[Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence

[Tara Prakash Tripathi]

Wonderful article on the sad incident of FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE and a great 
commentary on political hypocrisy of homogenization. I wonder if the authors 
of this article have writen something on the communal violence bill the 
government is working on? I would be interested in reading their views. I am 
copying them both on this email.

Best regards

TaraPrakash




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "arshad amanullah" <arshad.mcrc at gmail.com>
To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 10:14 PM
Subject: [Reader-list] Notes on the Forbesganj Violence


> NOTES On The FORBESGANJ VIOLENCE
>
> By: Ashok Yadav & Khalid Anis Ansari
>
> The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in
> Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3,
> 2011 has been analyzed in most reports in the public sphere through
> the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple
> with the other dimensions that the event entails. Increasingly, it is
> being felt that the discourse around secularism/communalism is being
> employed to reinforce the restorative politics of Indian ruling elite,
> broadly the upper caste sections of all religious identities, and is
> working as an instrument to subvert the counter-hegemonic peoples’
> solidarity at large. While the normative understanding of secularism
> is under pressure in almost all jurisdictions, for all practical
> purposes secularism in India has been thoroughly trivialized and
> reduced to the stand one takes with regards to the ‘Indian Muslim’. So
> any formation which takes a pro-Muslim stand, even for the sake of
> public consumption, is paraded as secular. On the other hand those
> formations that publicly interrogate or abuse the Muslim identity are
> communal. Thus, the Congress Party is ‘secular’ even when there is
> overwhelming historical evidence that implicates it in numerous riots
> against Muslims in the post-independence period simply because it
> never mouths anti-Muslim jargon. In contrast the BJP is undisputedly
> ‘communal’ because its growth as a political party has so far depended
> on its anti-Muslim rhetoric.
>
>>The Changing Nature of Political Space<
>
> In the last two decades the political space in India has transformed
> drastically. One of the most significant fallouts of the Mandal
> moment, especially since the report included both Hindu and Muslim
> lower castes in the OBC list, has been the fissure in the naturalized
> notion of the Hindu and Muslim monolith. Consequently, while on the
> one hand the Hindutva forces are facing sustained challenges in
> manufacturing an overarching Hindu vote-bank, on the other the
> enactment of the ‘pasmanda’ identity (OBC/Dalit Muslims) within Indian
> Muslims has interrogated the notion of Muslim unity in interesting
> ways. Hence, due to the counter-hegemonic identity politics of the
> lower castes as opposed to the entrenched politics of religious
> identity controlled by the upper caste elites, it has become
> increasingly difficult to consolidate the Hindu or Muslim vote-bank.
> The saffron brigade has so much weakened that it has to bank upon OBC
> leaders like Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, that too from outside the
> RSS-BJP fold, in order to conduct its politics. In a similar vein the
> Muslim upper caste elite sections too are experimenting with the Peace
> Party, by foregrounding a pasmanda Dr. Ayub, in North India.
>
> Broadly, the constitutional and policy consensus on social
> justice (affirmative action) and minority rights is under pressure
> from various quarters. In this respect, the Mala-Madiga contradiction
> in Andhra Pradesh or the enactment of mahadalit identity in Bihar
> recently, the emergence of EBC/MBC (Extremely or Most Backward Castes)
> politics, the challenges to minority religious identities from
> pasmanda Muslims, dalit Christians or dalit Sikhs, and the growing
> assertion of women generally, have all contributed to destabilizing
> the dominant imagination of dalit, OBC or minority identities. While
> on the one hand such fragmentation and multiplicity is a sign of
> penetration of Indian democracy, on the other hand this
> differentiation has to be arrested at some point and some broad-based
> political principles need to be evolved that could enable subaltern
> solidarities in order to tackle the increasing crisis of
> representative democracy (the gap between the leaders and the lead).
> In the absence of the latter the popular issues like corruption,
> electricity, education, health, employment, etc. will eventually be
> taken up by populist movements led by the elite which will only go on
> to construct a false ‘we’ that reflects the most powerful. In recent
> times both Anna Hazare’s and Baba Ramdev’s movements indicate towards
> this crisis badly. Both movements have hijacked the peoples’
> legitimate anger that could have been channelized in reforming the
> actually-existing Indian democracy by debating on the pitfalls of
> First-Past-the-Post electoral system (in contrast to a Proportional
> Electoral System), Right to Recall, deepening of the Right to
> Information, and other such relevant issues so necessary to unleash
> the next phase of people-led democratization in India.
>
> More pertinent to this essay is the manner in which the dynamics of
> the changing nature of political space have parochialized the received
> politics around the axes of secularism-communalism. If we look at the
> moves by pasmanda politicians in Bihar then in the assembly elections
> of 2005 they took a decision to reject Laloo Yadav led secular RJD
> alliance and opted to vote for Nitish Kumar led NDA with the communal
> BJP as an important ally. Nitish Kumar had later credited the support
> of pasmanda sections for ensuring his victory. Obviously, the
> preference of the pasmanda sections for a non-BJP government had not
> dwindled but at the same time they had stopped thinking in terms of
> the restricted options which secular-communal axis provided. Their
> support to JD (U)-BJP alliance was mostly driven by the fact that
> Laloo Yadav, under the influence of ashrafia politicians, had refused
> to acknowledge them. However, at that point of time it must be
> remarked that in the absence of non-BJP leaders like Nitish Kumar and
> Sharad Yadav, the pasmanda sections would have probably never voted
> for the NDA.
>
> In terms of discourse, the pasmanda have claimed that they are one of
> the indigenous bahujan sections of India who in historical times
> converted to Islam due to various reasons. However, caste
> discrimination continued to be practiced against them within the
> Muslim body politic even after conversion despite the egalitarian
> teachings of Islam. Consequently, there is a serious discomfort in
> pasmanda discourse with the minority tag as it is seen to be inhabited
> predominantly by the upper caste ashrafiya sections who utilize it to
> bargain for privileges from the state. The overall focus is on
> discounting the emotive issues and addressing the basic issues of
> bread-and-butter by democratizing the state and community structures.
> In strategic terms the pasmanda sections are keen to develop a
> horizontal unity with the lower caste sections of the so-called
> majority (and other minority) communities. Afterall, if caste is the
> primary basis of Indian society then the concept of ‘minority’ and
> ‘majority’ is irrelevant because no caste in India is numerically so
> strong that it may claim to be a majority community. Hence, the
> pasmanda movement is fast rendering the hegemonic Muslim-centric
> secular politics irrelevant and forcing us to rethink secularism in a
> new light. In liberating themselves from the minority psyche, the
> pasmanda movement is also attempting to liberate the country from
> religious conflicts which have so far frequently rocked India. It is
> in this context that we will read the tragic incident that happened at
> Forbesgunj recently.
>
>>Forbesgunj Violence: A Brief Recapitulation<
>
> As we mentioned earlier the lower caste pasmanda muslims, the victims
> in this incident, had greatly facilitated the formation of JD (U) led
> NDA government in Bihar in 2005 as well as in 2010. It is no wonder
> then that the entire opposition politics in Bihar and the ‘secular
> parivar’ sees the event as an opportunity to beat the NDA with the
> secular stick so as to send a strong message to the pasmanda social
> block that their security is guaranteed only in a non-NDA regime. It
> also goes without saying that the interests, electoral and otherwise,
> of the Congress and its cronies goad them to capture the entire
> Forbesganj episode in a monochromatic frame: the epic battle between
> the BJP, the eternal communal evil and the Muslim, the good and
> hapless victim. This version of the event is further reinforced by the
> involvement of a BJP politician in the actual facts of this case and
> the visit of the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar from BJP to the spot
> five days prior to the event. While one cannot discount this take
> considering the brutality of violence that foregrounded the deep
> rooted hatred of the perpetrators of the violence for the victims, one
> will also have to explore other dimensions of the issue for the truth
> of social events is seldom one-dimensional.
>
> The background of Forbesganj incident in short is that
> some sixty years ago the villagers of Bhajanpur and Rampur, the twin
> adjoining villages predominantly populated by socially backward
> pasmanda (OBC-dalit) muslims, donated their land, money and labor to
> build a road that reduced the distance from their villages to the main
> Forbesganj market from eight to one kilometer. ANHAD has reported that
> in 1984 Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority acquired 105 acres
> of agricultural land from the villagers which was meagerly compensated
> resulting in the pauperization of farmers from small land holders to
> agricultural laborers. Very recently, in 2010, the Bihar Cabinet
> approved an industrial unit for the manufacturing of starches from
> maize to M/S Auro Sundaram International Company. Incidentally, one of
> the directors in the Board of this company is the son of a BJP
> politician. The road that the villagers had themselves built on their
> land with their money and labor was given away to the company. This
> was understandably resisted by the villagers. On June 1, 2011 in a
> tripartite meeting between the company, the villagers and the
> administration, the villagers showed their accommodative spirit by
> agreeing to forgo their right over the village road provided an
> alternate road was built. The three parties agreed to this. However,
> on June 3 the company, in connivance with the local administration,
> breached the compromise formula and without providing for the
> alternate road began to raise a wall on the existing road.
> Consequently, the villagers after returning from the Friday prayers
> protested against this breach of trust. The administration in
> collusion with the Company opened indiscriminate firing on the hapless
> villagers. A reign of terror was let loose on the poor villagers by
> the police. Five people were killed including a pregnant woman and
> fifteen persons were grievously injured. A petty police official
> kicked and danced on the injured and unconscious body of a young boy.
> The still alive boy was sent for postmortem where the doctor noticed
> life in the body. However, he later succumbed to the injury.
>
>>The Question of Developmental Violence<
>
> Since the occurrence of this macabre incident the secular brigade has
> been campaigning and working overtime against the state government
> which is a joint collaboration of JD (U) and the saffron BJP.
> Political figures like Ram Vilas Paswan, who once sang the song of
> Muslim CM so much that Bihar slipped into the hands of NDA, and Laloo
> Prasad Yadav, who enjoyed power for fifteen long years by flaunting
> the so-called MY (Muslim-Yadav) equation, are still to visit the spot.
> What is striking is that the entire campaign of the opposition
> parties/voices is being run around the anti-minority character of the
> state government with no mention of developmental violence whatsoever.
> The opposition parties have conveniently chosen to underplay the link
> of this event with the chain of developmental violence in other
> jurisdictions (Singur, Nandigram, Bhatta-Parsaul, etc.). In our view,
> this is yet another example where the dominant discourse of
> communalism feeds into a hegemonic identity politics than informing
> any processes of a counter-hegemonic peoples’ solidarity. Very
> recently, we witnessed the strange use of the discourse of communalism
> again when the Congress suddenly discovered that Baba Ramdev was an
> RSS agent and the news that RSS was conspiring to burn the camp in the
> midnight hours and foment nationwide riots was broken not by the
> government and intelligence agencies but by a famous Muslim secular
> operator. While we have no sympathies with Ramdev’s or Hazare’s
> movement but the way the discourse of communalism was skillfully
> employed to polarize public opinion on this issue and further to elide
> the problems with actually-existing Indian democracy from the public
> discourse was indeed remarkable. In a similar vein, in the case of
> Forbesganj violence the fact that the land and road of the village
> were forcibly grabbed by the capitalist raiders has been reduced to a
> non-issue and the religious identity of the victims (why not caste?)
> has been continuously foregrounded. The spree of land grabbing of the
> poor and the marginalized by the powerful corporate and business
> houses in India and the crushing of subsequent peoples’ resistance
> with brutality by the state in collusion with capitalist raiders has
> become the order of the day. It would be too simplistic and
> opportunistic to define the Forbesgunj violence in terms of religious
> communalism alone.
>
>> Foot Soldiers in, Masterminds out!<
>
> Moreover, the state government has lodged a murder case against the
> petty police official who danced on the unconscious body of the young
> boy. The state government has been forced to do this because the video
> clip of Suneel Kumar Yadav, the police officer in question here,
> kicking and dancing on the body has been uploaded on YouTube and a few
> TV channels have been broadcasting this continuously. It is indeed
> incomprehensible that while Suneel Kumar Yadav has been slapped with a
> murder case, no case has been lodged against the senior
> police/administrative officials or the company management who were
> present on the spot and who bear primary responsibility for the
> firing. But there is also a historical and sociological background to
> such selective action by the state machinery. Nitish Kumar, who
> succeeded Laloo Yadav with the support of the BJP, also ordered
> enquiry into Bhagalpur riots earlier. While the report of the
> Bhagalpur riots enquiry commission instituted by Nitish Kumar is not
> known but what is fairly clear is that the entire blame was sought to
> be imposed on Kameshwar Yadav, without mention of any action against
> the masterminds of the riots. The news portal thebihar.com had
> reported on April, 13, 2010 that: “The only thing the Nitish Kumar
> government could do is to get Kameshwar Yadav, a local goon, arrested
> and jailed. However, the big fish in the Bhagalpur riots are still
> free…” 
> [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/five-commissions-crores-of-rupees-no-result/].
> In another related judgment fourteen persons were convicted of rioting
> and murdering Muslims at Sabour near Bhagalpur. Of these fourteen
> persons twelve were reported to be belonging to the lower-caste
> kushwaha community. The same news portal had reported on September 2,
> 2010 about the award of rigorous imprisonment for attack on a police
> party during the days of Bhagalpur riots. The news report has
> reproduced the names of all the ten accused and all of them are OBCs
> [http://www.thebihar.com/bihar-news/10-sentenced-to-ri-in-bhagalpur-riot-case/].
> There is remarkable consistency in these cases where the masterminds
> of violence against minorities are never brought to justice and it is
> only the lower-caste foot soldiers from the majority community that
> are routinely axed. Neither Laloo Yadav nor Nitish Kumar could muster
> courage to lay their hands on the masterminds of the riots. The dalits
> and OBCs are selectively punished in symbolic actions to appease the
> hurt feelings of the Muslims and ultimately to get their votes.
> Moreover, this selective handpicking of the accused belonging to the
> dalit-OBC sections for punishment also symbolically subverts the
> attempts of horizontal consolidation of lower castes across religious
> affiliations. This becomes an important dimension as since the
> inauguration of Pasmanda Movement in the post-Mandal phase the
> attempts of lower castes to make inter-religious horizontal unity has
> gathered momentum.
>
>>The Silence of Pasmanda Politicians<
>
> Lastly, the reluctance of Pasmanda political leaders in different
> political parties to come out openly against the killing of their
> brothers and sisters in Forbesganj throws up another crisis of Indian
> politics (though a few pasmanda figures like Noor Hasan Azad, Dawood
> Ansari, Hishamuddin Ansari and Mohd. Hasnain did visit the spot and
> spoke against it openly). The political line of respective parties
> which is nothing but the dictate of the party boss has a stifling
> effect upon the leaders of subaltern groups. The politicians belonging
> to subaltern groups prefer to show their allegiance to their party
> boss rather than to their caste or community in whose name they get
> the political opportunities in the first place. Even where the party
> bosses themselves belong to subordinated groups they prefer not to
> rake up radical issues and generally align with the status quo. For
> example, the main opposition party of Bihar, Laloo Yadav led RJD, is
> still not recognizing the victims of Forbesganj violence as belonging
> to the lower caste pasmanda muslim group. They are still comfortable
> in playing the old minority card and do not wish to subvert the Muslim
> monolith. While the pasmanda are claiming that they are primarily
> Bahujan, the RJD and other secular parties are still pushing them into
> the quagmire of Muslim politics and learning nothing from the debacle
> of 2005 and 2010 in Bihar. The RJD is still under the impression that
> the Pasmanda movement is at the best an aberration and that majority
> of Pasmanda populations are still under the influence of religious
> Muslim leaders. In time it is hoped that with the increasing
> sedimentation of the pasmanda discourse they will be forced to do a
> reality check once again.
>
> [The authors can be reached at ashokyadav2007 at gmail.com and
> khalidanisansari at gmail.com]
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