Where life is an interlude between two massacres

The story of the Sena goes back to a paan shop in Sarathua in 1994. What began as a fight between a boy who had gone to buy cigarettes and the shop owner became a clash between the Naxalites and the landlords, the Dalits and the Bhumihars.

After several aborted moves to form a private army to fight the Dalits and theNaxalites who support them, the militant Bhumihars christened their new force as Ranabir Sena after a retired military officer Ranabir Choudhary.

The Bhumihar legend has it that Choudhary was so strong that he resisted and defeated a group of Rajput landlords in a fight over a piece of land.

Since then, the Sena hasn8217;t looked back. CPIML General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya says the Sena has carried out 20 major massacres and has been involved in 91 clashes, killing nearly 270 people, all 8220;rural poor.8221;

There is a core difference between the Ranabir Sena and its predecessors, the Sunlight Sena and the Kunwar Sena. The Ranabir Sena does not spare even the children. The philosophy, they say, is: Don8217;t let the child of a snake grow.

All the Sena massacres took place under the ban. In February, 1996, it killed seven in Chandi in Bhojpur; the infamous Bathani Tola massacre, in which 21 poor villagers were killed, took place in July 1996. The list is long: Purhar, Dhanet, Ekwari, Haibaspur andLakshmanpur-Bathe, the biggest and cruellest massacre of them all, where 61 were killed in December 1997.

Displaying his respect for law and law-enforcing authorities, the chief of the Sena, Barmeshwar Singh on January 8 had made clear his intention of carrying out a massacre bigger than the one at Lakshmanpur-Bathe. A fortnight later, the Sena struck in Shankarbigha.

Sharvan, secretary of the underground CPI-ML PWG says the Sena continues to thrive because it was formed at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party and enjoys the political patronage of the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal. Rival communist factions agree. And that is perhaps the only thing on which they agree.

What has helped the Ranbir Sena survive is the internal war among the extreme-Left organisations opposed to it. The clashes among the three major Naxalite groups, the CPI-ML Liberation, the Maoist Coordination Centre and CPI-ML PWG has made the task easy for them. A senior Government official says since the state machinery cannottackle the Naxalite menace actively, it does not mind the Ranabir Sena targeting the Naxalites. The hatred for each other is so strong between the Naxal outfits in Bihar that they keep eliminating each other8217;s cadres.

Sharvan, secretary of CPI-Ml PWG, says: 8220;During the last four years, the MCC has killed nearly 84 PWG supporters and leaders. In retaliation, we too have assassinated nearly 45 MCC supporters. The guns of MCC, instead of being aimed at the Sena, are pouring bullets on us8221;.

However, he felt that time has come when a joint action should be launched against the Sena. Talking to media persons at a hideout in Jehanabad, he said: 8220;We have established contacts with the Liberation and MCC leaders and hope to evolve some kind of joint strategy.8221;

Bhattacharya as well Sharwan don8217;t subscribe to the view that massacres owe their genesis to land disputes. The present phase of the massacres are mainly political in nature aimed at crushing the growing assertion of the oppressed rural poor andsilencing their voices, they say. Even with a history of massacres, Jehanabad is still a pocket of neglect. The posts of circle officers, a crucial link in the administrative machinery, remain vacant and there has been no effort to strengthen security.

One massacre leaves not just a trail of blood in Jehanabad, it leads to another. Even before the Shankarbigha massacre disappeared from headlines, Ranabir Sena8217;s senior leader Shamshar Singh has issued fresh warnings to the Naxalites and said the Sena is getting ready for a much bigger massacre.