Meet the Ranbir Sena menace

The self-styled quot;armyquot; is plainly terrorist because it has no use for the law of the land; on the contrary, it mocks the state and its professed concern for the poor as it ruthlessly oppresses agricultural labourers and poor peasants. The statements issued to the Press by the Sena leaders are evidence of that. The Sena brazenly announced its decision to carry out a massacre precisely on the night when the President addressed the nation preparing to celebrate 50 years as a republic. This assault on republicanism is both symbolic and substantial.

The Sena launched an offensive on the landless labourers and poor sharecroppers of central Bihar as soon as they showed signs of getting organised. After centuries of acute exploitation and inhuman oppression, the peasants of central Bihar districts started getting restive in the mid-1970s under the leadership of activists who were called Naxalites. There are three distinct organisations among them. The largest and most powerful is the CPI Marxist-Leninist 8211; Liberation. The other two are the CPI ML 8211; Party Unity Group which has now merged with and styled itself the People8217;s War Group PWG and the Maoist Communist Centre MCC. All the three have been mobilising the poor in central and south Bihar to resist the depredations of the landlords. While the CPI ML 8211; Liberation has formed mass organisations like the Kisan Sabha and, recently, the Khet Mazdoor Sabha, the other two have been engaged in more covert activity through action squads.

The net result of the Naxalites8217; activities is that the poor peasants have started losing fear of the landlords and demanding what is due to them under the law. Even as the peasants are struggling for their economic demands, they are also asserting izzat8217;, dignity, denied to them earlier. This means that they can now dare to wear shoes in the presence of the landlords, send their children to school and not be passive when their women are molested. This has created a backlash among the landlords and the Ranbir Sena is leading it after other organisations like the Bhoomi Sena of the Kurmis, Lorik Sena of the Yadavas, Kuer Sena of the Rajputs, Brahmarshi Sena of the Bhumihars and the Krishak Sangh, an omnibus anti-labour organisation promoted by Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav of the Urea scam notoriety, have failed.

The Ranbir Sena is more successful than the other bodies mainly because it has the direct support of political parties, particularly the BJP-Samata combine as well as, more covertly, of the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal. The upper-caste landowners, who form the bulwark of the Sena, swung to the political Hindu Right represented by the BJP some time ago but large landholders among the middle castes too are extending support to this organisation to fight their common enemy, the poor peasants and labourers.

The Sena has been systematically engaged in this campaign of terrorisation and killing. In a total of 80 incidents, including 19 massacres, the Sena has killed 279 persons, including 79 women and 45 children, in cold blood. Before the organisation was formally banned in July 1995, it had killed 28 people in two incidents. After the ban, it has massacred 251 persons. Some ban!

The fact is that the government is not interested in taking action against this outlawed formation. One easy way out for the government and all parties that stand for the agrarian status quo is to equate the Sena and those termed quot;extremistsquot;. Even after the recent Shankar Bigha and Narayanpur massacres which led to the brief imposition of President8217;s rule on Bihar, the state and Central governments have made the usual noises and promised to intensify policing in the region. The attempt is to place the victims and the aggressors on an equal footing, dubbing them both as quot;extremistsquot; with particular ire directed against the lawful CPI ML-Liberation and then asking upper-caste policemen, with natural sympathy for the Sena, to enforce the law. Indeed, the focus of the BJP in its statements during the short-lived RSS rule in Bihar was clearly on quot;tackling the Naxalitesquot;.

Now, with the return of the Laloo Prasad Yadav surrogate government, the focus has shifted to issuing statements without actually taking action against the perpetrators of massacres. This is the quot;normalquot; way in Bihar. The tendency is to declare Bihar to be unchanging, boring, repetitive and hence exceptional. It is relegated to the position of an intellectual basket-case, a province so unique in its own characteristics that it holds little relevance to what is happening in the rest of India and even less to what is happening in the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, the fact is that Bihar cannot be dismissed in such a cavalier manner. Not only is it the second most populous state of the Indian union, immensely rich in mineral and other resources, but its very size and history make it crucial to political-economic developments in India. Indeed, in many respects, Bihar represents the extreme case of what has happened to a region subjected to societal stagnation, economic exploitation and cultural degeneration under conditions of long and stifling feudalism, external and internal colonialism and the most brutalising experience of a late capitalism which has acquired the bathos of senility without ever having witnessed the optimism of its youth.