Arvind N. Das, Indian sociologist and author of several studies on Bihar State Photos by Tiane Doan de Champassak
Dire poverty and oppression are the grim facts of life for the Dalits ('untouchables') of India's most backward state
Bihar: a place of inequalities and tensions
...Dalits constitute around 15 per cent of the state's population but they hold less than two per cent of the cultivated land. The social tensions are largely due to agrarian inequality, and often result in clashes between landed gentry and landless Dalit labourers. Active Dalit resistance in Bihar started in the 1960s, when landless labourers aligned themselves with Maoist Naxalite groups. The landlords and other upper-caste people formed their own private armies to assert their supremacy. Women, children and old people are often the victims of these caste-based massacres.... Bihar is India's most backward state, with the lowest literacy rate and per capita income. On the other hand, it is the richest state in terms of mineral resources, accounting for 40 per cent of India's total production.....
... Travelling in the eastern Indian state of Bihar is never easy: the trains are overcrowded and the buses are ramshackle. In the south-central plains, 100 kilometres east and west of Patna, the state capital situated on the south bank of the Ganges, bad road conditions make it hard to move around. As well as having to surmount these obstacles, travellers in this region may even need passes from private parties. Those who issue the passes could be Maoist groups but most often they belong to various senas -- landlords' caste- or class-based private armies. The law enforcement authorities are virtually absent from this region....Danwar Bihta and its surrounding area have witnessed many brutal massacres in the last three decades, claiming over 1,000 lives, mostly of landless "untouchables" or Dalits. The miserable state of Danwar Bihta reflects the general lawlessness that pervades Bihar today. Take Kusumlal, a landless labourer who barely survived the massacre that the landlords of Danwar Bihta carried out on election day in 1989. More than 20 Dalits were gunned down when they tried to exercise their franchise in the parliamentary election. Like other Dalits who survived the massacre, Kusumlal and his family had to move away from the village; their lives were clearly insecure in their traditional abode. They now live in tiny huts, built on the roadside near a primary school in a village five kilometres from Danwar Bihta. The cluster of huts, the fact that everyone belongs to the same caste, the physical distance from the landlords and the proximity to the school provide a certain degree of security. The situation is worse for Kusumlal's wife, Dhanpatia, and their eight-year-old daughter, Punamia. Every day they have to trudge to the Sone river, two kilometres from their hut, to fetch water in earthen pots. It is not that there is any lack of water in the nearby ponds and wells. Kusumlal's family and others like them are "untouchables" and are not allowed by rest of the villagers to take water from the public pond near their huts.
Armed struggle
Kusumlal and his 11-year-old son Manjhi cannot find work in the nearby village. The landlords there will not employ them; nor will people like Kusumlal dare to return to a group of people who have left the scar of a bullet injury on his right shoulder. They have to trudge long distances in search of work, sometimes up to ten kilometres each way, to earn a meagre 30 rupees (70 cents) per day. Even this kind of work is only available for four months a year, leaving them in hunger and misery for the rest of the time. Kusumlal's son goes to the village primary school on the days when he cannot find work, but this does not necessarily mean that he will actually get any education there. The school may be shut: the teacher, a landholder from a neighbouring village, is often absent, supervising work on his land rather than teaching the Dalit children in the primary school. There is, of course, no question of Kusumlal's daughter even going to school and learning about the great wide world since a girl child is expected from an early age to busy herself with household work instead. Kusumlal himself does not know much about the world beyond his wretched existence. He never went to school. All his life he has lived in or near Danwar Bihta. He went to Ara several times when the case regarding the Danwar Bihta firing was going on, but his visit was confined to the court buildings where he and others like him were summoned to give evidence. Kusumlal has not given up hope. He is aware that he is not alone. Living conditions are similar for the nearly 1.5 million landless Dalit labourers in Bihar who are now getting together here and there to form peasant and labourers' organizations in a bid to improve their situation. Unable to overcome the ruthless repression by peaceful means, some Dalits like Kusumlal support militant Naxalite groups such as the People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) who believe in armed struggle to end upper-caste domination. Many more join the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), known locally as "Maaley", which seeks to combine parliamentary politics with militant peasant struggles. Together they have formed their own "armies" to fight for their rights. Kusumlal doesn't want money. He wants to be treated with dignity. He wants the landlords to stop sexually exploiting and raping Dalit women. He wants the landlords' private army, the Ranbir Sena, to halt its massacres. Kusumlal doesn't know when these things will happen but he firmly believes they will come about one day.
<http://www.unesco.org/courier/1999_02/photoshr/03_1.htm> -- Yoshie
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