A war is declared

The helicopters flying us to Senari village, the site of the massacre of 34 Bhumihars in Bihar's Jehanabad district lost their way. The v...

The helicopters flying us to Senari village, the site of the massacre of 34 Bhumihars in Bihar8217;s Jehanabad district lost their way. The village with no approach road till date was suddenly on the international map and three Union ministers were flying in to express their sympathy with the families of those killed and, of course, to take stock of the situation for themselves.

The pilots scanned the landscape, so similar and so monotonous. Yet the parched land and dry caked fields in one village had been bloodied as 34 heads were axed and 34 stomachs ripped open the previous night. The pilots landed in a field outside the village. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, Defence Minister George Fernandes and Railways Minister Nitish Kumar hopped off the helicopter. They were accompanied by a number of local leaders from their parties.

The Bihar police commandos, thus far unable to prevent any of the bloody katl-e-aam in the district, formed a protective cordon around the VVIPs from New Delhi. An IG haddriven for over four hours on dirt tracks from Patna to get here. But the emotional mob broke through the cordon and rushed to the leaders. quot;Go back and protect the chief minister in Patna, these leaders are safe with us,quot; the mob booed.

8220;Tuho Bhumihar ho babu. Tohar khoon maara hai you too are a Bhumihar and they have killed your blood,8221; a villager sobbed to Sinha. Suddenly the suave civil-servant-turned-politician burst into the same dialect and accent 8212; 8220;Hum tohar dard janat hai bachcha I understand your pain son8221; 8212; and then went on to talk about the ruling BJP government8217;s attempts to sack the Rabri government. Promptly everyone assembled turned their ire against the political formations that had stymied this attempt.

But in this burst of anger, the hapless widows of Jehanabad were almost conspicuously ignored. 8220;See this woman. She was married less than two months ago. And that was her husband,8221; pointed out a villager. The woman appeared to be in her late teens, distraughtand unable to bear the pain of widowhood. She sat crying next to the body of her husband whose head lay clean cut off from the torso, his intestines bulging out for his stomach had been ripped open chest down.

Widows of all age groups sat crying, still unable to comprehend their agony. It was difficult to come to terms with this. Barely three hours earlier, we had been in Delhi, zooming through an eight-lane metalled highway on Nizamuddin bridge and in the afternoon we were here in a village with no approach roads, no electricity and no communication network whatsoever.

The police said they came to know of the massacre only because the killers engaged them in a gun fight. 8220;Otherwise we would have come to know of the incident only 24 hours later,8221; explained a police official. Amazing! Amidst the information technology revolution, here in a remote Bihar village, the death of 34 innocent villagers would have remained a secret to the world for an entire day.

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Bihar 8212; especially Patliputra of yesteryears8211; holds a special significance for history students. We had read of the Mauryas, even Alexander the Great, the conqueror of the world, was scared of getting entangled with the kingdom of Patliputra and returned. Patliputra, the dream of Chanakya, who trekked from Punjab to mobilise support for repulsing invasions. And the Patna of today where killings had become the order of the day. Flying back to Delhi, I thought of the bad times that have befallen Patna. 8220;Babu we will not rest and neither will they. We will avenge the killings. Not all Bhumihars are Ranvir Sena supporters but all Bhumihars have a great sense of pride. And we will take revenge. The war has just begun.8221; The warning of a distraught farmer still rings in my ears.