (RSS/affiliates), the role of the Ideological Instigators is more specific in a way that will be examined a little later. Similarly, here the role of Local

17. Four respondents (all Naroda Patia Killers) in this sample were among those also accused of the gang rape of several Muslim women, including minors. All four belonged to the Chhara community. This researcher could not locate significant differences in their socioeconomic background, ideological roots or rationalisation of practice versus the remaining respondents accused of murder, but not rape. (Psychological profiling may have helped differentiate, but was outside the possibilities in this study.) Significantly, Killers in this sample who did not rape nevertheless unequivocally cheered those who did. This study found that sexual assault on Muslim women — even if enacted by only a section of the Killers — was, in fact, driven by the same coherent worldview that the wider set of ‘Killers’ shared. 18. Aside from the core sample of 11 respondents who killed in the 2002 violence in Gujarat, this researcher spoke to a self-confessed killer of Muslims in the 1985 and 1987 riots in Ahmedabad. The narrative of this 12th respondent, who claimed to have been only a bystander in the 2002 Naroda Patia killings, was very useful to the current analysis.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 135

Supporter is qualitatively different from, say, the village supporter in Jharkhand, who sometimes houses and feeds the Naxalites, supporting their cause without any say, or any stakes in their operations. In Gujarat, on the other hand, I found that the Local Supporters — consisting of influential community/village elders — formed a very different kind of support block, without the consent of whom, the riots may actually never have happened. This chapter, along with Chapter 5, documents and contextualises perspectives of actors of violence in the above categories across locations in Gujarat: a metropolis, a Hindu (Patel) dominated village and an adivasi (Bhil) village. 1. Ahmedabad City 2. Village Sardarpura, Mehsana district 3. Village Palla, Sabarkantha district This chapter looks closely at the perpetrators of the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad, and the driving forces that made them willing to kill Muslims.

Ahmedabad My research in Ahmedabad began by speaking to those identified as perpetrators by Muslim victims in testimonies to independent factfinding bodies, and from records of FIRs filed with the local police. The bulk of respondents in Ahmedabad are ‘Participants’: those who allegedly killed, raped, or led the killing mobs. Some of these initial meetings and interviews — mainly in Naroda — not only helped identify other Participants (Mob Leaders, Killers and Killer Rapists, Rioters) in Naroda and other critically affected locations in the city (particularly Gulberg society in Meghaninagar), but also provided significant leads to those this study terms as Ideological Instigators and Local Supporters. To get to the core questions in this study, then: who really are the people who killed Muslims in Ahmedabad? Why did they do it? What kind of context did they formulate their worldview in and how do they rationalise their practice? To begin with, who led the killing mobs?

Mob Leaders The sample in Ahmedabad includes three respondents — one of them a woman — who, according to Muslim victims, spearheaded and instigated the killing mob in Naroda Patia.

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The sample of alleged Mob Leaders is fairly homogenous: all three are in their 40s, upper-middle caste (Sindhi/Patel/Brahmin), educated (postgraduates) and politically influential (members/associates of ruling party). They were/had been residents of Naroda and had established businesses there. One of them, a gynaecologist, had moved uptown some years back but continued to run a thriving clinic in the area (see Table 4.1 for a detailed socioeconomic profile). So why were the Mob Leaders there at the site of violence? What was their role in the killings? What was in it for them?

Angry Mobsters or Political Climbers? Suresh Bhai19 candidly discussed the occurrences of 28 February 2002 in Naroda, and his own role in it. While the other two members of this sample of Mob Leaders — Jayaben and Jagdish Patel — did not directly admit to their own participation, they spoke at length about their background, political ideas and beliefs. All of them rationalised the Naroda killings in terms of a ‘spontaneous,’ and ‘understandable’ outpouring of ‘public rage’ after the deaths in Godhra. It was apparent, however, going by their own account, that the ‘Mob Leaders’ were much more than just ‘angry Hindus.’ Those in this sample had functioned as empowered representatives of political, or affiliated ethnic organisations, whose presence at the site of violence — and participation therein — was led in great part by organisational diktat. While my sample was selected purposively from testimonies of Muslim witnesses/survivors of the 2002 violence, it turned out that all three respondents were associated with the BJP, the then ruling political party at both state and centre. While two held positions of power in the party itself, the third was a senior (national level) leader of its affiliated organisation, the VHP. Their narratives indicate direct complicity in the Naroda killings, including significant references to each other’s role in the events of the day, indicating that the Mob Leaders also had an active working relationship with each other (and, as will be discussed ahead, with frontline Killers) both prior to, as well as at the immediate time of violence. Mob Leader Suresh Bhai (BJP leader in Naroda) was, for instance, at pains to (voluntarily) repeatedly reiterate that Jayaben (state-level BJP leader named by Muslim witnesses as the chief cheerleader of the mob) 19. All names have been changed.

Current

Current

Current

BJP

2 Jayaben

3 Sureshbhai BJP

Education Graduate +PGD (Pathology)

General M Brahmin General Graduate + Secretary, LLB Naroda

General MBBS+DGO (Diploma in Obstetrics & Gynecology)

OBC

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

Joint M Patel General Secretary (Gujarat State) MLA F Sindhi

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

43

47

44

High

High

High

Education of spouse

Married MBBS+ DGO (Diploma in Obstetrics & Gynecology) Advocate Married Matriculate

Doctor (private practice)

Business- Married Graduate Pathology Laboratory

Estimated household income/ Age at Standard Other Marital fieldwork of living occupation status

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Mob Leaders: Socioeconomic Profile

1 Jagdishbhai VHP

Alias

Table 4.1:

Deesa, Vanaskantha

Housewife Muzaffarpur

Doctor (private practice)

Housewife Ahmedabad

Place of Occupation origin — of spouse village/district

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 137

138 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

was not at all present at the site of violence. Suresh defends that she was in fact at the (Naroda) residence of VHP leader Jagdish Patel, the third Mob Leader identified in this sample, on that day. His (faithful) version of her whereabouts was, unfortunately, at odds with the alibi offered earlier by Jayaben herself to this researcher, asserting she had been in assembly in Gandhinagar the entire day. Suresh Bhai, who spent four months behind bars before he was granted bail after the Naroda violence, said that ‘big names’ such as Jayaben’s could not have been allowed to surface in the FIR.20 On the other hand, he said, political expediency had demanded that the law be allowed to ostensibly run its course with junior leaders such as the likes of him. ‘I was an easy target . . . second rung to Jayaben.’ He holds no grudges against Jayaben or the party. ‘They have their limitations,’ he says, but adds that ‘people in the party should not forget.’ Jayaben herself denies leading the mob, adding that she was in ‘continuous contact’ with local police officials in Naroda on the day. She says she told them to ‘control the Hindus’, and cited frequent contact in this regard with police inspector ‘Mysorewala’. Interestingly, police inspector Mysorewala was especially remembered by Muslim survivors for his blank refusal to help them. A Muslim resident of Naroda recalls that Mysorewala said, Nahi, aaj to upar se order aaya ke aaj tumhari jaan bachane ki nahi hai (no, today we have orders from above that you are not to be saved).21 Jagdish Patel, close associate of Jayaben and the third Mob Leader identified by Muslim survivors as among those who incited and spearheaded the mob at Naroda Patia in this sample also did not speak much about the events of the day. He admitted, though, that as second in command in VHP, he had had a decisive say in its activities, as well as of those of the Bajrang Dal — organisations that he said held considerable sway over Hindus in Gujarat. (This senior VHP leader had, in fact, travelled with a cavalcade of BJP/VHP/Bajrang Dal activists carrying back the bodies of Hindus burnt in the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on 27 February 2002, a day before all hell broke loose on Gujarat’s Muslims.) Many of those involved in the Naroda violence a day after (as well as participants in the violence that swept across other areas in Ahmedabad and outside) said

20. Jayabehn was, apparently, repeatedly named by Muslim survivors in Naroda as key among those who had instigated and led violence in Naroda. 21. See Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a: 37).

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 139

they were actually incited to action after VHP and Bajrang Dal activists showed them blown up pictures (mainly from Gujarati daily Sandesh) of Hindus burnt in Godhra. By my findings, the actions of Mob Leaders — ambitious, upwardly mobile men and women in senior and middle leadership positions — on 28 February 2002 were thought through and calculated on yielding attractive returns on their political career. Suresh Bhai, for instance, recalls he had had a choice to make that morning. ‘The public mood was aggressive . . . if we didn’t show support, they would think we are only there for their votes . . . and if we supported them, we knew they would be out of control.’ Suresh Bhai’s lawyer and close friend explained, ‘This was his best opportunity to prove his mettle to the party. If he didn’t do it, someone else would have.’ The BJP leader himself admitted later, ‘Politics is all self interest. One is always insecure about being superseded.’ The Mob Leaders including Suresh had had at least a night to evaluate the implications of the decision to facilitate violence in Naroda. This reflection, by their account, was however by no means around an ethical dilemma. ‘I don’t feel anything wrong happened . . . the 60 Hindus who died in Godhra were also blameless . . . they (Muslims) started it.’ Suresh says he would, in fact, have liked to kill a few Muslims himself. He remembers with some envy: A sawmill owner killed so many of their (Muslim) burning women with a talwar (sword) . . . they tried to catch him so that they could kill him even as they died themselves. I remember he came out gloating, saying he had killed so many, and then went back in again.

But, as he sees it, people like him could not afford to take that kind of risk. The only man who can actually do this is someone who does not think of consequences, law, repercussions . . . it was finally maybe only a few hundred illiterate fools who actually did the killing . . . educated people like us don’t have the guts . . . I was a leader. I would easily have been identified.22

22. Several senior Sangh Parivar associates I spoke with in Ahmedabad echoed this view that it was the uneducated, ‘lower classes’ that did the killing (in 2002), not people like ‘them’. See particularly the section on VHP Ideological Instigators in Ahmedabad in this chapter.

140 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

While Suresh Bhai said his ‘biggest priority was to save the Hindus . . . No one should be caught’, his decision to facilitate violence in Naroda was taken after a careful risk assessment. Even as he benefited from the visibility it gave him in the party, his participation was orchestrated to minimise undesirable trouble. ‘I couldn’t afford to be caught.’ Believing that (as he said to this researcher) his actions had the support of his party (which was in power then both in the state and at the centre), he was confident that the legal repercussions of his actions would not be too severe. All the Mob Leaders, in fact, expressed surprise that with the BJP in power, they had to undergo whatever little discomfort to which they had been subjected. As Jayabehn put it, ‘My government is in power . . . and yet there was an FIR on me. You wouldn’t have seen this anywhere.’23 But, were all of those who led mobs in Gujarat doing it purely because they believed it would go down well with the party high command? Could they, for instance, also kill thousands of Hindus with as little compunction if required? While it seemed likely that those who led the mob in Naroda would not really worry about a few lives — of whatever caste or creed — lost here and there if it served them well, would they then recall their actions with as much satisfaction, as much glee? Why was it so easy for these people to kill Muslims? What was the kind of context that shaped their worldview, and their choices? What really is this worldview?

RSS in Early Childhood I found all ‘Mob Leaders’ in my sample had been exposed to a single, coherent ideological programme initiated in early childhood. All three were from families that bore a deep distrust of Muslims, and had a strong RSS background starting with early schooling years. For all, key (remembered) influencers in their lives were RSS swayamsevaks (volunteers) and leaders met with in those years. By their own account, they had deeply internalised the RSS ideology in their formative years, and were now powerful vehicles of its transmission to large numbers. The context in which an entire worldview around the Muslim community is thus shaped becomes clearer if we take a brief look at individual

23. Jayaben was arrested by the SIT (Special Investigation Team) in March 2009.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 141

backgrounds of the Mob Leaders, and how these backgrounds relate to their practice. Suresh Bhai, to start with, had been closely associated with the RSS in Ahmedabad since early childhood. His father, a Rajasthani Brahmin migrant from Bihar, believed that this was the true nationalist organisation, and asked his sons to attend shakhas regularly. While his elder brothers dropped out after some time, Suresh, who joined when he was only eight, stayed with them for life. Initially, it was all games and fun, lots of other children, nationalist songs and talk of national heroes . . . I liked going there because they would talk about our history, how we were enslaved by Muslim intruders who came from outside and ruled our country for more than 1,400 years . . . how all this happened because Hindus, though in the majority, are not united . . . I don’t know how and when, but over the years I became very closely intertwined with the RSS culture.24

After completing his graduation and a further degree in Law, he joined the army in 1983 on a Short Service Commission. However, he quit soon after completion of his contractual obligation, primarily because he could not adjust to what he called a ‘foreign culture in the Indian army.’ I felt isolated there. It’s not a real life. It’s a show of western culture . . . dekhava (ostentation) . . . you have to speak only in English . . . and I don’t like speaking it unless necessary.

He came back to Ahmedabad, got a sales job and quit again to start his own business. During this period of struggle, his relationship with the RSS was renewed and strengthened. Around the same time, they also gave him a formal post as Seva (service) head for Naroda. Two years later, he joined the BJP on their recommendation and, at the time he spoke to this researcher, represented the party in a leadership position at the local level.25 24. As he sees it, the most critical influence in his life has been that of the RSS. His role model continues to be an RSS swayamsevak, former mathematics teacher and personal assistant to Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat. 25. Suresh’s discomfort in the army, his uneasy choices thereafter, and his final ‘docking’ with the RSS is in some ways reminiscent of that of Mahmud Abouhalima, one of those accused of bombing the World Trade Centre in 1993. Abouhalima, in a prison interview, said the early part of his life was spent running away from himself. He said the low point came when he was in Germany, trying

142 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

While he frankly admits that his own participation in the Naroda violence was, in great part, dictated by political expediency, he believes what happened was right. ‘Symbolic violence was necessary . . . they needed to be taught a lesson.’ He adds that in 1969 he had seen much worse. He had been only nine years old then, and had attended the RSS shakhas for barely a year. ‘Hardly 100 yards away, Muslim women and children were slaughtered in front of my eyes. But I was not afraid. I knew they were being killed because a cow had been killed in front of Jagannath temple.’ As he sees it, Godhra just happened to be the ‘trigger’ that provided an outlet to the long accruing sentiments of Hindus. Any ideological movement needs time . . . it grows, grows, finally bursts . . . After Godhra, it was simply revenge, revenge. The killings needed to be brutal, even their women and children had to be burned . . . So that they remember forever that Hindus too can do this, Hindus too can be fanatics. You are not the only ones who can be barbaric.

Jagdish Bhai, among the key architects of the Naroda killings, attended RSS shakhas in school from the time he was 13 years old. He belongs to an influential business family in Naroda, which has for years run (as trustees) both the local mandir (temple) and school. He says he was strongly influenced by his father’s ideas on rashtravad (nationalism), and by Dr V. A. Vanikar (amongst those who founded the VHP in 1964), at whose insistence he formally joined the RSS at the age of 23. Two years later (1985), he was assigned Parishad zimmedari (VHP responsibility). We came together to unite Hindu society. We got naitikta (morality) from the RSS . . . that there is no big or small within Hindu society and that Hindus must unite for the sake of the rashtra. See, Hindus in their own country have to live as second-class citizens. If we want Saraswati Vandana

to live the way he imagined Europeans and Americans did. His return to Islam, ‘a rock and a pillar of mercy’ (Juergensmeyer 2001: 359), carried with it a renewed sense of obligation to make Islamic society truly Islamic: hard, not soft like the humiliating, mind numbing comforts of secular modernity (ibid.). Mark Juergensmeyer sees the need to thus fashion a ‘traditional’ or ‘hard . . . religion’ as concern not so much with religious, ethnic, or national selves as with their own personal, perilous selves (ibid.). See Hoffer (1951) for a larger, and more nuanced discussion on the subject.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 143 in our schools, we are called communal but because Muslims don’t want it, there is no Uniform Civil Code.

Today, Jagdish Bhai is trustee of several temples in Gujarat, including the highly frequented Ambaji temple in Sabarkantha district. The trust, he says, has contributed greatly to the development and activities of their dharmic vyavastha (religious organisation). In addition to running colleges and hospitals, these activities he says include working towards samajik parivartan (social change), rashtriya jagran (national awakening) and spreading awareness of Hindutva and of the wrong being done to Hindu society. If these activities foster violence against Muslims, he is not apologetic. ‘I believe, as I have also taught my children, that we are followers of Ram. Even he had to kill Ravana, who was not only Hindu but also a Brahmin.’ Jayaben, accused by Muslim survivors of instigating the mob in Naroda, comes from a family with strong RSS roots. Her father, from Sindh (now in Pakistan), was closely associated with RSS shakhas there even before partition. She was brought up in Disa, a small town in Vanaskantha district of Gujarat. Both she and her brother were sent regularly to RSS shakhas26 and training camps as children (she started at age 14), and continue to be staunch associates of the organisation today. Her husband’s family did not know much about the RSS, and for a few years, her ties with the organisation were limited to ‘contact five or six times a year.’ Things, however, changed when she and her husband moved to Ahmedabad in 1988. ‘I got the same environment here. Around that time the Shah Bano case was on . . . I felt it was wrong and I should play a more active role in electoral politics.’ Through her (maternal) family’s links in the RSS, she joined the BJP, and since moved from rung to rung in the political ladder. The Congress, as she sees it, was never an option for her. ‘Brain mein ghusa hua tha ke hamne Sindh choda, partition hua, because of Congress . . . magaz mein ghusa hua tha ke ye log kuch bhi kar sakte hai (it was ingrained in my mind that we had to leave Sindh, that partition happened because of Congress . . . it was ingrained in my mind that these people can do anything).’

26. Jayaben attended shakhas of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, the women’s wing of the RSS.

144 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Rationalisation of Practice Mob Leaders rationalised their practice almost exclusively in terms of a determined worldview of Muslims, rooted in most part in the RSS ideology. They seemed to share not just the same worldview on the Muslim community — primarily that Muslims can never be trusted — but, in the main, supported this view with a selfsame core set of locally fleshed out ‘facts’.27 In essence, these were: AMuslims have always been first aggressors and Hindus are not safe with them. AAThey are fundamentalists, intent on increasing their numbers. AAThey are anti-national. AAHindu women are unsafe with Muslims, A

First Aggressors Muslims as cruel aggressors and a threat to Hindu identity and existence — also one of the core tenets of RSS ideology — is the strongest thread linking the narratives of the Mob Leaders. Despite being a participant in, and eyewitness to the most gruesome of crimes committed by Hindus against Muslims, Suresh Bhai seemed surprised when asked if he had any regrets. ‘That community (Muslims) has no pity — or they wouldn’t have burnt people (in Sabarmati Express, Godhra). No man would have wanted to kill anyone, it’s a reaction to their brutality. History is witness that Hindus have never started a riot.’28 Interestingly, the Mob Leaders, themselves active local agents of propaganda creation and dissemination, seemed to have been (over time) also — without any conscious semblance of unease — co-opted into 27. These alleged ‘facts’ about Muslims were narrated with consistency and vigour by all Mob Leaders, and supported by local (Ahmedabad) ‘history.’ What was of interest to this study was however not the veracity of such local history — that as the Mob Leaders saw it, was only in line with larger pan-Muslim facts — but that the respondents themselves, by their own admission, had had insignificant or no interaction at all with the object of their hatred. In effect, an entire worldview around Muslims had been conceptualised, and hardened over time, based not just on ‘knowledge’ gathered more or less in the course of interactions with a single source (the Sangh) but, more significantly, in the near complete absence of meaningful contact with the vilified community. 28. If a lie repeated a thousand times is the truth (a statement often credited to Goebbel, Hitler’s chief propagandist), it seemed to this study a prophesy as true perhaps for those who themselves created and propagated the lies.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 145

the self propagating, powerful discourse of their own creation. Juhapur, a Muslim-dominated area in the old city, appeared for instance in narratives of almost all my respondents in Ahmedabad, including those of the Mob Leaders, as a primordial and typical ‘Muslim den’ housing the most ‘notorious elements’ of the Muslim community in Ahmedabad. None amongst the Mob Leaders had ever visited the area, and seemed wholly unaware of its complex, and contested, history.29 Jayabehn, particularly, voluntarily and repeatedly reiterated with ‘conviction’ that it was always Muslims from ‘Juhapur’ (often cited along with Kalupur, Dariapur and other such ‘notorious’ old city areas) that started the trouble in every riot. And, though I could not verify her allegation from any other source — including local Hindu residents of Naroda — she insisted the violence on 28 February 2002 was no exception. ‘Even on the 28th, Juhapur Muslims came here to provoke (in Naroda) . . . Sindhi shops in Revari Bazar and Panchkuan (Muslim-dominated areas in the old city) were burnt by them again this time.’30 Like her fellow Mob Leaders, she also refers repeatedly to Muslim aggression around ‘Hindu’ rathyatras31 (traditional Hindu carriage procession for a deity). Rathyatra shanti se ho jai, aisa kabhi Muslims ke taraf se nahi hua (Muslims have never allowed any rathyatra to pass in peace) . . . ‘when their Id julus goes, Hindus let them pass in peace . . . but they cannot be trusted!’ As a corollary, the rising Muslim headcount in the country — as cause for alarm — is a theme that dominates the narratives of the Mob Leaders.

29. See Breman (1999: 259–83) for a fascinating window into the history of Juhapura. Formerly a small village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Juhapura, now with a (still growing) population of 125,000, is integrated within the city limits. The year 1990 saw (for the first time) hundreds of Hindus and Muslims engaged in a bitter gun-battle over a plot of vacant land that left 11 dead and 60 injured. Relations between the two communities have been turbulent ever since, reaching flashpoint easily in the event of communal trouble in the city. 30. This researcher spoke to several (Hindu) residents of Naroda Gaon, as well as Naroda Patia (that saw the worst violence against Muslims in the city on 28 February 2002). None, however, including those who had themselves participated in the attacks on Muslims on the day, could confirm Jayaben’s allegation of Muslim provocateurs coming in to Naroda all the way from Juhapur. 31. The powerful symbol of the rathyatra — traditionally a ceremonial carriage procession for the Hindu deity — was used very effectively by Lal Krishna Advani of the BJP in the late 1980s to garner popular support for their campaign to secure Hindu rights over the (disputed) Ramjanmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya.

146 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

As Jagdish Bhai sees it, Muslims are a potential menace best eliminated while there still is time. During partition, they wreaked havoc because their population was above 35 per cent . . . if this happens here again . . . these pseudo secularists don’t know what will happen to them . . . In 1983, I went to Kashmir . . . saw 18 mandirs broken there . . . In Lahore before 1947, 50 per cent were Hindus . . . not one Hindu now. Who did all this?

Fundamentalists The Mob Leaders say Muslims are fundamentalists (kattarwadis) whose alleged orthodox disdain for family planning is enmeshed with a political strategy to increase their numbers in India. Jagdish Bhai says, They say, accept Islam or we will finish you with Jihad. They are incited in mosques and madrassas to kill Hindus, told that this is the fastest way to get to the pleasures in Heaven . . . their ulemas teach them to have as many children as possible, each man has 15 or 16.

Suresh Bhai reiterates, ‘They are controlled by anti-social elements . . . their role models are Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden . . . Their entire social system is wrong, their thoughts are wrong . . . and the biggest problem with them is population control.’

Anti-National The Mob Leaders reiterate often that Muslims are treacherous, and have no loyalty to India. Interestingly, their narratives on the subject are hedged around the same reference point that, as they see it, proves that Muslims are anti-national: an alleged affinity to Pakistan during cricket matches. Jayaben says, for instance, ‘If Pakistan wins (cricket matches) Kalupur Muslims cheer . . . Muslims will have to prove their loyalty to the country as citizens.’

Sexual Predators Muslim male sexuality, and in relation, Muslim fertility appears as a strong theme in the narratives of the Mob Leaders. Suresh Bhai says, for instance, of the Muslim man, ‘Right from when he is a child, he considers his cousin sister a future wife, not a sister . . . sex is the most dominant element in their minds and lives . . .’ Jayaben reiterates, ‘Our daughters are not safe with them (Muslims) . . . girls are taken away and raped . . . Muslim boys roam around colleges with Hindu aliases and trap poor girls who have never seen motorbikes . . .’

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 147

I encountered these (and similar) allegations repeatedly in narratives of my respondents in Gujarat, but none (including Jayaben) could provide details of such incidents, such as dates, names of colleges affected, whether a police case was filed, or even source from where the respondent heard of the incident.32 Apart from all of the above ‘facts’ about the Muslim community that the Mob Leaders use to rationalise their (violent) practice as self-defence, even as desh bhakti (love for the country), a fifth ‘fact’ is strongly woven into their narratives (which I shall explore in the following section).

Physically Repugnant Narratives of Mob Leaders evince an essentialised repugnance of the Muslim community that extends deeper and beyond the above discussed ‘rational’ criteria for revulsion. While some of them did have (other) specific criteria of dislike — for example, Suresh Bhai says, ‘notice how dirty they are . . . if they pass you by, they stink’, or later, ‘I hate that cap (Muslim religious headgear)’ — their narratives seemed to be saying, in not so many words, that they just disliked Muslims. This revulsion, for what was already essentialised as dirty, alien and potentially dangerous was again not sourced from personal experience.33

32. In his multi-volume histories of India, V. D. Savarkar painted a bleak picture of Muslim tyranny in India, emphasising especially the alleged abductions of Hindu women. The RSS corollary to this is that all Muslims are a threat to faith and nation and especially to women at all times. Revenge, therefore, must be taken on present-day Muslims both for historical wrongs and for the future danger that they embody (Sarkar 2002: 2874). In the absence of any corroborative data (despite my best attempts to locate it in local history), it does seem that Jayaben’s allegations, too, belong to the same legion of Sangh ideology/history. 33. Essentialisation of the hated ethnic other as physically repugnant or unclean, yet dark and dangerous at the same time — quite akin to the perception of the cockroach in most cultures — is not unique to Hindu–Muslim relations. For decades, Rwandan politicians had depended on evoking images of the terrible Tutsis invading the country from outside, ready to pounce on the hapless Hutus. In the 1960 mini civil war, the Tutsi guerrillas were called the Inyenzi, the cockroaches: an epithet given to them partly because of their ability to move freely at night and strike at Hutu enclaves, Now, three decades later, the failed invasion of the exiled Tutsis from Uganda provided the Hutu leadership with the perfect opportunity to label all Tutsis as cockroaches: liable to be killed without guilt (Gupta 2001: 157).

148 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Relationship with Muslims Respondents had no first hand experience of above cited ‘facts’ about Muslims. None in this sample of three had had any significant acquaintance with Muslims at an individual level at all, either in personal interactions or in more formal settings. Suresh Bhai, the only one in the sample of Mob Leaders, had known one Muslim at more than a cursory level — an acquaintance of his college days. ‘He had a mixing nature, the same interests as me . . . he was also working like I was . . . Pehchaan se dosti banne mein time nahi lagta hai (it doesn’t take time for an acquaintance to become a friend).’ This ‘friendship,’ however, did not make a dent on his worldview on the Muslim community. ‘I never felt the need to know how his thoughts were, fundamentalist or liberal.’ Jayaben, on the other hand, had had some interaction with Muslims in professional (service) transactions, but even these exchanges did not remotely impact her conceptions of the ‘enemy’ community. As a practicing gynaecologist in Naroda, she had had several Muslim patients, some of who would invite her for (the festival of) Id. She recalls that, not so many years ago, she even accepted some of these invitations and visited their homes in the festive season. These patients, she is confident, had voted for her as Corporator in 1995, and again as MLA in 1998, but not after the Naroda killings. Nevertheless, it is not a matter of consequence, she says, that amongst the many Muslim women raped and killed in the Naroda violence, some were likely to have been her patients.

Summary of Findings AThose who led mobs in the 2002 Ahmedabad riots were seniorlevel associates of the then ruling political party, and its sister organisations. AATheir actions of the day were not spontaneous, but in most part premeditated and judiciously thought through. AAThey acted in accordance with what they perceived would meet with significant approval from the party and expected that it would further their own interests. AAThey were confident that their actions would not meet with retribution from state agencies. AANevertheless, while the Mob Leaders — individuals with considerably high social and economic standing at stake — would not A

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 149

have been at the site of violence without prior assurance of the above, (being responsible for) killing Muslims was by no means an unpleasant task. In retrospect, they evinced no regret whatsoever. AAThe Mob Leaders shared an almost identical worldview on Muslims. This worldview was buttressed in most part with a common, repetitive set of local (Ahmedabad) data. AAA large part of this shared worldview was sourced from regular and sustained exposure to the Hindu nationalist RSS ideology in early childhood. This exposure was provided through a consistent, locally relevant and organised framework of instruction (RSS shakhas) at a strongly impressionable age. AANone of the Mob Leaders recalled being exposed to any conflicting ideologies in the same period of instruction. In the absence of ideological diversity, the RSS by repeated reinforcement of what it conveyed as ‘original truths’ about an ‘enemy community’, was successful in creating and cementing an insular worldview around Muslims. AAFor those who led the violence against Muslims, this deeply entrenched worldview provided a thick ideological buffer against guilt.

Killers In Ahmedabad, I met and spoke (often over several meetings) with eight men accused of killing Muslims in the 2002 riots. Three frontline killers, Mukesh Rajput and Ashok Prajapati (Gulberg Society), and Babu Bhai (Naroda Patia), spoke at some length about the events of the day and their part in it. In addition, three alleged killers from the Chhara community in Naroda Patia (Bhanu Chhara Rathod, Mahesh Rathod and Vasant Rathod) evaded direct admission of their own role, but spoke to me again at length, in the course of which they repeatedly endorsed the violence as just and fair. Of them, Bhanu and Mahesh (father and son) were named by Muslim witnesses as ringleaders who orchestrated gang rapes and some of the worst acts of brutality against women in Patia. Another two men, also from the Chhara community (Pappu, Sinh), living in adjoining colonies like Chharanagar, Kubernagar, etc. in Naroda also spoke to me in some detail about their background, and what made many Chharas willing to kill Muslims on the day. Pappu and Sinh were also accused of rape.34 34. All names have been changed.

150 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

In addition to this core sample, I also spoke to Prakash, a Congress party worker who self-admittedly killed Muslims in the 1985 and 1987 riots in Ahmedabad, and by his own confession again — had considered killing Sikhs in 1984. Prakash said he was only a bystander in the 2002 violence. Who really are these men? What made it possible for them to bloody their hands in a ‘riot’ that appalled the world in its brutality? Are they motivated any differently from the Mob Leaders? I found the Killers were younger than the Mob Leaders, mainly in their 30s (at the time of fieldwork in 2003). A significant slice consisted of graduates and above, mostly junior workers of political parties (including Congress), or aspirants to the same. The rest were self employed — smalltime businessmen, shop owners, auto-rickshaw drivers etc. — mostly primary school dropouts. Two respondents were Rajputs, one Patel, and the rest were mainly from the Chhara (OBC) and other OBC communities (see Table 4.2).

No Role in Strategy Unlike Mob Leaders, the Killers did not have a strategic role in planning, or igniting violence on the day. A few respondents (junior associates of political parties) said they acted on (prior) specific instruction of senior leaders. For these political aspirants — evidently eager to demonstrate their closeness, and loyalty to political bigwigs in the region — it was a matter of prestige and pride to be so acknowledged. Babu Bhai, among the foremost of those accused of butchery in Naroda was, for instance, a senior Bajrang Dal leader. He reminisces, ‘Our leaders told us: don’t be eunuchs, move now!’35 Having spent several months in jail after the Naroda killings, he says he was happy to be able to do something for the ‘Hindu leaders’ (including those in my sample of Mob Leaders in Naroda). ‘Somebody had to take the responsibility for what happened . . . I was proud to be chosen.’ He claims that he, in fact, carried on the good work in jail too, spearheading

35. The (post-Godhra) call to Hindu males to avenge themselves or suffer emasculation is hardly new. It is well in line with the larger Sangh Parivar vision of justice (offered to present-day Hindus) for the historical wrongs committed by Muslim (invaders) in the past, evoked in every episode of Hindu–Muslim conflict in India. See Breman (1993); Engineer (1989, 1992); Sarkar (2002).

Current

Current

3 Mukesh Rajput Congress

4 Babu Bhai

Current Current

Current

Current

6 Sinh BD 7 Mahesh Rathod BD

8 Bhanu Chhara VHP

9 Vilas Rathod

BD

Current

5 Prakash Tomar Congress

BD

Current

Current

2 Ashok Prajapati Congress

BD

Sex

Associate

Associate

President (Naroda district) Party Worker Associate Associate

Party Worker

Party Worker

M Chhara

M Chhara

M Chhara M Chhara

M Rajput

M Patel

M Rajput

Postgraduate

Matriculate (failed)

Education

Matriculate

OBC

OBC

OBC OBC

Unavailable

Middle School

Standard 9 Graduate +LLB

35

52

40 31

35

41

30

30

21

Unemployed

Housewife

Ahmedabad

Place of Occupation origin — of spouse village/district

Housewife

Meghani Nagar, Ahmedabad Sumerpur

Unavailable Unavailable Ahmedabad

Illiterate

Unavailable Housewife

Unavailable Housewife

Unavailable Unavailable Chamanpura, Ahmedabad

Illiterate

Education of spouse

Naroda, Ahmedabad Married Illiterate Housewife Ahmedabad Divorced Unavailable Unavailable Naroda, (after 2002 Ahmedabad rape cases) Married Illiterate Housewife Ahmedabad

Married

Married (Bigamy)

Married

Divorced

Married

Marital status

Medium Service Government (AMTS bus driver) Medium Small Married Business (cloth shop)/ Self-owned Taxi

Medium Auto Driver Medium Advocate

High

Part-time Video Shooting Shop Medium Unemployed/ Small Business (pan shop) High Service Private Sector High Business (finance)

Low

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

General Intermediate

OBC

General Graduate

M Prajapati OBC

OBC

Caste (as Caste narrated) type

Associate M Chhara (irregular)

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Killers: Socioeconomic Profile

1 Pappu Chhara

Alias

Table 4.2:

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among other things a joint effort by Hindus in the jail to break down an old masjid (mosque) and build a temple in its place. ‘The jail authorities supported us fully.’ His acquaintances said Babu Bhai, an erstwhile smalltime businessman who became a household name in Naroda thanks to the Bajrang Dal, revelled in his increased closeness to the political establishment in Gujarat after the 2002 violence. In a similar vein, Mukesh Rajput, a Congress worker from his college days, says proudly that he was personally (telephonically) instructed by senior VHP leader Praveen Togadia to get to Gulberg Society on the morning of 28 February 2002. Rajput, who candidly discussed his role in the organised massacre of Muslims in Gulberg Society, said he was among the key people who tortured, dismembered and burnt Congress leader Ehsan Jafri to death. ‘That morning Praveen Togadia Bhai called me up . . . he told me I was needed . . .’ Sabko pata tha ke is ladke ke roam roam mein Hindutva bhara hai (they all knew that this boy is deeply committed to Hindutva). Rajput says he had been in constant touch with other like-minded friends that morning, and had half-expected the call. ‘See, I have more weapons than anyone in this area (Meghani Nagar), including two licensed revolvers. More than that, I can organise several more from close friends. Togadia Bhai felt that if we have to take revenge for Godhra, this boy can help.’ Others like Ashok Prajapati, whose ‘good friends’ include several Congress party workers, said ‘everybody’ was on the roads, and ‘they’ just joined in. Ashok, involved in the Gulberg Society killings, added that he and some others like him would not have been there, if they hadn’t seen torrid pictures of the Hindus killed in Godhra all over the papers. He also says he still may not have ended up killing Muslims if the mob hadn’t been diverted by Bajrang Dal people. ‘The tola (mob) was stoning a masjid but they said: why are you wasting your time here . . . kill those people.’ Ashok, his friends say, was also heavily under the influence of alcohol on the day, like many of those in the mob.

Covered for Risk Like the Mob Leaders, Killers too would not have acted without assurance of personal safety. All of those I met and spoke with were sure that their own lives were not at risk, neither from (outnumbered) Muslims in the actual episode of violence, nor from the course of law. Ashok Prajapati says for instance, ‘There were thousands of people that day . . . what fear could I feel?’ Some others, like Mukesh Rajput, created

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a more complex safety net before acting. He said that, to be on the safe side, he had taped the VHP leader’s call to him that morning. ‘I wanted to ensure that my name shouldn’t come’.36 Bhanu Chhara Rathod (alias), Naroda Patia resident accused of multiple counts of murder, rape, and sexual assault in the 2002 riots, was, much to his surprise, suspended from his job in the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS) on account of cases filed against him by Muslim survivors. He said angrily, ‘Is this India or Pakistan? This situation makes me wonder if I am Hindu or Muslim.’ Prakash, a Congress party worker in Naroda who had had FIRs filed against him for murder and arson in the 1985 riots in Ahmedabad, and again in 1987, believes that in riots, ‘99 per cent of the public who participate know that they will go scot free.’ He himself was no exception. ‘In ’85, nothing happened, so I went again in ’87 . . . If I knew I would be hanged, I wouldn’t have gone either. Even today, in Patia or in Gulmerg, everyone knows nothing will happen . . .’ He also says that none of them would have acted without the safety of numbers. He recalls, for instance, that in 1984 he had been part of a crowd that had gathered to attack Sikhs. ‘We had planned to attack Punjab Society in Asarva. We finally did not do it, as enough people did not gather . . . 100–200 of us alone could not do it.’

Social Visibility, Potency and Power While some Killers — aspirants to mainstream politics — did think their actions of the day would better their chances, it was not the prime reason they were there. Unlike Mob Leaders, the Killers’ participation in violence was not quite pragmatic action oriented towards tangible political or other gains. For these men, the rare opportunity to be a perpetrator of socially legitimate violence against a hated enemy of the community was in itself highly desirable, investing the perpetrator with instant social visibility, potency and power. The act of killing itself was in no way ethically onerous, but recalled as a heady life experience.

36. Though Rajput was among the frontline killers in Gulberg, the police came to his home two months later. Rajput said it was Togadia who spoke to the police and got him out, but did not mention whether he had had to use the ‘tape’ for the service.

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Babu Bhai, for instance, often described as among the Hindutva brigade’s best gundas (hooligans) in Ahmedabad, carefully maintained a dossier of press clippings about himself that he proudly showed off to me. These articles, assiduously collated from both regional and national newspapers, document his ‘escapades’ — including in the Naroda violence — over the years. He boasts at length about the additional ‘punyakaam’ (good work) he did while in jail, such as brutally beating up Haji Bilal, key accused for the Godhra tragedy. ‘He had to be given 16 stitches . . . after that, every time he saw me coming, he took off his cap.’ Rajput, too, was glad to get on the right side of influential BJP leaders, but did not expect it to get him a future with the BJP. If anything, he guessed his ‘colourful’ actions of the day would get him better visibility in his own party, which it apparently did. At the time of speaking to this study, he was expecting a nomination at any time to the post of Youth Congress President from Ahmedabad. But, as he narrates, that was not what really drove him to Gulberg. ‘Twenty seventh ke raath se hi haath me khujli lagi hui thi (from 27th night itself, my hands were itching). I had seen the bodies of the Hindus who died . . . I had to do something.’ Rajput says he was ‘excited’ by the prospect of leading a huge mob targeting Muslims. The reason, he says, is that he always hated Muslims, and jumped at the chance to actually kill a few. However, Prakash, also a friend of Rajput (and Congress co-worker), had an additional view on Rajput’s participation. He believes that, for Rajput, it was important that many people see him participating in such violence. Rajput’s own narrative is riddled with frequent assertions about the extent of his power, as well as admissions of his desire to be, and be seen as, powerful. His fancy for, and sizeable collection of, arms grew out of the same need. He recalls that he first took a chaku (knife) with him to school, as some boys would open his dabba (lunchbox) without his permission. He remembers that it worked like magic, and was the beginning of his tryst with arms. I also found Rajput extremely bodyconscious, and keen to impress. He ended his narrative for instance with the following instructions: ‘I may be only 5 ft. 3 in., but don’t underestimate me. I can call the shots in many places across Gujarat.’ Prakash adds that in 1985 he himself had a shaukh (fancy) for the experience. He recalls that, at the time, he had failed the Higher Secondary examination. At that time I was not with the Congress, but I thought I would go into politics. I was not going to college because I had failed . . . everyone was trying to prove themselves . . . it was all about netagiri (political showmanship).

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Prakash said he was, however, only a bystander in the 2002 violence (despite being a resident of Naroda — possibly the worst-affected site in Gujarat) as it had lost its ‘novelty value’ for him. For these frontliners who actively sought out victims and bloodied their own hands in the 2002 violence — a fraction of the marauding mobs — psychological gratification does seem to have been at least as important as more tangible material gains. While a more complex understanding of the kind of factors that may have led men like Rajput to seek a ‘need gap’ fulfilment in mob violence was not within the possibilities in the immediate study, suppressed perception of personal (including physical or social) shortcomings — often compounded by unemployment — and anxiousness to prove self-worth seemed to be significant indicators from the narratives available to this researcher.37 It was perhaps the same for Bhanu Chhara, particularly remembered by witnesses for the macabre murder of Naroda resident Kauser Bano and her full-term foetus, who was wrenched out and swirled on the edge of a sword, dashed to the ground and finally burnt alive with his mother. His neighbours had told me some of the Muslims in Naroda Patia owed him money, and his participation in the events of the day was likely based on pragmatic calculations. Chhara’s home was also the first Hindu home adjoining the Muslim-populated part of Patia gali (street), and there were many who felt that Chhara may have had an interest in the adjoining property. When I met with him — and over the course of later meetings38 — Chhara said, over and over again, that he had been able to do his bit for

37. It has often been said that impotence — moral or physical — breeds violence (Arendt 1999: 10). My findings with (a few of) the 2002 riots killers may back this, though only indicatively. I found some suggestions in the field, both in Ahmedabad and later in Sardarpura, that point to a possible link between sexual impotence, and inclination to violence. As I make this linkage only on the basis of ‘rumours’, and ‘voluntary confidences’ by close friends or relatives of some respondents — but not the respondents themselves — such co-relation remains only suggestive. Also see Arendt (ibid.) for a nuanced discussion on the distinct nature of, and flows between, power, strength, force, authority and violence. 38. My (initial) meetings with Chhara — suspicious, confrontationist, lewd and suggestive all at once — were among the most difficult, and complex, in my months of fieldwork in Gujarat. When we first met (barely a year after the 2002 violence), he veered sharply, in a manner almost schizophrenic, between demands to know this researcher’s ‘true identity’, denial of his own role in events at Naroda, shrill

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the ‘Hindu’ samaj (community). From time to time, he quoted fervently from the Mahabharata (Hindu religious epic) to justify what happened. He used the epic allegory (of how the charismatic Hindu god Krishna rationalised Arjun’s war against his brothers, the Kauravas, as dutiful action to vanquish evil) as a metaphor that rationalises Hindu (portrayed as the righteous Pandavas) action against their neighbours, the Mussalman bhais39 (the Kauravas). ‘Why do you think it happened? Whenever there is evil on this earth, God comes down in human form . . .’ The youngest son of a poor family in Ahmedabad, Bhanu (Chhara) Rathod had, by his own account, struggled against economic odds for much of his childhood and a good part of his youth. He started working full-time in a factory after completing the sixth grade at school, as his then monthly salary of `52 was important to the family. Thereon, he worked on jobs ranging from factory security guard, auto rickshaw driver, milk-truck driver, and finally AMTS bus driver. In our first meeting, Rathod insistently reinforced his personal achievements. ‘I am a gold medal AMTS driver . . .’ In a later meeting, he regretted that he could not complete formal schooling. ‘I did not want to leave studies . . . I was always number one in class. I knew a little English . . . and my Maths is good even now.’ What is conspicuous by its absence in Chhara’s narrative is mention of the social odds he would have battled against to get to where he is today. The Chharas, a marginal community in Naroda, have over the years made their living from illegal liquor brewing, theft and trade in stolen goods. Boxed and stigmatised in public (and more difficult, police) perception as a homogenous ‘criminal community’, moving into, and surviving in alternate occupations has been an uphill battle for them. However, Bhanu Chhara’s narrative had no mention of any such struggle. On the contrary, he said (repeatedly, in an unstructured, and mostly unprompted, narrative) that they (his family) were ‘upper castes’, and in relation, aggressively reiterated his scriptural knowledge. ‘We are Rajputs . . . upper castes . . . Rathods . . . I am a learned man.’ Before I had the

justification of the ‘morality’ of what happened, to crude or plainly provocative personal remarks. While I persisted in my attempts to understand his ideas, it took a while before Chhara would treat me with the respect — or decency — needed for any meaningful exchange. 39. ‘Bhai’, the colloquially used suffix, is used in Gujarat after a man’s first name as a general manner of expressing regard.

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opportunity to meet with him, Bhanu had, in fact, been described to me by a close relative of his as a man who gave much importance to puja pat (colloquial for Hindu ritual prayers) and scrupulously adhered to other Hindu rituals. When I first went to their Naroda home, his family (wife, a son and three daughters) was making rigorous preparations for the impending Janamashtami festival, which he declared would as always be celebrated by them in style. While Chhara’s ostentatious religiosity likely had roots in a process of Sanskritisation that dates older than his contact with Hindutva, his relatives say it was his overriding need to be seen as a good Hindu that really made him vulnerable to the anti- Muslim propaganda of Hindu nationalist organisations like the VHP. His own narrative to this researcher reinforced that, in his eyes, his actions of the day had — at least for the moment — made him a veritable hero. Chhara was found dead under mysterious circumstances in October 2005, three years after the 2002 riots, and barely a year after we last met at his home in Patia gali. His death was reported by most newspapers at the time as a suicide, as his family said he had been suffering from depression. Important studies such as Stanley J. Tambiah’s Levelling Crowds (1996) have discussed how processes such as ‘routinisation’ and ‘ritualisation’ help comprehend why brutalities committed as a member of an inflamed mob, pursuing what it considers to be a ‘righteous’ political cause on behalf of the collectivity (ethnic group or nationality), may not take a crippling psychic toll on the aggressor at the level of the individual/self (ibid.: 230). A year after the gruesome Naroda killings and rapes — many of which he had spearheaded — Chhara’s extended narratives, in fact, had held absolutely no trace of regret, unease, or doubt. However, play-acting to a larger-than-life persona of righteous and victorious avenger, he seemed frequently bewildered by the repercussions of his actions — not so much with that he had been incarcerated for a few months, or had lost his job, but that he now faced a certain stigma as a rapist in his own immediate society, and as I observed, amongst his own family members. (Chhara was accused among other things of parading Muslim women and children naked before raping, hacking and burning them.) His narratives swerved sharply from gloating, megalomaniac self-glorification, to angry denial of his actions. In the course of a single meeting (the first of many), he said with a sly smile, ‘Yes, they have accused me of doing things you wouldn’t do with your Mister (husband),’ and moments later (angrily) stated, ‘I have daughters. How can I rape?’ Unlike Chhara who had secured a ‘permanent’ job with the AMTS, most respondents in this sample of ‘Killers’ however are either

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self-employed or engaged in what they perceive as mundane, menial jobs. Like Pappu Chhara, for instance, for whom ‘Muslims’ for a brief while took on enlarged, grotesque proportions of the enemy, a tangible, legitimate target of his accumulated frustration. ‘See, we Chharas can kill for our brothers in the community . . . everyone was very angry with what they did to our women and children in Godhra . . .’ Pappu however has been ‘angry’ for some time now about several other things, things that had little to do with Hindus or Muslims. He and his elder brother had a difficult childhood after his father married a second time. Despite his mother’s best efforts, his elder brother dropped out of school and got into chori (theft). Some years later, he died of blood cancer, leaving Pappu responsible for his own (three children) and his brother’s family. At 22, he works parttime in a video shop, and has few illusions about his future. ‘I wanted to get into the police . . . I have seen myself that a policeman makes an extra `2,000 every month through hafta (bribes) from only 20 Chhara families, but you have to be a graduate for that.’ Pappu, who did not clear his high school exams, and could not organise the extra `700 to fill the form for a second attempt, admits freely that most of his compatriots (Chharas) are in the daru (liquor) business or in chori (theft). ‘Why shouldn’t they? What other options are there for our people?’ His friend, who has postgraduate qualifications, agrees with Pappu. ‘When people find out that that I am from the Chhara community, they change their mind about hiring me.’ The perceived failure to procure (socially desirable) employment is not limited to the Chharas. Ashok Prajapati, involved in the Gulberg Society killings, said he had been looking for a job since completing his graduation, with no success. A postgraduate (Master of Arts), he even enrolled in law (Bachelor of Laws [LLB]) but dropped out after a year. ‘I saw so many others around with law degrees and still unemployed . . . I felt it would be of no use.’ He now runs a small pan (betel leaf) parlour, and has given up looking for a regular job. ‘I am now always thinking of making more money . . . and how to do that.’ Interestingly, like Pappu Chhara, he had been very keen on a job with the police, but could not clear the exams. Prajapati says Muslims make him angry. ‘When I read in the papers that three Hindus were murdered here . . . I get furious. I slapped a Muslim client here once after reading about Hindus who were killed in Kashmir.’ He is not as eager to discuss his participation in Gulberg, and only says ‘everyone was excited . . . they had to be punished.’ His friend (on whose reference he agreed to speak to this researcher), however, described his actions as that of a man who ‘seemed to have something to prove . . . show that he could do more than others.’

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Prajapati’s or Mukesh’s narratives do seem to hold out, in good part, Sudhir Kakar’s thesis on the psychological satisfaction provided by participation in the mob. The most immediate experience in being part of a crowd is the sensual pounding received in the press of other bodies . . . once the fear of touch disappears in the fierce press of other bodies and the individual lets himself become a part of the crowd’s density, the original apprehension is transformed into an expansiveness that stretches to include others. Distances and differences — of class, status, age, caste hierarchy — disappear in an exhilarating feeling . . . (Kakar 1990: 142)

Prajapati, for instance, remembers nostalgically, ‘Nobody then cared what tomorrow would hold . . . it was today . . . that was the atmosphere . . .’ Yet, while Kakar believes that mobs showcase the massive inducement, by group processes, of individuals ‘towards a new identity and behavior of the sort that would ordinarily be repudiated by the majority of individuals so induced’ (ibid.), narratives of the Killers in fact seem to indicate that, far from the individual ego being submerged in the transcendental assembly of the mob, the mob in fact provides or becomes an opportunity to gratify already existing unfulfilled, submerged desires. Strikingly, none of the Killers recalled, for instance, feeling any unease about their practice, or evinced regret in retrospect. Take Mukesh Rajput, who says, Uss din, koi daya nahi thi mann mein (that day, I felt no pity) . . . ‘I was the first to enter. I have absolutely no regret.’

Early Ties with Sangh Ideology Most of the Killers had acted with the support of their families. Ashok Prajapati, for instance, has disliked Muslims for pretty much as long as he can recall. His mother, who, he says, slogged to bring them up after his mill worker father died, never trusted the community and expressed no unease with the turn of events on the day. ‘I have seen so many riots . . . sometimes Hindus die, sometimes Muslims,’ she shrugs. ‘That day there were tens of millions of people (with him on the roads) . . . what fear could I feel?’ Babubhai on the other hand, recalls that his father, a marginal farmer in Sumerpur, Rajasthan, was a ‘true Hindutvawadi’. ‘He always told me no Muslim can ever be your own.’ As compared to Mob Leaders, there is less data available, however, on their ties with the Sangh. Of the core sample of nine ‘Killers’ (in the 2002 riots) in Ahmedabad, two (both Congress workers) admitted, and spoke in depth about, their childhood ties with the RSS. (Additionally, Prakash — also a Congress

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worker — who participated in previous riots in Ahmedabad also attended RSS shakhas regularly.) For frontline killers such as Ashok Prajapati or Mukesh Rajput — for whom the opportunity to be the perpetrator of violence in any unequal interaction was, in fact, (as should be evident from the previous section) gratifying by itself — it was, nevertheless, not by coincidence that Muslims became the real target of their virulence. Ashok, for instance, has attended RSS shakhas since he was 12 years old. ‘Their camps were right behind our house. I attended regularly for four or five years . . . used to go there with friends. I enjoyed it.’ Rajput said he ‘knew’ the RSS since childhood, but was evasive about the extent, or strength of his association with them. ‘There were five shakhas in our area . . . We didn’t want to go because they have prathana and samvad (prayer and discussion) after the games . . .’ He also said he didn’t like the ‘RSS wallahs’. ‘They speak very sweetly, ask you how your father is, but it’s all false.’ Towards the end of his narrative, Rajput’s duality towards the RSS was more comprehensible. Some years before (we met), he had got into an ugly brawl with an ‘RSS boy’, and had slashed his hand badly with a knife. The boy lost his hand and his brother turned out to be a policeman. ‘I was beaten up badly by about 150 people — some policemen, mainly RSS people . . .’ This incident soured his relationship with the Sangh for then, but did not tear him away from what he calls Hinduwad.40 Interestingly, Prakash (a Congress worker) who killed Muslims in two previous riots in Ahmedabad — though he says he was only a bystander to the violence in 2002 — also had childhood ties with the RSS. He recalls that he used to go with friends to the shakha when he was around 15 years old. Though he says he was not a regular at the shakha, he retained informal ties with the RSS. ‘We used to sit together . . . boys of the colony all believed in Hinduwad. There were Sangh boys, too, in our group and we would have discussions about Muslims.’ In 1985, he was 18 and, as he recalls, of kattar vichar (orthodox view). ‘People used to say things about Muslims . . . those things were there in my mind . . . RSS people told us all this is happening in the city . . . you should do something . . .’ Prakash admits that, at the time, he was also interested in the BJP. ‘The idea was to go via the Sangh if you wanted to join BJP . . .

40. This term was used often by respondents to refer to faith in the concept of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.

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there were no elections at college (Higher Secondary) level, no avenues for us . . . and anyway we were all Hinduwad at heart.’ He recalls that, in 1987, again it was RSS people who got them together. They said mandir pe hamla hua hai (the mandir has been attacked). For days we floated around aggressively with weapons . . . That was when I realised that we were being used to trigger a riot . . . I started hating those RSS wallahs (people).

Soon after, he contested elections at the University level as a Congress candidate, won and entered mainstream Congress politics. He says his interaction with RSS has been negligible since. Babu Bhai says he had not had any significant childhood association with the RSS or its associated organisations. He adds, though, that he had been deeply influenced by a particular ‘RSS neta’ (leader) when he was young. His commitment to ‘Hindutvawadi’, as he sees it, really began when he was 28 years old. After 12 years of factory labour (initially as a worker in Bombay, and then in a supervisory position in Ahmedabad) he had just started his own business with a government loan. The business was doing well and, as he recalls, he had success, lots of money, and the first flush of a dream come true. It was around then that he met with the Bajrang Dal. They were holding a small programme near my factory, and wanted only `1,000 or so to build a stage. They explained a lot to me . . . said they are working for Hindus . . . I got interested . . . went on to fund the whole programme.

Within three months of meeting them, he fired his driver, a Muslim who had been in his service for some length of time.41 ‘They opened my eyes to many things I hadn’t realised earlier . . . I felt this man could betray me.’ Babu Bhai held a senior position in the Bajrang Dal, and was a strong exponent of its organisational view on Muslims: one that labelled the entire community, in his lingo, as desh ke gaddar (traitors).

41. Babubhai, nevertheless, remembered little of his driver as an individual, except that ‘like all Muslims, he never failed to read the namaz (Quranic prayers) in time’.

162 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Our answer is only one . . . kato ya bahar bhejo (cut them up or chase them out) . . . Or take away their citizenship rights and make them slaves in this country. My view is we should convert all the Muslims here. If they must live, they have to live as Hindus. We in the VHP and Bajrang Dal feel in two to five years, there will be no masjid (mosque), no mullah (Muslim priest) . . . whoever stays here will convert. This is very much possible . . . the public will awaken and the state will be with us. It has happened in Gujarat.

Accounts of the remaining respondents (Naroda killers) indicated strong ongoing ties with the VHP, and the Bajrang Dal. Most (including the Chharas) said they did not ‘know’ the RSS but had received moral support as well as financial sustenance from VHP/Bajrang Dal, both before and after the killings. Mahesh Chhara (son of Bhanu Chhara), key accused in several of the gang rapes in the Naroda violence, said for instance that he had expected more help from the VHP. ‘All they gave our family was `1,800, 10 kilos of grain and some oil.’ Mahesh, an advocate by profession, complained that he had had to stay faraar (absconding) for well over a year (since the episode), till he managed to get anticipatory bail. His father (Bhanu Chhara), however, angrily denied any association with the RSS or its associated organisations. He said he had only been influenced by his guru (spiritual teacher), Asaram Bapu,42 whose discourses he had attended for over 30 years. ‘My mama (maternal uncle) first took me to his ashram . . . and ever since I entered service in 1972, any time I would get, I would go for his satsang (community prayers)’. Another Naroda accused, Sinh, said they had all received ‘support’ from the VHP for their service to the Hindu samaj (community). ‘They sent us food in jail . . . gave us money to survive through that period.’ The Naroda killers were also defended by a panel of VHP-appointed lawyers.

Violence as Self-Defence Killers, much like the Mob Leaders, also describe ‘Muslims’ as dangerous aggressors, a threat to the ‘Hindu nation’ and, as a corollary, their own violent practice in the course of the 2002 riots as self-defence. 42. Asaramji (as he is known to his disciples) preaches regularly in ‘Sant Shri Asaramji Ashrams’, numbering over 60 branches in India and abroad — the first of which was, in fact set up in Ahmedabad. Asaramji’s discourses have been accused of ‘taking a BJP slant,’ even of propagating a ‘Hindu fanaticism of sorts’ (Chitralekha 1998: 34–38).

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Beliefs about Muslims held by Killers (and local ‘data’ with which they are justified) as well as related ‘knowledge’, about the freedom movement, Gandhi’s (negative) contribution to it, etc., are again very similar to views expressed by the Mob Leaders, falling closely in line with the RSS worldview. Narratives of Killers — even of those respondents who (proudly) acknowledged their presence in the killing mob — are essentially accounts of how they were all filled with rage after Hindus were killed in Godhra and needed to ‘show them’. Babu Bhai, senior Bajrang Dal leader for Naroda zila (administrative district), said for instance, ‘Even women were giving us sticks in hand, saying go . . .’ Ashok Prajapati reiterates, ‘Ahmedabad Muslims needed to be taught a lesson.’ While the immediate provocation, he said, was the Godhra tragedy, they were also punished for the ‘trouble’ they gave Hindus over the last several years. Prajapati, however, floundered when asked for details. ‘No, not here . . . how can they dare . . . this is a Hindudominated locality . . . but you read so much in the papers . . .’ Even Bhanu Chhara, who lived in close proximity to other Muslim families, though he said his family did not mix with their unpleasant neighbours, believed that all Muslims were kattarwadis (fanatics). ‘They are born with swords in their blood.’ His son, Mahesh, asserted that all Muslims are ‘Pakistan lovers’. ‘When India loses a match to Pakistan, these people cheer’.43 However, Mahesh, too, doesn’t know any of his neighbours. ‘I leave early morning for work . . . come back late at night . . . how will I know these people.’ Rajput, whose narrative is avidly laced with crudely-worded invectives on Muslims, holds strong beliefs regarding the unholy designs of the Muslim community in India. ‘Last 10–12 years, I have read a lot about how Muslims are becoming very strong in India . . . big Muslim businessmen are giving business to other Muslims and slowly spreading their network.’ 43. In some parts of Ahmedabad, mainly old city Muslim ghettos, the researcher found this allegation was based on fact. Muslim intelligentsia in the city, who preferred not to be quoted, felt for Ahmedabad Muslims — majority of who are bitterly poor — weak conceptualisation of state and citizenship has resulted in a stronger than ever dependence on local clergy. As much as over-reaching ties with the ‘Islamic brotherhood’ are a structural part of Islam, there seems also at play a latent failure of the Indian state — and, for that matter, non-state secular institutions — to reach out to the everyday lives and ‘imagination’ of Muslims in India.

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As he sees it, even children are not innocent if they happen to be Muslim. Proud that he ‘was the first to enter’ slain Congress leader Jafri’s residence, Rajput says he has absolutely no regrets for the children who died that day. ‘Because of people like me, the Muslim menace is less . . . let them kill our children, we won’t cry.’

Threat to Hindu Male Sexuality Similar to Mob Leaders, only more overt, the Killers too saw Muslims as a threat to Hindu manhood. There was, in fact, a fairly evident obsession of the respondents of this study with the sexual prowess of the Muslim male — a prowess that, according to them, intruded into Hindu territory.44 The 2002 violence against Muslims — especially Muslim women — was widely justified by the Killers as just repatriation for the alleged rape of Hindu women in the Godhra tragedy.45 Mahesh Rathod, key accused in the gang rape and murder of several Muslim women in Naroda, many of whom were minors, said coolly, ‘In the Godhra kand (carnage), they raped our women . . . why wouldn’t we get angry?’ In fact, narratives of most Killers include anecdotes about how Muslim men in Ahmedabad (mainly college boys) have, over the years and in recent times, sexually assaulted and exploited Hindu women. Rajput insisted, for instance, ‘Our sisters and mothers will not be safe anymore.’ Some of these anecdotes were narrated to me in highly crude and sexually explicit detail, reflecting again on the very apparent obsession of the respondents of this study with Muslim sexuality, in relation to what is perceived as a threat to Hindu manhood. In this worldview, Hindu women themselves are often in the second line of attack, as potential partners in what is perceived as treachery against Hindu men. At the end of one of his graphic stories about exactly how a Hindu girl was stripped by

44. Muslims as a threat to Hindu male sexuality appears as a recurring theme in the documented ideology of the Bajrang Dal, crudely evident in the kind of pamphleteering before and after the 2002 violence. See Annexure 11 on ‘Hate Writing’ in Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a). Particularly, see ibid.: 283–84. 45. While such rumours had long since been rubbished by even the local police establishment, this researcher found stories to this effect had been widely published in leading regional dailies in Gujarat, hardening (Hindu) public pereption of ‘facts’ around Godhra and post-Godhra violence.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 165

Muslim boys in a park near Ahmedabad’s S. V. College, Rajput sniggers, ‘Despite knowing everything, these foolish smart girls go to college and later suffer . . .’ At another level, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bhai admits he had always envied Muslim men. ‘What do we have, one marriage, maybe two kids . . . Just look at them . . . three women, countless kids . . .’ After he joined the Bajrang Dal, he entered into a second marriage, as he puts it, ‘only for the experience’. ‘I was 35, had a wife and two teenage children. She was 16. I wanted to see how Muslim men do it.’ He says it is now his life’s agenda to bring (Hindu) girls back from Muslim homes. At the time we met, he said he already had 499 such cases under his belt. While, according to him, most girls ‘helped’ by him had been 16–20 years old and had been ‘trapped’ by Muslim boys, he admits that it was never easy to get them back into the Hindu fold. The girl generally does not want to return. Let me give an example of what we do in such circumstances . . . We pick up the boy’s brother or father or uncle and beat him up so badly . . . then they pop up quickly enough.

Babu says his efforts towards this key cause got him much recognition within the organisation, and from aggrieved, or sympathetic Hindu families. But best of all, he says, it gave him tremendous personal satisfaction to do so. ‘These mians (abusive term for Muslims) are all dagabaaz (betrayers) . . . their only ideology is how to harm Hindus. They cover their own daughters from top to bottom but take our women away.’ Interestingly, Prakash, who says he now ‘hates’ the RSS, and did not participate in the 2002 violence, nevertheless still continues to subscribe in great part to the selfsame worldview on Muslims. ‘Muslim boys misuse Hindu girls . . . I have heard this . . . seen in the colleges . . .’

Rioters This section reviews narratives of a sample of six (Hindu) Rioters in Ahmedabad: for the purposes of this study, those who threw petrol bombs, burnt or looted homes and shops etc., but did not kill. It includes, in particular, perpetrators of violence in areas such as Danilimda, Behrampura and Shahpur Darwaza Bahar. I found that here — unlike previous areas of fieldwork such as Naroda or Gulmerg — both Hindus and Muslims had been affected in sporadic bouts of violence. The losses here were also more in terms of homes and livelihoods rather than human lives. This section addresses questions such as these: Who were these Rioters

166 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

and what brought them here? Is their view of Muslims any different from that of the Mob Leaders, or Killers? Would they have been willing to kill Muslims if given the chance? All respondents in this sample, barring one, were in their early 20s. One was from the Chhara community in Naroda, while two were Dalits living in Danilimda. The Chhara Rioter was a middle-school dropout who, at the time of fieldwork, dealt in stolen cars. One of the Danilimda Rioters had failed the Secondary School Certificate (SSC [tenth grade]) exam and worked in a shop in his locality on commission basis. The other Rioter from Danilimda (also 9th grade fail) had recently quit similar commission-based employment and was jobless when we spoke. The remaining three respondents (Shahpur Bahar Rioters) were from the Waghri community and had had little or no formal schooling. They made their living by peddling vegetables, or household utensils (sold in exchange for used clothes). All respondents in this sample were from marginal income families, living in chapras (semi-permanent homes) with no white goods, barring the odd (second-hand) television set (see Table 4.3).

Aspiring Heroes Unlike Mob Leaders and Killers, most Rioters had suffered personal loss in Hindu–Muslim riots, including two in the 2002 violence. Their actions of the day were, nevertheless, driven not so much by personal retribution as the desire to make a visibly brave contribution in the samaj (community). Ajay and Deepak,46 for instance, respondents in Danilimda who were part of a tola (mob) that burnt down Muslim homes in March 2002, had faced attacks on their own homes in preceding violence the same day. Both said they entered into the ‘fighting’ in an attempt to protect their own homes. Ajay, a resident of Bhilvas chapras in Behrampura (adjoining Danilimda), says he was with ‘the Hindu tola’ from 10 in the morning to seven at night on 1 March 2002. This is his account of how he got there. We were three–four of us sitting at home. We heard sounds of maro, maro, maro (attack) . . . we started running . . . many of our houses were already burning . . . Muslims were attacking us from the quarters (residential flats) above with petrol bombs, pipe bombs, nipple bombs . . . we started attacking 46. All names have been changed.

Dileep

Deepak

Ganesh

Ajay

Anil

Ram

1

2

3

4

5

6

Alias

Table 4.3:

BD

BD

BD

BD

BD

BD

Current

Current

Current

Current

Current

Current

M

Cadre

M

Associate M

Associate M

Associate M

Waghri

Waghri

Dalit

Chhara

Dalit

Waghri

OBC

OBC

SC

OBC

SC

OBC

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

Associate M

Cadre

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Illiterate

Middle School Standard 9 (failed) Illiterate

Matriculate (failed)

Illiterate

Education

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Rioters: Socioeconomic Profile

17

25

21

47

22

22

Low

Low

Low

Medium

Low

Low

Small Business (hawker steel utensils)

Small Business (hawker steel utensils)

Small Business (hawker steel utensils) Part-time Work in Saree Shop (commission basis) Small Business: Stolen Cars Unemployed

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

Shahpur Darwaza Bahar, Ahmedabad Danilimda, Ahmedabad

Single

Married Illiterate

Single Hawker (utensils)

Danilimda, Ahmedabad Shahpur Darwaza Bahar, Ahmedabad Shahpur Darwaza Bahar, Ahmedabad

Married Intermediate Housewife Ahmedabad

Single

Hawker (utensils)

Place of Education of Occupation origin — spouse of spouse village/district

Married Illiterate

Marital status

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 167

168 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence them too . . . even climbed up on walls to get them. At that time I only thought I should save my home.47

Though his home escaped damage, Ajay said that he ‘jumped in’ to fight along with the Hindu tola that moved on to target Muslims in less protected locations. ‘I thought if I die no problem . . . they would think I died fighting in a riot for the samaj (community) . . .’ Deepak, whose house — in the same Dalit settlement — was completely burnt down, said that he was furious on the day. ‘Only negative thoughts were there . . .’ But, as for Ajay, it was not only what he thought that influenced his actions of the day. ‘Everyone said go get them…’ Unlike those in Danilimda, the Waghri respondents in Shahpur Bahar were not themselves victims of violence in 2002.48 However, much like Ajay and Deepak, they too saw their actions of the day as heroic support extended to the (larger Hindu) ‘community.’ As Ashok, the ostensible ringleader of the Waghri group that spoke with this researcher, offered — in context of Hindus who were burnt to death in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, ‘Who will fight for Hindus but Hindus?’

Backed by Bajrang Dal None of the Rioters were associates of political parties. However, three respondents from the Waghri community (Shahpur Darwaza) who spoke with this researcher said they had been (at the time of the 2002 riots), and still were with the Bajrang Dal. They said they joined the Hindu tola that attacked Muslims in some areas of Shahpur Darwaza Bahar because their Bajrang Dal leaders informed them of ‘what was happening’. As one of them recounted, They called us together on the 28th (February 2002) and took us to the local Bajrang Dal office. Large pictures from Sandesh newspaper were pasted 47. Ajay and his friends say that their chapras were probably attacked by Muslims whose homes and shops were burnt down by Hindu mobs a day before in adjoining areas like Parikshit Road, Gheewali Chali, etc.. Ajay also thinks it unlikely that those who actually lived in the adjoining Muslim society — mainly from the Bohra community — participated. ‘Outsiders came and did it . . . these people would know that they have to live here. That day I saw so many people who looked like goondas (thugs) . . . many of them had their faces covered.’ 48. Previous riots in the city, however — as recent as in 1992, for instance — inflicted the worst losses on the poorest communities (both Hindu and Muslims), including the Waghris. Many Dalits met with in course of fieldwork, in areas like Danilimda for instance, said they were originally from Shahpur but were forced to migrate in 1992.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 169 all around . . . all burnt women and children . . . who could remain calm after seeing all that . . .

These respondents said it was only the VHP and the Bajrang Dal that was taking care of their interests. ‘These Muslims always attack us . . . this time, the VHP pre-armed us, gave us food to eat, even some money . . .’ In fact, all of those in this sample had been warned by the ‘VHP– Bajrang Dal wallahs’ of the ‘bad intentions of Muslim neighbours’, and particularly so after (Hindus were killed in) Godhra. All Rioters had been pre-equipped with arms, and some money. Rioters in Danilimda felt the VHP and Bajrang Dal had come to the ‘aid’ of ‘long-persecuted’ Hindus. Deepak said, for instance, ‘this time Bajrang Dal really helped the Hindus . . . gave us weapons and told us we should be ready to defend ourselves.’ Interaction with Dalits in Danilimda and with the Waghri community in Shahpur Bahar, in fact, provided significant local insight into the dynamics of the Sangh effort to weave diverse cultural entities into a homogenous — and numerically large — ‘Hindu’ fold. Sudesh Tulsi (name changed) — a friend of Deepak — for instance, also lost most of what his family owned in the Danilimda riots. His house was burnt by a Muslim mob with the assistance of his Muslim neighbour. He says he was not surprised with what his neighbour did. ‘This was not simply a Hindu–Muslim problem . . . we have had lot of problems with that family over water . . . this man has always been a goonda (thug).’ However, Sudesh, who was in the final year of graduation when he spoke with this researcher, did not join the Hindu mob that went on the rampage on the day. ‘I don’t like all this . . .’ He says, nevertheless, that most of his friends are with the VHP, and as he sees it, understandably so. The VHP leaders come and give bhashans (speeches) like military leaders . . . they say you Hindus are not capable of doing anything. If you knew what the Muslims do to Hindus in Kashmir your hair would stand on end . . . If you heard them, you may also be swayed.49 49. Besides Sudesh’s case, I found no corroborative data to indicate that other (Hindu or Muslim) rioters were motivated to participate in the riots by previous disputes (over water or other resources). Some of Sudesh’s friends who did enter into the ‘fighting’ on the day were also intermediate or college students. It is, therefore, difficult to make any easy correlations between levels of education and rioting. As will be discussed later, what seemed to matter more was the ideological content of that ‘education’: while rioting then did not seem to have a convincing correlation to qualification alone, it was indeed related to the kind of education, both at the household/other informal level, and at the institutional level.

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Harish Parmar, a Dalit resident of Danilimda, described how the ‘atmosphere’ in his area has changed over the last decade. Even in ’92, things were not as bad. But in 10 to 12 years, the VHP has become much stronger here. They call our boys to their shakhas and ask them what we Hindus are doing . . . they say that in Kashmir, Hindus died . . . and if we don’t act in time, Hindus will be chased out of Gujarat . . . Godhra was just a trigger . . . people were already ready to ‘show’ the Muslims.

The Centre for Development, an NGO in Danilimda that works to improve ties between Hindu and Muslim youth in the area, reiterates Parmar’s assessment. This organisation attempted in post-riot (2002) days to provide an alternate worldview to (mainly Dalit) boys who had joined Hindu nationalist organisations like the Bajrang Dal. Mirabehn who runs the NGO, believes the ease with which these organisations could find cadres to fill out their mobs, is a result of close to 10 years of planning and work in the area. ‘Most of these boys are unemployed . . . most of them started out for fun . . . they were given `15–20 a day plus free food to attend VHP rallies . . . today some of them are hardcore.’ One such youth, Dipesh Solanki (name changed), was part of the mob that attacked Muslims in the 2002 violence. Dipesh was about 15 years old when he started attending Bajrang Dal meetings in his area out of curiosity. He was given trishul diksha (symbolic initiation as an armed warrior of the Bajrang Dal) five years later. Though he attended a workshop organised by this NGO, at the age of 24 (at the time of fieldwork), his stance on Muslims had hardened and, according to these activists, was unlikely to change. Mirabehn believes that Dipesh was an ideal typical ‘pick up’ for the Bajrang Dal. ‘He was dependent for small amounts of money on his family, and often friends, and didn’t like it . . . in this situation, the `100–150 they gave to boys who went with the (2002) mob was important for him.’ Gandhian activists like Chunnibhai Vaidya, who has worked with the Waghri community in areas like Shahpur Bahar, speak of a similar process of inconspicuous indoctrination. Vaidya points out that the Waghris (referred to by the VHP as devi putras, or sons of the goddess) are, even today, amongst the most economically deprived and isolated of communities, highly vulnerable to the unmatchable VHP ‘riot package’, so to speak, of alcohol, ready money, inflammatory speeches and guaranteed state protection.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 171

Fractured Worldview Much like the Mob Leaders and Killers, Rioters too say Muslims are treacherous. Despite living in immediate proximity with the Muslim community, Rioters conceptualise the community, in most part, from memories of previous riots in Ahmedabad. For instance, Deepak, whose home was destroyed by a Muslim mob in the immediate riots, says, ‘Muslims are betrayers. God knows when they will attack us . . .’ Ajay recalls that his house was burnt by a Muslim mob in the 1992 riots. ‘I was very small then. But I thought then that they should be thrown out.’ Apart from losing his own home, he has ugly memories of the violence that he witnessed in that period. ‘I saw five or six Muslims dragging a Hindu woman. They beat her so badly that she died. I hate these people.’ Many families in Danilimda are, in fact, migrants who settled here after being forced to migrate out from Muslim-dominant areas like Shahpur, Juhapura, etc., during previous riots in the city. And like Ajay, many boys from these families were ready recruits for the Hindu mobs that were rounded up by the Bajrang Dal, ostensibly in retaliation for the attack on Bhilvas.50 Interestingly, Ajay agrees that Muslims in his area — those he has himself known, however cursorily — are not ‘like that’, but insists most others are. In a tone uncannily reminiscent of Bajrang Dal leaders (and propaganda) this researcher encountered previously in Naroda, he says vigorously, Narendra Modi achha karte hai mian qaom ko nikaal ke, mai bhi sochta hun sirf hindu quam rahe yahan to achha hai (the chief minister is doing the right thing by getting rid of the Muslim community. I feel, too, that only Hindus should live in India). Ajay says he now feels that ‘there should be nothing called Muslim here. Remove them completely.’ He says that he feels this way because ‘so many Hindus died in the train

50. Meetu (name changed), an electrician whose family fled Shahpur in the 1969 riots saw boys from his community (Dalit) being rounded up by Bajrang Dal people on the evening of 28 February 2002. ‘They were saying Meredi Mata Mandir (temple of Hindu goddess Kali) has been burnt down . . . The Muslims were clearly targeted from before . . . I saw them running away — they were petrified.’ (The Meredi Mata temple, I discovered later, was entirely intact, untouched by the 2002 violence.)

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(Sabarmati Express) and the killers are going scot-free.’51 He goes on to argue that Muslims have got a better deal in this country. ‘We are hardworking but poor . . . they do do numbri kaam (underhand dealings) . . . they have cars, sofa sets, colour TVs . . .’ Deepak has a similar view of the community. ‘Mohammedan bhais52 have all kinds of weapons. We don’t have these things.’ The Waghri respondents also reiterate that Muslims are untrustworthy. Like the Mob Leaders and Killers, they lay particular emphasis on their designs on the Muslim community’s designs on Hindu women. ‘These Muslims lift our women. We have been told of a college nearby where these things are happening.’53 Narratives of the Rioters often vacillate between resentment against the ‘Muslim community’ and empathy for the real people they have seen suffer in the riots, much like themselves. This was particularly evident in the narratives of those living in Danilimda. Deepak, who says Muslims are ‘betrayers’, also says at another point in his narrative that he sometimes regrets what happened. ‘We live like brothers here . . . I felt later they were poor too, labourers like us . . . they lost a lot but then so had we.’ Even Ajay who says he ‘hates’ Muslims, is objective about his immediate Muslim neighbours, and believes they were not party to the attack on the Dalit chapras.

No Discourse even between ‘Friends’ Unlike Mob Leaders and Killers, Rioters — as a factor of living in closer proximity with the Muslim community — have actually also had significant personal acquaintance with Muslims at an individual level. Some

51. All of the Godhra accused — including Muslim corporators, randomly picked up Muslim ‘bad characters’ and an unprecedented number of local Muslim youth with no previous criminal records — were in fact held under POTA. 52. Bhai is colloquially suffixed in Gujarat after a man’s first name in a general manner of expressingrespect. Interestingly, most of the Rioters in my sample (in Ahmedabad) unselfconsciously use it even to refer to their Muslim neighbours — indicator, perhaps, both of the (relatively) closer social ties between Hindus and Muslims in areas like Danilimda and Shahpur Darwaza Bahar (as compared to, say, Naroda), as well as the difference in extent of (prior) vilification of the other. For instance, hardly any in the sample of Mob Leaders or Killers in Ahmedabad (mostly from areas like Naroda or Meghani Nagar) accord Muslims with the same regard in their narratives to this researcher. 53. I could not locate any corroborative evidence from independent sources to confirm these allegations.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 173

Rioters said they had a few Muslim ‘friends,’ unlike most Mob Leaders and Killers who had none. This limited interaction with members of the ‘other’ community is, however, conducted almost at a different plane of existence, steering clear of potentially difficult ‘real life’ areas of discourse. For instance, Deepak, who says all Muslims are ‘betrayers’, has some friends whom he feels are good as individuals. He nonetheless says: No, we don’t talk about what happened . . . that might spoil the friendship. It was a bad time . . . it has passed . . . I don’t think talking can help in this kind of case . . . sirf baat bigad jave (things only get sour).

Ajay says again that ‘they’ sit and talk occasionally with Muslim boys at a local street corner, but as he puts it, ‘about nothing much.’

Ready to Kill Danilimda and Shahpur Darwaza Bahar are areas with a majority Muslim population and respondents here say they did not kill. But would these men have been willing to kill, given the chance? On the face of it, there are significant differences between the social context of the men who were part of the killing mobs in Naroda and Gulberg, and that of the Rioters in Danilimda, or Shahpur Darwaza. To cite a few: the Rioters were, in the main, young boys from marginal income families. Many had been victims of violence themselves and were led into the violence on emotive grounds. Unlike the Killers — many of who had direct political patronage — their participation in immediate and subsequent violence was not as carefully calibrated for risk. Nevertheless, taking their own narratives at face value, it would seem more a matter of circumstantial logistics — and not really ethical choices — that determined the kind of violence that occurred in areas like Danilimda. The Rioters’ narratives on Muslims somewhere fell short of the ‘non-negotiable’, virulent stance held by Mob Leaders and frontline Killers, but they did not like Muslims either. While they may not have killed in their present time–space coordinates, they evince no discomfort with the possibility. Ajay, for instance, says in a matter of fact manner, ‘If they (Muslims) are in front of us, we can cut them up — (but) they were at a height.’ Although they had attended a few ‘meetings’, and heard many more bhashans (speeches) — especially in the period immediately preceding the riots — Ajay and Deepak were not Bajrang Dal cadres. The Waghris of Shahpur Darwaza Bahar, on the other hand — who had been with the

174 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Bajrang Dal for several years — were organised overnight into angry mobs in a manner not dissimilar to the Chharas who killed in Naroda Patia. Though the Waghris, by virtue of being poor, had also been vulnerable in earlier riots in the city, their current outlook on Muslims (as narrated to this researcher) closely mirrored widely-circulated Hindu nationalist propaganda. These respondents from homes as marginalised as those of the Chharas who killed in Patia like them also did not doubt the veracity of ‘information’ handed out to them by the only organisation that had reached out and communicated with them in a sustained manner over the last decade. Significantly though, though the Waghris were part of tolas organised to burn down shops and homes in safe pockets, in the immediate context they had not really been equipped to kill. Unlike in Naroda or Gulberg where, by all accounts, the attacks were intended to maximise loss of human life and dignity and were carefully coordinated by the BJP/VHP to meet this objective, here even the mobs herded together by the Bajrang Dal were more of hit and run squads. As has been extensively documented, mobs in Patia and Gulberg had been pre-armed with lethal weapons, gas cylinders, petrol, and generous supplies of alcohol. They were specifically guided to attack Muslims in weak locations (surrounded by Hindu colonies), with clear instructions to kill, rape and burn, whereas in largely Muslim-populated areas like Shahpur Bahar, the strategy — perhaps for logistical reasons — was different. While mobs were rounded up by the VHP/Bajrang Dal even here — soon after the Godhra tragedy — it was mainly to attack Muslim business establishments and shops after closing hours. Unlike the mobs that attacked Patia and Gulberg, these mobs were neither heavily armed nor had instructions to kill. Not surprisingly also, in later bouts of more unpredictable counter-violence in the area, the VHP/Bajrang Dal was content to take a back seat. Many (Hindu as well as Muslim) respondents said that in (Muslim majority locations like) Danilimda and Shahpur Bahar, Hindu nationalist organisations incited trouble, but moved out of the fray of real action. Respondents in Danilimda said, for instance, that VHP wallahs gave resounding speeches about how Hindus would be chased out of Gujarat if they did not teach the Muslims a lesson,54 but were not of much use when their homes were under attack from Muslims. As

54. Respondents say such speeches were a regular affair even before Godhra.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 175

Ajay put it, ‘The Bajrang Dal wallahs were not of much help that day . . . they would come from time to time to see what was happening, would fight a little from our side, and then go away.’55 It seemed to this researcher, however, that had the ground rules been laid differently, or in other words, if these same Rioters had been instructed and, more important, equipped to kill as many Muslims as they could, it is not unlikely that many would have obliged. Rioters in this sample, it is true, did not quite share the depth of ideological background, nor the sheer viciousness of intent of some of those who killed in Naroda Patia or Chamanpura. What they, nevertheless, did seem to have in common was the same basic framework of ethics, a framework within which violence was already an ordinary and legitimate means to ends. In the near total absence of exposure to alternate ideologies — including any that, for instance, which would see killing itself as undesirable action — the RSS/Bajrang Dal curriculum may well have played a significant role in transforming the squalor of petty violence against Muslims into the more glorious framework of a Hindu ‘holy war.’56 In this magnification, violence itself was associated with machismo, power, respect; values like empathy or gentleness on the other hand were effeminate, cowardly or plainly foolish. As Deepak said, ‘We are not like Gandhi Bapu, to put forth the other cheek if slapped on one.’ Respondents in both these categories (Killers in Naroda and Rioters in Danilimda) also share a fairly similar outlook on life, on desirable ends, as

55. In Danilimda, interestingly, I learnt from locals that it was actually the son of an influential Congress leader (the local municipal corporation standing committee chairman) who led the Hindu mob towards Abadnagar, the worstaffected Muslim settlement in the area. Across locations in Gujarat, I found that several participants in the 2002 violence were, in fact, Congress leaders/workers along with being self-confessed Hindutvawadis. While the unwavering allegiance to Hindu nationalism came perhaps (as I was to invariably discover) from their early association with RSS shakhas in Ahmedabad, their later political (career) choices were a much more pragmatic affair. See, for instance, narratives of Ashok Prajapati, Mukesh Rajput, Prakash Tomar, etc. in the section on Killers in this chapter. 56. The Bajrang Dal, for instance, has successfully co-opted popular Hindu deity Hanuman and his warrior brigade into a wider strategy to garner and retain the interest of (mainly underprivileged) Hindu youth. In an attractive comparison with Hanuman’s army that saved Sita from Ravan, Bajrang Dal cadres are posited as saviours of Hindu women from Muslim predators.

176 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

well as means to these ends. To take an example, similar to Killers such as Ashok Prajapati or Pappu Chhara, the Rioters too describe their dream job to be that of a (corrupt) policeman. Danilimda Rioter Deepak says, for instance, that a job with the police has ‘advantages’. ‘Insaan police ke andar bindaas ji sakta hai (a man can live freely in the police force). Whatever a policeman does is right. It’s the best job from all angles.’ In a manner reminiscent of Killer Pappu Chhara, Deepak calculates how the local police make a lot of money ‘on the side’. Like Pappu, he has no pretensions about what he would have been doing if he had made it there. ‘No, I don’t think I could have done anything “good” in the police — never seen a good police-wallah (policeman).’ There would then seem to be little reason to believe that those who killed in the Ahmedabad riots were essentially ‘different human beings’ than those who only ‘rioted’. Most Rioters, like the Killers, were also there for the thrill of a cost- and risk-free ‘adventure’ and their actions of the day — not dissimilar to some front-line Killers who initiated the worst acts of brutality against the Muslim ‘other’ — also seemed to provide a (sought-after) sense of personal aggrandisement. Certainly, not all who participated in the violence in Naroda shared the sheer viciousness of Killers like Mukesh Rajput or Bhanu Chhara, but it did not seem to take much for them to become eager helpers to those with more initiative.

A These findings could indicate that the line between Killers and Rioters in Gujarat was highly porous, really more of a circumstantial and logistical boundary than definitive of ethical choices. In fact, those who would not kill were unlikely to be Rioters either. Hasmukh, for instance, despite being a Bajrang Dal cadre, chose not to join the mobs in Danilimda. Sudesh Tulsi, on the other hand, when his own home was burnt down, was literally in the face of things. Though he did whatever he could at that point to protect his own home, he still did not join the rampaging mob that moved out later to launch revenge attacks on other less secure Muslim homes. Deepak’s eldest brother (a graduate) did not participate in the riots, and did not share his family’s views on Muslims. This brother, interestingly, had been from early days involved with street theatre, and at the time of fieldwork, was working with a ‘natak company’ (theatre troupe). It seemed a correlation worth exploring that this brother had from childhood been exposed to the myriad ideological influences of street theatre, and was therefore perhaps not as susceptible, or loyal, to the singular, dominant

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 177

Hindutva sentiments of the rest of his family. I could not, however, meet with Deepak’s eldest brother, and such surmise remains conjectural. Finally, apart from ‘Participants’ in the 2002 riots, the larger sample of ‘Hindu Extremists’ include two additional categories of actors: men and women, who — though they did not bloody their own hands in violence — played a critical role in making it happen. 1. Local Supporters: whose intervention (or conscious lack of it) at a local level had a strong relationship to the immediate course of violence, and 2. Ideological Instigators: without whose long-term efforts in the areas under study, there may have been no unrest at all.

Local Supporters ‘Local Supporters’ were not among the key players who directly instigated, or themselves participated in the violence in the areas under study. They, nevertheless, had a significant role to play in the course of events on the day/s by the factor of influence they wielded on the local community. As I came to understand, the ‘buy in’ of these Local Supporters was critical to the final implementation of the ‘project’ of violence in each field area. Local Supporters were generally from the same caste as (the majority) of those who killed or rioted, and often also held formal or informal positions of political57 and/or economic authority in the community. While, as this researcher found, their role was especially marked in a rural context,58 it was not insignificant even in urban settings. This section, then, addresses questions such as: since the mobs actually were spearheaded by forces other than themselves, could these locally influential ‘bystanders’ have stalled the violence if they had so wished? Did they attempt to use either their position in the community, or the threat of legal action to detract these forces? If not, why? Did they share the ideological affiliations and

57. Not all Local Supporters were associated with the BJP; a few, as will be seen in the section ahead on Sardarpura, were actually Congress loyalists. 58. Sections ahead examine the narratives of (four) respondents identified as Local Supporters in Sardarpura and Palla — among the wealthiest and most powerful people in these two villages (Vineetbhai, Kushalbhai, Amarbhai, Ramjibhai). Two of these four, for instance, held at the time of fieldwork (and at the time of the riots a year before that) the post of sarpanch (village political head). A third respondent (in Sardarpura) was an ex-sarpanch.

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politics of those who killed and rioted at the time, or were the dynamics of their partisanship somewhat different? As in preceding sections, I sought to document answers to these questions in significant part from the ‘point of view’ of the Local Supporters themselves. This section examines the role of Prof. (Dr) Jyotirmay, well-known and respected Dalit political leader in Ahmedabad, resident of — and immediate witness to the violence in — Danilimda in the period under study (see Table 4.4). Politically active and a convert to Buddhism since student days, he has been since associated with various Ambedkarite and Buddhist organisations in Gujarat, some of which he spearheaded. He moved into mainstream politics in 1991 with the Republican Party of India (Khobragade group). In 1995 he joined the right-wing Hindu nationalist party BJP, and was in 2001 designated vice-president of the Gujarat chapter of the VHP with specific responsibility for Hindu Bodh Samanvay (Hindu Buddhist Integration).59 Despite his immediate VHP connections, Jyotirmay was neither part of the rampaging mobs in Danilimda, nor (by independent accounts) was he among those who led the violence. So could he have impacted the course of events on the day? As his narrative to this researcher suggests, it would seem ‘yes’. To begin with, Jyotirmay (as did Local Supporters spoken to by this researcher in other field areas), by his own account, had had prior knowledge of the impending turn of events in his area at the time. He recalls that he was not ‘in favour of killing’. ‘I personally told the boys in my area not to (laughs) . . . they asked me to wear bangles.’60 Jyotirmay later showed took this researcher around his locality, pointing out in a matter of fact manner, empty, burnt-down structures — remnants of Muslim homes in the area. Having expressed his discomfort with bloodshed, he had not seen fit to initiate any more drastic measures to curb the inclinations of ‘his boys’. Significantly, Jyotirmay’s ‘requests’ to avoid murder were more or less followed by the VHP/Bajrang Dal cadres in Danilimda, lending credence

59. VHP sees Buddhism — as different from its stance on ‘foreign’ semitic religions — as of indigenous origin, and therefore integrated with the homeland. As such, it has not viewed en masse Dalit conversion to Buddhism in recent years unfavourably. 60. Colloquial terminology for (undesirable) unmanly behaviour.

Current

Vice President, M Dalit VHP Gujarat (for Hindu Bodh Samanvay)

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position SC

PhD

66

Medium Professor (retired)

Education of spouse

Jamalpur, Ahmedabad

Place of Occupation origin — of spouse village/district

Married Matriculate School teacher (retired)

Estimated household income/ Caste Caste Age at standard Other Marital Sex (as narrated) type Education fieldwork of living occupation status

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/Local Supporters: Socioeconomic Profile

1 P. Jyotirmay VHP

Alias

Table 4.4:

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 179

180 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

to the view that things may have been different for Danilimda’s Muslims had the professor, a highly-regarded figure in the Dalit community there,61 chosen to take a stronger stance. So why did the professor, Ambedkarite and avid proponent of social justice and equality for all sections of society — and a follower of the Buddhist faith of non-violence — choose to turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by members of his community? Why in fact did he join the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party, ostensibly an organisation his past political career had little synergy with and, more significantly, accept a senior leadership position in the VHP about a year before the violence in Gujarat? The VHP’s aggressive practice over the last decade in Gujarat — including concerted efforts to woo Dalits into ideological and military preparation for impending war with the ‘enemy’ — was unlikely to have been a secret to Jyotirmay. Jyotirmay says that, for him, the BJP was a pragmatic choice within limited political options. I was for Dalit upliftment all these years . . . but in the last 10 years the country’s atmosphere has changed . . . the Congress has done nothing but say that Muslims are good . . . the Communist Party is good, but regional in spirit . . . today the BJP, good or bad, is the only alternative.

His move into the VHP in 2001 was driven, he says, by the same logic that BJP and VHP ‘are one and the same thing’. Nevertheless, if he did not join the BJP/VHP quite as an ideological choice,62 he is not uncomfortable with their agenda. Though as a historian, he says ‘Ram (the Hindu god) was not born at all’, he is unembarrassed in his support of the VHP stance that seeks to justify the ‘rebuilding’ of a Hindu temple at the ‘birthplace’ of Ram. The question is not of a temple, it is of national pride . . . hundreds of Hindu temples were broken down by them, but we want to build only at Ayodhya,

61. As the findings of this study indicate, it was mainly Dalits — identified and addressed by VHP/Bajrang Dal programmes in the area for over a decade now — that made up the numbers of mobs on the day. 62. VHP senior leaders in Gujarat I found were invariably of RSS vintage: ‘talent’ transported across functions. A late entrant into the Sangh, Jyotirmay’s narrative indicated a much wider — and more fractured — scope of ideas than some of his compatriots in the VHP that this researcher spoke with.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 181 Kashi and Mathura . . . they (Muslims) don’t even have namaz (reading of the Quran as prayers) now at these sites, but still they don’t leave it . . .

Despite a discomfort with violence per se, Jyotirmay does not have a major ethical disconnect either with the events of 2002; rather he has a sense, in fact, that he as a Hindu was kinder than Muslims had been. Brought up in Jamalpur in the walled city area of Ahmedabad, he recalls that his family, along with most other Hindu households, had to flee Jamalpur in previous riots in the city. For Jyotirmay, who grew up in close proximity with Muslim families, memories of neighbours suddenly turned hostile are not sweet. ‘Muslims are different on a one-to-one basis, different in a crowd . . . when in a majority, they become aggressive . . . remove others . . .’ From within this remembered context of distrust, the Sangh Parivar’s stance that cautions Hindus about the rising Muslim population in India is fairly real for Jyotirmay. For somebody from an underprivileged background, who had been struggling for voice and recog-nition all his life, VHP also perhaps provided the best available deal — a ‘high status’ designation in a pan-national, in fact, international organisation, combined with the not-insignificant side benefits of working with an associate body of the then ruling party. This study found this organised co-opting of potential Local Supporters — a powerful consent block that was bought in by timely and effective realisation of identified interests — critical to the project of mob violence in Gujarat in 2002. Often, the buy-in of these actors was obtained by addressing financial vested interests, as will be explored ahead in the case of Sardarpura village in the 2002 violence in Gujarat. More commonly, as in the case of Jyotirmay, Local Supporters are strategically ‘secured’ from within the same socioeconomic strata intended to provide footsoldiers for the project of violence. The VHP/Bajrang Dal strategy to bolster resources has been, in significant part, based on tempting the unemployed (and under-employed) with local positions of (perceived) honour and prestige in their organisation. Hasmukh (name changed), for instance, also a resident of Danilimda — 25 years old, unemployed, graduation incomplete — met with the Bajrang Dal five years ago. They made him pramukh (head) of their youth mandal (gathering), a ‘post’ invested with a huge sense of responsibility and participation. Hasmukh, who did not himself participate in the 2002 riots, said (at the time of fieldwork) that he was increasingly uncomfortable with the Bajrang Dal agenda and would resign. Activists like Mirabehn of the Centre for Development pointed out that unlike areas like Naroda for instance, the VHP/Bajrang

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Dal has relatively not managed to set in very deep roots in Danilimda yet, especially amongst the Dalit community. This is where the importance of symbolic figureheads like Jyotirmay would count — local actors who had neither the compact worldview of true vintage Sanghwallahs,63 nor the political stakes of most Mob Leaders, but were nevertheless instrumental in deciding the final sway of events at the time.

Ideological Instigators As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, the narratives of Participants who led mobs, killed or rioted in the 2002 violence revealed that they shared in common a sustained exposure to Hindu nationalist ideology, for most in the organised instructive forum of the shakha. In fact, this researcher encountered a significant correlation between the depth of association that respondents had had with such shakhas and the kind of role they played in the violence under study. For the purposes of this study, those organising and running these ideological forums are termed as ‘Ideological Instigators’. While Ideological Instigators may not dirty their own hands in the violence at a local level,64 this study sees them as a critical category within the total sample of ‘Hindu Extremists’. Their role, unlike that of the actual Participants, is enacted over wider term and scale, contributing to the formation of a worldview on Muslims that makes violence against them implicitly justifiable. While a significant slice of this sample of respondents were also involved in planning and instigation of the immediate violence, the more significant role of the Ideological Instigators was to build fertile ground for such episodes. Aided in great part by the narratives of Participants, I identified and met with a sample of respondents associated

63. Sanghwallahs was a term I came across repeatedly across areas of fieldwork, used in local parlance to refer to people associated with the RSS. While all the Mob Leaders and most Killers spoken to by this researcher had old RSS history, Local Supporters often did not. In fact, unlike Jyotirmay, some Local Supporters met with later (in Sardarpura village for instance) — as will be discussed in sections ahead — did not have a formal association with BJP or its associated organisations. 64. While Ideological Instigators included in this sample — influential, highly mobile members of VHP/RSS — did not physically participate in the 2002 violence, many other members of these organisations, especially those working at a local level, did.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 183

with two Hindu nationalist organisations — the VHP and the RSS (and their women’s/youth wings). While both organisations had, over the last decade, actively engaged in expanding the reach and penetration of Hindu nationalist ideology in the field areas, their approach towards and, more importantly, influence on their target audience was different. The VHP Instigators built immediate ground to redress current (perceived) grievance. For this they relied mainly on the effective circulation of dramatic and virulent propaganda that incriminated the Muslim community as dangerous aggressors. While these efforts were led by highly visible, if nouveau pan-Indian ‘Hindu leadership’, shakhas run by its youth wings (Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini) in a supportive function in local field areas ‘trained’ and equipped young people into a state of ‘military readiness’ for an impending holy war against the enemy community. Across field locations, these efforts had gained significant momentum in the last two to three years, reaching its peak in the period immediately preceding the 2002 violence. RSS Instigators, I found, played a more long-term role in these areas, contributing significantly to (early) formulation of worldview, and ideological beliefs of Participants. Associated with values of community service and sacrifice, they enjoyed a credibility and stature in the eyes of Participants to which VHP Instigators generally did not match up. While its swayamsevaks (literally, voluntary service-givers) conduct the bulk of RSS ideological activities at a local level, the organisation depends greatly on its pracharaks — full-time, generally unmarried members dedicated to the core task of taking the RSS ideology wider and deeper. (The VHP and its youth wings operate through a wide network of voluntary workers and territorial leaders across the country, but do not have an equivalent pool of dedicated pracharaks). While this researcher did not encounter direct advocacy of violence against Muslims in ongoing RSS activities in field areas under study, a striking majority of Participants in violence narrated early childhood exposure to the RSS ideology of Hindu nationalism, and as a corollary, early distrust of Muslims as an essentialised community. Going by these accounts, time spent in RSS shakhas and camps exercised a deep and lasting influence on the worldview of Participants. As will be discussed in chapters ahead, appreciation of the role of these two sets of players was particularly critical to the understanding of violence in sample regions untouched by previous bouts of Hindu–Muslim unrest in the state: Sardarpura in Mehsana village and more so, in Palna, the Bhil village in Bhiloda taluka.

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As for preceding categories of Participants, the approach taken towards this understanding is through narratives of the actors themselves, attempting to locate answers to questions of who the actors really are, what drives their practice and how this practice may have impacted the course of events in the 2002 violence. This section examines the narratives of a sample of Ideological Instigators met with in Ahmedabad.

VHP Instigators In Ahmedabad, this researcher met with three office bearers of the VHP, including one respondent from its militant women’s wing, the Durga Vahini. These include Goga Bhai and Kapil Bhai — top rung, national level leaders of the organisation and among those responsible for formulating and driving VHP’s overall strategy and agenda in India and abroad.65 The third, Archana Behn, held a regional (North Gujarat) leadership position with Durga Vahini, in charge of almost all districts — Mehsana, Panchmahals, Vanaskantha, Kheda, Dahod, Godhra, Sabarkantha, Nadiad, Anand, Gandhinagar, etc. — that saw violence in 2002. All VHP Ideological Instigators in the sample are first generation, upper-income group urban settlers. Goga is a practicing oncologist running his own clinic, Kapil Bhai a Sanskrit scholar and erstwhile senior associate of Gujarat Sahitya Parishad, and Archana Behn a former primary school teacher. Barring Goga, who belongs to the influential Kunbi Patidar or Patel community, all respondents in this sample are Brahmins (see Table 4.5). The narratives of Kapil Bhai and Goga Bhai, two VHP stalwarts indicted by several published reports of direct complicity in the 2002 killings, were unfortunately more of a diatribe against ‘pseudosecularists’, the Indian English media, academic fraternity, etc.66 Though meetings with them

65. Respondents like Jagdishbhai, senior leader of VHP Gujarat, who by his own account was a key figure in the strategic ‘think tank’ of the organisation, or Babu Bhai , Bajrang Dal leader in Naroda zila who worked over the last several years in the area, can also be seen as key Ideological Instigators. Both of these respondents were, however, directly indicted by victims as Mob Leaders in the Naroda violence in Ahmedabad, lending credence to a view that the pool of Ideological Instigators is potentially available to be tapped by the organisation for actual participation. 66. Goga was also extremely abrasive with this researcher, and held out several direct threats, as for instance, ‘If you publish anything against me . . . I will ensure you don’t get a job anywhere . . . people like you should be beaten up . . .’

3 Goga Bhai

VHP

Current

46

37

Intermediate (Graduation incomplete) MBBS+MS (Master of Surgery)

99

Education of spouse

High

Doctor Married Unavailable Unavailable Amreli, (oncologist) Saurashtra

Mangrol, Saurashtra Vadnagar, Mehsana

Place of origin — Occupation village/ of spouse district

Professor Widower Illiterate Late (honorary) (Housewife) Medium None Married Unavailable Full-timer VHP

High

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other Marital fieldwork of living occupation status

Middle School

Caste (as Sex narrated) Caste type Education

Founder M Brahmin General Member Uttar Gujarat F Brahmin General Pranth Sahayogika (North Gujarat) International M Patel OBC General Secretary

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/VHP Instigators: Socioeconomic Profile

1 Kapil VHP Current Bhai 2 Archana Durga Vahini Current Behn

Alias

Table 4.5:

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 185

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did not then yield any significant new insight on their background, or the immediate dynamics of their practice, they were, nevertheless, useful in that they drew attention to (a highly self-conscious posturing of) nouveau social status as a likely motivator. Goga, for instance, named by some frontline killers who spoke with this researcher as the key figure who drove the turn of events in the period under study,67 angrily and repeatedly reminded this researcher of his ‘stature’ and political influence. ‘I am the leader of Hindus today . . . I don’t need your opinion . . . you need me . . .’ An oncologist with his own clinic in Ahmedabad, he also informed this researcher that he was ‘the best cancer surgeon in Gujarat.’ Some of Goga’s colleagues who also spoke with this researcher, however, dismissed his stated skills as an oncologist, saying that it was only his association with the VHP that catapulted him from an ordinary small-time doctor running a nursing home in Ahmedabad to a figure of international fame. No other ‘profession’ as they saw it could have given him the kind of attention and limelight — even if occasionally unflattering — he now gets with the media and from middle-class Hindus around the country. Around the time of fieldwork, Goga had been gifted his full weight in silver by villagers in a ceremony organised by the VHP in his native village (Amreli, Saurashtra district) in Gujarat. This study also found Goga, like most VHP Ideological Instigators, was also physically ensconced in ostentatious material symbols of his economic success and social status. So does Goga, a top-rung Ideological Instigator, believe in what he says? Is he an ideologically driven leader, willing to sacrifice, endure hardship, if needed even die for his cause? A man again (perhaps by no accident) of old RSS vintage, he does seem to hold a worldview fairly similar to that held by the Mob leaders and Killers — that first, views Muslims as a potential threat to the wellbeing of Hindus in India, and second, in more deeply rooted, if unclearly formulated terms, sees Muslims as unpleasant people. But while this worldview could well have, as for most of those who actually bloodied their hands in the 2002 violence, made it easier for him to get Muslims killed, ideology seems unlikely to be the reason for his practice. Goga came across, in fact, as a man who took every care to ensure his own well-being and safety. When I met with him at his residence in

67. A few respondents (Killers) who spoke with this researcher (proudly) said they received direct (telephonic) instructions on the day from Goga.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 187

Ahmedabad, I encountered a fortress-like security, manned by a posse of heavily armed policemen that would have done a chief of state proud. Goga is known to be close to the (then) Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, perhaps explaining the huge state expenditure on an ordinary citizen’s perceived need for security. A BJP leader in Naroda points out bluntly, ‘Every party needs its own goondas (thugs) . . . and Goga (name changed) has been especially useful to Modi.’68 Were the motives that guided Kapil Bhai — centenarian VHP founder member and unit head, Sanskrit scholar, elected president of Gujarat Sahitya Parishad and teacher in Gujarat University69 — significantly different? Even if culpable for instigating men to murder, does he see his life’s work as done for a selfless, noble cause? Does he actually believe in the VHP standpoint that Muslims as a community are treacherous, and if left well alone, will one day make Hindus slaves in their own country? Kapil Bhai, when he spoke to this researcher, did not make any claim to such guiding concerns. In surprising disregard for the VHP’s (nouveau) interest in the deprived strata of Hindu society, he told this study his interest in Hindutva arose ‘naturally’ as he was both Hindu, and a Brahmin. Perhaps the least politically correct of this sample of respondents, he informed this researcher voluntarily, if a little defensively, ‘We did not give any orders to kill Muslims (in the post-Godhra violence) . . . lower-class people did all this killing, not savarna (ritually pure) Brahmins.’ Kapil Bhai’s position on Muslims as a community is as confusing. He reiterates the VHP official line — that Muslims as a community are a perennial threat to people of other faiths. ‘They believe Islamism should be our goal . . . wherever we will go, we will try to convert people of other religions . . . be they Hindus, Christians, Yehudis or Chinese . . .’ However, Kapil Bhai himself was born and brought up in Mangrol, then a Muslim monarchy in Saurashtra province of Gujarat, and recalls that there was ‘no trouble at all between Hindus and Muslims there.’ Both Hindus and Muslims, as he admits, in fact ‘live quite peacefully’ even today in Saurashtra, still a Muslim majority district. In another vein, he speaks highly of Kuwait, where his youngest son is employed as chief engineer of the Muslim state. ‘It is no problem that they are Muslims . . . they are

68. Reference made is to Narendra Modi, ex-RSS pracharak and, at the time of fieldwork, the chief minister of Gujarat. 69. Kapil Bhai told this researcher with some pride that though he himself was a matriculate, he had guided PhD students in Gujarat University.

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not so rigid.’ Kapil Bhai justifies his apparently discordant stance on the Muslim community with the following argument: ‘Up to this time majority of Muslims in India are calm but they are being instigated by people from Pakistan.’ Kapil Bhai, by independent accounts, was again known to have been in the inner circle of trusted associates of the then chief minister Narendra Modi, and a key collaborator working in the political interests of his establishment. Durga Vahini (North Gujarat) leader Archana Behn spoke with this researcher at considerable length, and it was finally her narrative that brought in more granular insight into the process of association, trajectory of growth as well as the dynamics of work of an Ideological Instigator of the Sangh Parivar. In her interactions with this researcher, mainly at the VHP unit office in Ahmedabad, Archana Behn came across as a highly motivated resource of the Sangh. Hardworking and committed to her work, Archana also seemed very conscious, and proud, of her growth and what she saw as her hard-earned stature within the organisation.

Why Durga Vahini? While she has been with the Durga Vahini from its conception in 1992, her association with the Sangh began much earlier. Her father, a man of Jansanghi vichar,70 was, she says, a key associate in BJP’s Ram Janmabhoomi Andolan in the early 1980s. She remembers the period as one of exciting times. I was a teenager then. Ma Babuji would go to receive the yatras (processions) in our village (Vadnagar,71 Mehsana district) and I would go too . . . Later VHP got in touch with him to start a Satsang Mandal (community prayer forum) and Ram Dhun (lyrical repetition of name of Hindu god Ram) in every village. Everyone would come to our temple (at home). I would sit for bhajans with everyone. There were many VHP karyakrams and sabhas (programmes and meetings) in our village — they would take me there too.

70. Reference to the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, that was renamed Bharatiya Janata Party after 1977; Jansanghi vichar (of Jansangh worldview) was often used colloquially by respondents in this study to refer to RSS association. 71. Vadnagar was one of the earliest centres of BJP/VHP’s Ram Janmabhoomi campaign; the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, too, is from Vadnagar.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 189

She recalls that her sister, who was older than her, attended these programmes too.72 ‘She would come, but her mind was not like mine. She was not as interested.’ While her sister got married and left the village for Ahmedabad, Archana completed her schooling and started attending college. She failed, however, in the second year and could not complete graduation. After completing a Primary Teaching Certificate (PTC) course, she got a job in a school in Badarpur, a Muslim-majority village in Mehsana zila where she worked for the next 13 years.73 Through this entire period and despite her job with the school, Archana got more and more involved with VHP activities. So much so that, when the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti (RSS women’s wing) also asked her to open and run shakhas for them — only a couple of years after VHP’s entry into the village — she recalls that she refused as she felt she had no time from her work with the Mahila Vibhag (VHP Women’s Wing). However, in 1989 — a landmark year she remembers with pride — she met with Malabehn Rawal (founder head of Durga Vahini), and her involvement and responsibilities leapfrogged incrementally. In 1992, ‘Durga Vahini’, intended feminine counterpart of the Bajrang Dal (militant wing of the VHP), formally came into existence, and Archana was seconded into its rolls. Archana’s account of these events suggests a sense of honour to have been ‘chosen’, as she sees it, to work for a ‘cause’ that was and continues to seem larger and grander than the remaining components of her everyday existence, including her job as a school teacher. There had been other things that had occupied her interest, and that she had tried to pursue at different points of time — such as music, sewing — (she did a two year professional training in it) and even completed a ‘beauty parlour course’ that she had found particularly interesting. (She recalls however that her father did not like it and she did not finally open a parlour of her own, but continued to help out at weddings to polish her skills.) It was, nevertheless, her association with the Mahila Vibhag, and even more so, her ‘promotion’ into the Durga Vahini that finally gave her a sense of personal achievement, of being engaged in something important, and as she sees it, even meaningful. Commitment to this ‘cause’ had been, in the main, free from hardship, asked for no personal sacrifices — on

72. Her elder brother was in construction business, and a BJP worker. 73. She left Vadnagar, and her job in Badarpur, after her marriage to a VHP worker based in Ahmedabad.

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the contrary had been completely within the familiar sphere of colourful communitarian engagement.

Organisational Agenda, Practice and Impact Archana Behn’s memories of the initial years of her work with the Mahila Vibhag (women’s wing of VHP) gives an energised participant account of what seems to have been the VHP strategy in those early days: target and maximise reach to women in small towns and villages. Since 1990, I started going to small villages on Ayodhya kar seva (holy service) work. The first question we would ask is — do you have a bhajan mandali, satsang mandali (community prayer forums) in this village? Then we asked women if they had worshipped the shila . . .74 they were all very enthusiastic, said yes . . . Initially, no one knew about VHP . . . in 1989 we had taken the shila to every village, every home. We wanted to mobilise women to go to Ayodhya for kar seva (religious service). Most women would say there’s too much work at home, but we will do anything you say in the village . . . but some became ready to leave everything to go to Ayodhya, they would say it’s for Ram . . .

By the early 1990s, the Mahila Vibhag had made fair inroads in its work, mainly that of reaching out to and involving more and more women in its activities — mainly Satsang Mandalis (community prayer gatherings), organised once a week in local temples, and even members’ homes. These forums, Archana recalls, held regularly in familiar, over a period of time even intimate, gatherings, formed an ideal template for effective penetration of VHP prachar (spread of information); more significantly, in most cases these formed the first organisational setting for the development of Hindu communitarian bonds between women in mixed local communities. The Durga Vahini was set up in 1992 to reach out to a whole new target group of Hindus: young women in the age group of 15–35. ‘Today’s youth copies western culture. Our aim is to bring them closer to Bhartiya sanskriti (Indian culture) . . .’ As Archana Behn puts it, the organisation works towards imparting the three tenets of seva, suraksha aur sanskar (service orientation, self-defence and Indian values) to young Hindu

74. Ram idol sought to be installed in the disputed Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 191

women. The strategy to attract, and retain the target group was once again well formulated. ‘If we tell young girls to go for bhajans (prayers), they will not like it. It is their age to be physically active.’ Their biannual 10-day training camps for young women — a key focus area for the Durga Vahini — are, therefore, accordingly positioned as opportunities for personal development, rather than ideological forums. Archana Behn who supervises the proceedings for, and personally attends, such sessions in South Gujarat, says they get about 550 girls in one camp. ‘We go to parents, convince them . . . we also depend on those who have attended earlier to convince their sahelis (friends) to attend.’ While the camps include ‘exciting’ activities such as rifle (mainly air guns) and martial arts training, rope climbing, etc., the core agenda as Archana herself puts it, is to leave them with a consciousness of ‘critical issues’ facing the country. Bhartiya sanskriti ki charcha . . . samajik kuriti ka gyan . . . ye sab unke vichar mein daalte hai (discussions on Indian culture, social problems facing the country . . . we put these thoughts into their minds). Durga Vahini, she says, also runs weekly shakhas (called Shakti Sadhana Kendras or forums for developing strength) led by local volunteers in different districts. The agenda here is defined on similar lines: strategic Hindu nationalist themes — including the deity Ram, the temple at Ayodhya, desh bhakti, or love for the (Hindu) nation — are in the main woven into a fun session of songs and games. Every meeting of the shakha however concludes on a ‘serious’ note (called chintan, as asking for grave introspection) — a brief 10-minute session on ‘important matters on the nation’. Significantly, as Archana mentions herself, many of those who attend don’t have access to television, etc., and this final session is for them also the only organised source of ‘information’ about such matters. In addition to satsang mandalis and shakhas, the Durga Vahini runs bal sanskar kendras (infant schools) for children between the ages of four to 12 years. The Mahila Vibhag of the VHP also runs similar schools (shishu mandirs) for children between three, and five and a half. While the shishu mandirs are run (for three hour sessions) every day, bal sanskar kendras are generally run once or twice a week. These ‘schools’, that as Archana Behn says are run mostly in backward areas, also provide nasta (snacks) to get more students in. The curriculum is pointed and focused. ‘We teach them from childhood about our dharma, sanskriti, veer purush (Hindu religion, culture and heroes).’ But is the Durga Vahini’s mission only to bring its young recruits closer to (what they see as) Indian culture and values? Are the ‘training camps’ organised from time to time by the Vahini at undisclosed secret

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locations really exercises in ‘personal development’ and self-defence or is the organisation working towards a graver agenda? What kind of ‘results’ has Archana Behn seen for her efforts over the years? Towards the end of our last meeting, Archana Behn showed this researcher some (then) recent pictures taken at one of their ‘training camps’ for young women. The pictures — of hundreds of girls (clad in the traditional Indian salwar-kameez but with the accompanying dupatta tied warrior style around the waist) assembled in linear and other pseudomilitary formations — conveyed a sense of structure, meticulous planning and effort. The session was inaugurated, Archana Behn said, with pride by VHP leader, Praveen Togadia. In addition, important figures like Sadhvi Rithambara, erstwhile VHP firebrand and one of the founding members of Durga Vahini, were also present as special guests at the camp. While the presence of such ‘big people’ was important, Archana Behn felt, to inspire the girls, the camp had also roped in Durga Vahini associates who were in the ill fated S-6 bogey of the Sabarmati Express that was set on fire by a Muslim mob in Godhra a year before. These women survivors had also been involved in training the Vahini girls in rifle shooting, lathi (wooden stick) training, yoga sessions, etc., at the camp. Both Togadia’s and the Sadhvi’s (well-documented) vitriolic public speeches have, however, been infamous for their brand of ‘inspiration’ — shrill calls for Hindu brotherhood and ‘action’ specifically against Muslims. The effort, again, to locate and involve women who were present at a site of actual attack by Muslims would seem to indicate a similar pointed objective in these training camps — vilification of the Muslim community in India. And by Archana Behn’s account, these efforts have yielded rich dividends. She says that now Hindu women were ‘not afraid’. She describes how ‘during that time’ (2002 riots), ‘verybody came down fast.’ In toofan (riots) our girls could go out fearlessly, take whatever they have in their house, in their hands, and attack . . . in my (Hindu housing) society even our women picked up thalis and chamchas (plates and ladles) and started banging them loudly.75

75. Archana Behn had begun her narrative to this researcher by saying that she herself had been in Ayodhya at the time (February–March 2002). This part of her narrative seems to contradict her earlier stance.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 193

Archana Behn narrates how after ‘hearing about Akshardham,’76 the girls also want to fight against Pakistan, against atankvad (terrorism). ‘Some girls are even ready to be suicide bombers . . .’ Considering that most of these young girls — from villages and small towns across several districts in Gujarat — by Archana Behn’s own admission did not have access to newspapers and television, it would seem to be the Vahini’s own ‘current affairs’ sessions with its young recruits that inspire such anger and loyalty. So does the Sangh expect its women to take up arms against the enemy? Archana Behn says ‘no’ and indeed, unlike their male counterparts from the Bajrang Dal, there are hardly any reports of Durga Vahini women being direct participants in mob violence against Muslims, even in the 2002 pogrom.77 What really then was the kind of role envisaged for them in the 2002 violence? The findings of this study seem to indicate a more significant and long-term function of the Durga Vahini than the creation of an ancillary Hindu army: that of the strategic inclusion of women as ideological partners to ensure domestic support for the actions of male cadres of the Sangh. By including women in their campaign of ‘action’ against Muslims, these forums foreclose the possibility of local women-to-women intercommunity bonds that could pose resistance to the Sangh project. The sheer extent of the Sangh’s success in the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat, marked most conspicuously perhaps by complete and overwhelming absence of guilt in actors, was achieved in great part by a longer term, inconspicuous superimposition of what amounted to a whole new framework of ethics: one that glorified butchery, rape and arson if the victims 76. Reference here is to the terrorist attack on the Akshardham temple at Gandhinagar soon after the 2002 riots that killed several Hindus and injured many more. 77. There are many more reports though, including in narratives I encountered in my own fieldwork, of women playing a directly supportive role to the men-folk to facilitate the attacks on Muslims. This generally ranged from activities such as preparing petrol and other bombs to even (distant range) riot-warfare such as hurling the bombs (from windows, etc.) when at a strategic height. Bhanu Chhara’s eldest daughter was, for instance, accused by Muslim victims of supplying kerosene and kerosene-soaked rags to the mob that burnt alive several Naroda Patiya residents.

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were Muslim, over existing value systems that likely saw violence itself as immoral. The penetration of Durga Vahini (and the Mahila Vibhag) into households where the men were already with the Bajrang Dal (or the VHP), co-opted women into this effort and built in added social legitimacy for crimes — as for instance rape — that may still have otherwise been questioned as socially inappropriate action. Despite the ‘feel good’ physical and arms training sessions, Durga Vahini women were then expected to perform not so much as new actors of violence themselves, but within existing domestic roles as mothers, sisters and wives — enacting typically, for instance, a warrior’s send off for the mobster, a hero’s welcome or the celebration of his exploits — orchestrated domestic actions that contributed to accord social sanction and legitimacy to the most heinous of crimes.78 The narratives of most of those (that spoke with this researcher) who killed, or rioted in the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Ahmedabad included references to such ‘supportive’ actions from — in particular — mothers, and also wives. Ashok Prajapati, for instance, (frontline killer in the Gulberg society massacre), left home that morning with a purpose that his mother was well aware of, and proudly endorsed. ‘That day there were lakhs79 (several hundred thousand) of people with him, why would I be afraid’? Babu Bhai, who as discussed earlier, led one of the most vicious mobs that attacked Muslims in Naroda (Patia), Ahmedabad in February 2002, for instance, began his narrative to this study with the declaration, ‘Women were giving us sticks in hand, saying, “Go!”.’ Bajrangi’s young (second) wife nods in consent, adding that her husband is a true deshbhakt (nationalist). ‘Even at two o’clock at night he is occupied with desh seva (nationalist activities).’ Bajrangi recalls that his wife had not always been so supportive of his ‘work’. ‘Earlier she created some problems . . . a lot of things had to be explained to her . . . now she helps us.’

78. Most parts of Ahmedabad that saw violence in 2002 are old VHP strongholds, including both Naroda and Meghani Nagar (site of the Gulberg Society killings), and witnessed significant Durga Vahini (and Mahila Vibhag) activity in years building up to 2002 and since. 79. Her claim needs to be seen more in the light of metaphorical allusion to the ‘huge strength’ of the mob that attacked Gulberg Society. In reality the number was closer to 20,000 or so.

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The significance of the Sangh’s programmes in co-opting women as domestic partners in their campaign of ‘action’ against Muslims becomes all the more marked when viewed in the light of crimes committed by their cadres that could threaten the stability of the perpetrators own families — rape, for instance. While Bajrangi’s wife seems proud in the knowledge that her ‘brave’ and colourful husband was among those who led a killing mob in Naroda, even Bhanu Chhara — accused of gang rape and macabre violence against Muslim women in the same episode — is nevertheless backed by his wife and three adult daughters. Chhara’s wife and daughters were, in fact, identified by riot relief activists in Ahmedabad as ‘persistent troublemakers’, who had continued to threaten and humiliate Muslim women in the neighbourhood even up to the time of fieldwork.80 His son, Mahesh Chhara — also accused of rape and murder — was, however, not so lucky. Married barely some months earlier, his wife and her maternal family, who did not share the worldview of the Chhara family, were horrified by the events of 28 February 2002 and filed for divorce almost immediately after. (Around the same time, Chhara’s eldest daughter, too, was sent back by her in-laws for the same reasons and was, at the time of fieldwork, still staying with her parents in Naroda Patia. She has since remarried.).81 This researcher in fact came across several instances of marital discord, even divorce, after the 2002 violence in families where the perpetrator had been recently married — a pattern repeated, as will be discussed ahead, even in rural locations studied. (Even Ashok Prajapati, the Gulberg society killer, said he was divorced,

80. Naroda is an instance of the terrible life conditions that countless Muslim families were forced to live in after the 2002 violence. While many had to leave behind their homes, property and belongings for good, some — like Naroda’s hapless Muslim survivors — had no choice but to return to co-exist with their attackers who roamed scot-free. Chhara’s Muslim neighbours, who had seen their wives and daughters raped and burnt to death, were, for instance, subjected to everyday threats of a ‘repeat performance’. 81. Chhara’s eldest daughter was the first woman arrested in connection with the riot cases by the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT). While both Bhanu Chhara and his son Mahesh said the marriages had broken up because of ‘what had happened’ (in February 2002), both were cagey about answering any further questions — about Mahesh’s wife’s background for instance — and this researcher was not in a position to probe further.

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but refused to answer any further queries around the matter.) This discord between old and new members of the family unit in the manner in which participation in the 2002 violence was perceived seemed to this study to point towards a more fundamental disjunction — that between the organised ideological activity women in areas that saw the worst violence had been exposed to in recent years, and what women who abruptly entered these locations through marriage had not. Nevertheless, in the absence of more indicative data, this supposition remains conjectural. Elaborating on the commitment that Durga Vahini girls have to their work, Archana Behn also showed this researcher some (startling) photographs of its cadres taken during the Hindu festival of raksha bandhan.82 The (then recent) pictures showed the young girls tying the traditional rakhis (sacred thread) signifying the protective bond between a brother and sister — on the wrists of the Ahmedabad police force. The celebration of raksha bandhan with the Gujarat police force was, by Archana Behn’s own admission, a symbolically loaded effort suggestive of the (Hindu) police brother protecting his (Hindu) sisters against (Muslim) enemies. Given extensively documented evidence of police complicity in the 2002 violence in Gujarat, it would also seem to this study an effort oriented towards goals similar to those held on the domestic front — in this case an attempt to make heroic the (potential or retrospective) dereliction of duty. The Durga Vahini is, then, used here as a highly effective tool that unobtrusively takes the Sangh ideology (and propaganda) further and deeper — even into state domains restrictive to more formal methods of penetration.83

Worldview and Ideological Commitment So, does Archana Behn back what happened to Muslims in Ahmedabad? How does she feel about the hundreds of women raped and burnt alive in Gulberg and Naroda? A soon-to-be mother herself,84 does she share the agony of women who lost their unborn foetuses and young children to the marauding mobs? 82. This festival, celebrated every year across India generally in the calendar month of August, is intended to reinforce the sacred bond between a brother and sister. 83. The Indian state does not permit government servants and office holders of political posts to actively engage in, or sponsor activities of Hindu nationalist groups such as the RSS, VHP, etc. 84. Archana Behn was five months pregnant when we met in 2003.

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Archana was exposed first-hand to the torture and humiliation Muslim women in Gujarat underwent in 2002.85 As she recounts, soon after the toofan (riots) she went with some other people to one of the chavvanis (relief camps) to ‘see for herself.’86 She was, she says, shocked by what she heard. Wahan toh aurte kuch bhi kehte thi . . . dekhiye hamare Hindu aurto ke saath bhi anyay hua tha, lekin who kabhi bata nahi payenge (there women were saying anything they liked, see our Hindu women were also wronged, but they would never be able to tell). If she saw the gashes and the burns, her narrative does not show it — and she adds stubbornly, aisa kuch hua hi nahi (nothing like that ever happened). Archana Behn, who had amicably agreed that Muslims had been attacked (by ‘angry Hindus’) after ‘Godhra’ (adding that she herself was in Ayodhya at the time), seems uneasy when faced with evidence of sexual assault on Muslim women in the same period. It is unlikely that she was not in the ‘know’ of the VHP/Bajrang Dal’s documented (in pamphlets widely circulated in Gujarat immediately before and during the 2002 violence) plans to use women’s bodies in their scheme of ‘revenge’ against the Muslim community in India.87 Her narrative still conveys a sense of disbelief, not at the atrocities that Muslim women were subjected to, nor that her Hindu brethen could be perpetrators of such atrocity, but in a more complex relation to what finally seemed reluctance to construct the alien, demonised (and distasteful) Muslim woman as also an object of sexual desire for the Hindu male. These women were catching hold of any and everyone and saying all kinds of things. One particularly ugly woman was saying (Hindu) men were running after me . . . I felt like saying at least look at your face before you make these allegations. 85. While most mobs that went on a rampage in different parts of the city targeted small Muslim pockets in Hindu majority areas, I found many Hindu families, especially in mixed localities (Naroda Patia for instance), had surreptitiously moved women and children out (in most cases the previous night) before attacking their Muslim neighbours. 86. Given that these relief camps had also turned into active sites for the documentation of witness testimonies to the media, Indian as well as international human rights organisations, etc against perpetrators of the 2002 violence — several of whom were well-known and influential members of the Sangh Parivar — it seems likely that Archana (by status of being a woman) was sent specifically to spy on proceedings there. 87. See, for instance, Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a: 279).

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While Archana had had practically no interaction at all with Muslim families till she was a young woman, she taught as a primary school teacher for 13 years in Badarpur, one of the few Muslim-dominated villages in Mehsana. She says she took up teaching as a profession because she ‘always loved small, small children’. Her students in Badarpur seemed to have trusted her. ‘Kids don’t know . . . they tell you everything, even household fights . . . during riots they would come and tell me, you know in Ahmedabad, Hindus are killing Muslim children.’ Archana says that in Badarpur most families were Memons, who as she put it, are the ‘not so kattar Muslims’. Most of them had become Muslims only 50 to 60 years ago . . . their rites and rituals are still similar to ours . . . they would say, Sunnis are kattar Muslims, we Shias are not, we want to live together with Hindus in harmony.

Her stance on her young Muslim wards is nevertheless hard. These children are already kattar (fanatic) about their dharma (religion) . . . we leave our kids behind when we go to the temple or for a satsang (Hindu community prayer gathering) but there even a five year old child is going to the madrassa . . .88 they are trained to think of Hindus as kafirs (infidels).

Why does Archana Behn, who says she has known several ‘not so kattar’ Muslim families — and more importantly, their children — for a period as long as 13 years (unlike other Ideological Instigators this researcher met with who had never known any Muslims at all) still parry to what sounds again like Sangh jargon on Muslims? Does she really believe in what she says? Is she in fact ideologically committed to the Sangh agenda, or is hers an opportunistic loyalty? To answer the last question first, it is difficult to doubt Archana’s stated commitment to Hindutva, the ideological construct that argues for a Hindu rashtra. Her association with the Sangh (and its ideas) is almost as old as she is — her father, of Jansangh vichar, was an early ally of the VHP and her entire family was intimately involved in the heydays of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Her involvement with the VHP predates her work in Badarpur, and as it would seem from her narrative, continued

88. Madrassas teach Muslim (male) children to read (in Arabic) and understand the Qur’an.

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to be an active — and dominant — part of her life through her years as a schoolteacher there. Going in fact by her description of ‘work’ in Badarpur, it would seem she operated there more as a Sangh representative than as a schoolteacher as well. Archana recalls, for instance, that she invested a lot of time teaching her (primary school) students verses from Hindu religious texts. ‘I used to teach the (Muslim) children (Vedic) shlokas (verses) in Sanskrit. Later some parents objected. They asked me why do you teach such small children in Sanskrit?’ Though the primary school Vedic lessons had to be stopped, she shifted focus to ‘cultural activities’ with high school girls in Badarpur. Though the girls were happy enough to participate in activities intended to impart Hindu sanskar (Hindu values) to them, she was not quite content. Dhwaj vandana karte hai, sankritic programme karte hai, par bindi nahi lagate (they would do the flag worship ceremony, and the cultural programmes, but would not put the vermilion mark on their foreheads).89 Archana Behn remembers that quite a few of the high school students were uncomfortable about putting on a bindi, but she says she used to make them wear it nevertheless. Wahan kuch ladki bhi kattar thi, kehte thi — hamare me aisa likha hai, bindi pehenne se bich wale bhag jal jate hai (some of the girls were also fanatics — they would say it’s written in our religion, that if we wear a bindi, the middle portion of the forehead gets burnt). It is quite evident that Archana Behn came to Badarpur with a fairly hardened worldview on Muslims, and a preconceived agenda of what she was going to do there. Getting to know her young students (less still hobnobbing with their parents) was never on that agenda. (From the tone of her narrative, it seems unlikely that she ever actually interacted with the children as students, doubtful in fact whether she even really saw them as just children — as anything more than little Muslims.) Despite having worked in a Muslim majority village for as many as 13 years, she then does not really see the community any differently than her colleagues do.90 89. Across regions of fieldwork in Gujarat, I realised that the bindi (called chanda by Gujaratis) — traditionally a circular vermilion mark on a Hindu woman’s forehead that symbolised marital status — had come to be increasingly also viewed as signature of ‘Hinduness’, and its absence as a clear marker of being a non-Hindu, and likely Muslim. 90. While Archana did not live in Badarpur village, there seems little reason to believe that additional physical proximity alone would have impacted her worldview in any significant measure. Through fieldwork in Gujarat, the study encountered several instances of those who had in fact been neighbours for years, but still had no discourse. The researcher did not in fact find a history of

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For Archana Behn, over 20 years (at the time of fieldwork) of association with the VHP seemed to have hardened the veracity and importance of key (Sangh) ‘facts’, so much so that despite being part of the process of propaganda herself, she does not actually seem to see the lie. She operates comfortably and wholly without guilt, within a framework of ‘values’ described by the ‘cause’. These ‘values’ sidestep (broader ‘humanitarian’, if still anthropomorphic) ethical parameters such as those of integrity, objectivity, tolerance, etc., to work within what is essentially a communitarian framework, encouraging, for instance, patriarchy, family, kin and (Hindu) community ties, ‘social service’ (community-based), religious worship as a social event, etc.. Archana is anxious to reinforce that she lives and has achieved within the bounds of this (patriarchal) value system, followed the wishes of her father (gave up the beauty parlour dream for instance), and now works with the ‘full support’ of her (senior VHP worker) husband. She repeatedly reiterates that her marriage — with a VHP co-worker — was not a ‘love marriage’ (frowned upon by VHP/Bajrang Dal/Durga Vahini as a potential precursor to the more dangerous Hindu–Muslim alliances) but an alliance ‘arranged’ by her Sangh colleagues.

RSS Instigators The researcher in Ahmedabad also met and spoke in depth with three senior RSS (and its women’s wing, Rashtriya Sevika Samiti) associates actively involved in ideological forums and activities run by the organisation. This sample includes Prema tai (of Rashtriya Sevika Samiti), RSS associate Vinay and his wife Deepa (who at the time of fieldwork handled the Ahmedabad chapter of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti).

Who are they? Unlike VHP, where significant part of its senior leadership (as well as grassroots workers running shakhas met with by this study) were (originally) from the same socioeconomic background as the mass base it targeted,91 RSS Ideological Instigators were in the main urban-based,

‘neighbourly amity’ in any of the locations studied (that saw violence in 2002), no case really of so to say, ‘friendly neighbours’ turned into murderous foes ‘overnight’. 91. Some top-rung VHP leaders however are of RSS vintage, having been ‘transferred’ to the VHP.

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middle to upper-middle class, often highly educated, qualified professionals (academics, senior bureaucrats, government servants, doctors, engineers, etc.). All three members of this sample are (Maharashtrian) Brahmins (see Table 4.6). Prema (aged 75 years) was born and brought up in Nagpur. An Arts graduate, she taught at a higher secondary school in Nagpur, and worked for several years in the Post and Telegraph audit office. She took voluntary retirement in 1965 and has since been a ‘full time’ Samiti worker, or in RSS lingo, a Pracharika.92 Prema lives in the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. Vinay (40 years old) is again from Nagpur, and spent his entire schooling years there. A graduate (BSc) from Pune University, he obtained his Master’s degree in Surat, and returned to Pune for a PhD programme. Vinay also has a post-doctorate degree (in Microbiology) from a university in the US, where he lived for a period of four years. At the time of fieldwork, he was an Research and Development (R&D) professional with a leading Indian pharmaceutical firm. Vinay lives in an upper-middle-class housing society in one of Ahmedabad’s posh localities. Deepa (aged 40 years) is from Pune, and completed her schooling and university education in the city. After acquiring a doctorate in Biochemistry, she also completed a postdoctoral programme in America.93 Though she joined the same firm as her husband upon their return to India, she quit after two years for ‘family reasons’.94

How did they Get Here? Prema, Vinay and Deepa are all from families that had a significant history of association with the RSS. Prema and Vinay in fact belong to (Maharashtrian Brahmin) families in Nagpur who worked actively along with first generation RSS founders, and have themselves known the RSS from about as long as they can remember.

92. RSS Pracharaks and Pracharikas (literally, propagandists) are wholly dedicated resources of the Sangh, who base themselves in the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, but travel extensively to take the RSS ideology across the country, and when required outside. These men and women are required to stay unmarried as a marker of their undivided loyalty to the Sangh. 93. Vinay and Deepa met as PhD students in Pune, and were married before Vinay left for the US, a year before Deepa joined him there. 94. Deepa and Vinay have a daughter, who was three years old when Deepa moved to the US to complete her post- doctorate.

3 Vinay RSS

Current

Pracharika F Brahmin and Senior Member Senior M Brahmin Associate

2 Prema Rashtriya Current Sevika Samiti

Brahmin

Senior F Associate

1 Deepa Rashtriya Current Sevika Samiti

Alias

General

General

General

PhD (Microbiology)

Graduate

PhD (Biochemistry)

Caste Sex (as narrated) Caste type Education

40

75

40

High

Unavailable

High

Education of spouse

Occupation of spouse

Service Private Sector

Nagpur

Poona

Place of origin — village/district

Married PhD RSS worker Nagpur (Biochemistry)

Housewife Married PhD Service (Microbiology) Private Sector None Single

Estimated Age at household income/ Other Marital fieldwork standard of living occupation status

Hindu Extremists/Ahmedabad/RSS Instigators: Socioeconomic Profile

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Table 4.6:

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Prema says, for instance, that she was associated with Mausiji’s95 (colloquial reference as mother’s sister, or aunt for Lakshmibai Kelkar, founder of the RSS women’s wing Rashtriya Sevika Samiti) family since childhood. ‘Dr Hedgewar, Babasaheb Apte (RSS founders) used to live in a room above our house . . . My cousin brothers used to go to the Sangh . . . I joined the Samiti because of Mausiji.’ Vinay says his father had been a very active member of the RSS. ‘He was with the RSS since his childhood . . . it was he who handled all correspondence for Gowalkar (RSS founder member) . . .’ Vinay recalls that their home was also very close to the RSS headquarters and that they (he and his two olderbrothers) would go regularly to the shakha as a ‘family tradition.’ I don’t remember that we ever watched television in the evenings for instance . . . we were always at the evening shakha . . . it was a lot of fun, play and games . . . I made very good friends there we are in touch even now.

Though he left Nagpur on completing schooling, he says he ‘continued to be associated’ with the RSS through his college days in Pune (an old RSS stronghold), and even later as a post-doctorate student in the US. Vinay says he had been an active swayamsevak till a year before we met (in 2003), personally handling all shakha-related work in his area, but had now slowed down on account of corporate commitments. Deepa, senior functionary of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti in Ahmedabad, however, recalls that, though even her father attended local RSS shakhas, she ‘came into contact’ with RSS only after marriage.96 ‘My husband’s father was an RSS pracharak for sometime (before marriage). Three of his brothers (Vinay’s uncles) are also pracharaks . . .’ Interestingly, she says that her own association with the organisation really began after her husband and she (with their three year old daughter) moved to the US as post-doctorate students. ‘There were a lot of programmes for the (Indian Hindu) families there . . .that’s where I actually got actively involved with the RSS.’

95. Prema herself is called Prema tai (sister) within the RSS in an effort to place relationships within RSS in a pseudo familial structure, as opposed for instance to the simple postfix ji (mark of regard) attached to names (often pseudonyms) of Naxal functionaries and workers alike. 96. RSS association is fairly strong even in her maternal family. Deepa mentions elsewhere in her narrative that her younger brother and sister also believe in RSS ideology.

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Motivation, Worldview and Agenda Vinay and Deepa speak of the RSS like extended kin, a familiar and comfortable support system associated with valued attributes like warmth, familiarity, ‘friends circle’, family values, etc. Deepa, for instance, says the most compelling factor that got her more and more involved with RSS in the US and kept her with them even after they returned to India, was what she calls its atmayikta — emphasis on human relationships. In RSS there is a very strong human bonding . . . the relationship between two human beings is very strong . . . This (work) connects you to your society and your nation . . . at an emotional level also you get charged.

Vinay and Deepa, whose work as swayamsevaks has been largely within the sphere of (comfortable) communitarian engagement, involving little sacrifice or pain, nevertheless often reiterate that their engagement with RSS has been other-centric, meaningful work, ‘social service’ of sorts. Deepa says, ‘I have seen so many pracharaks and their lifestyle . . . people are doing so much . . . why can’t we for such a good cause?’ She has made significant efforts over the last several years for the organisation that she believes gave her ‘social awareness and national awareness’ and, in turn, commands a high degree of respect from her peers and cadres of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti. This study, in fact, found RSS Ideological Instigators were in the main viewed (by cadres enrolled in shakhas) as disciplined, selfless workers, even ‘social workers’ of sorts — markedly different from the (more ambiguous) manner in which VHP Instigators were viewed.97 97. This study found that many who attended RSS shakhas were actually looking for a passage into politics — quite a few later moved into its mainstream political wings, a likely first move being the BJP’s youth wing Akhil Bhartiya Vishwa Parishad (ABVP). RSS Ideological Instigators (swayamsevaks and pracharaks who run shakhas) — generally men and women who have spent a significant period of time with the RSS — however, tended to be more ideologically rooted in RSS itself, and were not necessarily looking at it as a short-term measure to greener pastures. (Vinay, for instance, obviously politically astute and well-linked to senior political leadership in the state nevertheless does not seem to have been in the RSS for potential political gains. Though he does not rule out a political career with the BJP as an option that may be considered, if at all, in the distant future, he says his ambitions for the present are to ride the corporate ladder.) As such they seem to enjoy a much higher credibility with cadres than their VHP counterparts, who are often seen as political upstarts.

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 205

If the internally reinforced — and rarely disputed — (feel good) sense of also being engaged in important (patriotic) work is a significant driver of practice, RSS Ideological Instigators, particularly its pracharaks, do not doubt the authenticity and criticality of the ‘good cause’ of (growing support base for) Hindu nationalism and its sub text: political, social and economic marginalisation of Muslims in India.98 Deepa says: ‘Before I came into contact with RSS, I was also very open-minded, but when you see lots of conversion going on, you naturally get angry . . . at this rate we will be in a minority . . . the way they attacked the victims (in Sabarmati Express, Godhra) was totally inhuman.99

Prema tai (sister, as she is called), dedicated pracharika in the RSS women’s wing Rashtriya Sevika Samiti,100 describes her work in the nature of a vocation, even as personal sacrifice for a larger cause.101 ‘We have different goals . . . to create national awareness in women, to make them understand their role in nation building . . .’ Prema repeatedly asked this researcher to ‘look at history, study the nature of both communities in time before coming to any conclusions’. She added, ‘One Muslim can feel safe among 500 Hindus but five Hindus are unsafe amongst 100

98. In addition to Prema tai, this study also spoke, more cursorily, with several other RSS pracharaks and pracharikas in the course of fieldwork, who reiterated the same standpoint. Meena (name changed) a pracharika from Kerala — also based in the RSS headquarters in Nagpur — for instance, says firmly, ‘Our goal is Akhand Bharat (undivided India, RSS concept connotative of regaining control over Pakistani territory) . . . don’t forget that they (Pakistan) had said haske Pakistan liya, ladke Hindustan lenge (took Pakistan with a smile, will fight and take India as well).’ Navneet Bhai, RSS pracharak posted at the time of fieldwork in the VHP karyalaya (office) in Ahmedabad, says simply, ‘Hindu kattarwad (extremism)? We want it . . . otherwise we (Hindus) will die.’ (Navneet Bhai recalls with pride that he had worked for several years with the then chief minister of Gujarat and alleged mastermind behind the 2002 violence, Narendra Modi, who was also at the time an RSS pracharak.) 99. All of the above stated ‘facts’ that anger Deepa, came to her via the RSS grapevine. She has not attempted to independently verify their authenticity. 100. For more about Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, see Sarkar (1993). 101. While she says she chose a vocation over marriage, Prema tai was around 40 years old when she took voluntary retirement from a government job to become a full time RSS worker. It seems a likely conjecture that in the Indian social context, marriage was by then probably also not an available option.

206 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Muslims. My request is you must go very deep . . . understand the core of the problem.’ Vinay, who — unlike Prema and Deepa — had had a ‘few good Muslim friends’ (in his student days in Surat) says he nevertheless ‘retained his distrust.’ Individually they may be the best of people, but not as a community . . . one of the major apprehensions I have is that a Muslim is not able to come out of the philosophical exclusivity of Islam . . . just listen to Banetwala for instance in the Lok Sabha . . . they say the Shariat is supreme, above the Indian constitution.

Vinay believes the RSS presence has been critical to the survival of Hindus in the subcontinent. ‘Imagine what would have happened if you did not have a Hindu nationalist opposition to Islamic fundamentalist groups in India . . . for that matter, imagine (the course of) history without a Shivaji.’ While it continues to engage its traditional supporters (upper and middle castes), the agenda now is to stretch the base by getting many more of the deprived castes and classes into the RSS fold. ‘We want everyone (all castes and tribes) to identify as Hindu,’102 states Vinay. The way to build the ‘Hindu nationalist opposition,’ Vinay says, has been to ‘use tools and techniques to mobilise people which can be adopted by the common man.’ Interestingly, Vinay says the basic concept here is not dissimilar to that used by ‘saints’ like Mohandas Gandhi, the difference being that the average upper-middle-class Hindu has moved some distance away from Gandhi and cannot identify with the austerity of Gandhianism. ‘If you make a deity of it, you alienate people.’ The researcher found that most RSS shakhas (targeting the entry-level young schoolchildren) in Ahmedabad ran daily 40–50-minute sessions — accordingly positioned as forums for ‘fun and games’. In Ahmedabad, this researcher met girls enrolled in the daily (in some areas, weekly) Rashtriya Sevika Samiti shakhas across the city, who described their

102. Taking the example of the anti-reservation stir in the 1980s, Vinay points out that RSS ‘despite the inherent contradiction’ supported the pro-reservation lobby at the time. ‘We try to think in a very comprehensive manner . . . though in the RSS the majority are upper castes, RSS will never do anything that causes divisions within Hindu society even if it harms its short-term interests.’

Hindu Extremists in Ahmedabad A 207

schedule as including (Hindu) prayers, bhagua (saffron, connoting loyalty to the Hindu nation as opposed to the Indian state) flag-hoisting ceremony, outdoor games and physical exercises. While the ‘prayers’ and other songs sung for participants at the preliminary level already include reiteration of Hindu nationalist themes (such as Jai Shri Ram or ‘glory be to god Ram’, Hindu theological concepts such as reaffirming identity of participants as Manu ke santan or ‘Manu’s children’, eulogising the Hindu text Manusmriti, declaring loyalty to the bhagua, or saffron flag, etc.), shakha sessions move in time to include more focused discussions on topics of ‘national importance’.103 Rashtriya Sevika Samiti girls cited a training schedule that spans over a period of four years, moving across stages termed Pravambharik, Pravesh, Prabodh, and finally, Praveen. RSS shakhas meant for boys go through an equivalent schedule. While the fun and games bring in the children, it is again the RSS atmayikta (the interpersonal bonds that attracted Ideological Instigators like Deepa) that seems to make them stay. A young BJP party worker, for instance, recalls that he first attended a local RSS shakha in the seventh grade only to tease the chaddhiwallahs.104 ‘But they were so concerned about my well-being they would actually come home to ask why I didn’t come if I didn’t turn up one day.’ This worker, requesting anonymity, dismisses VHP stalwarts such as Goga Bhai and Jagdish Bhai as anti-social elements hired by RSS to do its dirty work. Nevertheless, he sees no fault in the RSS ideology itself. ‘RSS is not against Muslims, it is against antiIndians . . . unfortunately Muslims’ role in this country has been anti Indian.’ This study found the RSS strategy — of early exposure followed by sustained contact — not just built lifetime loyalties with the Sangh, but more significantly, seemed to successfully create an ideological bulwark of sorts that could entirely block out guilt in (potential) participants in violence against Muslims.

A

103. Some of the popular topics recalled by participants are lectures on Indian ‘history’, Muslim ‘psyche’, ‘movement’ for temples at sites of Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi, Islamic terrorism, etc. 104. Joking reference to the khaki shorts worn by RSS cadres.

208 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

FIVE A

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat: Sardarpura and Palla W

hile actors of violence in Gujarat are — as observed in the earlier study of left-wing extremism — distributed into key analytical categories relevant across locations, the process of induction into the ranks of ‘Hindu extremists’ occurred in different space–time coordinates, in historically and socioeconomically distinct contexts. Chapter 5, therefore, looks in some detail at the narratives of participants in the 2002 riots in two additional location contexts in Gujarat: rural (Sardarpura in Mehsana district) and tribal (Palla in Sabarkantha district). The documentation of narratives of actors from these contexts should further insight on key questions addressed in Chapter 4: who the participants in Hindu extremist violence really are, and what makes them willing to kill Muslims.

Sardarpura Ostensibly a nondescript village, like any other in Gujarat, populated by seemingly peace-loving and educated people1 with no previous history of violence, it seemed like Hindus and Muslims had lived for years in harmony here. Many (Hindu) residents reiterated with pride a tale of how during the 1969 riots, they had in fact held back mobs that had come to attack Muslims. Hindus here, this researcher was told, even used to eat in the homes of the Mohameddan bhais. With such apparent bonhomie, why did Sardarpura’s Hindus suddenly turn on to their Muslim neighbours with such ferocity? Were 33 Muslim 1. Sardarpura, I was told by locals, is almost 100 per cent literate (census figures, however, were much lower, citing a total literacy rate of 39 per cent — though literacy figures for the district (Mehsana) were higher at 74 per cent) with several high school and university graduates. Most districts of Gujarat at any rate have a far higher literacy rate than the national average.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 209

residents of the village,2 mostly women and children, electrocuted to death by an organised mob only to avenge what happened to Hindus aboard the Sabarmati Express in Godhra? Was the violence that took place on 1 March actually just a ‘spontaneous and unplanned reaction’ to the deaths at Godhra — as this researcher was informed on a first field trip? What really happened in Sardarpura on 1 March 2002? The findings of subsequent fieldwork indicate that the violence did not in fact ‘erupt’ overnight. Sardarpura, in fact, again brings home the significance of the analytical category of Ideological Instigators in understanding the 2002 violence in Gujarat, a telling example of the potential impact of such effort. This researcher found a fairly structured history of unrest in the village, the beginnings of which are traced by quite a few respondents to as way back as the late 1980s. Since 1987 things started changing . . . it was in the time of V. P. Singh’s sarkar (government) . . .3 Advani’s rath yatra was creating a lot of excitement . . . RSS wallahs had already become very active in our area.

This respondent, a senior citizen and member of the dominant Patel community in the village recalls, ‘Since then, in our community, during marriage processions, the boys burst crackers and throw them into the (village) masjid . . . I always said if there is a storm, I will be with the Muslims.’ The storm, though, never did happen, though the provocation continued. Hindus in Sardarpura — including Patels — in fact, even continued ‘eating’ in Muslim homes, as had been the practice since anyone could remember. This sociability was indulged in, however, only on the occasion of a Muslim wedding, where food was specially prepared for the Hindu guests by Hindu cooks in segregated ‘pure’ territory. (The same privilege was not accorded to Muslims in Patel weddings.) But even that had stopped two to three years prior to the time of fieldwork — an indicator of a significant turn in the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in the

2. While 33 dead is the official figure released by the Gujarat government, Hindus living in Sardarpura — including some of those who killed their Muslim neighbours — themselves cite a much higher number of Muslims killed on the day. 3. At a time dominated by caste politics and the bogey of reservation, BJP strategically avoided association with the reservation bandwagon on either side of the fence, and diverted focus instead to the Ram Janmabhoomi ‘movement’.

210 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

village, and of the shape of things to come. Around that time, Bajrang Dal opened its first shakha in Sardarpura, and with it, brought in a qualitative shift in the manner of instruction of Sangh ideology in the village. If RSS had already created an ideological base for distrust, the Bajrang Dal shakha was crudely hostile to Sardarpura’s Muslims and made no secret of its agenda. ‘In the last couple of years boys have joined in a big way . . . they hold clandestine nightly meetings, organise camps . . . everyone is with them,’ said a Hindu (Patel) resident. The accuracy of this (unnamed by request) Hindu resident’s assessment was clearly manifest to this researcher in interactions with older children upon visits to the local high school. This researcher found the Sangh (particularly RSS) network had, in fact, flourished in great part by relying on parasitic growth on existing (particularly governmentfunded) school infrastructure.4 Interactions with students in the high school in Sardarpura for instance — started by Patels (many of whom are Sangh associates) and run with government grants — showed up a chilling homogeneity of worldview in the young students. In a manner uncannily reminiscent of ‘concerns’ that overrode narratives of older Sangh associates, a ‘group discussion’ (with about 15 boys from the 11th and 12th standards) converged — barring few aberrations5 — with unequivocal concurrence on atankvad (terrorism) as India’s ‘biggest problem,’ and emphatically, on Muslims as its perpetrators. The discussion with these young students rolled on in seemingly natural progression to ‘Godhra’ as yet another instance of how Hindus have been victimised by Muslims (‘they did this to us, they always do this to us . . .’), and to the

4. The infiltration of Sangh ideology into school curriculum and education policy in Gujarat over the last decade has been previously documented. See Sundar (2004); Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002b: 151). Also see Panikkar (1999) for the Sangh’s efforts to revise curriculum in BJP-led states towards consonance with the Hindutva perspective. 5. One boy said garibi (poverty) was India’s biggest problem. He also said he could say this because of personal experience. Another boy said he had stopped going to the RSS shakhas because he didn’t like the ‘message’ there. Ilyas, the only Muslim boy in the group, who was silent while the rest of the group — mainly Patels — expounded on problems of ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘victimisation of Hindus’ suddenly asked this researcher, ‘You tell me, why do atankvadis (terrorists) become atankvadis?’ He went on to add, ‘If you murder nine out of 10 members of a family, wont the tenth become an atankvadi?’ Ilyas however was badly isolated in the group — that had got fairly aggressive by then — and the discussion had to be stalled.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 211

pogrom that followed as just and appropriate (‘they had to be punished this time’). In a later discussion on individual identities — or ‘who’ they really were — the boys without exception recalled and described only their religious identities. Even when prompted further, they reiterated that they were Hindu first and Bhartiya (Indian) later.6 Interestingly, perhaps another indicator of the correlation of the work of Ideological Instigators to worldview in Sardarpura, this study found that high school girls who had had no RSS/Sangh shakhas to go to7 expressed more diversity of opinion in similarly unstructured discussions. When the discussion veered to the events of 1 March 2002, a few girls (mainly Patels) seemed visibly uncomfortable and fell silent. But many more — including Patels — said what happened was wrong. Some said they were still in touch with their Muslim girlfriends on phone, though their families were not being allowed to return to the village. One (Patel) girl said with feeling, ‘Bade hamare sune, tab na (what can we do, do the elders listen to us) . . .’ Nandita, a Thakore girl (whose home was close to the Sheikh settlement) said she could never forget that her Muslim friends, for whom she had a lot of affection, had been killed. ‘Some people in the village were getting too jealous of their (Muslims) progress . . . that is why my friends died.’8 But who are those ‘some people’? Who attacked Sardarpura’s Muslims on 1 March 2002? To begin with, this study examines the narratives of Dr Patel and Ambujbhai.9 identified by Muslim survivors — as well as by Hindu respondents who spoke with this researcher on condition of anonymity — as

6. Ilyas said that he was a Bhartiya first and Muslim only after. However, given that he was the only Muslim in a hostile Hindu group, it was not clear to me whether he had even had the same choice to express an individual view that his Muslim classmates had exercised. 7. Sardarpura, though an old RSS stronghold, has actually never had a Rashtriya Sevika Samiti or Durga Vahini shakha in the village, not so much a strategic lapse as a factor of the lack of available — or willing — hands to run it on a sustained basis. 8. Nandita’s reference is to the landed and affluent Pathans who were, as many of my (Patel) respondents told me, the object of the Patels’ ire, and the intended target of violence on 3 March 2002. The Pathans, however, managed to get police protection, and the murderous mob was diverted at the last minute towards the Sheikh tola, that housed landless Muslim labourers. 9. Names have been changed.

212 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Mob Leaders, men who allegedly instigated and led the mob on the day. Patel, an MBBS doctor, was born and brought up in Sardarpura village. He now stays with his wife and children in the adjoining town of Vijapur. Ambujbhai, who has several acres of prime land in the village, says his primary source of income is from ‘kheti (agriculture) and milk business’ (through the village cooperative). Ambujbhai has also been a member of the village panchayat (see Table 5.1). So why did Patel and Ambujbhai organise and lead a mob to kill their Muslim neighbours? What was in it for them? Collaborative of the findings of this study in Ahmedabad, Patel and Ambujbhai were also actors in a larger political game-plan to target Muslim residents of Sardarpura. Like those who led mobs in Ahmedabad, Patel and Ambujbhai were again (ruling party) BJP associates. Patel was, at the time of fieldwork, the elected BJP representative in the taluka (Vijapur) panchayat (for four villages — Sardarpura, Ferozepur, Kamalpur and Sunderpur). Ambujbhai, also a BJP worker, said he had been ‘very active in politics till two or three years back.’10 Patel’s uncle, a senior citizen and influential member of the Patel community, says his nephew knew what was to happen much in advance of the actual ‘mob frenzy’. ‘He told me today after eight o’clock it will all be over.’ Patel, who allegedly drove the effort in terms of logistics and micro-planning, was closely supported, his uncle says, by ‘BJP–RSS wallahs . . . These people said if we call you, come immediately with stuff (kerosene).’ Similar to findings in Ahmedabad, Mob Leaders in Sardarpura also received a guarantee of punitive immunity for services rendered. Despite being named as the chief accused in a criminal case filed by Muslim survivors after the 2002 violence, Ambujbhai says he is not anxious as ‘there is a lot of backing for this . . . both force and money . . .’ from the political bosses. He says their mandate, however, had been to kill the Pathans — a sizeable numerical and economic threat to the Patels — which did not quite pan out right. ‘We were supposed to do away with 10. Ambujbhai says he had cut down on political activity because of ‘family constraints’. He also mentions, however, that he had of late been fighting a slew of cases filed under the Atrocities Act by (Dalit) labour working on his fields, and that he had received no political help on those cases. It seems a likely possibility that the local BJP leadership would have distanced themselves from Ambujbhai after his (politically undesirable) rift with the Dalit community in Sardarpura. Post-Godhra, Ambujbhai seems to have got a chance to prove his worth again to the BJP.

Current

Current

2 Ambujbhai BJP

Patel

Patel

OBC Matriculate

OBC MBBS

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type Education

Member, M Taluka (Vijapur) Panchayat Party M Worker

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

50

35

High

High

Estimated household income/ Age at standard of fieldwork living

Hindu Extremists/Mob Leaders/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile

BJP

1 Dr Patel

Alias

Table 5.1:

Education of spouse Married Graduate

Marital status

Agriculture+Milk Married Illiterate Business

Doctor (government hospital)

Other occupation

Housewife

Housewife

Sardarpura, Mehsana

Sardarpura, Mehsana

Place of origin — Occupation village/ of spouse district

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 213

214 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

some, but some others died. Even I feel bad. They (Sheikhs who were killed) were poor people . . . khet majdoors (daily wage labour) who worked on our field.’ But Patel and Ambujbhai were not just following instructions. The actions of these Mob Leaders who led the villagers to kill their Muslim neighbours — men, women and children they had lived with for as long as they could remember — was driven at least as much by personal inclination as by pragmatic political imperatives. It was in fact they who, possibly taking advantage of the political mandate supporting violence against Muslims in Gujarat, actually planned and executed the elimination of a sizeable slice of Sardarpura’s Muslim population with notable initiative and zest. Not content with instigating a mob that burnt down Muslim shops, homes and any Muslims they could get at hand, they strategically inserted a live wire (rod) into the pucca house where 33 Muslims (including women and children) had huddled in to escape being burnt to death. Patels in the village told this researcher that the 2,000 strong-mob ‘knew’ BJP legislator Naresh would come later to throw water on the house — which he did — electrocuting its inmates to a preplanned ghastly end. Despite the cursory regret Ambujbhai expressed, that Sheikhs died on the day while the more affluent Pathans ecaped, he shrugs off responsibility. ‘Gandhi ne bura khichdi packaia (Gandhi made a bad mess of things) . . . after partition we should have sent the whole lot (Muslims) there (to Pakistan).’ Dr Patel, who dismisses the events of 1 March in Sardarpura as an ‘equal and opposite reaction to Godhra,’11 offers a permanent prescription for peace. ‘Islam has to be finished for satyug12 to come.’ Patel believes Hindus have no option but to ‘get organised’. ‘Hindu rashtravad (nationalism) is increasing only because of Muslim kattarvad (fanaticism) . . . the whole world is surrounded by atankvad (terrorism).’ When asked whether he has ever had any doubts at all about his worldview, or his practice, he says, ‘Doubts? Only one . . . what will happen to this country if Muslims become a majority again?’

11. This analogy was made at the peak of the 2002 violence, famously, by the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. Modi, who has been indicted by several reports of direct complicity in the events of the time, is also incidentally an ex-RSS pracharak. 12. As per Hindu scriptures, current times are those of kalyug — the worst epoch in the history of humankind with evil presiding supreme. Satyug (period when truth would prevail) is to arrive again after kalyug is destroyed.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 215

Given the almost orchestrated synergies between Patel and Ambujbhai’s worldview on Muslims (strongly reminiscent again of worldviews of Mob Leaders in Ahmedabad) — and the sheer hatred and distrust encapsulated in it — it is perhaps no accident that both Patel and Ambujbhai also had a long history of RSS association. Patel (35 years old at the time of fieldwork) joined the RSS when he was about 10 or so and became a regular at the local shakha and more intensive training camps. He recalls that he was very impressed by the swayamsevaks, and occasionally pracharaks who came to their village to ‘motivate them’. ‘Mukund Rao ji (RSS ideologue and pracharak) used to come here . . . he spoke about Dr Hedgewar . . . about why our country was enslaved . . . how Muslims know how to play on (caste) divisions in Hindu society . . .’ Patel says he tried to implement what he was learning from the RSS even then. ‘I went to houses of the Harijans13 in our village, even took them inside the temple despite a lot of opposition from the family.’ His family was apparently even more uncomfortable, though, when he — while still at school — started and single-handedly ran a shakha in the village. ‘I ran it myself till I left to join medical college.’ Patel continued with ‘shakha work’ at medical college as well. His family members say his own views also notably hardened after he enrolled at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad.14 Patel continues to find time for RSS activities, including running shakhas and training camps despite his work at a Jain Trust hospital in Mehudi (Mehsana district) and other political engagements. His uncle says Patel, in fact, left a good ‘government service’ job only because of the restrictions it imposed on his RSS activities. Ambujbhai’s narrative eulogises on a fairly similar note what he ‘learnt from the RSS’ (about rashtravad, the Muslim community, etc.). His association with the Sangh is as dated, going back to when he was in the ‘fifth class’ — again about 10 years old. The only son of a widow, they were like family to him, and initiated a relationship that is still going strong. 13. The Sangh’s efforts to woo the Dalit community in Sardarpura do not seem to have met with much success, however. At least part of the reason could certainly be that such efforts by themselves have been inconsistent and sporadic, different from the hardnosed and focused approach observed in Ahmedabad. 14. Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital would seem to be a hotbed of RSS activity. Apart from Patel, (RSS) Ideological Instigators met with in Bhiloda too narrated how they often recruited student volunteers from the Ahmedabad Civil hospital, among other colleges, in Ahmedabad.

216 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

But if a few men like Patel and Ambujbhai led the violence on the day, a mob about 2,000 had followed eagerly. Who were they? What drove them to attack (Muslim) neighbours they had known for years? Hindus in Sardarpura, including participants themselves, said the mob was in the main constituted of young boys — mainly Patels15 — from Sardarpura and adjoining villages. However, most of its front-liners, those who joined the mob with a clear intent to kill, were from Sardarpura itself. This researcher spoke with two Killers, Nimesh Patel and Vrishut Patel (see Table 5.2). Nimesh (aged 20 years) said ‘he was right in front’ of the tola (mob) that had attacked and killed the Muslim neighbours they had grown up with. In the manner of a tour guide, he guided this researcher around the burnt-out remains of the Sheikh locality that had been the main target of attack on the day. He reminisced that they had wanted to kill the Pathans, but had to settle for the impoverished Sheikhs. He also recalled that though they ‘burned three people in one house, and one more in another,’16 they couldn’t immediately harm those who ran into a pucca house, the only permanent structure in this part of the village. Nimesh carefully guided this researcher through stagnant water and the decaying debris of what was once a thriving settlement to the infamous small house with a grilled window, and an iron door (now locked and sealed by the police) where 33 Muslims — including women and children — were electrocuted to death. ‘There was no way to burn it down,’ he remembers, ‘so we pushed a live wire in.’ The easy nonchalance of Nimesh’s narrative belies the gruesomeness of the events he describes. Does he ever regret the bloodshed and violence he was party to? Have there been any moments when he doubted the veracity of his practice? ‘No to both,’ he says calmly. ‘They (Muslims in Godhra) did the same to us . . . so we did it to them.’ He had recently cleared his intermediate exams (taken in fact in 2002, not so long after the events under study) and presently helps out for a few hours in his father’s fields.17 Farming, however, is not remotely 15. In Sardarpura, other castes like the Waghris, Dalits, etc. — who did not join the attack on Muslims — were Congress voters. The Patels were BJP loyalists. 16. While Sardarpura got a lot of bad press (in the national media) for the deaths of those 33 Muslims who were trapped by a mob, and subsequently electrocuted, additional killings such as those Nimesh narrates went largely unreported, both in police records and by the media. 17. Nimesh’s father has, along with his younger brother, joint possession of about 15 acres of land.

Current

Current

2 Vrishut Patel BD

M

Patel

Patel OBC Intermediate+ Diploma (Diesel mechanics)

OBC Intermediate

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type Education

Associate M (irregular)

Cadre

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Hindu Extremists/Killers/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile

1 Nimesh Patel BD

Alias

Table 5.2:

22

20 High

Medium

Place of origin — Occupation village/ of spouse district

Intermediate Housewife Sardarpura, Mehsana Intermediate Housewife Sardarpura, Mehsana

Education Marital status of spouse

Unemployed/ Divorced Agriculture Service Married Government (diesel mechanic)

Estimated household income/ Age at standard of Other fieldwork living occupation

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 217

218 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

close to his heart. ‘I’m not interested in kheti (agriculture) . . . I want to fight for the country (with a cocky smile) . . . it’s the army for me.’ Nimesh, who had already taken competitive tests for Indian Defence Services and was at the time of fieldwork awaiting its results, has a curious take on what, according to him, made the army a superior career option. ‘In the police, you have to only follow orders . . . and they don’t even fight on the border (with Pakistan). But in the army it’s not like that — armywallahs can fight on the border.’ When asked why fighting on the ‘border’ was so critical to his job selection, he says, ‘Because Kashmir is with us and they (Pakistan) shouldn’t take it away.’ He adds, ‘Every day so many of our people (Hindus) are dying there . . . there is so much terrorism everywhere.’ Asked about his sources of knowledge about the issues he espouses with such passion, Nimesh says some of his friends are in the army.18 He adds that he (knows because he) also sees the news on regional television channels, and reads (the regional newspaper) Sandesh.19 Later, Nimesh told this researcher that he had joined a Bajrang Dal cell two years back, when it was set up in the village, and had learnt a tremendous amount since. In a pattern reminiscent of the findings of fieldwork in areas that saw violence in Ahmedabad, this researcher found Sangh Parivar shakhas very active in Sardarpura. While the RSS had been around for well over a decade, Hindu respondents, including participants in violence themselves, related the recent surge in ‘awareness’ of important ‘national issues’ amongst Hindu youth in the village — and (as corollary) sharply rising resentment and ‘anger’ against Muslims — to ‘information’ from a Bajrang Dal cell set up in Sardarpura barely a couple of years before the 2002 killings.

18. Nimesh’s narratives, as indeed narratives of several other respondents spoken with in the course of fieldwork in Gujarat (including Bhils whose family members had joined the forces recently — not all perpetrators of violence in 2002, and therefore not part of this sample), may point towards an insidious, if still nascent, process of communalisation of the armed forces, commandos, police, etc., in Gujarat. 19. Regional newspapers such as Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar, as well as certain (regional) television channels were strongly indicted of (state-sponsored) partisan reporting on issues involving Muslims in Gujarat, particularly in the run up to — and during — the 2002 violence. The extent of the culpability of the media in what happened in Gujarat was deeply reinforced by the findings — which included in-depth interviews with reporters working at the time with these local media houses — of my own fieldwork in Gujarat.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 219

Vrishut (aged 22 years), Bajrang Dal colleague of Nimesh, and partner in the 2002 attack on Muslims, for instance says, ‘Mohammedan and Hindu vibhag (divide) is there very densely in the head . . . because Muslims are high in Mehsana (district).’ He adds, ‘Muslims here (in Sardarpura) are very notorious — responsible for all the trouble. Even before Godhra they were trying to do as they pleased.’ Vrishut was not comfortable when asked for details of exactly what his Muslim neighbours had tried to do that was displeasing. He finally said, ‘Muslims are strong here. They were getting stronger and stronger. Raste pe chalna ho to dadagiri, bazaar mein bhi (they would walk on the road so aggressively, even in the marketplace) . . . Now the thing is solved.’ This study found Sardarpura’s Killers and Rioters had, then, much like participants in Naroda or in Meghani Nagar in Ahmedabad, been exposed not just to the core Sangh (RSS) ideology in early childhood, but to an aggressive and sustained flow of more immediate (and provocative) propaganda — in the near complete absence of any conflicting ideologies. Sardarpura, in fact, is a particularly telling example of the Sangh’s method in Gujarat. In this relatively insulated rural setting, their takeover of even pre-existing avenues of discourse is near complete: here one doesn’t really have to ‘join’ them anymore to hear what they have to say. Along with very visible saffronisation of regional news channels and the biggest regional dailies,20 I found Hindu religious forums (that have thrived in Gujarat from much longer than VHP’s relatively recent history) have been effectively, if insidiously hijacked by the VHP over the last few years.21 A good example is that of the Ambaji Yatra, an age-old journey to the Ambaji temple undertaken by several hundred thousands of Hindu devotees from all over Gujarat in the month of August. I found the yatra, a particularly effective forum both in terms of reach and

20. In Sardarpura — much the same as in Ahmedabad or in Bhiloda — I found it was the regional media (Gujarati television channels, and some newspapers) that was regularly viewed. National news channels like NDTV or even Doordarshan, or newspapers like The Times of India, Hindustan Times, etc., had almost never been viewed by my respondents. 21. Lakshminarayan temple trust, Ramakrishna Mission, etc., enjoy high credibility with Hindus — particularly as organisations that also work with the underprivileged. The VHP, by riding on the credibility that these organisations have built over the years, seems to have found it easier to garner (human) resources for its own agenda.

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credibility, had been used by the Bajrang Dal to reach out to Gujarati youth, particularly in rural locales.22 It certainly seems to help that most young people in the village have a fair amount of time to spare. Nimesh, for instance, works in the fields only for a few hours in the early morning, eats and rests for a bit, and more or less loiters around the rest of the day away.23 Vrishut, who has a Diesel Mechanics diploma from the nearby town Visnagar (and has trained for a year at a government state transport bus depot there) is hopeful of getting a job in the depot and is also thinking of starting his own business. ‘I will get `2 for every one I put in.’ Nevertheless, for some time now, his day looks similar to Nimesh’s — the first half given to work on the family fields, lunch and a siesta, the second more or less free. Pandu (aged 24 years), a bystander in the 2002 violence — but admits that several of his friends contributed much more to the events of the day — believes a significant part of the reason was that ‘most of us don’t have jobs.’ Pandu himself had not joined the Bajrang Dal as he had been busy with a newly started (and now wound up) ‘construction business’, but many of his friends did. He says of those who joined the mob on the day, ‘They don’t have any regret. They are junoon wallahs (obsessed) . . . have strong feelings about Muslims . . . they say all Hindus were angry about Godhra . . . and what happened was right.’ Both Nimesh and Vrishut did not in fact offer much more than, as Pandu said, ‘collective anger’ as direct explanation for their actions of the time. The complete text of their narratives and interaction with this researcher was, however far more nuanced, also conveying a more individualistic, ‘feel good’ sense of power that seemed to accrue from the display of ‘machismo’ that elevated the (perceived) status of the perpetrator in the eyes of his peers, his community. The success of the Bajrang

22. The Ambaji yatra (pilgrimage) was on in full swing at the time of fieldwork in Gujarat. In Sardarpura for instance, Nimesh when we met was preparing to set out on the yatra — he had been delayed by family matters but most of his friends (most of who were with the Bajrang Dal) had already left. This study also found — across locations — senior VHP leaders were trustees in some of the biggest temples of the state; Jagdishbhai (Mob leader, Ahmedabad), for instance, is managing trustee in the Ambaji temple. 23. At the time of violence (in 2002), Nimesh was still in high school, due to take his intermediate exams. However, he says academics had never really taken his fancy, or his time.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 221

Dal in Sardarpura, it seemed to this researcher, actually lay in playing loudly to this tune, successfully placing Muslims as an easy, legitimate target within a larger framework of alternate values itself — wherein tolerance, non violence, kindness, gentleness, etc., would in themselves be indicative of weakness, even effeminateness.24 A good number of those in the mob on the day were however not even of employable age. Many Bajrang Dal recruits in Sardarpura (who made up the numbers of the mob) were in fact students at the local high school, including Nimesh at the time. While front-liners like Nimesh, or Vrishut bloodied their own hands in the violence, quite a few of these boys — even if led there to begin with primarily by a heightened sense of drama and anticipation — had been only too eager to help and, if nothing else, cheer on the Killers. As such, this study again found the dividing line between Rioters and Killers thin and shifting, delineated more by location and opportunities therein; given the chance, Sardarpura’s Rioters too may have killed.25 Nevertheless, for those like Nimesh, or Vrishut who actually killed, a question that still remains to be answered is: did satisfaction accrue specifically from killing Muslims? Or could it be that it was the act of killing itself that was psychologically gratifying? Indeed, even in the absence of more instructive data from psychological profiling, etc., it seems quite likely that a slice of those in the mob on the day may well have been ‘potential killers’ (psychopaths if you like) per se, for whom Muslims just happened to be easy game. Even for these Participants, however, it was Sangh ideology that finally provided impetus for action (hardly any of those in the mob on the day had killed before), by defining an easy ‘workable’ object for violence, by making the violence itself socially legitimate, and

24. While the Bajrang Dal seemed to have played a decisive role, both in encouraging the new value framework itself, as well as locating Muslims within it, early family influence of prejudice against Muslims showed up in narratives of both Rioters and Killers. 25. There were those, often also within the same family, who refused to be part of (any kind or degree) of violence against Muslims. It is strictly not true that some people can burn (Muslim) shops but won’t kill Muslims. This study found, to the contrary, that there were only two categories of active relationship to mob violence: either being part of it, or staying out of it. (Bystanders, even if they do not protest or try to stop the proceedings, would still be seen as staying out of mob violence. See Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion on the same point.)

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guilt-free. It does seem that the large majority of Participants (running into thousands) in Sardarpura, as in Ahmedabad, may never have bloodied their hands in violence if not for the Sangh. However, by no means were the killings in Sardarpura only the handiwork of a few misled youngsters — there was a strong community mandate26 for the violence. Even at the time of fieldwork, more than a year after the violence in 2002, this researcher found an ongoing bandi (formally imposed restriction) in the village against any interaction, personal or professional with Muslims, enforced punitively (fines on mild offenders and more stringent action against deliberate opposition) by (Patel) ‘village elders’ and community leaders. In fact, given resistance from these village elders and community leaders, the Mob Leaders would likely have found it hard to incite violence in Sardarpura. An indicator of the kind of influence such (formal and informal) community leaders can wield in this (rural) context is available in the example of Fudeda, another village in Mehsana district. Fudeda — close to Sardarpura and in the purview of the same Ideological Instigators — nevertheless averted violence only due to a firm stance taken by the village sarpanch. In Sardarpura however, village ‘elders’ (including the then current village sarpanch and an ex-sarpanch) — some of who were old Congress loyalists, even self-professed Gandhians — instead formed a powerful lobby of support that provided legitimacy and sanction to the pogrom against Muslims in the village. This study then looks at a sample of such respondents who played a role akin to that of those termed as ‘Local Supporters’ in Ahmedabad, with the difference that in this rural setting their influence was more critical. The sample includes Kushalbhai (sarpanch of Sardarpura at the time), Amarbhai (wealthy landowner and secretary of village milk cooperative) and Vineetbhai, a non-resident landowner in the village.27 Vineetbhai has not actually lived in Sardarpura since childhood; nevertheless he wields considerable influence and has in fact been sarpanch of the village for two consecutive terms from 1975 to 1985 (see Table 5.3).

26. While the violence found active backing amongst mainly Patels, members of other castes in the village (Dalits, Waghris, Thakores, etc.) neither protested, nor resisted the course of events on the day. Predictably, barring a lone Dalit activist (who subsequently was brutally beaten up by BJP goons), no one — from any caste — came forward to testify against the perpetrators either. 27. Names have been changed.

Current

2 Kushalbhai BJP

3 Vineetbhai

Current

Alias

1 Amarbhai

M Patel

OBC Middle School OBC Matriculate

OBC Graduate

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type Education

Sarpanch, M Patel Sardarpura M Patel

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

64

58

46

High

High

High

Housewife Sardarpura, Mehsana Housewife Sardarpura, Mehsana

Housewife Sardarpura, Mehsana

Place of origin Marital Education Occupation — village/ status of spouse of spouse district

Agriculture (self Married Illiterate owned/outside labour)+Milk Business+LIC Agriculture+Milk Married Illiterate Business Agriculture Married Illiterate (sharecropping)+ Khadi Gram Udyog

Estimated household income/ Age at standard fieldwork of living Other occupation

Table 5.3: Hindu Extremists/Local Supporters/Sardarpura: Socioeconomic Profile Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 223

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Though none of these men were themselves participants in the violence, nor were among those who led the mob on the day, they were highly influential members of the Patel community who, by their own account, had had prior knowledge of the impending turn of events. Why did they choose to not act on this information? Did they in fact support the turn of events, and why — as it seemed to this researcher — did the entire village fall in with them? This section draws out from their narratives a sense of the kind of dynamics that buttressed the intent of Mob Leaders in Sardarpura. Of the three, it is Kushalbhai, the village sarpanch, who seems to have played the most significant role in abetting the events of the day. (He was in fact named by Muslim survivors as among those responsible for the killings, and as a consequence even spent a couple of months behind bars before being released on bail.) Key accused in a legal case (filed by Muslim survivors of the 2002 violence) still sub judice at the time of fieldwork (and writing), he does not speak of his own role directly, but says the Muslims had it coming. ‘In particular there was one (Pathan) constable. He had troubled everyone . . . even people from all adjoining villages . . . everyone had a problem with him.’ Kushalbhai says it was difficult to attack only him, and so they planned to get him in the midst of a more large-scale attack on the Pathans altogether. Haath mein nahi aata tha (we couldn’t get our hands on him). While Kushalbhai’s narrative expands on how Muslims (in particular the Pathans) in Sardarpura had been troublesome,28 some others who stayed away from the mob (and were anxious not to be quoted) said Kushalbhai, among the biggest landowners in the region, had had ‘ego issues’ with the prosperous and ‘high status’ Pathans — in particular with the police constable who refused to pander to his wishes. Amarbhai, secretary of the milk cooperative,29 and by various accounts (including his own) one of the core group of influential Patel landowners who backed the 2002 violence against Muslims, and later the bandi on

28. Kushalbhai complains for instance that the Muslims took away a ‘library’ that he claims had been Hindu property since 1955, as well as a chabutra (bench) used by Hindus, for their madrassa. He recalls angrily that the then sarpanch (for the period 1990–95) had been on the side of the Muslims, and that they had had to take quick action. ‘He was superseded by another sarpanch soon.’ 29. Locally he is referred to as the dudh mantri, or milk minister, a privileged post shuffled periodically among the richest and most influential of Patels in Sardarpura.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 225

interaction with them, is as unapologetic about the attack. ‘Earlier this village was a Muslim darbar (gathering) . . . the Mohammedans were trying to gain an economic stronghold . . . they were also trying to divide Patels and bring divides among us.’ He adds with satisfaction, ‘. . . now we have got the retaliation (sic).’ Vineetbhai’s narrative to this researcher is, however, layered, suggestive of the more complex relationship that some of those this study would see as ‘Local Supporters’ can have with the agenda of violence they sponsor. Vineetbhai — a vintage ‘Gandhian’ (even if only by virtue of quasi-commercial association with Khadi Gram Udyog for nearly half a decade) and an old time ‘Congressi’ (Congress voter) — likes to think of himself as a levelling force between communities. ‘The Prajapatis, Nareshs, Harijans (scheduled and other backward castes) listen to me . . . and I always said if there is tension I will be with the Muslims.’ Unlike his compatriots Kushalbhai or Amarbhai, he also seems surprised by the final turn of events on 1 March 2002. ‘I never imagined that these people could ever do this.’ Yet, at another level, Vineetbhai makes no attempt to deny that he also had been in the ‘know’ of things on the day, in fact declares with something akin to pride, I knew at 2 p.m. on the 1st (March 2002 — the mob gathered around Muslims in the village by about 9 p.m. the same day) . . . kerosene etc., was being collected . . . it’s the young people who were collecting it . . . I was there all through it . . . saw everything.

He also admits readily that the events of the day were not really the handiwork of only these ‘young people’. ‘Obviously the village supports. If it didn’t this could never happen.’ It seemed to this researcher, based on Vineetbhai’s own narrative (documented over several sessions of interaction), that the violence in Sardarpura in fact could not have transpired without his consent, being an ex-sarpanch of two consecutive terms and, even at the time of fieldwork, a visibly influential community leader. Though he said the Patels — barring his own brothers’ (families) — wouldn’t listen to him when it came to matters regarding Muslims, he described himself at the same time as a ‘maker of sarpanches’. ‘I make sarpanches win. People respect me.’ The current sarpanch Kushalbhai, who makes no bones of his distaste for the Muslim community in the village, is also one of Vineetbhai’s own protégées. And while he himself makes no attempt to deny his complicity in the 2002 violence, Vineetbhai is loudly defensive on his behalf. ‘He

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was with me . . . we both tried to stop it . . . but because of Godhra there was nothing we could do.’ Although it seemed to this researcher that Vineetbhai was not, unlike Kushalbhai and Amarbhai, entirely comfortable with the extent of his own culpability in the events of 1 March 2002, there remains little doubt from his narrative that he, like them, allowed actors like the Mob Leaders and Ideological Instigators to use ‘Godhra’ as an immediate trigger to justify the murder of their Muslim neighbours. So why did the Local Supporters give their nod to the attack on Muslims? Unlike the Mob Leaders, the Local Supporters were neither all ruling party associates, nor did they recall any significant length of (childhood) association with Hindu nationalist organisations. Of the three, it was Kushalbhai, the village sarpanch, who was closest to the Sangh Parivar and even he, as Vineetbhai sees it, had actually gotten closer to them after spending months in jail with the Hindutvavadis after the 2002 violence. Nevertheless, while Kushalbhai received considerable ‘politicolegal’ assistance from BJP after being indicted in the Sardarpura case, neither he nor Amarbhai or Vineetbhai were BJP party workers or officebearers actively looking for political spin offs. One point of view voiced in the village — a view that also gains credence from the narratives of Kushalbhai and Amarbhai — is that Godhra also became a convenient excuse for a few powerful (and arrogant) Patel landowners to settle personal scores and vendetta against some (of the more influential) Pathans. Even Vineetbhai admits in a less guarded moment, ‘Gaonwallahs (villagers) had decided to hurt the Pathans . . . though the Sheikhs ended up suffering,30 the support of the village also was for that reason.’ It probably didn’t help that the affluent Pathans offended the egos of the Patels. But, although the Local Supporters did not admit to it, this researcher found powerful economic interests that likely clinched their consent to the attack. Sardarpura is home to a large population of Muslims with large tracts of cultivable land. Pathans in Sardarpura own not only own amongst the most fertile — and more significantly borewell irrigated — landholdings, most of them also lived in prime area (Darbargadh) whose real estate 30. The Sheikh settlement — a cluster of mainly semi-permanent structures — is housed almost at the entry of the village.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 227

value has shot up over the years. After the 2002 violence, the Pathans left Darbargadh seeking safety in relief camps in safer (Muslim-dominated) villages like Sawala, etc. Though a few Pathan families had, by the time of fieldwork (about a year after the violence in 2002) returned to the village, many Muslims said they may, in the end, have no option but to sell their land to the Patels and resettle elsewhere.31 Pathans (as well as some Dalit/OBC respondents) in Sardarpura themselves believe it was the greed and acquisitive intent of a few Patels, including those this study sees as Local Supporters (among the few with the resources to envisage taking over — at relatively throwaway prices — the huge landholdings of the Pathans) that finally turned the tide against the Muslims. An old Pathan landowner who requested anonymity said, ‘I would say 70 per cent of even the Patels had no problem with us. But they had no choice but to support the remaining 30 per cent on community lines.’ A question that remains to be asked however is, if the Pathan landowner is right and most villagers — including the majority of even the Patels — were at least not antagonistic to the Muslims, why did they fall in with the Local Supporters? Did they really have ‘no choice’? At least part of the answer (why the Patels are with the Local Supporters) seems to lie in the strength of ‘community lines’ — as the Pathan put it — in Sardarpura, which this researcher found were predominantly defined along caste lines. Here, unlike this study’s findings in Ahmedabad, caste in fact came across as a more predominant, and more openly acknowledged, marker of identity than even religion in narratives of respondents.32 In Naroda Patia, for instance, Dalits, Charas, Sindhis and Rajputs, among others, joined the ‘Hindu’ mission to kill as many Muslims 31. While Sardarpura’s affluent Pathans posed a particularly attractive target for the Sangh Parivar’s ire, economic marginalisation of Muslims has been a concerted part of the Sangh’s agenda for several years now, and was a core part of the 2002 violence across Gujarat. In Sardarpura, Muslim-owned shops occupying prime space near bus stops or railway stations were for instance torched while adjacent Hindu-owned shops stayed untouched. The Muslims had not returned to these shops even at the time of fieldwork, and the Patels had no intention of allowing them to. Vrishut, for instance, amongst the Killers and a frontliner in the rampaging mob that destroyed the homes and shops of the Muslims, told me categorically, ‘If they return, they will not have a livelihood here.’ 32. In narratives of (Patel) respondents in Sardarpura (and in other interactions with them), there is in fact very little suggestion of more ‘individual’ identities. All respondents describe themselves as Patels, talk of land holding, occasionally service/business currently in or aspired to, but not much more.

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as possible with equal zest. In Sardarpura, however, the campaign to do away with the Muslims originated with the Patels, and was meticulously implemented almost wholly by them; the 2,000-strong mob was also made up mainly of Patels (mainly youngsters with the Bajrang Dal)33 from Sardarpura and nearby villages. Quite likely then, most Patel families themselves had a family member or friend involved and had vested interests in keeping their silence on the events that impacted their Muslim neighbours. The remaining — and this is what was interesting — felt they were morally bound by communitarian (Patel–Patel) bonds not just to allow violence that they may have had reservations about (on humanitarian grounds) in the ‘larger interests of Patels’, but to thereafter honour a bandi that forbade all interaction with the few Muslim survivors who had returned to the village. The ban, initiated by some Mob Leaders and Local Supporters who were named by the Muslims in an FIR filed after the killings, was intended to browbeat the Muslims into withdrawing their case. Though it was enforced with a punitive threat of hefty fines on those who would dare speak with the Muslims, the Patels, who clearly privileged community interests over individual ethics, were unlikely rebels anyway. But it was not just the Patels who stuck by the ban. More than a year after the violence, this researcher found Dalits, Waghris and other OBC families had also steered clear of any interaction with Muslims in the village. So were they, too, tacit partners in the bandi imposed by the Local Supporters on all ‘Hindus’? The findings of this study don’t encourage such assumption. The Dalits and the OBCs had neither been involved in the game-plan to attack Muslims, nor were part of the mob on the day. Some of these families had, in fact, actually sheltered Muslims from the marauding mob on 1 March 2002. A likely, if obvious explanation could, however, be related to the economic dependence of these castes on the more landed amongst the Patels — including some who acted as key ‘Local Supporters’. While the Dalits and Waghris in Sardarpura are considerably better off than their counterparts in other districts of Gujarat, they still do not have much land of their own, and make their living from lands leased on share-cropping basis. Some of these families also work as daily wage labour on Patel owned fields — the single biggest employer of wage

33. In Sardarpura, the Bajrang Dal itself is basically a Patel outfit, reaching out to and drawing its cadres almost exclusively from amongst the Patels.

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 229

labour in the village would easily be the sarpanch (and Local Supporter) Kushalbhai, for instance. While it seemed evident that going against the diktat of these influential landowners would have had costly economic consequences for the poorer castes in Sardarpura, these families themselves, barring a lone Dalit activist,34 were reticent towards discussion on the subject, and explanation remains conjectural.

Palla Palla, a small village in tribal-dominated Bhiloda taluka in Sabarkantha district, was a significant site of violence against Muslims in the 2002 riots. There were eight Muslim (Ghanchi) families here, whose homes, shops and fields were burnt down. Their lives were spared as the (Bhil) Sarpanch of the village sent them to Tintoi, the nearest Muslim majority village. By all accounts, including those of the Rioters themselves, it was the Bhils (Dungri Garasias) — from Palla and adjoining villages like Gunia Kua, Dhandesan, Dhuleta Palla, etc. — who made up the numbers of the attacking mob in Palla. Yet, unlike worse-affected tribal areas in Dahod or Panchmahals, for instance, residents in Palla cite no old class antagonisms between Bhils and Muslims,35 in fact recall no trouble at all from the few Ghanchi Muslim families, who the Bhils themselves say were comfortably integrated into 34. Dalit activist (and ex-deputy sarpanch of Sardarpura in Vineetbhai’s tenure), Someshwar Pandya, had helped the Muslims file an FIR against the perpetrators of the 2002 violence in Sardarpura, for which action he was brutally beaten up by BJP goons in an open marketplace. Badly disabled by the vicious attack on him, in which he lost an eye and suffered spinal injuries amongst others, a disillusioned and cynical Pandya refused to speak to this researcher (a stance also likely driven by this researcher’s stay and work from the location and point of view of perpetrators of the 2002 violence — the Patels who were behind the attack on Pandya.) 35. In Dahod and even Panchmahals districts of Gujarat, the Bhils were front-liners in amongst the worst attacks on Muslims in the 2002 violence. NGOs that have worked closely with tribal people in these areas believe that, here, there was some inherent class discord between the communities, which the VHP picked on successfully. Paulomi, an associate of Disha, an NGO that has worked in the region for over two decades, points out that in areas like Dahod, the adivasis probably had as many grievances against the Muslim traders and shopkeepers as against the Hindu Banias. In these areas, she says, Muslims were the ‘upper class’, equal to (upper caste) Hindus. Bhils here, on the other hand, are not economically well-off, dealing with — among other things — serious water

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their ‘Hindu’ way of life in the village.36 The region was significantly, unlike Sardarpura, or Ahmedabad, also a stronghold of the Congress — a party arguably best known for its ‘secular’ credentials. The Bhils here, including those who attacked Muslims, had in fact been loyal Congress voters for years. What then was it that made the Bhils attack their Muslim neighbours? The genesis of the ostensibly surprising attack on Palla’s Muslims, according to Bhils here, can be located in a fast-rising wave of ‘Muslim hate’ linked to the strategic entry of Sangh Parivar organisations here a decade ago. In findings similar to those in Ahmedabad and Sardarpura (in fact more overtly evident here — both Ahmedabad and Sardarpura were locales that detracted from ‘pure’ explanations of the 2002 killings),37 events in Bhiloda seem definitively linked to the macho, militant ‘Hinduisation’ of tribals over the years — a process that apparently gained momentum sharply a couple of years before the 2002 violence.38 Darshan Bhai (name changed), sarpanch of (Malingaon) another Bhil village in the taluka, says the ‘process’ took a significant turn about problems, and dearth of schooling facilities for their children. While most do have a little land, it’s not enough, and often it’s not even in their own name. Paulomi feels VHP/Bajrang Dal programmes strategically harnessed and directed the ire of an impoverished and discontented community (exclusively) against the Muslim traders. ‘For example if in a mela (traditional mobile market), Hindu boys tease adivasi girls, it mostly goes unnoticed. But if a group of Muslim boys happens to do so, it’s blown completely out of proportion by the VHP.’ 36. While the Bhils here were traditionally hunters–gatherers, by far the majority (locals estimate as much as 80 per cent) are vegetarians today. A significant number are also janoi dharis (wearers of sacred thread) associated with the Bhakti cult. (There are for instance as many as 200 janoi homes in Dhandesan alone.) These families follow prescribed strictures on shudh bhojan (ritually pure food) in keeping with strict purity–pollution norms and do not eat or drink in others’ homes. 37. Attempts to identify a ‘core’ cause to the 2002 violence in Ahmedabad are, for instance, made difficult by its old history of ‘ethnic conflict’ between the two communities or, for instance, the fact that at the time under study it was a BJP political dominion, etc. Sardarpura again has had the portents of ‘manufactured’ ethnic conflict brewing for some years now, and on the other hand has also had clear lines of economic conflict between Hindus and Muslims. 38. Locals locate the origin of the current brand of (macho) ‘Hinduisation’ of Bhil youth here to an aggressive Sangh campaign, about a decade old at the time of fieldwork. However, the amalgam of the Bhil way of life with Hindu culture is obviously much older and much more difficult to date. Locals, for instance, say

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 231

10 years back (from time of fieldwork), when the Sangh began by wooing the Thakors and the ‘Bakshi Panch’ (OBCs) into their fold. ‘They were given talwars, told that they were traditionally Mataji’s people (soldiers of the mother goddess) . . . given positions of authority and prestige . . .’ As he saw it, it was, however, really in the last three years (before the 2002 violence) that the adivasis joined the Sangh in a big way. They started talking first to our young boys . . . got them involved in a big, grand manner in things like the celebration of Hindu festivals . . . just see the Ambaji procession any year . . . it’s our boys who make the vishamas (rest stations for pilgrims), it’s our people who serve there.

Darshan Bhai recounts how, after establishing a relationship of camaraderie and trust with the Bhils, the Bajrang Dal began an insidious ‘Muslim hate’ campaign in the region. ‘They would say, see how these Muslim landlords are exploiting (marrying) our adivasi girls.’ He remembers, for instance, a huge row created recently about Kushalpur, a village where some Muslim traders, drivers, etc., had married Bhil girls. ‘There was no zabardasti (force) there . . . but the RSS–Bajrang Dal wallahs (people) made a big hue and cry about it.’ they have been ‘Hindus’ even before independence; a few like Dhulji Bhai of village Guniakuan insist that the Bhils in Gujarat were dedicated warriors who helped the Rajputs fight the Moghuls, dharma bachane ke liye (to save the Hindu faith). However much of what Dhulji Bhai believes is ‘Bhil history’ may itself be a construct of Sangh propanda: in an area that has been the work site of (Sangh) organisations like Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad for several decades, it’s difficult to tell the difference. There is little doubt however that here again, as in Sardarpura, or in Ahmedabad for that matter, it was not really ‘friendly’ neighbours that suddenly turned into bitter foes. Bhiloda going by the narratives of respondents who spoke with this researcher seems to have had a Hindu–Bhil alliance (pitted against Muslims) brewing for several decades before the 2002 violence, actually (according to some accounts) going as way back as 1971. Older respondents in Palla, including its sarpanch, recall that earlier there used to be a sizeable Muslim population in villages adjoining Palla. The Muslims were evidently hounded out in 1971 after some Hindu college girls were reportedly molested by Muslim boys in the adjoining (Muslim-dominated) Modasa district. (The few families in Palla had then been left alone, as they were seen as late converts to Islam and not really kattar, or orthodox Muslims.) The (BJP associate) Palla sarpanch agrees that, even then, there had been no witnesses to the offence committed by Muslims, but recalls that ‘everybody knew’ what had happened.

232 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

As in Sardarpura, the study also attempted to factor in the narratives of key Ideological Instigators in Bhiloda — Sangh Parivar associates whose work seemed to have had an almost directly causal relationship to violence here. Though this researcher could not meet with a representative sample of senior VHP associates here, I spoke at some length with VHP Ideological Instigator, Naresh Bhai (see Table 5.4). Naresh Bhai, sarpanch of the temple town (and village) Shyamlaji, managing trustee of its famous Shyamlaji temple — and a well-to-do businessman — is among the VHP’s most trusted associates, involved from the outset in efforts to ‘Hinduise’ the tribal-dominated region. He belongs to a Brahmin family in Shyamlaji — in fact his is one of only three non-Bhil families in Shyamlaji. (The other two ‘Hindu’ families in Shyamlaji are his relations, and have legal rights in the temple as well.) His father had been a committed Jan Sangh worker and he says that he, along with his siblings, developed dharmic vichar (religious outlook) early on. We had no television, no other distractions, it was only us . . . my father, mother, uncle would talk to us about Hindu sanskriti (culture) . . . we all heard loris (lullabies) about Shivaji (valiant Hindu Maratha king who fought the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb) right from childhood . . . it was only natural for us to get involved with VHP activities later.

Though Naresh did not speak directly about the 2002 violence in Bhiloda, or his role in it, he happily acknowledged that VHP’s ‘efforts’ over the last decade have seen significant change in the way of life — and thought — of Bhils here. ‘Now adivasis even come to Brahmins to enquire about shastravad (scriptural rites), right time for marriage, etc.’ As he sees it, the keynote of their success however has been in taking Ram naam (name of the Hindu God Ram) to every village in the taluka. ‘Even when they meet each other, they say Jai Ram Ji Ki (glorious is Ram)!’ he declares with pride. A good estimate of the depth of VHP’s influence in Bhiloda, Naresh says, can be made from VHP’s increasing influence in even Lusadia, a village that has had a high — about 50 per cent — Christian population for decades.39 ‘Some Christians in Lusadia are now coming back to us . . . turning into Hindus.’

39. Lusadia, according to Naresh, derived its Christian influence primarily from a big hospital set up by the British in pre-independence days. The hospital, which in pre-independence days had ‘foreign doctors’ on its rolls, is now run mainly by Christians. The village in addition has an old Christian high school, which Naresh says is good even today.

1 Naresh BJP

Alias

Current

Education

Sarpanch, M Brahmin General Unavailable Shyamlaji

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type 35

High

Marital Education status of spouse

Shyamlaji, Bhiloda

Place of origin — Occupation village/ of spouse district

Business+ Married Unavailable School Managing Trustee Teacher Shyamlaji Temple

Estimated household income/ Age at standard of fieldwork living Other occupation

Hindu Extremists/VHP Ideological Instigators/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Table 5.4:

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 233

234 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

For a better understanding of the Sangh’s work with Bhil youth in the taluka — including those who attacked Muslims in Palla — Naresh referred this researcher to his second-in-command, Bajrang Dal head Jagdish Bhai Prajapati40 of Palla village. Prajapati, however, had already left for the Ambaji yatra — along with a posse of his boys from Palla and adjoining villages — and this researcher could not meet with him. The yatra was, in fact, in full swing at the time of fieldwork and it was impossible to miss the Bajrang Dal stamp on it. Ambaji vishamas (functional rest stations) — dotted along the highway taken by yatris (pilgrims) to Ambaji — were, as Karshan Bhai had mentioned, manned almost fully by Bhil youth, anywhere between 15–20 years old, from different villages in the taluka, most of whom wore saffron or red headbands, and carried Bajrang Dal (saffron) flags, trishuls, etc. While Ambaji yatra itself has been a part of Hindu religious practice in Gujarat for several decades and more, it seemed doubtless at the time of fieldwork that this forum of Hindu spiritual expression had been virtually hijacked by the Sangh. While some here were even first-timers, most of those this researcher spoke with here said they had been going to Ambaji for five years or so — and from the outset, with the Bajrang Dal. The yatra (manned dominantly by Sangh cadres) was not an appropriate (safe) forum to discuss the 2002 violence, but this researcher received some sharp insights when speaking to a group of young boys (11th and 12th standards) studying in the Palla high school. These boys were from villages adjoining Palla — Dhuleta, Dhandesan, etc. and agreed that ‘most of their friends’ attended Bajrang Dal shakhas.41 (They were uneasy however when asked about their own participation; following the 2002 violence, even these schoolchildren seemed aware that association with the Dal’s kind of work could be viewed unfavourably in some forums.) The group was initially quiet, almost sullen when probed about Palla’s Muslims, but finally one boy burst out, ‘If they (Muslims) go on

40. Prajapati, of OBC caste, pretty much represents the first rung of cadres (lesser off OBCs like Karshan Bhai pointed out) wooed into the Bajrang Dal when it started its efforts here a decade ago. Sangh leadership in the area, including in the Bajrang Dal, still did not include too many adivasis. 41. Recent years have seen a spurt of private schools, run mainly by Bhil political leaders, leading to a high rate of growth of education among the adivasis in the region. See Balagopal (2002: 2118) for how education led to an identity quest amongst adivasi youth in Gujarat: a space that in the vacancy of (state or other led) alternatives, has been filled by the Sangh Parivar (ibid.).

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 235

like this, we will have to do something. I will myself pick up a gun and kill them all. We Hindus have to do something.’ The others in the group silently nodded, signalling complete assent. When asked about how they knew what Muslims had done, most said they saw the pictures in the newspapers (Sandesh).42 In addition, this study would have benefited by my speaking with Malabehn (related to Naresh), founder leader of the VHP women’s wing Durga Vahini, also based in the Shyamlaji temple. Unlike Sardarpura, this researcher found Durga Vahini had been active in Bhiloda for several years, targeting in the main teenage school-going girls. A likely reflection of that effort, young girl children (11th and 12th standard students) met with in (Palla high school) Bhiloda also articulated a coherent and highly aggressive worldview — more or less identical to that held by male youth in the villages — on Muslims, Godhra, the 2002 violence, etc.43 Their narratives were markedly different, for instance, from the more fractured narratives of schoolgirls in Sardarpura that did not have a Durga Vahini/Rashtriya Sevika Samiti presence. Unluckily, Malabehn too was not in Bhiloda at the time of fieldwork, and this study could not factor in her narrative. More important — less obviously visible, but of far deeper impact — has been the work of RSS Ideological Instigators in this region. This study found that the RSS has over the last decade funded, run and frequented a host of ‘charitable’ residential schools for tribal boys and girls in this area. While most of the school-cum-hostels frequented by the 42. As in Ahmedabad, the Gujarati newspaper Sandesh appears repeatedly in the narratives of respondents in Bhiloda. Based on narratives of (Ahmedabadbased) reporters working for Sandesh, I had learnt about how the Sandesh management partnered with the Narendra Modi-led government to deliberately encourage partisan coverage, inflammatory stories (unsubstantiated and since declared false by the Gujarat police) about women abducted, raped and killed. Several respondents said it was Bajrang Dal men who actually carried the Godhra (newspaper) pictures and stories to show the Bhils. 43. The girls, to begin with, were silent when this researcher enquired about violence against Muslims in Palla. There was a sea change, however, in their responsiveness with more ‘leading’ questions like: ‘Do you think they deserved to be thrown out?’ One girl said (almost surreptitiously), ‘Jo hua achha hua (whatever happened was right),’ which unleashed a wave of giggles and approving noises in the rest of the class. Another girl added aggressively, ‘Godhra me woh sab kiya . . . hamare log bhi toh jawab denge (they did all that in Godhra . . . so our people also have to retaliate).’

236 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

RSS are actually government-run bodies, the RSS has also set up quite a few ‘educational institutions’ of its own. A large slice of Bhil youth here — including girl children — have spent a good part of their childhood in one or the other of these live-in schools, which could take much of the credit for the insular stance on the Muslim community held by Bhiloda’s tribals today. So who are the RSS Ideological Instigators? How do they go about their work and what kind of ‘results’ have they seen in Bhiloda? What’s in it for them? This researcher met (and later travelled) with a group of RSS associates in a high-level government guesthouse in Shyamlaji — lodged officially at the time of fieldwork as ‘doctors from Gandhinagar’ conducting a ‘health check up’ for tribal schoolchildren. In truth, there was only one ‘doctor’ of sorts — a diploma holder in Ayurvedic medicine and an employee of the Bharat Sevashram44 — in the motley group of five; of the remaining four, one (Mihir Gupte) was a Bank of Baroda employee, his wife (Smriti) was a government servant (state fisheries department), and two were graduate students (home science) in an Ahmedabad college (see Table 5.5).45 The group this researcher met with in Bhiloda operated under the pseudonym of ‘Gajanand Trust’, an alias that, Mihir said, gave them easier access to the institutions they sought to penetrate. ‘RSS is sometimes perceived as kattar (fanatical) . . . we say the same things, sing the same songs, spread the same message . . . but no one objects!’ While Mihir, Smriti and the Ayurvedic doctor from Bharat Sevashram were members of the Gajanand Trust, the Home Science students were student volunteers. ‘RSS people come to our college . . .46 we like their work so we agreed to come with them here,’ explained one of the girls. This researcher accompanied the Gajanand Trust on one of its (obviously regular) visits to the ‘Mahatma Gandhi Uttar Bariyadi Ashram’, a charitable school-cum-hostel for tribal children in Khiloda village. This particular school I was told, in fact, housed children from several villages in Bhiloda (Palla, Bornala, Ode, Subeide, etc.) as well as from 44. Gupte says Bharat Sevashram has collaborated with the RSS in various ‘programmes’ over several years now. 45. All names have been changed. 46. RSS has a strong network of shakhas targeting the (Hindu) student community in Ahmedabad, including those enrolled in the university, medical and engineering colleges, vocational courses, etc. For students from poorer backgrounds, RSS often functions as ‘family’, providing hostels, communitarian warmth, and even financial support.

Current

2 Smriti Rashtriya Current Sevika Samiti

1 Mihir RSS

Alias

Senior M Associate Senior F Associate

Brahmin General Graduate

Brahmin General Graduate

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

35

35 High

High

Place of origin — village/ district

Service PSU Married Graduate Service Unavailable (Bank of Baroda) Government Service Married Graduate Service PSU Unavailable Government (Fisheries department)

Estimated household income/ Age at standard of Marital Education Occupation Education fieldwork living Other occupation status of spouse of spouse

Hindu Extremists/RSS Ideological Instigators/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Table 5.5:

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 237

238 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

neighbouring talukas such as Meghraj, Vijaynagar, Modasa, etc. Like many others of its ilk in the region, it was run on government grants, which Gupte said had been plentiful in the Narendra Modi (then current political) regime. Bank of Baroda employee Mihir was clearly the group anchor, leading the effort wherever we went. While he conducted the proceedings for the schoolboys (roughly between the ages of seven and 12), his wife Smriti Behn (from the fisheries department) engaged the girls with the assistance of the home science students. (The Ayurvedic ‘doctor’ seemed to function more as a symbolic prop, randomly doling out (allopathic) freebies — eye drops, vitamin drops, fever, cough and cold drugs, etc. — from a ‘medicines’ sack at the end of the ‘educational’ session.) The core session was similar for boys and girls: a couple of songs and ditties that were in the main nationalistic, but heavily dotted with references to Hindu deities — such as Jai Shri Ram (glory be to Lord Ram) and Hindu theological concepts (for example, Manu ke santan, or Manu’s children, eulogising the Hindu text Manusmriti), a lot of slapstick fun and some games (here the boys’ session had exercises interspersed with calls of Jai Shri Ram), and finally, gift-giving. Mihir says this is a strategy the RSS has learnt from the church in India. ‘We realise that if you don’t give something, you can’t reach people. Christians have done it like that . . .’ So in every such session with schoolchildren, the Gajanand Trust doles out either medicines, or blankets, notebooks, even snack food that gets the children excited. The critical part of the mission is to ensure that, along with the freebies, children also get to see (and keep) pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses (often part of the packaging material of the freebies). ‘The idea is simply to get any Hindu picture — Ram, Hanuman, Durga — into their home,’ Gupte says candidly. But while the government-funded Mahatma Gandhi Uttar Bariyadi Ashram welcomed the Gajanand Trust associates warmly — and the evidently familiar proceedings went off as smoothly — Mihir says it is not always as easy. Some schools, he says, don’t allow them to speak with the children. At other times, he recollects that they obtained an entry, only to realise that the school also had Christian students. ‘We quickly get guarded and don’t waste our time. We are clear about this — you first say Jai Shri Ram (glory be to Ram), only then we can give you anything.’ His wife Smriti adds, ‘We always tell the (Bhil) kids: hame kise party ne nahi bheja hai, nahi government ne, hame Shri Ram ne hi bheja hai tumhari madat karne ke liye (we have not been sent here by any party, nor by the government, Lord Ram himself has sent us here to help you).’

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 239

Mihir says their efforts in the region have been in the main wellrewarded. ‘Today when we ask these boys to say Jai Shri Ram, they all do, except a few.’ Interestingly, while the children were willing enough to hail Hindu deities, Mihir says most of them do not respond to similar calls to cheer the political party BJP, or its chief representative in Gujarat, Narendra Modi. Gupte believes that the region, which has been a Congress stronghold for decades, is still suspicious of the BJP as a political alternative. RSS/VHP-sponsored institutions, on the other hand, had (even in 2003) been around for over a decade and seem to have successfully implanted core Hindu nationalist themes and ideas amongst the Bhils. (Children being addressed in these schools are, in fact, also often second generation targets for the RSS, likely making the task that much easier this time around.) In a manner reminiscent of findings in Sardarpura, boys and girls here — as young as seven or eight — identified themselves dominantly as ‘Hindus’. A little Bhil girl said in a matter of fact manner, ‘This school is only for Hindus, not for Christians or Muslims’. Discussion on key issues facing the country threw up similar themes that had emerged in Sardarpura — Muslim atankvad (Islamic terrorism), Pakistan, etc. So what is it that drives Mihir and Smriti to travel around the countryside increasing the numbers of ‘little Hindus’? Is their practice motivated any differently than the work of VHP Instigator Naresh? Mihir and Smriti’s narratives convey a sense of being involved in significant work towards an important cause. They say they believe in the relevance of what they have been doing, and their narratives carry no doubt, guilt, or ambiguity. Hardly aged 40 now, Milind in fact plans to avail, along with Smriti, of the VRS that would be available to them in a couple of years, to focus better on RSS work. ‘We’ve been married for 17 years . . . no kids . . . earned enough in all these years . . . we want to now retire and dedicate ourselves fully to (this) social service.’ While they may well cherish distant political ambitions, RSS Instigators met with here — like their counterparts in Ahmedabad — again carried on their work in relative obscurity, willing to frequently leave the comfort of their middle (and upper-middle) class homes without immediate rewards.47 While for Mihir and Smriti, the work also seems to have filled time–space coordinates left vacant by childlessness and undemanding occupations,

47. Unlike VHP/Bajrang Dal Instigators, who — barring a few key national level positions — operate more at a familiar local level, senior RSS Ideological Instigators are often mobile.

240 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

the rewards sought for labour here are essentially those of (RSS) communitarian engagement and approval. But again, to get the point of view of the Bhils who actually attacked Muslims in Palla: who are the Rioters? What was it that made them attack their Muslim neighbours? Did they really hate Muslims?

Rioters48 This study met with four (Bhil) respondents in Dhandesan (adjoining Palla), all of whom were allegedly present in the mob that attacked Palla’s Muslims: Pandu, Ashok Gardasu, Dilip (name changed on request) and Shiv. Pandu, Ashok and Dilip were in their early 20s. Of the three, Pandu was the only one employed (apprentice with the Gujarat Vidyut Board in Vanaskantha). The fourth, Shiv, aged 42 when we met, was employed with the state’s commando force in Gandhinagar (see Table 5.6). So, what turned these boys, barely a few years out of school, into ‘Rioters’? And why did Shiv, who was actually based in Gandhinagar (ostensibly far away for several years now from local influence), join the mob? Dilip was a late entrant to a group (of alleged Rioters) with whom this researcher was already in (unfruitful) conversation in Dhandesan — an abrupt and aggressive addition that initially demanded a stop to my ‘suspicious enquiry’ in the region. It was, however, eventually Dilip who spoke in some detail (on condition of anonymity) of his own participation in the 2002 violence. (His narrative persuaded the others who had remained present as Dilip spoke — listening intently and nodding assent — to finally speak to this researcher as well. Even if in bits and pieces, even these respondents said much that helped clarify the context in which ‘their friends’ acted.) Dilip, to begin with, said — much like Rioters in Ahmedabad — that the Muslims were attacked because of what they did in Godhra. ‘See we get papers here, all of us saw it on TV. We were furious and threw out all the Muslims in Palla. Sab kuch jala dala (burnt everything down).’ By his own account, however, it seems unlikely that Dilip’s actions of the day were only a spontaneous, one-off reaction to events at Godhra. He adds, for instance, that he anyway hates Muslims. ‘Terrorism, riots, any other fights . . . we (Hindus) are always targets . . . we feel why does it happen only to us . . . why do Muslims do this all the time?’ He suffers no

48. There were no deaths in Bhiloda taluka.

Current

Current

Current

Current

1 Pandu BD

BD

RSS

2 Dilip

3 Shiv

4 Ashok BD

Alias

M

Associate M

Associate M

Cadre

Associate M

Bhil (Dungri Garasia) Bhil (Dungri Garasia) Bhil (Dungri Garasia) Bhil (Dungri Garasia)

Education

Adivasi Intermediate

Adivasi Intermediate+ Diploma (Electrical) Adivasi Matriculate+ Diploma (Medical) Adivasi Standard 8

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

Hindu Extremists/Rioters/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Table 5.6:

20

42

20

22

Medium

High

Low

High

Single

Single

Marital status

Education of spouse

Dhandesan, Bhiloda

Dhandesan, Bhiloda

Place of origin — Occupation village/ of spouse district

Government Married Unavailable Housewife Dhandesan, Service (police Bhiloda commando) Unemployed/ Married Unavailable Housewife Dhandesan, Agriculture Bhiloda

Service Government (apprentice) Unemployed/ Agriculture

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 241

242 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

regret at all about what happened to Palla’s Muslims on the day, or his role in facilitating it. ‘I still feel bad whenever I think of what they did in Godhra. About what happened later — no worries. They started it.’ He scoffs at the suggestion that Palla’s Bhils were perhaps reluctant to spill blood (as compared to Hindus or, for that matter, tribals in other districts of Gujarat), in that here Muslims were allowed to escape with their lives. ‘I myself can do it (kill Muslims). I did not get the chance.’ Dilip says he ‘believes in Hindutva’ and feels that India should be converted into a ‘Hindu rashtra’. When asked what place Muslims or Christians would have in it, he retorts, Sabhi Bhartiya hote to ye toofan nahi hota (if all of us were Indians, these riots would not have happened). Dilip admits Bajrang Dal is powerful in the region, but says his own views had nothing to do with them. He, in fact, left Dhandesan soon after the 10th grade and joined a school-cum-hostel in Umbrel to do a ‘medical diploma’ course. While his narrative is extremely sketchy here, it is probable that Dilip actually picked up the base elements of his current worldview only after he left Dhandesan. (Bhiloda is densely mapped by such residential school-cum-hostels, run in the main by charitable trusts targeting children from poorer Bhil families. While some are funded directly by the Sangh, many more have staunch Sangh supporters amongst their staff.) Ashok attended the Dhandesan high school till 10th standard, after which he went on to do his intermediate from Pintoda, a few kilometres away. Still unemployed at age 20 (at the time of fieldwork) — though married and father of a year-old child — he says he would like to get a job. In the meanwhile, he keeps busy with a ‘little kheti (agriculture)’ and ‘community events’ like the Ambaji Yatra, which he had ‘gone with’ almost every year since it was ‘started’ in 1998 (by the Bajrang Dal/VHP combine). Ashok is cagey about discussing his own (alleged) role in the events of the day. He mumbles, ‘Some of our friends were going, but we stayed behind . . . we didn’t have time’. A moment later, he bursts out passionately, ‘But can you tell me why Muslims hate Hindus? Couldn’t they find anyone else . . . Christians, Parsees?’ While Ashok clams up on any mention of the Bajrang Dal, Pandu (the third respondent in the sample of Rioters) says that he’s been to their shakhas ‘in childhood’. He admits that ‘they keep coming, it’s there,’ but insists that he was never ‘interested in RSS–Bajrang Dal people.’ Nevertheless, despite the evinced disinterest in Bajrang Dal, even Pandu believes, ‘Hindu rashtravad is a good thing.’ He adds (about the 2002 violence) cynically, ‘What should we have done, keep our hands folded together and allow them to keep attacking us?’ Pandu, 22 years old when

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 243

we met, cleared his intermediate from the local high school and went to do a diploma course from an ‘Industrial Training Institute’ in Himmatnagar taluka. Luckier than his friends Dilip and Ashok, he had also recently found employment — with the Gujarat Vidyut (electricity) Board in the neighbouring Banaskantha district. But if Pandu’s — or Dilip’s and Ashok’s — stout defence of Hindu nationalist ideology (and the attack on Palla’s Muslims) can be related to the onset of Bajrang Dal activity on home ground, Shiv’s worldview is harder to locate in context. Shiv, who was 42 years old when we met, had attended high school in the nearby town of Dodesra till the eighth standard, after which he joined the state police department. He was posted in Surat where he then lived for 18 years. In 2000, he was transferred to the state’s commando force in Gandhinagar, where he continued to be based at the time of fieldwork. Allegedly among those who spearheaded the attack on Palla’s Muslims, he, like other Rioters in Palla, justifies it as revenge for events at Godhra. ‘If they (Muslims) cut up our mothers, sisters, daughters, I can’t be happy.’49 He also reiterates the importance of having a ‘Hindu rashtra.’ ‘I am against cow slaughter . . . Manjula Behn who fought in Mirzapur against it was killed by Muslims . . .50 we have to save the nation . . . it’s our (Hindu) land and it will stay ours.’ But unlike younger Rioters like Deepak, Ashok or Pandu, Shiv had neither attended Bajrang Dal shakhas as a child (it did not exist then) nor actually ever lived long enough in Dhandesan — even if he visited frequently — to be schooled adequately. Where, then, did he pick up his evidently staunch ‘Hindu nationalist’ worldview? Shiv’s own answer to the question is this: ‘Parents talked of Hinduism, teachers spoke about Hindu rashtra (nation), I read some books . . . and after I got a job, I got to know so many more things about this problem . . .’ While Hinduisation of Bhils in Gujarat (as of several other tribal groups across India) could be a much older process, contact with the 49. Stories of the alleged rape and murder of Hindu women in Godhra, Kalol, etc., had appeared in regional dailies like Sandesh soon after the burning of Sabarmati Express, and were quickly distributed by Bajrang Dal cadres. Though these accounts were later found to be fictitious by the Gujarat police, counter stories were either not published in the regional press, or could not dislodge what had by then become part of the public imagination. 50. Participants in the 2002 violence often narrated accounts of horrific wrongs done to Hindus in faraway regions, difficult to pin down to date and detail, leave aside verify.

244 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Sangh’s brand of Hinduism here is evidently not all that recent either. Shiv’s account of Hindutva being (at least an informal) part of his curriculum as a high school student in the 1970s is a fair marker of the length of time the Sangh (RSS, Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, etc.) has been active in the region. While his school at Dodesra may or may not have been an RSS run institution (these are generally hostels targeting the poor) it is evident enough from his narrative that there were keen RSS loyalists (if not active swayamsevaks) amongst the staff, who were probably the first to shape his worldview of today. But as he says, it was really his years of employment in the state police department that hardened his views against Muslims in general, and particularly the Muslim community in India. ‘In a government job I am required to treat Hindus and Muslims equally . . . par dil me thoda kala to rehta hai (but in my heart I have a bad feeling for them) . . . you can’t help remembering that these guys killed our people.’ Shiv is actually a good example to showcase the prevailing paradox in Bhiloda: as opposed to the common-sense notion that Rioters are angry, dissatisfied, jobless youth, a good number of those who attacked the Muslims — and many more who cheered them on — were in fact employed in stable permanent jobs. While most respondents worked on (generally self-owned) land, this study also found young people as strongly disinclined to look at farming and agriculture as occupation’ — much like (Patel) youth in Sardarpura. In the near absence of alternate avenues of (stable) private sector employment in the region, Bhil youth (most of whom are high school pass-outs) aim to find employment in ‘government service’, first choices being jobs in the police, army, forest department, etc. These services for some years now, locals say, have had a growing RSS presence and work as fertile ground to induct fresh blood into the ranks of the Hindutvavadis (Hindu nationalists). Darshan Bhai (name changed), a respected (Bhil) social activist in the region says bluntly that boys in government service are actually easier to induct. ‘Let’s say I am an RSS man and I have an adivasi working under me . . . I don’t think there are too many different possibilities ahead . . .’ A village elder in Shiv’s village, Dhandesan, says there is a huge adivasi (Bhil) population especially in the army. ‘When these men return home, they talk a lot about Hindu rashtravad (Hindu nationalism).’ This study, then, found Rioters in Bhiloda, much like in Ahmedabad or Sardarpura, had been exposed early on to organised — and sustained — ideological schooling. Yet Dilip, Ashok, Pandu and Shiv were not quite driven ideologues on a mission. What the Sangh schooling did do was to legitimise the attack, pre-absolve participants of guilt, and therefore made it easy for them to attack Palla’s Muslims. Again similar to

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 245

Ahmedabad, practice may well have also fulfilled individual psycho-social or economic needs.51

Local Supporters In Palla, as in Ahmedabad and Sardarpura, this study revealed that the attack on Muslims, who had been part of the community for several decades and more, was significantly enabled by the support of critical ‘Local Supporters’. As in previous locations, Local Supporters here, too, were strategically secured from within the (caste/tribe/community) base intended to provide foot-soldiers for the attack. Ramjibhai (see Table 5.7), Palla’s 38 year-old (Bhil) sarpanch was not among those who instigated Bhil youth to attack the Muslims,52 nor did he himself lead the mob. He in fact organised a car and personally escorted the Muslims out to the relative safety of Tintoi, the nearest Muslim majority village. ‘Here everything was so hot and charged — anything could have happened . . .’ He adds that the Muslims in Palla were anyway late converts to Islam (therefore less orthodox). ‘They were Ghanchis, had land here like us, even had Hindu names till a generation or two back . . . I don’t think I could bear to have seen them being killed.’ Yet, Palla’s Muslims could not have been attacked at all without Ramjibhai’s tacit consent and support. As sarpanch (in a Bhil-dominated region), and by virtue of being a teacher in the local high school, he (as he admits) had a high degree of influence on the Bhil youth, who comprised the majority in the mob. Ramjibhai had also been associated with the political party, BJP (again by his own account the key agent behind the violence) for well over a decade, and had had prior intimation of events to come.

51. Unlike in locations like Ahmedabad, and even rural Sardarpura, commitment to Hindutva for these boys however is not at all synonymous with loyalty to BJP. Politics is addressed as a pragmatic affair, being with the Bajrang Dal does not mean you have to vote for the BJP. In fact, most villages here were Congress strongholds. Even in affected villages like Palla, Dhandesan etc., because no one was killed, and hardly any cases were filed, it did not become imperative for even those involved to vote the BJP back to power. Electoral politics, also pretty much a community affair, and the ‘community vote’ is generally left to the discretion of community leaders. 52. Among others, it was Bajrang Dal leader Jagdish Prajapati, a resident of Palla village, who was allegedly at the helm of affairs on the day.

Current

Bhil

Education

Adivasi Graduate+ Diploma (Electrical)

Caste (as Caste Sex narrated) type

Sarpanch, M Palla / President, Samajik Nyay Samiti (BJP’s adivasi arm)

Political affiliation Type of (organisation) association Position

Hindu Extremists/Local Supporters/Palla: Socioeconomic Profile

1 Ramjibhai BJP

Alias

Table 5.7:

38

High

Agriculture Dhandesan, (selfBhiloda, owned) Sabarkantha

Place of origin — Marital Education Occupation village/ status of spouse of spouse district

Agriculture Married Illiterate (self owned/ outside labour)+ School Teacher

Estimated household income/ Age at standard Other fieldwork of living occupation

246 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Hindu Extremists in Rural and Adivasi Gujarat A 247

So where exactly does Ramjibhai stand on what happened in Palla? Why did he allow his Muslim neighbours — who he admits had been in no way troublesome to the village (and whom he couldn’t bear to see killed) — to be hounded out of their homes, and driven out of the village? Ramjibhai admits, in as many words, that he acted on the behest of the then political establishment (of which he was a part). His account of the subject is more nuanced than that of the trigger-happy Rioters, or for that matter Mob Leaders and Killers met with in earlier locations. ‘See all these (2002) riots have been done by BJP it is true, but we (in Palla) have ensured their (Muslims) safety . . . We Bhil people believe we should not murder anyone . . . I did not want blood on my hands.’ But while Ramjibhai’s narrative (like Jyotirmay’s in Ahmedabad) indicates discomfort with using violence as means to end, he (like Jyotirmay again) has no disagreement with the desired end itself — in this case hounding Muslims out of Palla. In the final take, he too was guided not by his broader ethical (humanitarian) qualms but by pragmatic interests. If it was (other) BJP/local Bajrang Dal leaders who instigated and led a mob, it was undoubtedly Ramjibhai’s consent (as was his dissent with murder) that decided the final sway of things at the time. ‘See, I got a car and sent them to Tintoi. But I have no hesitation in speaking openly. I told them you did this in Godhra, this will happen to you.’ He adds that he does not want to have any interaction with Muslims. ‘We don’t need their votes.’ Ramjibhai (much like Jyotirmay in Ahmedabad) is a telling example of how key local influencers, whose support was critical to the success of the project against Muslims, were wooed into the Sangh. He recalled that he first came ‘in contact’ with RSS when he was sent to hostel in Modasa taluka soon after completing his seventh grade — he was about 13 years old then. He stayed on in Modasa to complete his intermediate, a two-year technical (electrical) diploma course, and later his graduation (Bachelor of Arts [BA]). Ramjibhai says it was ‘RSS teachers’ who introduced them to (Hindu devotional streams of) bhakti vichar, swadhyay, etc., as well as provided them with Hindu (literature) pustikas — lessons that he says stayed with most of them for good. ‘I myself have been of bhakti vichar (thinking) since then.’53 53. Over the last few decades, noticeable changes have taken place in the traditional religious practices of the Bhils due to Hindu sectarian movements such as Bhatiji, Satkeval, Nirant, Sanatan, Ramanand, Jayagurudev, Kabir, Swadhyay Parivar, Swami Narayan, Sita Ram, etc. Most of these sects are of Hindu reformist variety, and have their followers from amongst well-to-do and educated tribals. See Pinto (1995) for the changing religious landscape in Gujarat.

248 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Around the time he joined the Palla high school as a teacher, people from the Sangh Parivar’s tribal wing, Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, met with him and requested him to do prachar (propaganda) for BJP. He agreed and in reward was soon after made sarpanch of his home village Dhandesan. Ramjibhai recalls that he was then only aged 25. ‘After that I got actively involved in election work . . . it was an uphill task . . . the adivasis opposed any talk of BJP . . .’ In 1995, the BJP won taluka panchayat elections in a region that had always been, and by and large continues to be, a Congress stronghold; Ramjibhai was made taluka panchayat chairman. In the period since, the party also accorded him plum posts such as social and welfare committee chairman, president of Samajik Nyay Samiti (Tribal Welfare Committee), etc. At the time of fieldwork, he was again a sarpanch, this time of Palla. Ramjibhai’s narrative includes candid moments where he speaks at some length about the kind of murkiness involved in sustaining a political career. He adds that a political career — something that got him social standing and enough money to run the family — is still not something he would ever want his children to get into. Raj karan ka kaam ganda kaam hai . . . unko service me jana chahiye (politics is dirty work . . . they should go for jobs).’ Yet, by supporting the political establishment’s pogrom against Muslims, it was not quite as if Ramjibhai acted against his conscience, so to say, or that he consciously chose political interests over personal ethics. On the subject of Palla’s (now homeless and destitute) Muslims, his narrative does not convey any sense of regret or doubt whatsoever. Quite on the contrary, perhaps as a factor of his 25-years long (at the time of fieldwork) association with the Sangh’s ideological wing RSS, he believes he went against the tide to save the lives of people who belonged to a community that actually could not be trusted. ‘I feel these Christians and Muslims will get together one day . . . they are both the same . . . foreigners . . . the same people who enslaved us.’

A

Introduction A 249

SIX A

Conclusions I

n his influential and brilliantly persuasive book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer had said that mass movements appeal to the same types of mind (1951: xi). Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one . . . However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing (ibid.).

That ‘same thing’, as Hoffer saw it, was the fanatic’s hunger for the deep assurance which comes with total surrender, with the wholehearted clinging to a creed and a cause. For the fanatic — perpetually incomplete and insecure — what matters is not the content of the cause but the total dedication and communion with a congregation (ibid.: 83–86).1 So were the marauding mobs in 2002 Gujarat — some numbering 20,000 people or more — composed mostly of fanatics? Are the young people who shot down 76 jawans over a few hours in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district in April 2010 also fanatics? How do the Naxalites and Hindu rioters in India relate to Hoffer’s contention?

1. Hoffer’s argument is with reference to the early phase of a mass movement. In his view, when the movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage; that it is no longer engaged in moulding a new world but in possessing and preserving the present. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an enterprise (Hoffer 1951: 13).

250 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Based on my findings with both left-wing and right-wing extremism in India, I would venture to say most participants in armed movements may in fact not be driven by belief at all. Let me reiterate, this book does not seek to argue that those who kill in the name of a larger cause do not believe in the cause. By the findings of this study, it is quite evident that they do: in fact the majority of Hindu extremists and Naxalites I met believed in the cause. It was this belief that legitimised, sanctified and made it easier to kill. But — in a nuanced but important difference — belief was not the reason people joined the movement, or willingly killed in its name. Quite different from Hoffer’s view about a certain type of mind that predominates mass movements, by far the majority of those I met (including some who had in fact joined the Naxalite movement in Bihar as early as the 1980s) were made up of no extraordinary psyches, were really people no different from ‘us’. The project of this book about Naxalites and Rioters has been then not so much to describe the curious features of different, or aberrant psychological types, but to detail out in these disparate contexts, how ordinary people hardly any different from ‘us’ are actually mobilised to kill in the name of a cause.2

2. On a different note, James Aho (1990) in his study of Idaho Christian patriotism argues that the way extremists join groups is no different from the way people join any other political group. Stressing on the importance of personal recruitment and existing social networks, he suggests that potential recruits have to weigh two considerations: the value to themselves of the collective goods advertised by the groups in question (defence of constitutional liberties or traditional White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) privileges from ‘unAmericans’ for instance); and the value of selective private goods that might accrue from affiliation with those groups — such as pleasures of socialising with others who share one’s views, or more worldly things like sexual gratification and money. Others such as Steve Bruce (1988: 20–24), Sara Diamond (1995: 3–5), Chip Berlet and Mathew N. Lyons (2000: 13–15), and Lane Crothers (2002: 222–23, 229–31) have sought to examine (right-wing) extremist groups in more conventional political terms: to see them as ‘normal’ political actors seeking to promote their interests by the rational mobilisation of the various resources available to them — leadership skills, financial backing, manpower, technology, media interest, popular and elite support, and the prevailing political–economic context. The danger with such propositions I think is that they miss the point that ‘extremists’ are in fact engaged in practice as ‘un-normal’ as killing. While given the numbers, it is evident they are ordinary, the question of interest is perhaps the (local) context that enables so many (ordinary) people to actually be ready to kill.

Conclusions A 251

My findings in Jharkhand, Bihar and Gujarat in fact indicate that there is much in common — not in the kind of people (as Hoffer may have thought) — but between the contexts that enable two ostensibly radically disparate movements to ready large numbers of ordinary men to actually kill in the name of their cause. In fact, for by far the majority of my respondents, the process of decision making and the choice to kill — whether for Naxalites or for Hindu extremists — is not really motivated by reasons as different as they may perhaps have been in yester years, and are rarely ‘ideological choices’ at all. I found the profile of those joining Naxalite groups to be quite different from what may have been the case till even the 1990s. Only a very small section of the sample, almost all of whom had joined the party in the late 1980s to mid 1990s, were motivated to violence by desire for social change. While a clearer picture of the kind of motivational factors that drive the Naxalite movement today has been detailed in the previous chapters, it suffices to reiterate that the sample was dominated by those termed as ‘Drifters’ — who constitute well over half the total sample. For these men — most of who were not from the oppressed classes, many in fact upper caste — the decision to join and kill for Naxalite groups was in the last count a quasi occupational choice of sorts, chosen as (relatively desirable) livelihood in an arena presenting no roadmaps for real ideological/life alternatives.3 The majority joined young — often in their early teens and even earlier — a time when association with the ‘party’ was macho, prestigious and promised quick rewards. It was factors like opportunity for recognition, achievement and power play — often used to resolve petty personal disputes with peers and community rather than ‘class enemies’ — that influenced choices for a significant chunk of the sample. At this age, and stage of life, crossing the law and even the possibility of death itself — as I heard time and again in the narratives of such cadres — was romanticised, in fact enhanced the value of their association with Naxalite parties. While the sample itself was not distributed by commitment to cause in Gujarat, for reasons discussed in the preceding chapters, core findings were not at odds from those in Bihar and Jharkhand — none of those who spoke with this study had killed because they believed in the Hindu

3. While most were actually from families that had enough land to make a living, agriculture was rated low as an occupational option across socioeconomic strata.

252 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

nationalist cause. Contrary to popular opinion — and indeed contrary to initial declarations of participants in violence themselves — the 2002 killings also did not happen because Hindus were angry with Muslims.4 Rioters in the 2002 violence, who form the bulk of sample in Gujarat much like the Drifters in Bihar, in fact also viewed their actions of the day as heroic work of sorts, upping their status in the eyes of the Hindu samaj (society), and immediate peer group. Narratives of Killers — many of who were front-liners responsible not just for death but for the terrible manner in which it was dispensed — again reveal how the mob was a forum for personal need gap fulfilment and gratification. For these men the opportunity to be a perpetrator of socially legitimised violence against a long hated enemy of the community was in itself highly desirable, investing the perpetrator with instant power, visibility, and a strong sense of achievement. Undoubtedly, immediate imperatives that drove participation in violence were not the same for Naxalites and Hindu extremists, and in fact, were different for varying categories of actors within both. For the left extremists (Committed, Drifters and Opportunists) the reasons to join and kill were very different. In the case of Hindu extremists too, those who instigated the violence, those who led it, those who allowed violence to happen, and those who actually did the killing were all motivated variously. Narratives of Mob Leaders for instance — even those who did not directly admit to a role in the violence — confirm that these key actors had worked with political imperatives in mind. Actors outside of the core sample of Participants in violence (Ideological Instigators, Local Supporters) were not by any means led by faith in the cause either. Narratives of several VHP Ideological Instigators indicate a compulsive need for social status, recognition and power. The researcher did find some among the RSS Instigators whose everyday work in fact seemed to stem from belief, but even for them, consent to violence was driven more by a varied portfolio of motivational factors ranging from communitarian ties with those actually spearheading the violence, to 4. Barring a few respondents who had themselves been victims — previously or in 2002 — of riot violence, this study found very few had actually been ‘angry’ enough to kill without caring about consequences. It may be significant to reiterate here — a point discussed in the previous chapters — that this researcher also met in Ahmedabad some of those whose homes had been burnt by Muslims in 2002/previous riots but who did not join, or endorse the 2002 violence against Muslims.

Conclusions A 253

personal political ambition. Local Supporters were secured by addressing pragmatic interests, in a manner not too different from Opportunists amongst the Naxalites. Hindus in Sardarpura, for instance, may not have finally electrocuted their Muslim neighbours had it not been for the huge tracts of prime land in the possession of a section of Sardarpura’s Muslim residents — and eyed by those this study termed as Local Supporters. Nevertheless — and this is what is important — without mass-based ideological organisations such as the RSS, Bajrang Dal, Krantikari Kisan Samiti, or for that matter Nari Mukti Sangh, neither the Mob Leaders nor the Local Supporters nor the MCC or the PW would have ever found so many foot-soldiers ready and willing to kill for them. Ideological Instigators and Mob Leaders do not make up the numbers — to reiterate the obvious, it’s the Rioters that make a ‘riot’.5 It was finally the (relatively recent) explosion of hundreds of Bajrang Dal cells across Gujarat that provided that many thousands of willing hands (Rioters and Killers) for the cause. The study found as many as 24 out of 40 ‘Hindu Extremists’ (60 per cent of the sample) including respondents in rural- and tribal-dominated regions that had hitherto seen little or no such trouble had attended Sangh (RSS/Bajrang Dal) shakhas since early childhood. As findings in Bihar and Jharkhand show, as much as 70 per cent of Naxalite cadres too had begun associating with the ‘party’ as teenagers, or even before — generally several years before they finally joined the armed dastas.

Summary of Findings Killings not for Ideology Most Naxalite armed cadres as well as Hindu perpetrators of violence in Gujarat killed for reasons that had little to do with ideology (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2).6

5. Refer, for instance, to narratives of Killers such as Prakash Tomar (see Chapter 4) who recalled how there were finally just not enough ‘rioters’ at an agreed site of attack in 1984 in Ahmedabad, and the ‘riot’ was called off. 6. As evident, for Naxalites the decision to join the armed cadre is in itself a decision to engage in violence / kill for party if called for. However, as discussed previously, this study found that reasons for current association were for some cadres different from reasons that had drawn them into the armed cadre. In the case of respondents in Gujarat, ‘reason to join’ is with reference to joining the rioting mob.

Jopan Manjhi

Anil

Pranav Vidyarthi

Videsh Pal Ramji

Sadanand Mahato

Kalu Mahato

Shyamji

Navjyoti Isha

Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra

Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi

Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav

2

3

4 5

6

7

8

9 10

11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20

Recognition Land Dispute (with family) Recognition Clout: ‘felt joining them would make me stronger’

Commitment to Cause: ‘joined armed cadre with gusto thinking I would change the world’ Commitment to Cause: ‘from oppressed class, who can help supporting?’ Commitment to Cause: ‘was IPF days . . . I was from the oppressed class . . . got involved in the action.’ Recognition: ‘I thought I may become a leader’ Recognition: by MCC commander/within party/outside community Clout: ‘Everyone gets scared when they hear PW’ Recognition Recognition Recognition: ‘I was becoming very popular’/Money: BDO contracts now coming to family Recognition/Influence Recognition

Commitment to Cause: ‘felt it was important’ Commitment to Cause

Commitment to Cause: ‘I started doing their work from age 10 . . . liked it enough to go deeper.’ Commitment to Cause: ‘had witnessed oppression . . . wanted change.’ Commitment to Cause

Reason to engage in violence/kill

Naxalites: Reason to Join/Engage in Violence

1

Alias

Table 6.1:

Police Case (became full-timer to escape arrest) Party Meetings: ‘In the village everyone goes’ / Family (elder brother) Involved Party Meetings Police Case (charges of murder): joined to escape arrest Party Meetings Failure in Business (closed down in Patna)

Failure in Business/Other Dispute (over love affair) Caste Dispute (insulted by upper caste in village) Caste Dispute (with Rajputs) Party Meetings: ‘everyone gathers, even I did’

Party Meetings: Early association with Nari Mukti Sangh Other Dispute (with own family over love affair)

Party Meetings: Fought for ‘gair mazarua’ (village commons) land with Sangram Samiti; killed Bhoomi Sena man with their help; joined PU to escape arrest Party Meetings (MKSS): ‘got drawn in’ Party Meetings: ‘Gadar stayed at our home. I got engaged with cause. . . was given responsibilities.’ Party Meetings: ‘Couldn’t get college admission (on account of corruption) . . . joined JSS . . . didn’t know it was a MCC front.’

Approached by party for help (was an ex-jawan in Bangladesh war)

Land Dispute: with relatives

Remembered trigger

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Drifter Drifter

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Drifter Drifter

Committed

Committed

Committed

Committed Committed

Committed

Committed

Committed

Category

254 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Brijesh

Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar

Harihar Paswan

Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji

Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram

Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji

Nathu Mahato

Pappu Dinesh Yadav

22

23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30 31

32 33

34 35 36 37

38

39 40

Clout/Money: ‘opportunity to make big money’ Recognition: ‘Since they gave me attention I also got influenced’

Fear: ‘They asked me to join. No one here can refuse.’ Land Dispute: used party’s clout Unemployment: ‘nothing else to do anyway’ Recognition: Offered posts of authority — first area in charge, then sub-zonal area in charge for Chatra Recognition/Opportunity to Achieve/Make Money Party Meetings: ‘attended . . . joined (MSS) along with everyone else.’ Clout/Money Clout: demonstration of strength Land Dispute: used party’s clout to settle Success/Recognition: ‘quicker rewards than other political parties’ Clout/Money

Izzat/Recognition

Recognition/Importance Unemployment: ‘nothing else to do anyway’ Recognition Izzat/Recognition: ‘Rajputs didn’t treat us properly. This was the only option for people like us.’

Recognition/Clout/Nothing Worthwhile to Do

Recognition/Shaukiya (just felt like joining)

Police Case (charges of murder): joined to escape arrest Party Meetings

Party meetings: ‘Rallies . . . so many people with them, so I went too.’

Land Dispute Land Dispute: with zamindar/Party Meetings

Land Dispute: used party to settle scores

Party Meetings: attended ‘along with everybody’ in Dhanbad colliery Other Dispute: within family

Land Dispute Land Dispute: used party’s clout

Party Meetings/Other Dispute: used party’s clout to settle personal scores Other Dispute (with relatives): ‘thought joining PW might improve situation’ Party Meetings Land Dispute: used party’s clout Party Meetings: ‘they used to come and go . . . I got influenced.’ Party Meetings: ‘used to attend with friends, helping, sticking posters, making arrangements for them . . . one day, four of us went to join them.’ We were always troubled . . . party took action . . . naturally I got involved.’

Opportunist Opportunist

Opportunist

Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Opportunist Opportunist

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Drifter

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Drifter

Drifter

Note: Joining a closely banded, armed guerrilla group such as MCCI/PW implicitly includes consent to current or potential possibility of having to kill for the party. In the case of Naxalites, therefore, ‘reason to join’ is mainly coterminous with ‘reason to kill’ at the time.

Rinku

21

Introduction A 255

Jagdishbhai

Jayaben

Sureshbhai

Dr Patel

Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel

Pappu Chhara

Nimesh Patel

Ashok Prajapati

Mukesh Rajput

Babu Bhai

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9

10

11

Mob Leader Mob Leader

Godhra Deaths Public Support: ‘That day public mood was “no, we’ll not leave anyone.”’ Political Mandate (estimated from narratives of older family members) Political Mandate BJP/Bajrang Dal Support

Psychological Gratification/Recognition: ‘Haath me khujli mache thi (hands were itching) . . . I had to get them’/‘I may be five foot three but don’t undersestimate me’ Recognition/Status: ‘I have a dossier of press clippings about me . . . only afraid of English media wallahs’

Psychological Gratification: ‘Everyone was so excited . . . they had to be punished.’

Vendetta against Pathans in Sardarpura Clout/Power: ‘Pathans were tring to do man-mani (get their own way) even before Godhra.’ Heroism/Anger: ‘. . . we Chharas can kill for our (Hindu) brothers — for what they did to our (Hindu) women and children.’ Heroism/Achievement

Political Mandate: ‘Our leaders were telling us, don’t be eunuchs, move!’

Killer

Bajrang Dal Mobilisation around Godhra: ‘I saw news on TV, in the papers (Sandesh taken around by BD cadre) . . . started hating them (Muslims).’ Bajrang Dal Mobilisation: ‘Bajrang Dal people said why are you standing here, kill those xxxxxxxx (in Jafri’s home) . . . we were diverted like that.’ Political Mandate: ‘Goga (alias for senior VHP leader) called me on 28th morning.’

Killer

Killer

Killer

Killer

Bajrang Dal Propaganda: ‘Muslims had brutally killed a Hindu man . . . made people lose control.’

Mob Leader Killer

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Godhra Deaths

Political Mandate (estimated from other interviews, including those of his co-participants in 2002 killings) Political Mandate (estimated from respondent’s narrative to researcher; interviews of other participants in 2002 killings) Political Mandate: ‘people in the party should not forget’

Vendetta against Pathans in Sardarpura

Category

Remembered trigger

Reason to engage in violence/kill

Hindu Extremists: Reason to Join/Engage in Violence

1

Alias

Table 6.2:

256 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Prakash Tomar

Sinh

Mahesh Rathod

Bhanu Chhara

Vilas Rathod Ashok

Dileep

Deepak

Ganesh Pandu

Ajay

12

13

14

15

16 17

18

19

20 21

22

Free Thrill (estimated from narratives of co-participants) Heroism/Machismo: ‘What should we have done, fold our hands and wait for Muslims to stop attacking us?’ Heroism/Recognition: ‘If I die, no problem . . . (community) would think I died fighting in a riot.’

Anger (own house burnt in riots): ‘I am not like Gandhi bapu — to turn the other cheek when slapped on one.’

Shaukh/Netagiri: ‘I had a shaukh (fancy) for the experience . . . netagiri (political showmanship) — people would see us participating in riots.’ Psychological Gratification (subjective estimate based on interactions with researcher) Psychological Gratification: ‘They raped our girls, why wouldn’t we get angry?’ Psychological Gratification/Status: ‘We are upper castes’/ ‘Whenever there is evil on this earth, God comes down in human form to avenge.’ Unavailable Adventure/Peer Pressure: ‘(After Godhra) everyone was going (to attack the Muslims . . .’ Adventure/Thrill

VHP/Bajrang Dal Mobilisation

Bajrang Dal Mobilisation: ‘VHP/BD wallahs had warned us, armed us, given us food, some money etc . . . asked us to join the tola (mob).’ VHP/Bajrang Dal: ‘VHP had prepared us from before . . . helped us with weapons . . . told us you should be able to defend yourself.’ VHP/Bajrang Dal Support Unavailable

VHP/Bajrang Dal Support Bajrang Dal

Godhra

VHP/ Bajrang Dal Support

RSS people said it is happening in the city . . . you should do something. We were anyway Hinduwad (believers in Hindutva) at heart.’ VHP/ Bajrang Dal Support

(Continued)

Rioter

Rioter Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Killer–Rapist Rioter

Killer–Rapist

Killer–Rapist

Killer–Rapist

Killer-Previous

Introduction A 257

Anil

Ram

Dilip

Shiv

Amarbhai Kushalbhai

Vineetbhai

Ramjibhai

P. Jyotirmay

Deepa

Prema

24

25

26

27 28

29

30

31

32

33

RSS Ideology/Recognition

Clout/Economic Interests: To hurt the Pathans Clout/Economic Interests: ‘Muslims needed to be taught a lesson . . . there was one Pathan police constable haath me nahi aata tha (we could never touch him) . . .’ Economic Interests: ‘Intention was to hurt Pathans . . . whole village supported . . . Sheikhs ended up suffering.’ Political Mandate: ‘See all these riots were done by BJP it is true’ Political Mandate: ‘Congress has done nothing. BJP, whether good or bad, is the only real alternative.’ Community Ties/Recognition

Recognition/Adventure: ‘Who will fight for Hindus but Hindus?’ RSS Ideology/Anger: ‘All of us saw (Godhra) on TV. No point doing Gandhigiri. Why always us?’ RSS Ideology/Hates Muslims

Heroism/Status

Reason to engage in violence/kill

(Continued)

23

Alias

Table 6.2:

Godhra: ‘Riots wouldn’t have happened if they (Muslims) had showed regret’

Godhra

Community Ties

Godhra: ‘If they cut up our mothers, sisters, daughters, I cant be happy’ Godhra Godhra

Godhra

Bajrang Dal: ‘Bajrang Dal people called us on 28, took us to the office . . . pictures from Sandesh newspaper (of burnt Hindus) were pasted all over. Who could remain calm after seeing all that?’

Remembered trigger

Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS

Local Supporter

Local Supporter

Local Supporter

Local Supporter Local Supporter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Category

258 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Mihir

Smriti

Kapil Bhai

Archana Behn

Goga Bhai

Naresh

35

36

37

38

39

40

Status/RSS Ideology

Recognition/Status

Recognition

Political Mandate (estimated from narrative)

RSS Ideology/Recognition

RSS Ideology/Recognition

RSS Ideology/Recognition

Political Mandate

Political Mandate

Political Mandate

Godhra

Note: ‘Reason to engage in violence’ encompasses those who killed/rioted as well as led/supported/instigated killings.

Vinay

34

Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Introduction A 259

260 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

By far, the majority of Naxalite cadres had been drawn to and motivated to kill for Naxalite groups by factors like recognition, izzat (respect) in local community and peer group, clout, etc.7 Most cited ‘triggers’ that influenced the decision of respondents were petty disputes, repeated exposure to ‘party meetings’, and more occasionally, factors such as a police case against the respondent, etc. The decision to attend these ‘meetings’ was for most, not really a matter of deliberation or choice, but just happened — most just ‘drifted’ in along with friends, peers, co-workers, etc.8 While the party meetings were attended along with ‘everyone else’, respondents often recalled being proud to (be chosen to) later associate with the partywallahs over extended periods, organise things for them, etc. A few started going to such meetings as college students — these men initially joined student and youth fronts of Naxal parties, and only later moved into the armed cadre. Some said they initially didn’t know that the ‘party’ they were getting involved with was banned by the Indian government. As evident from Table 6.1, ‘petty disputes’ were also an important factor that often triggered the decision to join Naxalite parties. Many respondents said they joined the party after using their clout to swing land and other petty disputes (including love affairs, quarrels with peers and family, etc.; but rarely a caste/class dispute) in their favour. Rioters in Gujarat were not motivated very differently from the Naxalites: core reason to kill even here was recognition, heroism or status. In addition, Hindu extremists were also driven by factors such as political imperatives (Mob Leaders), psychological gratification/shaukh (fancy)/ thrill (Killers), or economic interests (Local Supporters). The ‘trigger’ to kill that was recalled first was Godhra, but again the vast majority of Hindu Extremists admitted to attending RSS/Bajrang Dal shakhas/meetings called by VHP/Bajrang Dal over the last several years, and particularly in the immediate context preceding the violence. In context of fieldwork in Gujarat being conducted in 2003 — barely a year after the 2002 7. ‘Reason to engage in violence/kill’ described here — though based completely on the respondents’ extended, nuanced and often contradictory narratives to me — are also finally based in great part on my own qualitative assessment of the respondent’s motives. ‘Immediate triggers’, in contrast, are mostly documented almost verbatim from narratives of respondents. 8. Questions of why only some of the many who possibly attended these meetings were particularly attracted to the agenda set by these forums, and what got them personally involved have been addressed in more depth in the previous chapters.

Conclusions A 261

killings — several denied any knowledge of Hindu nationalist groups (unlikely in context of the spread in the region), let alone association. For (potential) foot-soldiers of violence here, this study found ‘choices’ to attend these forums were in a manner different from the case in Bihar and Jharkhand,9 also significantly pre-described, not just by religious but by caste/community loyalties as well.10

Recognition Key to ‘Good Life’; Agriculture Rated Low as Occupation Well over half the sample in Jharkhand and Bihar across socioeconomic strata (mainly the Drifters and few Committed) list recognition/izzat (respect/honour) in the local community/peer group as the most significant aspect of a ‘good life’ (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4). Other significant (most desired) aspects of a good life were ‘freedom from oppression’ (mainly listed by Committed cadre), ‘life as a Naxal cadre’ (Drifters), etc. Land ownership, secure homestead, good food and good clothes, interaction with the buddhijeev (intellectuals), education also appeared — though less frequently — in the wish list of Naxalites. As evident from Tables 6.3 and 6.4, there are remarkable similarities between Naxalites and Hindu extremists in terms of outlook on life, desirable ends, as well as means to ends. Recognition figures highest in Gujarat as well, followed closely by clout, money, social status, etc. Sylvestor, sub-zonal commander of the MCCI had once wanted a police job — much like Ashok Prajapati or Pappu Chhara, killers in the 2002 riots who also describe their dream job as that of a (corrupt) policeman. Danilimda Rioter Deepak says, for instance, that a job with the police

9. While at the time of fieldwork this study found young people drawn into Naxalite forums from across caste/class strata, this was not the case in the region till even the late 1990s. Anil Singh of Sahupur village in Jehanabad district (at the time of fieldwork in Gaya jail), for instance, recalls immense ‘community pressure’ to join Ranvir Sena (militant grouping of upper caste farmers against Naxalites) in 1998. ‘I had finished my graduation. Our community members were being killed in Senari, Bara. When my friend Bindu Singh lost his father, brother, sister, his whole family . . . I had to support him . . . I lifted the rifle and took part in action in the villages.’ 10. In Sardarpura, for instance, Patels — even those who did not back the violence against Muslims — felt they were morally bound to support their community brothers.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

None None None Unavailable Agriculture (self-owned)/Service Agriculture (self-owned) None None Marriage Marriage None Agriculture (self-owned) Agriculture (self-owned) Agriculture (self-owned) Other Labour (unorganised private sector) Agriculture (self-owned) None None Agriculture (self-owned) Business/Political Party Agriculture Agriculture

Alternative occupation options (as perceived by respondent)

Naxalites: Definition of Good Life/Occupational Alternatives

Jopan Manjhi Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav Rinku Brijesh

Alias

Table 6.3:

Respect/Recognition Respect/Recognition Respect/Recognition Freedom from Oppression/Respect Recognition/Meaningful Work Recognition/Meaningful Work Freedom from Oppression/Respect Respect/Recognition Recognition/Opportunity for Leadership Recognition Money/Influence Respect/Influence Freedom/Recognition Recognition/Money Recognition Unavailable Recognition Free and Relaxed Life Recognition/Power Freedom/Power MCC Life (Recognition/Local Clout/Money) Recognition/Local Clout/Money

Definition of good life

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Category

262 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji Vijay Singh

Sailendra Ram Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji

Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

Other Labour None Unavailable

None Agriculture (self-owned) None None Other Labour

Agriculture Agriculture Unavailable None Agricultural Labour in Village (undesired) Unavailable Unavailable None Agriculture (self-owned)/Service Agriculture (self-owned+labour)

Recognition/Influence/Money Unavailable MCC Life (Status/Power/Guns) Recognition/Money Recognition/Freedom Unavailable Unavailable Recognition Recognition/Power Independent Life/Freedom of Action/Opportunity to Achieve Money/Leisure/Time with Family Money/Influence Power/Clout Money Money/Influence/Education and Wider Prospects for Children Money Money/Freedom Influence/Money/Political Connections

Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Opportunist

Introduction A 263

Jagdishbhai Jayaben Sureshbhai Dr Patel Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel Pappu Chhara

Nimesh Patel Ashok Prajapati Mukesh Rajput

Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok Dileep Deepak

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Agriculture Higher Education Unavailable Unavailable None Unavailable Agriculture None Army

Agriculture Law

Agriculture Unavailable

Army/Sales/Business

Alternative occupation options (as perceived by respondent) Recognition/Influence/‘Life in a Hindu rashtra’ Power Social Status/Money Recognition/Power Clout/Money Money/Clout Money/Police Job: ‘Each policeman here makes at least 2000 rupees extra every month from hafta (‘protection money’) from just 20 Chhara families.’ Army Job: ‘Then I can fight on the border with Pakistan’ Money: ‘I am always thinking how to make more money’ Recognition/Clout: ‘People should think a million times before taking us on’ Social Status/Recognition/Money Influence/Money Unavailable Success/Money Social Status/Recognition/Money Unavailable Good Job Money/Recognition Police Job: ‘A man can have a good life in the police . . . many advantages . . . no none does anything good in the police.’

Definition of good life

Hindu Extremists: Definition of Good Life/Occupational Alternatives

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Alias

Table 6.4:

Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter Rioter Rioter

Killer Killer Killer

Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Killer Killer

Category

264 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Ganesh Pandu Ajay

Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti Kapil Bhai Archana Behn

Goga Bhai Naresh

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

None None None None None None None None None Various School Teacher Various Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable Running Beauty Parlour/ School Teacher Unavailable None

Unavailable None Shop Salesman

Recognition/Social Status Recognition/Influence

Social Status/Money Good Job/Money Good Job/Independent Life: ‘will live alone, send money home’ Money/Recognition Money/Recognition Good Job/Recognition Recognition Money/Clout Money/Clout Power/Influence Social Status/Influence Recognition/Status Community Bonds/Recognition Recognition/Social Status Recognition/Influence Recognition/Community Ties Recognition/Community Ties Social Status/Recognition Recognition/Social Status

Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Rioter Rioter Rioter

Introduction A 265

266 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

has ‘advantages’. ‘Insaan police ke andar bindaas ji sakta hai (a man can live freely in the police force) . . . whatever a policeman does is right . . . it’s the best job from all angles.’ Pappu Chhara and Deepak calculate how much money is to be made in these lucrative professions ‘on the side’. They have no pretensions about what they would have been doing had they made it to the force. ‘No, I don’t think I could have done anything “good” in the police . . . never seen a good police wallah (man).’ The majority of Naxalites said that the only other (undesirable) option for them would have been agriculture. A significant number of even those who had said they anyway had no other occupational alternative had had enough land to make a living but were uninterested in agriculture. A few said they would have had to eke out a living by labouring on others’ fields, construction work, etc. A few listed alternatives such as joining/ continue working with other locally active political parties/organisations like the JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha), the AJSU, the Congress Trade Union, the Sakshartha Vahini (Literacy Mission), etc. Two armed cadre of the MCCI — both women — said the alternative could have been marriage. Data in Gujarat on alternate occupation options available to respondents is more diffused. Most Mob leaders and Ideological Instigators were for instance well established professionally — apart from their work with the Sangh Parivar — and did not see it as necessary to evaluate other options. For Killers and Rioters in Sardarpura and Bhiloda, agriculture was an available (but undesirable) occupational option; those in Ahmedabad — some of who were unemployed — saw no alternatives. Most Local Supporters again (in Sardarpura/Bhiloda) had large landed estates and had never seen reason to evaluate alternate occupational options.

Caste/Class/Life Experience not Linked to Ideological Commitment; Committed not Created but Tapped Across contexts, neither caste nor class background, and not even life experience had a deterministic relationship with ideological commitment. Even from the same socioeconomic background, this study discovered that barely a few respondents killed for, or because of the cause. For instance, in the case of Naxalites, even from the poor who join early, only some become Committed cadre of the organisation, while many more join and stay on as Drifters. As important is the fact that ‘Committed cadre’ were also not created by extremist organisations: only ‘tapped’, so to say, by them in time. It seemed to this researcher that both Naxalite

Conclusions A 267

groups/Hindu nationalist organisations gather a great many young people in their net, and whenever they find it, tap and channelise innate potential/temperament/bent of mind/sincerity very effectively. Committed Naxalite cadre like Jopan Manjhi and Sadanand Mahato — or a dedicated pracharak or, say hypothetically, even a Pragya Singh Thakur of Malegaon blasts fame (assuming that she killed because she believed in the cause) — I would say, on the basis of the findings of this study, were all found, not created.

Belief in Cause; Early Ideological Exposure in Organised Forums In a nuanced difference, though the study found very few who killed for the cause, most Naxalite armed cadre/Hindu extremists in fact believed strongly in the cause espoused. By far, the majority of Naxalites and Hindu extremists also recalled early association with formal ideological forums — often including even those who joined the organisation late (see Tables 6.5 and 6.6). It seemed to this researcher that it was this early start that made it possible for even ‘ordinary’ people (a few hardened criminals and fewer committed ideologues don’t make a mob) to endorse, even participate in the violence — and make political, economic or psychological harvest — without guilt or fear of social sanction.11 Going by the findings of this study, it is evident that those gunning for Muslim blood in 2002 in Gujarat had been associated with the Sangh Parivar. Most ‘Hindu Extremists’ — as much as 60 per cent of the sample — recalled early and sustained exposure to organised ideological forums such as RSS or Bajrang Dal shakhas, a contact that, if nothing else, seemed to have made killing Muslims relatively easy. Narratives of all Mob Leaders, Ideological Instigators and some frontline Killers include accounts of deep and early association with the RSS. Most other Killers and Rioters, this researcher discovered, had attended Bajrang Dal shakhas over the last several years. It was really this ideological ground built early on that, in the complete absence of a convincing alternate, fostered more than hatred — a resilient dislike

11. Though early influences work best, this study found that people do listen and act on propaganda even later, especially when it is interesting, dramatic and hardship free.

268 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Table 6.5:

Naxalites: Age of First Ideological Association/Organisation of First Association

Alias 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Jopan Manjhi Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav Rinku Brijesh Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

Age of first (formal) ideological association

Organisation of first ideological association

Category

10 25 15 29 15 18 18 27 15 14 8 10 18 16 38 12 25 37 15 17 12 12 10 21 12 12 10 Unavailable 17 15 16 17 18 18 Unavailable 19 20 18 20 17

MCC MCC PU PU MCC MCC MCC CPI(ML)Liberation MCC MCC PU MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC PU MCC PW PU MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC MCC PU

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Conclusions A 269 Table 6.6:

Hindu Extremists: Age of First Ideological Association/Organisation of First Association

Alias 1 2

Jagdishbhai Jayaben

Age of first (formal) ideological association 14 15

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Sureshbhai Dr Patel Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel Pappu Chhara Nimesh Patel Ashok Prajapati Mukesh Rajput Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok Dileep Deepak Ganesh Pandu Ajay Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti

8 10 9 16 15 15 12 14 28 15 Unavailable Unavailable 21 Unavailable 15 14 16 Unavailable 16 15 17 14 16 12 Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable 14 Unavailable 30 10 10 Unavailable Unavailable

37 38 39 40

Kapil Bhai Archana Behn Goga Bhai Naresh

Unavailable 16 Unavailable 10

Organisation of first ideological association RSS Rashtriya Sevika Samiti RSS RSS RSS RSS BD RSS RSS RSS BD RSS Unavailable Unavailable Asaram ashram Unavailable BD BD BD Unavailable BD BD BD BD RSS RSS Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable RSS Unavailable RSS RSS RSS RSS Rashtriya Sevika Samiti RSS VHP (Mahila Vibhag) RSS RSS

Category Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

270 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

and fear — that made Muslims easy game in Gujarat. Without the legitimacy, social sanction — and therefore, buffer against guilt — built in by this early sustained ideological exposure, most in the 2002 mobs (including the many who would have even otherwise enjoyed the ‘thrill’ of a cost and risk free ‘adventure’) may still have opted out. As evident in Table 6.5, most Naxalites in Bihar and Jharkhand too met the party early: as much as 70 per cent had begun associating with armed dastas as teenagers or earlier. Not so dissimilar to findings in Gujarat, the study observed that for them, killing members of police and state establishment — reconstructed ‘class enemy’ of the new millennium12 — was not viewed in the same framework as ‘murder’ at all. In fact, for Naxalites in Bihar and Jharkhand, killing policemen was nothing more than a clean-up operation well done, providing satisfaction akin to that derived from, say, a particularly difficult pest control — ridden with none of the guilt associated with killing itself. Early ideological construction of the police force as ‘enemy’ then successfully evokes fear and dislike quite similar to that inspired by Muslims in Gujarat.

Killing is Easy; Early Acclimatisation to Violence as Way of Life In Tables 6.7 and 6.8, the third and fourth columns in the table document feelings on first kill for cause. Across both contexts, respondents did not find it difficult to kill for the cause — not even the first time.13 The opportunity to kill was in fact viewed as a privilege, and awaited with excitement. The fifth column attempts to provide a ‘retrospective’ view’ of how Naxalites and Hindu Extremists viewed their (violent) practice at the time of fieldwork. The sixth column looks at the ideas and symbols respondents use to rationalise their (violent) practice. In both Bihar and Jharkhand and in Gujarat, I did not find any trace of ethical dilemma of any sort around the use of violence itself to acquire ends. There was a high degree of (early) acclimatisation to violence as a way of life in respondents across contexts. Use of violence was seen

12. At the time of fieldwork, I observed evident erosion in numbers/influence of the traditional Naxalite enemy — the exploitative zamindar — across areas of fieldwork in Bihar and Jharkhand. The ranks of both MCCI and PW were in fact flush with cadres from prosperous — and often upper caste — households. 13. Though there were some exceptions, for the larger majority of sample, ‘first kill for cause’ was also the first time the respondent had killed.

Achievement

Triumph

Happiness

Ideologically Charged/Sense of Achievement

2 Anil

3 Pranav Vidyarthi

4 Videsh Pal

Feeling/s at first engagement in violence/ killing for cause Positive: ‘I am a very respected cadre. If something happens to me they will make me a martyr.’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Rationalisation of violence Category

(Continued)

‘Ham ye sab soche nahi. Committed Kranti ke liye jaroori hai haath uthana (I did not think on these lines . . . there can be no revolution without violence.’ ‘Because his crime was Positive: ‘I am happy. ‘This should have been Committed that he had humiliated Earlier my family would be done. I have seen our women, we cut off standing with head bowed with my own eyes his penis and put it in and the zamindar would be — zamindari has been his own mouth . . . we sitting. Now they make me crushed at the roots.’ left him like that.’ sit beside them with arms around my neck.’ ‘I felt happy I got my Mixed: ‘Ek lalsa tha (we had ‘I do have uneasy Committed revenge (first killing a zest for change) . . . I do thoughts but we are after joining was of have uneasy thoughts but trying our best.’ Bhoomi Sena cadre who we are trying.’ had killed his relative)’ ‘When I had to use a gun, Positive: ‘I don’t regret giving ‘I liked their method.’ Committed I was expectant. I had up my business. I feel this seen it used and was was important.’ waiting to join the struggle for change.’

‘I was given training for it. It takes 10 years to make one hardcore cadre of the party.’

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Naxalites: Feelings on Killing for Cause

1 Jopan Manjhi

Alias

Table 6.7:

Introduction A 271

Excitement

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

6 Sadanand Mahato

7 Kalu Mahato

8 Shyamji

9 Navjyoti

Feeling/s at first engagement in violence/ killing for cause

Unavailable

(Continued)

5 Ramji

Alias

Table 6.7:

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

‘I was happy the first time I got a gun. It was youth and excitement.’

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

‘Many people died. We took it in our stride as part of the struggle. They said nothing has ever changed without guns.’ ‘We should be allowed to live with dignity.’

‘I had a passion for the cause.’

Rationalisation of violence

Pragmatic: ‘The kind of oppression there was (in our times) many people moved out of the mainstream.’ Mixed: ‘Now everyone is ‘Because they deliver looking for immediate gain. instant justice it is But if the party is not there so attractive to the zamindari may come back.’ poor.’ Unavailable Unavailable

Positive: ‘In my times many of us joined for ideological reasons.’ Mixed: ‘Sometimes I feel satisfied I did something meaningful . . . but there were things very wrong within the party.’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Drifter

Committed

Committed

Committed

Committed

Category

272 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Unavailable

Confidence

Little uneasiness

Unavailable

Unavailable Achievement

10 Isha

11 Suresh

12 Vilas Paswan

13 Suraj Yadav

14 Chandra 15 Romeshji Unavailable ‘I thought “let me try my hand”.’

Unavailable

‘I was little uneasy but there is no other way for change.’

‘I have never had any qualms killing for PW.’

Unavailable

Unavailable Positive: ‘This is an international struggle for change.’

Positive: ‘The sub-zonal gives me lot of importance . . . asks me to speak at meetings. The other girls (in the party) are very jealous of me.’ Positive: ‘It was the right choice for me. People from my background (OBC’s) get a place in society.’ Mixed: ‘It was inevitable that I (as a Dalit) join . . . but only such people are kept in lal dasta who kill, don’t think . . . I am not that.’ Negative: ‘MCC Zonal Commander (mastermind behind Dalelchak killings) got bail. I got trapped.’ Drifter

‘For years Rajputs played around with izzat of our people. We had to fight back for our honour.’ Unavailable ‘Party doesn’t kill unless it is sure.’

(Continued)

Drifter Drifter

Drifter

‘No hesitation in killing Drifter for a good cause.’

‘Has given our people a voice.’

‘See you know how Drifter (Hindu goddesses) Durga, Kali came down to subdue evil. Now people need us.’

Introduction A 273

Non-event: had killed before

Unavailable

18 Kumar Singh

19 Sunilji

20 Raghunandan Yadav Unavailable

Unthinking

17 Manilal Mahato

Feeling/s at first engagement in violence/ killing for cause

Unavailable

(Continued)

16 Siyaram Manjhi

Alias

Table 6.7:

Positive: ‘I still support the party in spirit. Earlier we were devoted to the party, now there are new boys as dedicated.’ Mixed: ‘Ideology is correct, leadership is in wrong hands.’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

‘There was no tension, we were under the commander’s leadership. If he told us, we did it. There was nothing to think.’ Unavailable Pragmatic: ‘With the police after me everywhere, this life has to be with the MCC.’ Unavailable Positive: ‘We have every kind of facility with us . . . enough resources to take over Ranchi but we are biding our time.’ Unavailable Negative: ‘I feel my life has been destroyed but does this government realise it?’

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Drifter

Drifter

Drifter

Category

‘Yes its true people Drifter don’t want us (in Kotila) — its fear . . . but we have made a difference here.’ ‘No other way to help Drifter the poor — too much corruption around.’

‘If police calls a ceasefire, so will we.’

‘I didn’t think so much.’

Unavailable

Rationalisation of violence

274 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Little uneasiness

Unavailable Excitement

Unavailable

Excitement

Unavailable

21 Rinku

22 Brijesh 23 Nilesh

24 Piyush Nath

25 Manishji

26 Mohan Lohar

‘I liked the gun at 14 and I like it even now.’ Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable ‘I found it exciting . . . I anyway had had full arms training at home.’

‘I was a little worried, afraid of police . . . but they explained.’

Positive: ‘What can be better ‘We don’t kill without than being a krantikari purpose. It’s our — what use is it to be policy. Jis thali me a doctor?’ khate hai, usi me ched karte hai (we makes holes in the same plate from which we eat/destroy the rich).’ Unavailable Unavailable Pragmatic: ‘Today either the ‘When I joined they very poor join this party or were doing good the very rich . . . anyway work . . . today no one can survive here anyway nobody can without supporting them.’ survive in this region without supporting them.’ Negative: ‘Barozgari me waqt ‘How many of us itna rehta hai, aadmi galat then even knew the raste par chala jata hai (an difference between unemployed man has so MCC and JMM, or much time, he goes on the that MCC is banned, wrong path).’ illegal?’ Positive: ‘We have helped ‘We only kill our poor friends.’ oppressors.’ Negative: ‘I will go back to ‘A poor man who has the same Naxalbari, what not studied . . . takes else. People like us are the first offer that anyway meant to suffer comes his way to and then die.’ fight the system.’ (Continued)

Drifter

Drifter

Drifter

Drifter Drifter

Drifter

Introduction A 275

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

28 Turi

29 Chander Rana

30 Nagarjun

Feeling/s at first engagement in violence/ killing for cause

Vengeful

(Continued)

27 Harihar Paswan

Alias

Table 6.7:

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

‘Jisne hame peeta hai, uska swagat ham mithai se nahi karenge (we won’t greet with sweets those who beat us ).’

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Negative: ‘Party is too hasty, too brutal (was beaten up and left for dead by MCC as punishment for killing a woman) . . . works only for its own interests.’ Negative: ‘Earlier it was different but now if the government really tried, gave employment, who would join.’ Pragmatic: ‘Who will join without compulsions (land dispute) . . . but now I won’t leave. Anyway the police will never let me.’

Positive: ‘Izzat bacha hai (I have my dignity intact).’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Drifter

Drifter

Category

‘If there is a bad weed it has to be uprooted.’

Drifter

‘Most people use it to Drifter resolve their personal disputes.’

‘Mere saamne koi ma behno ka izzat loot le, to ham khada reh jaye ka (if they rape our mothers and sisters should I keep watching)?’ ‘It was all a mistake.’

Rationalisation of violence

276 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Enjoyment

Unthinking

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

Non-event

31 Pandeyji

32 Vijay Singh

33 Sailendra Ram

34 Baiju

35 Keshwar Singh

36 Mohan ‘In Kalyug, one already knows how to operate a gun.’

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

‘I did not think about it.’

‘They had trained me in arms and I enjoyed it.’ Negative: ‘There was too ‘I was attracted to much hierarchy. They their kind of justice thought let this man — quick and just . . . continue to carry the later saw people gun for me. So what if close to MCC got he has the potential for their enemies killed much more?’ by them.’ Negative: ‘If I hadn’t joined ‘I wanted justice. them I wouldn’t have been They said you have rotting in jail. It’s those you to do it yourself.’ trust the most who betray you (captured because of inside help).’ Negative: ‘They were doing ‘I didn’t agree with wrong things.’ the murders and meaningless violence.’ Pragmatic: ‘I have to have Non-event enough money to get out. When so many years, why not a few more.’ Positive: ‘Rajputs got an ‘Rajputs were not idea of our strength.’ giving any respect to our women.’ Negative: ‘They called me a Non-event traitor but I realised (after a baithak in 1997) where all the money was going. MCCI is actually a foreign organisation.’ (Continued)

Opportunist

Opportunist

Opportunist

Opportunist

Opportunist

Drifter

Introduction A 277

Revulsion/Felt Physically Sick

Non-event: had killed before

Unavailable

38 Nathu Mahato

39 Pappu

40 Dinesh Yadav

Feeling/s at first engagement in violence/ killing for cause

Unavailable

(Continued)

37 Dileepji

Alias

Table 6.7: Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Negative: ‘You know who gets respect in the party — the absolute fool. I realised (after high level MCC meet in 1997) ki koi khat raha hai . . . koi kama raha hai ( some are slogging, some others are making money).’ ‘12 Ma-Le men were lined Negative: ‘What ideology, up (in Vishnugarh, this party is helping Hazaribagh) and shot Pakistan, what they earn in the stomach . . . I goes to Muslim countries could not eat for and to Nepal.’ / Personal two days.’ vendetta against MCC commander — wants to kill him not with gun but with knife. Unavailable Pragmatic: ‘At this level we can make maximum 300–400 a month . . . but what other options do I have?’ Unavailable Pragmatic: ‘I am evaluating some (mainstream political party) options.’

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Opportunist

Opportunist

Category

‘This work is happening Opportunist for international links now . . . anyway they only hurt those who hurt them.’ Unavailable Opportunist

‘They had not told me we would have to kill.’

‘Though I am responsible for all those murders as commander, I did not kill anyone with my own hands.’

Rationalisation of violence

278 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Jagdishbhai

Jayaben

Sureshbhai

2

3

Pragmatic

Unavailable

Unavailable

Feeling/s at first engagement with violence/killing for cause

‘Priority then was to save the Hindus . . . no one should be caught.’

Unavailable

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Hindu Extremists: Feelings on Killing for Cause

1

Alias

Table 6.8:

Rationalisation of violence

‘We are followers of Ram. Even he killed Ravan who was Hindu and a brahmin. I have even taught my children this.’ Proud of Achievement/ ‘People thought how Positions Held long will we tolerate . . . do we have to only tolerate, always tolerate?’ Pragmatic: ‘Politics is self ‘They needed to be interest. They say collect taught a lesson. 2 lakh you will definitely Notorious elements keep 50,000 . . . I will never were burnt alive. become an MLA — Jayaben Nothing wrong with it.’ got lucky as Naroda is dominated by Sindhis. But to move ahead in the party one needn’t struggle much . . . just be active.’

Proud of Position: ‘Got Parishad responsibility’/ ‘I am a trustee in Ambaji mandir’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

(Continued)

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Category

Introduction A 279

Dr Patel

Ambujbhai

Vrishut Patel

Pappu Chhara

5

6

7

Heroic

Unavailable

Pragmatic

Unavailable

Feeling/s at first engagement with violence/killing for cause

(Continued)

4

Alias

Table 6.8:

‘We Chharas can kill for our (Hindu) brothers in the community.’

‘We were supposed to do away with some others (landed Pathans) but they (Sheikh labourers) died. It couldn’t be helped.’ Unavailable

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Mixed: ‘What happened is justified . . . but I spent 30000 rupees to get bail.’

Satisfied: ‘Muslims are strong here. They were getting stronger . . . now the thing is solved.’

Positive: Eulogises RSS/Its Work: ‘I have only one nightmare. What will happen to India if Muslims come to a majority?’ Positive: ‘There is lot of backing for us . . . both force and money (for 2002 killings).’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

‘They should anyway have been packed off to Pakistan after partition . . . Gandhi ne achha khichdi packaya (Gandhi made a mess of things).’ ‘Here (number of) Muslims are high and very notorious . . . responsible for all the danga fasaad (riots).’ ‘We Chharas can kill for our brothers in the community. If they do this to us we can also be ready to fight them.’

‘Islam has to be finished for satyug (golden age of virtuosity) to come.’

Rationalisation of violence

Killer

Killer

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Category

280 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Prakash Tomar

12

Heroic

Heroic

Babu Bhai

11

Jubiliant

Heroic

Ashok Prajapati

9

Heroic

10 Mukesh Rajput

Nimesh Patel

8

‘It was netagiri (political showmanship). People would see us participating in riots . . . there was no tension, no compunctions.’

‘That day everyone was on the road, even women were giving us lathis (sticks) saying go!’

‘That day I felt no regret, no pity. I can do it again. Let them kill our children. We won’t cry.’

‘I killed three Muslims in one house itself.. some (33) were hiding in a pucca house . . . no way to burn them so we put a livewire in.’ ‘Nobody then cared what tomorrow holds . . . it was today.’

‘If I knew I would get hanged, I wouldn’t have gone.’

Positive: ‘Muslims needed to be punished’/‘Whenever I read in the papers so many Hindus murdered I get furious.’ Positive: ‘Everybody knows Mukesh bhai is not a criminal, no daru addas(liquor joints) but pahuch wala hai (has big connections)’ Positive: ‘BD can save our country, our religion’/‘In 2–5 years, there will be no masjid, no mullah . . . whoever stays will convert.’

Satisfied: ‘I am not wrong . . . my mother, father, and sister, too, agree with me completely.’

‘The answer is only one — kato ya bahar bhejo (kill or throw out). Or take away their citizenship rights and make them slaves in this country.’ ‘In riots 99% of public who participate know they will go scot-free. Patia or Gulbarg — everyone knows nothing will happen.’

‘Because of people like me the Muslim menace is less.’

‘We are not criminals. But Ahmedabad Muslims needed to be taught a lesson.’

‘They burnt our Hindus, we took revenge by burning them.’

(Continued)

Killer-Previous

Killer

Killer

Killer

Killer

Introduction A 281

Sinh

Mukesh Rathod

Bhanu Chhara

Vilas Rathod

Ashok

14

15

16

17

Unavailable

Unavailable

Heroic

Jubiliant

Unavailable

Feeling/s at first engagement with violence/killing for cause

(Continued)

13

Alias

Table 6.8:

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Positive: ‘They (BJP/VHP) helped us . . . gave us money while we were in jail, even sent us food.’ ‘In Congress times Dissatisfied: ‘VHP gave us Hindus were (after arrest) little oil, 10 butchered, now kilos grain and 1800 rupees Muslims will be.’ . . . no real help.’ ‘They accused us of doing Anger: ‘these Pakistanwallahs things you wouldn’t do . . . do they have even with your mister any committees and (grins) . . . If we had commissions when we wanted we could have (Hindus) are murdered finished them.’ there (in Pakistan)?’ Unavailable Anger: ‘The BJP wallahs got us locked up. We all want to leave this place — even the SRP . . . we have women at home.’ Unavailable Justified/Self-defence: ‘Have you ever heard of Hindus attacking Muslims first?’

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Killer–Rapist

Killer–Rapist

Category

‘Then why do Muslims hate Hindus? Can’t they find anyone else — Christians, Parsees?’

Rioter

‘Haven’t you read Killer–Rapist Mahabharat? Whenever there is evil on this earth, God comes down in human form to avenge.’ Unavailable Killer–Rapist

‘These Muslims are all kattarwadis (fanatics).’

Unavailable

Rationalisation of violence

282 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Jubiliant

Angry

Unavailable

Unavailable

Heroic

Jubiliant

Jubiliant

18 Dileep

19 Deepak

20 Ganesh

21 Pandu

22 Ajay

Anil

23

24 Ram

Unavailable

Unavailable

‘I thought if I die no problem. They (community) would think I died fighting in a riot.’

Unavailable

Unavailable

‘I was furious (after they burnt my house). Only negative thoughts would come.’

Unavailable

Positive

‘Maybe I wouldn’t have gone if my own house wasn’t burnt. But I feel Muslims are betrayers . . . never trust them.’ Anger: ‘They (BJP/VHP) made sure the Patels and Sindhis got away scot free but not us.’ Positive: ‘Hindu rashtravad is good.’ Regrets Failure to Kill: ‘If they (Muslims) are in front of us we can cut them up, but they were at a height . . . There should be nothing called Muslim here . . . remove them completely.’ Positive

Positive

‘Muslims always attack us. This time VHP helped us.’ Revenge for Godhra . . .’

‘Narendra Modi feels no Muslim should stay here. He is doing the right thing . . . at least someone thinks for us.’

Self-defence/Retaliation

‘BJP, VHP instigated the mob. I think they were behind Godhra as well.’

‘Maybe we are being used by politicians . . . but VHP/BD have really been there for us.’ Retaliation

(Continued)

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Rioter

Introduction A 283

Jubiliant

Unavailable

27 Amarbhai

28

Kushalbhai

Heroic

Shiv

26

Vengeful

Dilip

Feeling/s at first engagement with violence/killing for cause

(Continued)

25

Alias

Table 6.8:

Unavailable

‘Now we have got our retaliation’

‘We drove them out of Palla. I went too. Eet ka jawab pathar se diya (we retaliated strongly).’ Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Satisfied

Satisfied: ‘Mohammedans were trying to divide Patels . . . create rifts amongst us. Now we have got our revenge.’

Satisfied: ‘Hamara rashtra hai, hamara rashtra rahega (its a Hindu nation, will stay that way)’

‘I have no regret. I could have killed them. Here I did not get the chance.’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

‘Dil me kala rehta hi hai (that bad feeling is always there). You can’t help remembering that these guys killed our people.’ ‘This village had become a Muslim darbar (court gathering). They (Pathans) were trying to get an economic stronghold.’ Unavailable

‘There is no point doing Gandhigiri. Why should this happen always to us?’

Rationalisation of violence

Local Supporter

Local Supporter

Rioter

Rioter

Category

284 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Pragmatic

Uneasy

30 Ramjibhai

31 P. Jyotirmay

32 Deepa

Pragmatic

29 Vineetbhai Mixed: ‘I never imagined these villagers could do this . . . went personally to Sawala to bring them back.’ / Yet believes Muslims had it coming: ‘All these Muslims are anti-nationals.’ Satisfied: ‘I did not want blood on my hands. But I have no hesitation in saying openly I want no interaction with Muslims. We don’t need their votes.’

‘I said openly “you did this in Godhra, this will happen to you”. But I thought these people have lived with us for years… ham hatya kyu kare (why should we kill)?’ ‘I was not in favour of Satisfied (with his own moral killing. We Hindus can high ground): ‘I personally burn homes but we stopped the boys in my cannot kill.’ area.’ Unavailable Justified: ‘The way they attacked the victims (in Godhra) was totally inhuman.’

‘I knew by 2 pm on 1st. My nephew told me today by 8 pm it will all be over . . . I was there the whole time, saw everything.’

‘Riots wouldn’t have happened if they (Muslims) had showed regret for Godhra.’ ‘Before I came in contact (with RSS) I was also very open. But when you see what is going on . . . lot of conversions . . . at this rate we will be in a minority.’

‘I said openly you did this in Godhra, this will happen to you . . . but we ensured their safety. I personally organised a car and escorted them to Tintoi.’

‘After Godhra, nobody could stop it . . . obviously the whole village supports otherwise it can never happen.’

(Continued)

Ideological Instigator-RSS

Local Supporter

Local Supporter

Local Supporter

Introduction A 285

Prema

Vinay

Mihir

Smriti

33

34

35

36

Alias

Table 6.8:

Feeling/s at first engagement with violence/killing for cause

(Continued)

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

Unavailable

Memories of first engagement with violence/killing

Satisfied: Plans to take voluntary retirement to dedicate time fully to this ‘social service’. Satisfied: Plans to take voluntary retirement to dedicate time fully to this ‘social service’.

Justified: ‘Today’s Hindus are not willing to tolerate intolerance of others. This is today’s Hindu psyche. We have to accept it.’

Justified (Revenge for Godhra): ‘We don’t believe in bloodshed — it is the last resort. But if a very calm and patient man is pushed too far, he can be very intolerant.’

Feeling about practice at time of fieldwork

Unavailable

‘You should look at history, the nature of both communities . . . But only one person cannot go on suffering. The tolerance of Hindus must not be tested any further.’ ‘Imagine what would have happened if you did not have a Hindu nationalist opposition to Islamic fundamentalist groups in India . . . imagine history without Shivaji.’ Unavailable

Rationalisation of violence

Ideological Instigator-RSS

Ideological Instigator-RSS

Ideological Instigator-RSS

Ideological Instigator-RSS

Category

286 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Unavailable

38

Unavailable

40

Naresh

Unavailable

39 Goga Bhai

Archana Behn

Unavailable

37 Kapil Bhai

Pride/ satisfaction: ‘In toofan (riots) our girls could go out fearlessly, take whatever they had in their homes or hands and attack. After hearing about Akshardham, they also want to fight Pakistan . . . some girls are ready to be suicide bombers.’ Pride/Self-glorification: ‘I am the leader of Hindus today . . . I don’t need your opinion, you need me.’ Satisfaction: ‘In the last few years you can see the VHP influence (in Bhiloda). . . there is Ram naam, they say jai ram ji ki (glory be to Ram) . . . some Christians (converts) in Lusadia village) are even turning back to Hinduism.’

‘That was spontaneous anger due to Godhra’

Unavailable

‘Lower class people did this. We have not given any orders. Lower class people did this thing to kill them, not savarna (ritually pure) Brahmins.’ ‘Our Hindu sisters too were wronged but they would never be able to talk about it. But these Muslim women were catching hold of anyone and everyone and saying all kinds of things. Nothing like that happened.’ Unavailable

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Introduction A 287

288 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

as desirable and legitimate means to ends; values of tolerance and non violence equivalent to weakness. It seemed to this researcher that in Gujarat, the RSS/Bajrang Dal curriculum played a significant role in transforming the squalor of petty violence against Muslims into the more glorious framework of a Hindu ‘holy war’ against Muslims — step one of which included co-opting the popular Hindu deity Hanuman and his warrior brigade. In an attractive comparison with Hanuman’s army that helped rescue Sita from Ravan, Bajrang Dal cadres are posited as saviours of Hindu women from Muslim predators. In the total absence of any convincing, or credible alternate ideology that may have showed up killing in itself as undesirable action, use of physical violence against the enemy was easily accepted by respondents as macho, powerful, and commanding respect. Amongst the Naxalites, several Drifters, most Opportunists and even a few of the Committed in fact had had prior familiarity with the use of firearms — often through exposure and training within the family circle — even before joining the party. Violence was ordinarily used as proof of — along with power and strength — honour. Take the case of Baburam Yadav,14 key accused in the Dalelchak Baghaura massacre of 1987, where an entire village of Rajput women and children were beheaded by MCC cadre on a rudely improvised chopping block. Convicted on the testimony of a sole (four-year old child) survivor who witnessed the carnage that night, Yadav had been sentenced to death (commuted after appeal to life term). Yadav, 36 years old at the time of fieldwork and by now a postgraduate with an additional degree in law (LLB), recalls calmly that the ghatna (event) occurred15 because of an ‘old dispute’ with the Rajputs there. ‘The reason this had to be done was our maan, maryada, samman (honour) . . . for many years, zamindars had been playing around with the dignity of our people.’ In a narrative uncannily reminiscent of words used by Mob Leaders like Suresh Bhaiya, or Killers like Bhanu Chhara or his son Mahesh Rathod — ‘When I was nine (1969 riots) Muslim women and children were slaughtered in front of my eyes because a cow had been killed . . . I was not afraid even then’ (Suresh Bhai, personal interview,

14. ‘Late Drifter’ in the sample of Naxalite armed cadres. 15. When this study met with him in Aurangabad jail, Yadav was fighting for further reduction of sentence. Admitting that the wealthy elite amongst the Yadavs had had links with the (then) MCC, he was nevertheless wary of talking about his own involvement in the events of the day.

Conclusions A 289

Ahmedabad, 2003)/ ‘Why do you think it happened? Whenever there is evil on this earth, God comes down in human form . . .’ (Bhanu Chhara, personal interview, Ahmedabad, 2003)/ ‘They raped our girls, why wouldn’t we get angry?’ (Mahesh Rathod, personal interview, Ahmedabad, 2003) — Yadav too defends the murder of innocent women and children as justifiable, and as honourable retaliation.

Extremists are Educated; Education Viewed as Useless Those who kill in the name of a cause are by no means illiterate or uneducated people. The majority of respondents in Gujarat were educated up to at least intermediate — there were also several graduates, postgraduates, and even doctorates in the sample. Though fewer than amongst Hindu extremists, the majority of Naxalite cadres too were matriculates (close to 60 per cent), with quite a few graduates and postgraduates in the sample (see Tables 6.9 and 6.10).16 But barring a few — mostly Naxalite cadres who joined in the late 1980s and 1990s — education was discounted by respondents as being of ‘no use’. Respondents in Gujarat — especially those amongst Killers and Rioters — were cynical about the point of schooling, leave aside higher education. Gulbarg Society Killer Ashok Prajapati (already a postgraduate) dropped midway out of an additional degree course in law, feeling that it would lead to nothing. Prajapati ran a small pan (betel leaf) shop at the time of fieldwork, and was still looking for options to ‘make more money’. Most Rioters — including those in Danilimda or Behrampura, or say the Chharas in Naroda (some of whom were high school dropouts) — also did not feel education had/could have bettered their chances. Nimesh Patel and Vrishut Patel, killers in Sardarpura — both of whom had an intermediate degree from the local high school — were dismissive, if not amused when asked about having learned anything of ‘value’ in their schooling years. Nimesh had applied for a career in the army, while Vrishut with a diploma in diesel mechanics was toying between taking

16. Two had additional professional qualifications, one an LLB and the other a diploma in computer science and a management degree by correspondence. The latter acquired these in recent years after quitting the MCC and surrendering voluntarily to the Jharkhand police. Only two (of forty) Naxalites were illiterate.

290 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Table 6.9:

Naxalites: Education Profile

Alias

Education

Category

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Jopan Manjhi Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav Rinku Brijesh Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

Matriculate Matriculate Matriculate Middle School Graduate Intermediate Middle School Intermediate (failed) Literate Intermediate — Ongoing Graduate Graduate Postgraduate+LLB Matriculate Intermediate Graduate Illiterate Matriculate Graduate Matriculate Middle school Middle school Intermediate Standard 9 Unavailable Middle School Illiterate Unavailable Matriculate (failed) Middle School Postgraduate + PGD (Business Management and IT) Matriculate Matriculate Matriculate Matriculate (failed) Primary School Middle School Middle School Matriculate Middle School

Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Conclusions A 291 Table 6.10: Hindu Extremists: Education Profile Alias

Education

Category

1 2

Jagdishbhai Jayaben

Mob Leader Mob Leader

3 4 5 6

Sureshbhai Dr Patel Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel

Graduate + PGD (Pathology) MBBS+DGO (Diploma in Obstetrics and Gynecology) Graduate + LLB MBBS Matriculate Intermediate+Diploma (Diesel Mechanics) Matriculate (failed) Intermediate Postgraduate Graduate Matriculate Intermediate Standard 9 Graduate+LLB Middle School Unavailable Intermediate Illiterate Matriculate (failed) Middle School Intermediate+Diploma (Electrical) Standard 9 (failed) Illiterate Illiterate Matriculate+Diploma (Medical) Standard 8 Graduate Middle School Matriculate Graduate+Diploma (Electrical) PhD PhD (Biochemistry) Graduate PhD (Microbiology) Graduate Graduate Middle School Intermediate (Graduation incomplete) MBBS+MS (Master of Surgery) Unavailable

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Pappu Chhara Nimesh Patel Ashok Prajapati Mukesh Rajput Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok Dileep Deepak Ganesh Pandu

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Ajay Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti Kapil Bhai Archana Behn

39 40

Goga Bhai Naresh

Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

292 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

up a government job, and starting his own business. ‘If I start my own business I know I can get two rupees for every one put in,’ Amarbhai (Local Supporter in sample), among the biggest land owners in the village, regrets that his son — of the same age as Nimesh and Vrishut, also a likely Rioter (not included in sample) — was like most youngsters in the village not interested in kheti (agriculture). ‘He did not clear PTC17 and BA has no value . . . he got into construction business and gave me a loss of two lakhs.’18 Bhiloda taluka again, like Sardarpura, boasts of a high literacy rate (80 per cent according to the last census). Most Rioters met with here had studied up to intermediate, or were matriculates.19 Nevertheless, the locals say that the quality of education is poor — including in the high school in Palla — and most families with the wherewithal prefer to school their children in (commutable) Modasa. In Bihar and Jharkhand, a small section of the sample — mainly the Committed — had joined from poor households and acquired this degree with difficulty. They schooled themselves in difficult conditions, some even after joining the party, and also tried to ensure that their children attend school. Considering that the average literacy rate in Bihar has been less than 40 per cent and Jharkhand about 46 per cent, it does seem like these were men who valued education and placed a premium on it. At the same time it must not be missed that most ‘educated cadre’ are in fact Drifters and Opportunists — those who routinely kill for the party without commitment to cause. Interestingly several amongst the new crop of cadre — those who joined Naxalite parties in the new millennium, most from relatively prosperous, often upper caste families — are school dropouts. While the higher number of nonmatriculates and school dropouts amongst Naxalite cadre is undeniably a reflection of far lower availability of schooling in Bihar and Jharkhand versus similar resources in Gujarat, it is also true that Drifters like Rinku or Brijesh had little regard for, or hope from whatever formal schooling they had been through. 17. This study found passing exams for PTC, or Primary Teaching Certificate course (leading to government jobs in teaching), was a coveted achievement across areas of fieldwork in Gujarat. 18. Amarbhai feels that the boys get used to having it easy because of a government ruling of 25 per cent ‘easy pass marks’ in school. 19. Besides a host of schools set up as trusts by tribal elite on government grants, the region is flush with residential schools and other educational institutions run by the Sangh Parivar.

Conclusions A 293

These figures reinforce at any rate that — despite the high density of matriculates and higher degrees — ‘education’ in both contexts did not impress itself on the minds of respondents, nor did they see it as having added any value to their lives. Narratives of respondents across contexts seem to indicate serious gaps in the content as well as mode of imparting school education in Bihar/Jharkhand/Gujarat.

Environment of Monopoly of Ideas This study found no flow of alternate ‘knowledge’ in both locations — even in Gujarat where (unlike in guerrilla existence of Naxalite cadres) respondents had access to mainstream media. Across contexts, respondents regularly received party literature/ propaganda relating to the ideological cause (see Tables 6.11 and 6.12). By far, the majority of sample of Naxalite cadre20 only received/read party literature — a few senior cadres occasionally read (regional) newspapers.21 While the point is self evident in the case of a guerrilla party, in Gujarat again, most respondents — across Ahmedabad, Sardapura and Bhiloda — received Sangh literature/propaganda material regularly. Here, most respondents across urban and rural locations also had (varying degree of) access to regional newspapers (mainly Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar), radio and television. The study found, however, that the reach and credibility of regional dailies/television ‘news’ had actually been strategically used in Gujarat, especially during and immediately after the 2002 riots as medium of (state-instigated) Hindu nationalist propaganda. While regional news channels and Gujarati newspapers like Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar functioned at the time almost as in-house propaganda wings of the (Hindu nationalist) government of the day,22 alternate knowledge and perspective on the events of the time published mainly in national dailies — unluckily in English — actually never reached most respondents.

20. Some of those in the sample were not part of the armed dastas at the time of fieldwork. They included, for instance, cadres in jails, cadres who had defected (rare) or been expelled, etc. 21. Front organisation cadre (not included in core sample) often have access to mainstream media, including even television. 22. Source: findings of personal fieldwork in Gujarat, including the detailed narratives of correspondents working with these media organisations.

294 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Table 6.11: Naxalites: Media Habits Alias

Media habits

Category

1 2 3 4 5

Jopan Manjhi Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed

6 7 8 9 10 11

Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav Rinku Brijesh Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram Baiju

35 36 37 38 39 40

Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

Party literature Radio/Regional newspaper Party literature Party literature Television/Radio/Regional newspaper/ Party literature Party literature/Regional newspaper Party literature Radio/Regional newspaper/Party literature Party literature Party literature/Regional newspaper Party literature/Regional newspaper/ Television Regional newspaper/Party literature Unavailable Unavailable Party literature Regional newspaper/Party literature/Radio Radio Party literature Unavailable Unavailable Party literature/Radio Party literature Television/ Radio/Regional newspaper Radio/Regional newspaper Party lit Party literature Party literature Unavailable Unavailable Party literature Radio/Regional newspaper Unavailable Television/Regional newspaper/Radio Television/Regional newspaper/Radio/ Party literature Unavailable Unavailable Television/Radio/Regional newspaper Unavailable Party literature/ Radio Unavailable

Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Jagdishbhai

Jayaben

Sureshbhai

Dr Patel

Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel Pappu Chhara Nimesh Patel Ashok Prajapati Mukesh Rajput Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok Dileep Deepak

1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Alias

National and regional television/Radio/Regional (occasionally English) newspapers/ Organisational literature National and regional televison/Radio/English and regional newspaper/Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional (occasionally English) newspaper/ Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional (occasionally English) newspaper/ Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Organisational literature Regional television/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Congress literature Television/Radio/Regional (occasionally English) newspapers/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional newspapers (pictures and as read to)/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature

Media habits

Table 6.12: Hindu Extremists: Media Habits

Mob Leader Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter Rioter Rioter

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Category

(Continued)

Introduction A 295

Media habits

Regional television/Radio/ Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Organisational literature Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/regional newspaper/organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper National and regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Organisational literature National television/Radio/English newspapers/Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Organisational literature National television/Radio/English newspapers/Organisational literature National television/Radio/English newspapers/Organisational literature Television/Radio/Regional (and occasionally English) newspapers/ Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional and English newspapers/ Organisational literature Regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper/Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional newspaper and English newspaper/ Organisational literature National and regional television/Radio/Regional newspapers/Organisational literature

Alias

Ganesh Pandu Ajay Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti

Kapil Bhai

Archana Behn Goga Bhai

Naresh

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39

40

Table 6.12: (Continued)

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Ideological Instigator-VHP

Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS

Category

296 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Conclusions A 297

No Discourse with Enemy As discussed previously (see Chapter 3), it was difficult to locate the real Naxalite ‘enemy’ (rapidly reconstructed in a changed, post-Jharkhand context): conceptualised variously by armed cadres as the exploitative zamindar, brutish police, corrupt contractor, partisan state, and so on (see Tables 6.13 and 6.14). It is evident at any rate that interaction with the enemy, no matter how diffused, was low in the case of the Naxalites. In Gujarat, the core enemy was unambiguous: Muslims as an entire community, women and children included. Unlike the Naxalites, several respondents here, to begin with, cited medium and often even high levels of interaction with Muslims. Nevertheless, findings of research in Gujarat completely debunk the notion that in some primeval, mysterious manner specific to ‘mob violence’, ‘friendly neighbours’ known and trusted for years suddenly turn into vicious foes during ethnic riots. Across locations in Gujarat — Ahmedabad, Sardarpura and Bhiloda — the study found there had indeed been (varying degree of) interaction between Hindu/ Bhil and Muslim families. But — and this is what is significant — the study failed to locate any history of discourse between members of the two communities, even between those who said they had been not just neighbours, but friends. For instance, Deepak and Ajay — Rioters in Ahmedabad (Danilimda) — said they had had a few ‘good friends’ amongst the Muslim families attacked. Neither had however ever discussed anything to do with religion or Hindu–Muslim relations with these friends. As Deepak put it, it just meant unnecessary trouble — Sirf baat begad jave (things only get sour). In Sardarpura again — even before the RSS/Bajrang Dal camps started in the village about a decade before — (Hindu) Patels and Pathans (Muslims) were never friendly, never did trust each other, despite the fact that they attended each others’ weddings, or exchanged pleasantries. In fact, those who did share a modicum of discourse with the Muslims — a few Dalit families, or the Wahgris (who had friends among the poorer Sheikh Muslims who were killed) — did not join the mob. Bhanu Chhara, perhaps the ugliest face of the Naroda Patia violence, lived cheek to jowl with the Muslims for several years. The Muslims, Chhara’s neighbours said, even owed him money. But as he says, not for a moment in all these long years did he ever chance to doubt his view of Muslims as Pakistanwadis and kattarwadis. Archana Behn — Durga Vahini leader — spent 13 long years teaching Muslim children, years that did not in the least skew her worldview.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1

Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji

Jopan Manjhi

Alias

High Medium Medium Medium Low Low Low Low Nil Medium Medium Medium Unavailable Medium Low Low Low Unavailable

Medium

Interaction with Enemy ‘Black marketeers, those with overfed bellies, those who snatch away even one square meal from the poor’ ‘Forward jatis’/Zamindars Zamindars/Administrative apparatus Punjiwad (capitalists) Political and Administrative apparatus ‘Capitalist set-up’ Zamindars Zamindars Police Those with ‘piles of money’ Unavailable Upper castes Rajputs Unavailable Administration/Political establishment/Police Unavailable Unavailable Police Unavailable

Definition of Enemy

Table 6.13: Naxalites: Definition of Enemy/Interaction with Enemy

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter

Committed

Category

298 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Raghunandan Yadav

Rinku Brijesh Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Medium Medium High Medium High Medium High Medium High

Low Low High Unavailable Low Medium Medium Unavailable High Medium

High

Economically powerful class/Poor (Yadavs and other castes) who ‘strayed’ Police Police ‘Samantvad’ (capitalists) Unavailable Zamindars Rajputs/Whoever fights with us Zamindars/Police Unavailable Police/Personal enemies Landed/Upper castes Personal enemies Oppressors (zamindars) Landed/Upper castes Personal enemies Rajputs Personal enemies Zamindars Government Personal enemies Zamindars

Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

Drifter

Introduction A 299

Jagdishbhai

Jayaben

Sureshbhai

Dr Patel

Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel Pappu Chhara Nimesh Patel

Ashok Prajapati

Mukesh Rajput

Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok

1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Alias

Low — but had few Muslim patients in the past Medium — had a Muslim ‘friend’ (but never discussed religion/other beliefs) Medium — Muslim neighbours since childhood but no Muslim friends Medium — Muslim neighbours Medium — Muslim neighbours Medium — Muslim neighbours High — Muslim neighbours/One Muslim friend who fled in 2002 (no discussions on Hindu–Muslim issues/No regret for what happened to his ‘friend’) Medium — Had a Muslim ‘friend’ (but no discussions ever about these issues) Medium — ‘If you don’t mix with Muslims how will you know what they are planning?’ Low — but had a Muslim driver Low Medium Medium — Muslim neighbours Medium — Muslim neighbours Medium — Muslim neighbours Low

Low

Interaction with Enemy

Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims

Muslims

Muslims

Muslims Muslims Muslims/General society unfair to Chharas Muslims

Muslims

Muslims

Muslims (those who study in madrassas as well as those who teach there)/Pseudosecularists Muslims/Congress

Definition of Enemy

Table 6.14: Hindu Extremists: Definition of Enemy/Interaction with Enemy

Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter

Killer

Killer

Mob Leader Killer Killer Killer

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Mob Leader

Category

300 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Dileep Deepak

Ganesh Pandu Ajay

Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai

Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti Kapil Bhai Archana Behn Goga Bhai Naresh

18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Medium Low (high in childhood) Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low

Low High — Muslim friends and neighbours/But no discussion on Hindu–Muslim issues as ‘too risky’. Medium Low High — Muslim neighbours/‘adda’ friends/ But no discussion on taboo topics Low Low Low Low Medium High High Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims (Pathans)/Someshwar Pandya (Dalit activist in Sardarpura who supported Muslims) Muslims/Christians Muslims/Congress/English media wallahs (persons) Muslims Muslims Muslims Muslims/Christians Muslims/Christians Muslims/English media (‘very mischevious’) Muslims/Pakistan Muslims/(JNU/English media) pseudosecularists Muslims/Christians

BJP/VHP Muslims Muslims

Muslims Muslims

Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter

Rioter Rioter Rioter

Rioter Rioter

Introduction A 301

302 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Palla in tribal-dominated Bhiloda taluka should, on the face of things, have been the exception. There were barely a few Muslim households here, families that the local Bhils say were completely integrated into the ‘Hindu’ way of life in the village; and these were in fact late converts to Islam — having had part Hindu names till only a generation or two back. Yet, even here, the researcher discovered that the Bhils did not in fact suddenly turn upon their Muslim neighbours. Bhils and Muslims had lived in separate camps so to say, for quite some years. There was a long history of latent hostility in the region — initiated again by the entry of Sangh Parivar shakhas, and more significantly, residential educational institutions in the region about a decade before. Subsequently, there had been trouble — albeit less dramatic — in the region even in years preceding the 2002 attacks. As Ramjibhai Kalaswa, (BJP) sarpanch of Palla points out, Muslims had been ‘cleaned out’ by them in adjoining areas like Modasa several years ago. Palla had so far been spared more by chance, than because of friendly relations between Bhils and Muslims.

Economic Status Determines Role in Violence Though economic status did not describe who would join the Naxalites/ Hindu extremist groups, or even whether they would kill for the cause, it did determine in significant part what kind of role the cadre would play for the organisation (see Table 6.15 and 6.16).23 A surprisingly large number of recruits to the armed cadre of Naxal groups were from households by no means poor, or socially deprived: significant numbers were in fact from landed, often upper caste families in rural Jharkhand. Nevertheless, this researcher observed that it was still

23. Categories of Low, Medium and High ‘Standard of living’ were broadly estimated with reference to (wherever available) monthly household income, landholding, salary or daily wages, type of house (pucca or cemented/semipermanent/chapra/mud/size), consumer durables, vehicle if any, etc. In a few cases, particularly with some Naxalite cadres met with in the armed dastas, I could not gather any information at all on the subject. Tables 6.15 and 6.16 are also with reference to current standards of (family) living observed or documented by this researcher (based on respondent’s narrative) — not for instance to household income at the time of joining the organisation or party. (For most in the sample of Naxalites — barring few arrested cadres — joining Naxalite parties had led to significant improvement in their household income/land assets, including for those highly committed to the movement.)

Conclusions A 303 Table 6.15: Naxalites: Standard of Living

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Alias

Estimated household income/Standard of living

Category

Jopan Manjhi Anil Pranav Vidyarthi Videsh Pal Ramji Sadanand Mahato Kalu Mahato Shyamji Navjyoti Isha Suresh Vilas Paswan Suraj Yadav Chandra Romeshji Siyaram Manjhi Manilal Mahato Kumar Singh Sunilji Raghunandan Yadav Rinku Brijesh Nilesh Piyush Nath Manishji Mohan Lohar Harihar Paswan Turi Chander Rana Nagarjun Pandeyji Vijay Singh Sailendra Ram Baiju Keshwar Singh Mohan Dileepji Nathu Mahato Pappu Dinesh Yadav

Medium Low Low Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium Low Medium High High High Medium Medium Medium Low High High Medium Medium Medium High Medium Medium Low Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium Low High Medium High Medium High Medium High High

Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Committed Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Drifter Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist Opportunist

304 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Table 6.16: Hindu Extremists: Standard of Living

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Alias

Estimated household income/Standard of living

Category

Jagdishbhai Jayaben Sureshbhai Dr Patel Ambujbhai Vrishut Patel Pappu Chhara Nimesh Patel Ashok Prajapati Mukesh Rajput Babu Bhai Prakash Tomar Sinh Mahesh Rathod Bhanu Chhara Vilas Rathod Ashok Dileep Deepak Ganesh Pandu Ajay Anil Ram Dilip Shiv Amarbhai Kushalbhai Vineetbhai Ramjibhai P. Jyotirmay Deepa Prema Vinay Mihir Smriti Kapil Bhai Archana Behn Goga Bhai Naresh

High High High High High High Low Medium Medium High High High Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium Low Low Medium High Low Low Low Low High High High High High Medium High Unavailable High High High High Medium High High

Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Mob Leader Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer Killer-Previous Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Killer–Rapist Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Rioter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Local Supporter Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-RSS Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP Ideological Instigator-VHP

Conclusions A 305

by far those from the deprived classes who formed the backbone of the red squads. These boys generally join early, spend several years acquiring advanced arms training and then join the ranks of the red squads as bandookdharis (gunmen). Again cadre in the bal dastas (child squads) are almost always recruited from families of the very poor, most often with their consent.24 Though several do get to positions of deputy/area commanders, occasionally rising to senior positions like sub-zonal/zonal commander ranks, the process of growth for them was slower and more painstaking. More often, it was those from relatively well to do/influential families (more so if they are late associates of the party) who managed to reap quicker benefits — and designations — from the party. The case was not very different in Gujarat. Though a few Rioters had regular (government) jobs, well over half would fall into a low ‘standard of living’ category. By far, the majority described themselves as unemployed, including those who had part time jobs (store salesmen, for example) on commission basis, or petty hawkers of plastic/steel vessels, etc. Killers as well as Killer–Rapists were dispersed between medium and high income brackets. Mob Leaders, Ideological Instigators and Local Supporters were all from high income families.

‘Community’ Support from Law Enforcers Finally, I discovered that respondents in Gujarat had been greatly enabled by the infiltration of Sangh ideology into the state police, and even commando force. Several respondents especially in Sardarpura and Bhiloda had family and close acquaintances who had grown up with them, were exposed to the same ideological forums that they attended, and joined the police/armed forces with an already hardened worldview. Others cited examples of those known to them who actually came in contact with ‘Sanghwallahs’ and developed ‘kattar vichar (extremist view) after joining the forces. The celebration of raksha bandhan with the Gujarat police force was by Durga Vahini leader Archana Behn’s own admission a symbolically loaded effort suggestive of the (Hindu) police brother protecting his (Hindu) sisters against (Muslim) enemies.

24. At the time of fieldwork (2003), I did not encounter any instance of forced recruitment into bal dastas, — unlike the case of guerrilla armies of groups like LTTE for instance, which faced allegations of forced child recruitment. In more recent times however the CPI (Maoist) — born out of the merger of MCCI and PW in 2004 — has faced similar allegations. See SAIR 2005.

306 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

Given extensively documented evidence of police complicity in the 2002 violence in Gujarat,25 it would also seem to this study an effort oriented towards making heroic the (potential or retrospective) abdication of civic duty to protect. While the attempt to involve state agencies of law enforcement into the project of extremist violence was perhaps more audacious, or naked in the 2002 killings, the Naxalites are not innocent of such strategy. Through the 1990s, there was much conjecture about the (then) MCC’s underhand dealings with the then ruling party, the RJD — so much so that RJD cadres were accused of being MCC hit-men by night.26 Findings of personal fieldwork in Bihar and Jharkhand convinced me of the truth of these ties — and the sheer wing-power they had dealt to extremist violence in the region.27

Are They Different People? Hard as it may be to accept, at the end of the road, Rioters and Naxalites did not look all that different. Across two (ostensibly) disparate contexts, there were no dramatic answers to what really made people willing to actually kill in the name of a cause: I found very ordinary men and women driven to violence by factors in fact not so far removed from our own immediate everyday contexts. To recap, the key ones are:

Early Contact with Ideological Forums RSS shakhas/bal kendras/MCC bal dastas/‘party’ meetings in villages serve to catch potential recruits young: ideological ground built now ensures absence of guilt later. At this age and stage these organisations also encourage and foster an (often pre-existing) value framework that equates violence with strength and tolerance with weakness. More significant then, while Naxalites and Rioters did not share an ideological background, respondents across contexts shared a larger framework of ethics that normalised violence itself. Narratives of both Naxalites and the Hindu extremists make evident that by far, for the majority it was quite easy to kill, even the first time. Early inculcation doesn’t necessarily lead to ideological ‘commitment’: what it does do is foster unquestioning

25. Concerned Citizens Tribunal (2002a). 26. See Baweja and Jha (1999: 24–28). 27. See Gosain (1991: 11–13) for a similar account of the nexus between militancy and regional political parties in Assam.

Conclusions A 307

acceptance, routinisation of thought and unwillingness to consider alternate thought and practice.

Politics of Recognition All things being equal, the question of who would be attracted to — and join — Naxalite parties in Bihar and Jharkhand, or Hindu extremist groups in Gujarat, would doubtlessly at the end of the day also need to factor in an element of individual psychological predisposition. In the final call, Drifters like Rinku, Brijesh, Manoj or even Nilesh (who later opted out) did seem to have joined the party shaukiya (as Rinku put it) — because they fancied the experience. As Brijesh’s grandfather said: in this environment, the children adopt whatever they (the Naxalites) say as God’s truth . . . but there are differences in all my children . . . I ask you, how will you bring about equality? I gave all my sons equal shares of my land, but all of them had different interests, different aptitudes . . . he (Brijesh) was always a rebellious child . . . he was in a hurry to get everything for himself, for us.

Brijesh’s brother, Neeraj, only a year and a half his senior, for instance, has a different outlook on the Naxalites. He feels his brother would never have joined the party if he had stayed away from them at the outset. ‘I don’t think these guys are right . . . there is something funny going on . . . why are they so agitated about Iraq . . . they talk always only about Muslim countries . . . who tells them . . . who dropped the arms in Purulia?’28 Nevertheless, Drifters in Bihar and Jharkhand, and Rioters in Gujarat — if nothing else by virtue of their sheer numbers — perhaps have to be recognised finally not as aberrant psychological types but as completely ordinary, ‘normal’ people, hardly different from the many ambitious young people in a hurry one comes across in contexts closer to our own lives. Some Naxalites, as well as Rioters said they were unemployed at the time of joining. Yet most (including many of those who said they had been ‘unemployed’) across Bihar, Jharkhand and rural Gujarat were in

28. Reference to air drop over Purulia in Bihar — allegedly by the ISI — of sophisticated arms to the Naxalites in the mid 1990s.

308 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

fact from families that had enough land to make a living. In Sardarpura, for instance, it was the well-off Patels who made up the numbers of the killing mob while Waghri and Dalit youth — belonging to the poorest families in the village apart from the (Muslim) Sheikhs who died — stayed out. Agriculture — the occupational mainstay of most of my respondents — was rated very low as an occupational preference across regions of fieldwork, and across socioeconomic strata. The conclusion I would draw is that ‘extremists’ in the final call seem to be more ‘under-employed’ than (as is the common adage) unemployed people. In a globalised and media-shrunken world, where no one — not even the poorest of the poor — is really insulated from the glittering possibilities and racy success stories of those with more access, extremist groups often succeed in filling the void of entirely human, universal needs of recognition, achievement, or ‘success’. Hard as it to accept, there was at the end of the day little difference between 16-year old ‘area commanders’ such as Rinku or Brijesh in Jharkhand, and teenage Bajrang Dal recruits in Naroda Patia or Danilimda in Ahmedabad, or for that matter in Bhiloda: all (including the adivasi Bhils) were wooed in (by the Bajrang Dal/Durga Vahini/armed dastas) with exciting, ‘feel good’ incentives such as ‘prestigious positions’ and designations, arms, adventure, money, etc. Most Naxalites then were not quite quintessential ‘revolutionaries’ driven by goals of the collective, fighting for the cause of the subaltern. Nor were the mobsters I met really led by Hindu nationalist goals. The majority of these ‘extremists’ had in fact killed to fulfil psycho-social needs as ordinary as a sense of achievement, social status, izzat (respect/ honour) in peer group/community, and so on. Ironically, most of their narratives are infused with bravado, seeking approval and kudos for having done the ‘right’ thing, for having taken — as they would like to see it — the road less travelled. The ‘extremist’ politics I witnessed closely was more than anything else, a politics of recognition.29

No Discourse with Conflicting Ideas In both contexts — which fostered Naxalism and Hindu extremism — I found a visibly controlled inflow of ideas/knowledge/communication.

29. The way I use ‘politics of recognition’ here is somewhat different from the way it has been used in past scholarship. For Nancy Fraser (2000), the politics of recognition is a politics aimed at overcoming subordination by establishing the misrecognised party as a full member of society, capable of participating at par

Conclusions A 309

While the point is self evident in the case of the armed cadre of guerrilla parties that have little or no access to the outside world, I found Naxalite groups (both MCCI and PW) had invested in setting up special schools in remote villages, promising ‘catchment areas’ for potential recruits.30 In Gujarat, as discussed in the preceding chapters, Sangh ideology had extensively infiltrated existing school education as well as regional media: deliberate misinformation and provocatively biased reporting played a leading role in inciting the 2002 killings. Foucault’s well-worn thesis on power is very useful here.31 I discovered that both left- and rightwing extremism in India are in fact powered not as much by control of information, as by more long term — and more insidious — processes of production of ‘knowledge’. This ‘knowledge’ of a demonised, irrevocable enemy is what enabled the 2002 rioters to rape, burn and murder without guilt. It is also perhaps such knowledge that enabled the making of a Dantewada massacre: for the platoon/s of armed cadre that determinedly decimated the hapless Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) battalion that morning, it may well have been an operation not too different from a successful pest control. At the end of the road, it seemed to me that what mattered more than anything else was discourse with — as opposed to only exposure to —

with the rest (ibid.). Her ‘status model’ (as opposed to previous identity models) understands social justice as encompassing two analytically distinct dimensions: a dimension of recognition, which concerns the effects of institutionalised meanings and norms on the relative standing of social actors; and a dimension of distribution, which involves the allocation of disposable resources to social actors. Narratives of both Naxalites and participants in the Gujarat riots in 2002, however, also indicate that for the young in these locations, (entry into) extremist organisations paradoxically actually often serve as means of access to the public sphere, thereby functioning as important sites for the construction/reconstruction of individual identities of people, along pathways not necessarily predictable by the imperatives of the group itself. 30. At the time of fieldwork, three Naxalite (PW/MCC) run schools were shut down in Palamu district (in Maneka, Barwaiya and Sarja in Chattarpur) alone. Anil Palta, then superintendent of police for Palamu district told this researcher that he had had no other option as the schools were hotbeds for ideological training. 31. Distinguishing himself from ‘para-Marxists’ like Marcuse who as he saw it gave the notion of repression an exaggerated role, Michel Foucault posited that power, far from preventing knowledge, actually produces it (Foucault 1981: 59).

310 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

multiple, conflicting ideas, and the earlier the better. Take the case of Ahmedabad Rioter Deepak who told this study belligerently, ‘I am not like Gandhi Bapu . . . to turn the other cheek when slapped on one.’ Deepak was sure that ‘one can never trust these Muslims’, and said he had the ‘full support’ of his entire family, parents included — barring one member, his elder brother. His brother, who Deepak said had left home early to join a street theatre group in Ahmedabad, did not share the family’s view on Muslims. It seemed reasonable to conjecture that being part of a troupe as diverse as street theatre troupes are wont to be, did in all likelihood expose Deepak’s elder brother to worldviews more fractured than those available to Deepak and his immediate family in Danilimda. The sheer success that Naxalite groups, and more so, Hindu extremist groups have had in areas they made it their business to penetrate, is not the least because of the complete vacuum of alternate ideas, and — perhaps more important — an alternate (credible) larger value framework in these regions. Even if, as findings of this study indicate, most foot-soldiers of extremist movements do not in fact kill for realisation of ideological goals, it was Naxalite/Hindu nationalist ideology that made killing heroic, entirely guilt-free, and therefore, possible. To reiterate a point made previously, the rapid success of left extremist operations in India, or the sheer scale of the Sangh’s success in the 2002 pogrom — marked not so much by the acts of violence itself, as in the overwhelming absence of guilt in actors — was achieved in great part by the longer term, inconspicuous superimposition of what amounted to a whole new framework of ethics: one that glorified butchery if the victims were Muslim/upper caste/Indian policemen and so on, over existing value systems that may have seen violence itself as immoral.

Finally a Battle for the Mind Once minds were overwritten, killing was easy. Outrageous as it may seem, it is not an unlikely hypothecation that if Durga Vahini sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, key accused in terrorist blasts that killed six earlier this year in the textile town Malegaon,32 had grown up in a Naxalite stronghold in Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh, she may have been as readily enlisted into the MCCI, or PW. A correlated assumption is that (at least in contemporary context), those who refuse to join the

32. See The Times of India (2008a).

Conclusions A 311

Naxalites in Bihar and Jharkhand are not likely to join the Rioters in Gujarat either. The battle against extremist ideology has really no choice but to walk the same road charted by extremist leaders to realise their goals: an arduous, long-term effort to engage with human minds and values. While I am by no means advocating the sole primacy of ideas over other resolutory frameworks to address State–Naxalite or Hindu–Muslim conflict, it is worthwhile to remember that both the Naxalite dastas and the Sangh Parivar shakhas did their work in almost completely uncontested (ideological) spaces. Where was the Indian state when minds (and ideas) were being won over in Jharkhand? Who else has worked like the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat over the last couple of decades? Gandhians? The Left parties? The Indian state? The truth is that no one has come remotely close to these ‘extremist’ organisations. Growing ideologies is hard work, and we have just not bothered to compete. Let us recognise that ‘development’ — our latest counter-insurgency buzz word — is a wasted chance without credible efforts to grow alternative ideas: not with leaders of extremist movements, sadly perhaps not even with the young people already willing to kill in its name, but with those who will soon be tapped, or are already being addressed.

A

312 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence

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About the Author Chitralekha is an academic and researcher based in Delhi. She has a doctorate in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was previously member of the faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She has been a journalist in the past, specialising in social and development issues, and continues to write for leading national dailies. Her current research interests range from ethnic and armed group conflict, to governance, citizenship, education, identity and the media. She is the author of Committed, Opportunists and Drifters: Revisiting the Naxalite Narrative in Jharkhand and Bihar (2010).

Introduction A 321

Index Advani, Lal Krishna 129, 145n31, 209 Ahmedabad 2, 6, 7, 9, 43, 45–46, 52– 54, 66, 125, 127, 130n9, 131n11, 134n18, 135, 138, 139n22, 141, 143–45, 148–50, 153–56, 159–65, 171, 172n52, 175n55, 176, 178, 181, 184, 186–89, 194–96, 198, 200–201, 203, 205n98, 206, 212, 215, 218–20, 222, 227, 230–31, 235n42, 236, 239–40, 244–45, 247, 252n4, 253n5, 266, 289, 293, 297, 308, 310 Akhil Bharatiya Vishwa Parishad (ABVP) 204n97 All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) 34, 266 Ambaji Yatra 219, 220n22, 234, 242 Anderson, Benedict 16 anti-reservation agitation 127–28 armed guerrilla movements 61 authoritarian personality 5, 27n35 Babri Masjid, demolition of (1992) 129 Bajrang Dal 6, 10–11, 126–28, 138–39, 150, 152, 161–63, 164n44, 165, 168–71, 173–76, 178, 180n61, 181, 183, 184n65, 189, 193–94, 197, 200, 210, 218–21, 228, 230n35, 231, 234, 235n42, 239n47, 242–43, 245n51, 247, 253, 260, 267, 288, 297, 308; rioters backed by 168–70 bal dastas (child squads) 9, 42, 69, 78n80, 123n77, 305–6 bandookdharis (gunmen) 121n76, 305

Bharat ekta yatra 128 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 2, 8, 45, 126, 128–30, 132, 136, 138–41, 143, 145n31, 154, 160, 174, 177n57, 178, 180, 182n63, 187– 88, 204n97, 207, 209n3, 212, 214, 226, 230n37, 239, 245, 247, 248; ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ campaign 129, 188, 209n3; rath yatra 129, 209 Bharatiya Jan Sangh 126–27, 188n70, 232 Bhatia, Bela 79–80 Bhoomi Sena 88 Bjorgo, Tore 14 Bolshevik principles of ‘democratic centralism’ 75 bonded (bandhua) labour 92, 92n27 Border Security Force (BSF) 86 Breman, Jan 22, 126n2, 130, 131n10, 145n29, 150n35 caste agitation 128 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) 309 Chhara community 134n17, 149–50, 156, 158, 166, 289 Chinese Cultural Revolution 55 Civilization and its Discontents 26 coal mafia 39 Communist Party of India (Marxist) 55 Communist Party of India (Maoist) 58, 61n27, 62–68, 70–76, 78n79, 80n2, 93n31, 305n24; military training camps 72n65; networks of revenue generation

322 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence 72n64; ‘one-member-from-onefamily’ campaign 73; recruitment strategy 72–73; Urban Perspective Document 66 Communist Party of India (Marxist– Leninist) [CPI (ML)] Liberation 15, 19n25, 34, 55–56, 58, 60n23, 62n30, 65, 87–88, 93n32, 109 ‘community’ support, from law enforcers 305–6 Congress Trade Union 266 Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) 62 commitment to ideological cause 81, 95, 116n69, CPI (M). See Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPN (Maoist), Nepal 15, 64, 73 Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, The 22 Cultural Revolution 24, 55 dalams (armed groups) 68n50, 70, 77 Dalelchak Baghaura massacre (1987) 7, 57n7, 74n71, 288 dastas 919n25, 29, 30n39, 34, 36, 39, 41–42, 58, 69–70, 73–75, 77, 78n80, 83n8, 85, 87, 99 –101, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 112–13, 116– 17, 121n74, 253, 270, 293n20, 302n23, 305–6, 308, 311 Durga Vahini 126–27, 183–84, 188– 94, 196, 200, 211n7, 235, 297, 305, 308, 310 Ebata, Michi 13–14 education profile, of Naxalites and Hindu extremists 289–93 Education under Attack 2010 (UNESCO Report) 73 Escape from Freedom 26 ethnic violence (conflict) 12, 22, 23n32, 24–25, 126n2, 230n37, 297

extremism 1n1, 3–5, 11, 15, 25, 27, 55– 56, 59, 125–33, 205, 208, 250, 308– 9; delimitation of 12–16 Freud, Sigmund 22n31, 25–26 Fromm, Erich 5, 26–28, 28n38, 115n67, 123 fundamentalism 13, 15, 62n30 Gajanand Trust 236, 238 genocide 20, 23–24 Godhra incident 3, 9, 10, 45, 131, 136, 138, 139, 142, 144, 152, 154, 158, 163, 168, 174, 205, 209 Gujarat Samachar 10, 218n19, 293 Gulberg Society 45, 52, 135, 149, 152, 158, 194–95 Gurr, Ted 17 Harijan massacres 57 Hindu Bodh Samanvay (Hindu Buddhist Integration) 178 Hindu extremism, in Gujarat 3, 4, 6, 11; in Ahmedabad 135; background and current dynamics 125–33; methods and problems associated with study of 43–54; in Palla village 229–40; in Sardarpura 208–29 Hindu extremist 5–6, 133–35; acclimatisation to violence as way of life 270–89; age of first ideological association 269; angry mobsters 136–40; caste, class, and life experience 266–67; categories of 134; definition of good life and occupational alternatives 264– 65; early contact with ideological forums 306–7; economic status and role in violence 302–5; education profile 289–93; enemy, definition of 300–301; environment of monopoly of ideas 293; ideological exposure in organised

Index A 323 forums 267–70; ideological instigators 182–84; inflow of ideas, knowledge, and communication 308–10; interaction with enemy 300–301; as killers 149–62; local supporters 177–82; media habits 295–96; as mob leaders 135–36, 140–41, 144–48; no discourse with enemy 297–302; organisation of first association 269; political climbers 136–40; politics of recognition 307–8; reason to join/kill 256–59; as rioters see rioters; socioeconomic profile of 137; standard of living 304; VHP instigators 184–88; worldview and ideological commitment 196–200 Hindu Mahasabha 126 Hindu–Muslim violence 3, 127, 166 Hindu nationalism 10, 126–27, 160n40, 175n55, 183, 205, 244 ‘Hindu’ rathyatras 129, 145 Hindu right-wing organisations 130 Hindutva 1, 3, 128, 129n7, 143, 152, 154, 157, 160n40, 177, 187, 198, 210n4, 242, 244, 245n51 Hoffer, Eric 6n11, 16n21, 25n34, 85n12, 90n23, 123, 142n25, 249–50 Holocaust 24, 115n66, 123n77 human rights organisations 31, 114n65, 197n86 ideological instigators 182–84; in Sardarpura 209 improvised explosive device (IED) 68n47 Indian People’s Front (IPF) 62n30, 87 informed revolutionaries 80 Inquilabi Naujavan Sabha 109 instinctual revolutionaries 80 izzat 6, 11, 56, 79, 121–22, 260–61, 308

jan adalats 1n3, 107, 111, 111n57, 119 Jharkhand, formation of 61 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) 266 Johnson, Chalmers 17 Jyotirmay, Prof. (Dr) 178–82, 247 Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) 63 kar sevaks 3, 129, 131 KHAM (Kshatriya–Harijan–Adivasi– Muslim) policy 128 killers, Hindu extremists as 149–50; early ties with Sangh ideology 159–62; risk cover for personal safety 152–53; social visibility, potency and power 153–59; socioeconomic profile of 151; strategic role in planning or igniting violence 150–52; view of Muslim as threat to Hindu male sexuality 164–65; violence as self-defence 162–64 krantikari 75, 98n33, 101 Krantikari Kisan Committee (Revolutionary Farmers Committee) 72 Krantikari Kisan Samiti 253 Kydd, Andrew 13 Le Bon, Gustave 22–23 Levelling Crowds 157 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 62–63, 73, 123n77, 124, 305n24 literate ideology 55n1, 121 Local Regular Guerrilla Squads (LRGS) 70 local supporters 177–82; in Palla village 245–48; socioeconomic profile of 179 Mahatma Gandhi Uttar Bariyadi Ashram 236, 238 Mandal commission 16

324 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), Jharkhand 1, 7–8, 11, 39, 56, 58, 65, 69, 77–78, 83, 85–87, 92–95, 98–100, 103–14, 116–19, 121–22, 253, 288, 306, 309 Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) 5–6, 8, 11, 29, 31, 34, 36, 39, 41, 42, 56n2, 58, 59n18, 60, 61n26, 63n33, 64–67, 69, 73, 74n70, 75–77, 80, 81n4, 83n9, 85n11, 86, 93n30, 98, 99–100, 103–6, 108, 111–12, 119, 121– 22, 261, 266, 270n12, 305n24, 309–10 Maoist violence 59 martyrdom 88–90; revealed preference for 123n78; reward of 89, 89n22 Marxist theory of revolution 18n24 Marx, Karl 18n23–n24, 83 Mazdoor Sangathan Samiti 29, 67n45, 81, 117 mob leaders 140–41; categories of 135–36; depiction of Muslims as anti-national 146; depiction of Muslims as first aggressors 144–46; depiction of Muslims as fundamentalists (kattarwadis) 146; depiction of Muslims as sexual predators 146–47; rationalisation of practice 144–48; relationship with Muslims 148; repugnance of the Muslim community 147 Modi, Narendra 132, 141n24, 171, 187–88, 205n98, 214n11, 235n42, 238–39 motivational profiles, of Naxalite armed cadres 4, 81, 116n69 Nari Mukti Sangathan (Women’s Liberation Union) 67n45, 69n55, 72, 77, 106, 106n52, 107–8, 114, 253 Narmada Bachao Andolan 16

Naroda Patia 2, 6, 43, 134n18, 135, 138, 145n30, 149, 154, 155, 174–75, 195, 197n85, 227, 297, 308 Navratri garbas 129 Naxalbari uprising (May 1967) 55, 79n1 Naxal dastas 29, 34 Naxalism, in Bihar and Jharkhand: attrition levels of Naxal groups 74–75; boundaries between enemies and comrades 60–61; brief history 55–58; committed cadres, ideology of 82–83; compliance, discipline and hierarchy 78; current scenario of 58–60; deepening ties with international ‘terrorism’ 61–63; formation of Jharkhand as an independent state, impact of 61; growth of 73– 74; ideology and current agenda 63–65; late associates 83–87; methods and problems associated with study of 28–43; military wing of 67–72; organisational culture and core values 75–77; organisation structures of 65– 66; political wing of 66–67; recruitment strategy 72–73; women cadres 77; zamindari system, memories of 87–88; see also Communist Party of India (Marxist) Naxalite movement 3, 19, 34, 55, 64, 77, 80–81, 250–51 Naxalites 5, 6, 11; acclimatisation to violence as way of life 270–89; age of first ideological association 268; caste, class, and life experience 266–67; committed cadres, socioeconomic profile of 84; definition of good life and occupational alternatives 262–63; Drifters 95–116; early contact

Index A 325 with ideological forums 306– 7; economic status and role in violence 302–5; education profile 289–93; enemy, definition of 298– 99; environment of monopoly of ideas 293; feelings on killing for cause 271–78; ideological exposure in organised forums 55, 63–65, 94, 267–70; inflow of ideas, knowledge, and communication 308–10; interaction with enemy 298–99; killing without regret and death as martyrdom 88–90; late associates 108–13; literate ideology of 55n1, 121; media habits 294; modalities of killing 114–16; no discourse with enemy 297–302; as opportunists 90–95; organisation of first association 268; personal connections 92–94; political power/career 94–95; politics of recognition 307–8; from ‘prosperous households’ 99–104; reason to join/kill 254–55; social or economic oppression 90–92; standard of living 303; turning of late drifters into opportunists 116–22; and women drifters 104–8; and zamindari system 87–88; see also Naxalism, in Bihar and Jharkhand non-governmental organisation (NGO) 29, 45n44, 170, 229n35 Oraon Sarna Samiti 111 Palla village, Hindu extremism in 229– 40; local supporters in 245–48; rioters in 240–45 People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) 67–68 People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) 67, 69–70

People’s Militia Squad 70 People’s War (PW) 6, 8, 11, 29, 34, 39, 42, 58, 60, 64–69, 75–77, 80–81, 88, 94, 102–3, 108–10, 116, 122, 253, 309, 310; Bihar–Jharkhand State Youth Committee 63, 108; merger with MCCI 64–66 People’s War Group (PWG) 63n31, 109 Pinto, Stany 129, 247n53 politics of recognition 124, 307–8, 308n29 pracharaks 183, 187n68, 201n92, 203–5, 214n11, 215, 267 protracted people’s war 64 Psychologie des foules 22 ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ campaign 129, 188, 198, 209n3 Ramshilapujan in Ayodhya (1989) 129 Ranvir Sena 57–58, 81n4, 113, 261n9 Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) 19n25, 39, 41, 94, 119, 121, 306 Rashtriya Sevika Samiti 143n26, 189, 200, 203–7, 211n7, 235 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 126; in early childhood 140– 43; instigators 183, 200–207; shakhas 8–10, 141–43, 149, 160, 175n55, 182, 183, 189, 191, 200, 203–4, 206–7, 210–11, 215, 218, 253, 260, 267, 302, 306, 311; swayamsevaks (volunteers) 140, 141n24, 203, 204n97, 215, 244 Red Corridor 3, 58, 58n12 revolutionaries, perspectives and problems associated with 17–28 Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) 62 rioters 165–66; as aspiring heroes 166–68; backed by Bajrang Dal 168–70; conceptualisation of

326 A Ordinary People, Extraordinary Violence Muslim community 171–72; in Palla village 240–45; personal acquaintance with Muslims 172– 73; perspectives and problems associated with 17–28; ready to kill 173–76; socioeconomic profile of 167 Sabarmati Express, attack on. See Godhra incident Sahni, Ajai 59, 64–66, 68n48, 71 Sakshartha Vahini (Literacy Mission) 266 Samajik Nyay Samiti 248 Sandesh 10, 139, 168, 218, 235, 243n49, 293 Sangharsh Jan Mukti Morcha 34, 81n4 Sangh Parivar 9, 43, 128–29, 131n11, 132, 139n22, 150n35, 181, 188, 197n86, 218, 226–27, 230, 232, 234n41, 248, 266–67, 292n19, 302, 311 Sardarpura, Hindu extremism in 46, 181, 208–29 Satsang Mandalis (community prayer gatherings) 188, 190–91 Schutz, Alfred 21, 21n28 Self Defence Squad 70 sexuality, concept of 26 Shah Bano case 143 Skocpol, Theda 17–21 social order 17–18 Special Economic Zones (SEZ) 65 Special Investigation Team (SIT) 140n23, 195n81 Special Regular Guerrilla Squads (SRGS) 70 Spencer, Jonathan 24 standard of living: Hindu extremists 304; Naxalites 303 States and Social Revolutions 17 Structures of the Life-world, The 21n28 Sunlight Sena 99n36

swayamsevaks 140, 183, 203–4, 215, 244 Tambiah, Stanley J. 12n18, 22–23, 157 terrorism 13–15, 61–63, 68, 132, 193, 207n103, 210, 214, 218, 239 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA, 1987) 114n66 Thakur, Pragya Singh 267, 310 thana hamlas 2, 69n52 Tibetan self immolators 16 Tilly, Charles 17 True Believer, The 249 Uniform Civil Code 143 United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) 63 Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad 231n38, 244, 248 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 43, 45, 53, 126–29, 136, 138–39, 142, 152–53, 157, 162, 169–70, 174, 178, 180–81, 183; instigators 184–188, 204–5, 207, 215n14, 232, 235–36, 239, 252 Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) 111 Waghri community 46, 48, 166, 168–70, 172–74, 228, 308 Walter, Barbara 13 women drifters 104–8 women Naxalites 42, 77 World People’s Resistance Movement South Asia (WPRM South Asia) 62 zamindari system, memories of 87–88, 98; and caste oppression 98, 105 zamindar–Naxal conflict 117