The violence against Pasmanda Muslims in Azizpur-Bahilwara in Muzaffarpur cannot be understood as an instance of conventional communal strife between Hindus and Muslims. This report from the ground indicates that different layers of caste, community, administrative and patronage networks have played a role in fostering the violence but also in containing it.
On 18 January 2015, violence broke out in Azizpur-Bahilwara village near Saraiya in the district of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Five people were reportedly killed and almost all the 56 Pasmanda Muslim households were looted and burnt. The immediate provocation was an alleged interfaith love affair: Was it a case of “Love-Jihad” in reverse, or a variant of
“honour killing”?
A Hindu (caste of Mallah, fishermen) boy named Bhartendu Sahni, 20, was reportedly in love with a girl from the Pasmanda Muslim community. Both of them were from the same village and studying in the L S College of Muzaffarpur. According to reports, Sahni went missing since 9 January 2015. A report was lodged against a Muslim man named Sadaqat, also known as Vicky Ansari, and his father Wasi Ahmad from the same village, with the Saraiya police. The local police was reported to have not acted on this report of kidnapping despite the fact that this issue did carry a very high degree of communal volatility and sensitivity.
It is alleged that Ansari and Ahmad were resisting the marriage of the girl to Bhartendu Sahni. However it is also true that Ahmad’s second wife is Hindu – belonging to the Kahaar caste (palanquin bearer). Wasi Ahmad works as a small-time advocate in the district court of Muzaffarpur, and supplements his income as a commission agent of the non-banking financial institution – Sahara. Saraiya, a fast-growing semi-urban centre in Muzaffarpur, is reportedly one of the lucrative branches of Sahara.
Just few months ago (in October-November 2014), ahead of the Chhath puja celebrations (an important Hindu festival of Bihar) there was acute communal tension between Hindu Mallahs and Pasmanda Muslims in Turkauliya village in the Saraiya-Paroo police station areas. The violence could be contained only in the first week of November 2014 with prompt administrative interventions, prolonged persuasions, as also with the initiatives of the local people for inter-community dialogues. The district magistrate of Muzaffarpur personally camped in Turkauliya and sat down with the local residents for comprehensive discussions on the whole dispute.
In this incident, a Pasmanda Muslim was alleged to have thrown a huge heap of human excreta into the irrigation canal in which the Chhath puja is performed every year since ages. This was allegedly done at the behest of a Muslim man in the village (a paan shop owner) who had some political aspirations. He represents this character in a rural society who often aspire to become a recognisable face among the local politicians and officials. From my personal knowledge, as an insider of Turkauliya, I do know how illegal arms were collected by the Muslims and Mallahs in and around Turkauliya in October-November 2014. However the local police feigned ignorance about all these developments.
Pre-planned Violence
On 18 January 2015, a farmer of Azizpur-Bahilwara, having gone to put fertiliser in his wheat-fields, saw that some dogs were digging to remove soil. Suddenly a human hand came in sight. It was close to the mosque of the village. The dead body was identified to be that of Bhartendu Sahni. On hearing this, a huge mob reportedly came out with a lot of crude as well as sophisticated weapons and also petrol cans. This suggested that there was some preparation on the ground for this level of violence which the local police seemed to be unaware of.
It was around 9 am that the dead body of Bhartendu Sahni was found. Around 12.30 pm, some 30 to 40 angry people of the village of the deceased came to the house of Wasi Ahmad and Sadaqat (Vicky) Ansari, but did not target the rest of the 55 Muslim houses of Azizpur. Vicky managed to run away and his family was spared by the mob.
About half an hour later, approximately 30-40 bikers came to Azizpur and indulged in rampant looting. Most of these faces were unknown to the villagers of Azizpur. They resorted to burning down the houses and throwing people into those flames to kill them. This looked like a pre-planned operation. This is testified by Sudha Verghese of the Bihar State Minorities Commission who visited Azizpur on 24 January as she found a pattern in setting the houses on fire. Significantly, the fugitive Muslims were sheltered by the Hindus of the neighbourhood. A local journalist Arun Srivastav has got videos of the attackers of the second and third phases. These videos are with the district administration.
While the attack was being carried out, the special superintendent of police (SSP), who was travelling near to the affected village, received calls from Muzaffarpur’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament (MP), Ajay Nishad, about the violence in Azizpur. Meanwhile, from Azizpur, Iqbal Ansari (sanitation inspector, municipal corporation, Muzaffarpur), the maternal uncle of Sadaqat (Vicky), and Nesaruddin (former deputy mayor, Muzaffarpur) kept calling the SSP and the district magistrate but the calls were either not being picked up or the officials were not paying any heed.
The local newsmen and other notables are of the opinion that the deputy superintendent of police (DSP), who has been suspended since, did not act after being informed of the violence. This was after the chowk was situated just 2 km from the village. It was at this chowk that the BJP Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Paroo-Saraiya, Ashok Singh, had also arrived from Muzaffarpur leaving a BJP meeting midway.
Meanwhile, the villagers have asked that the role of Rampukar Sahni of Bajrang Dal (some say he is affiliated to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)) be investigated. They have also demanded that the video shot by the journalist Arun Srivastav should also be made use of for investigations in order to identify the violent and rapacious bikers.
Ironically, Azizpur-Bahilwara is adjacent to the native village and political base of Ashok Singh, BJP MLA of Paroo-Saraiya. There are reports alleging that the BJP MLA created some obstruction in letting the police reach the spot of violence. There are also reports that the girl’s brother Vicky is close to the BJP MLA Ashok Singh. Quite a lot of local people confided that the local BJP MLA, being the protector of the accused Vicky Ansari, could have forced the police to ignore the issue at its initial stages when Sahni was being targeted.
It has also been reported that Kamal Sahni, Bhartendu Sahni’s father, had gone to Ashok Singh appealing to him so that he would tell the police to search for Bhartendu and also arrest and interrogate Sadaqat (Vicky) Ansari. Singh first spoke to Wasi Ahmad and then to the police, and informed Sahni that Bhartendu was not alive. A few hours later, Kamal Sahni disovered his son’s dead body just 200 yards away from the house of Wasi and Vicky. How the BJP MLA knew about the death of Bhartendu even before the police remains a lingering question.
Almost every village in this area has criminals belonging to different castes and religious communities who straddle local public life, but since June 2013, when the Janata Dal (United)-BJP coalition broke, the Muslim criminals are acting in tandem with local BJP functionaries. This is to condolidate the electoral base of chief minister-aspirant Syed Shahnawaz Husain of the BJP. It is openly spoken about among local residents that these Muslim lumpens are on the payrolls of the BJP and its affiliates. After the recent Jharkhand elections, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) camps have also become very active in rural, semi-urban and urban spaces of Bihar. They interact with, and indoctrinate, the deprived sections of the historically disadvantaged groups who aspire to social elevation and at least some degree of social respectability through these RSS camps. This is what I observed during my visit to the villages across Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, and Patna in the early weeks of January 2015.
A History of Communal Tension
Azizpur-Bahilwara is very near to the historic village of Vaishali, the birthplace of Lord Mahavir, and with deep historical associations to Lord Buddha too. It also has a popular shrine of the 15th century Sufi saint Shaikh Qazin Shuttari. Venerated by every religious and caste groups, the annual Urs (death anniversary) of this Sufi is a testimony of the syncretic traditions and religious harmony in this locality. There is also an annual fair called Bawana Mela.
It is also ironical that the L S College, where Bhartendu studied, was the outcome of strong Hindu-Muslim cooperation in a movement for modern education. This movement was launched in 1868 by Syed Imdad Ali (died on 8 August 1886, buried in Bhagalpur), the then subordinate judge of Muzaffarpur (Tirhut), and a friend of his counterpart in Aligarh, Sir Syed Ahmad.
Significantly, at least in the post-Independence period, Muzaffarpur has remained by and large free from communal violence. Only those parts of Muzaffarpur, which now constitute the districts of Sitamarhi and Sheohar, had seen a few major incidents of communal violence after 1947. Even in the late-colonial period, the only major communal violence of Muzaffarpur is the one in the village of Benibad (September 1946), and here too the immediate cause was inter-faith marriage. A Muslim of the village Benibad, Ali Hasan, working in Kolkata had married a Hindu girl of that city named Kalyani Dey, who was renamed Nur Jahan. This provoked the local people and a major violence broke out. The police could not control it as quickly because of the mechanical breakdown of the truck carrying a troupe of police.1
However, in recent years, more particularly, ever since the breakdown of coalition between the BJP and the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) in Bihar in June 2013, things have started changing for the worse very rapidly. India witnessed major communal tension and violence during the 1920s, 1940s, 1980s, and ever since then communal tension has been a sad reality of our lives besides caste-based oppression. Incidentally, these were the decades when growing affluence among the Muslims created middle classes, and thereby ensued competitions and rivalries in all walks of life – education, politics, share in power, trade and manufacturing, etc.
The Pasmanda Muslims of Azizpur-Bahilwara village have also achieved prosperity only recently. Their access to education may not have improved but their trade in tyre-tube repair and sales, and in motor-parts was becoming the envy of others. The rising status and prosperity of people with blue-collar jobs in west Asia was also fuelling aspirations for a share in the structures and processes of power, particularly in the panchayat elections. This was already becoming an irritant among other, more entrenched castes and communities.
It should also be remembered that in present-day Bihar villages migrations for livelihood have made male presence very minimal. The few who stay back often become part of the lumpen criminal-politician set who work as brokers of nationalised banks as well as touts at police stations and in the community development blocks from where the panchayat development funds and the funds for social welfare schemes flow. There are reports that ever since the Nitish Kumar-led administration launched a crackdown on this network, many of them have taken to another form of crime – sex-trade and trafficking.
The Mallah Caste
It is arguable that in today’s Muzaffarpur – comprising the Muzaffarpur and Vaishali Lok Sabha (parliamentary) seats – the Hindu Ati Pichhrha (extremely backward) caste of Mallah, carrying surnames of Nishad, Sahni, and sometimes Manjhi also, have become the “dominant caste”. They have replaced the Rajputs and Bhumihar-Brahmins, but also the Yadavas, Koeris, Kurmis too who had become dominant some decades ago.
Many times, Muzaffarpur has elected its parliamentarians from the community of Mallah, including the incumbent one from the BJP, Ajay Nishad, son of previous MP from Muzaffarpur, Captain Jainarayan Nishad. Before being elected MP, he had turned into an entrepreneur as one of the earliest dealers of cooking gas (LPG) in Muzaffarpur. In the Vaishali Lok Sabha constituency,2 the JD(U) candidate in 2014 was a Mallah. Unlike most of Bihar’s parliamentary seats, the JD(U) candidate from Vaishali had secured a very significant number of votes in May 2014. This vote share secured by the JD(U) may not be going down well with the BJP-Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) combine. This could be a possible reason why the Hindu Mallah-Muslim Pasmanda conflict is a growing reality of this locality.
This region also has a presence of Maoists and quite often press statements from local politicians would complain that most Maoists are Mallahs. In the 2010 assembly elections of Bihar, Paroo’s sitting BJP MLA, Ashok Singh, had to face the ire of the Mallahs for having made a statement in the press that most of the Maoists belonged to the community of Mallahs. Cutting across religious and caste-barriers, the local population would express a certain degree of scare about the Mallahs, about their community-solidarity and about “their proneness to violence and aggression”. This is a kind of stereotype about the Mallahs that is commonly found among the local population.
In this way, the Azizpur-Bahilwara violence may be said to not be an instance of inter-religious violence in a way we have understood it conventionally, as non-Mallah Hindus have not only stayed away but are also extending all possible help in protecting those affected and in organising relief measures. In fact, today the local people – Hindus and Muslims – vehemently react against media reports speaking in terms of conventional Hindu-Muslim violence.
Therefore, if at all there is any attempt by any communal organisation to create Hindu-Muslim polarisation or an attempt to create a communal wedge between the Ati Picchrha communities of Hindus and Muslims for the purposes of the forthcoming assembly elections in Bihar in October-November 2015, then it could possibly be seen as a gratifying silver line as both Hindus and Muslims stand united to get the culprits of Azizpur-Bahilwara booked.
Conclusions
The Saraiya police may have acted slowly but the state response to this violence has since then been very prompt. Reports suggest that quite a large number of the accused have been arrested including Vicky Ansari. However his father Wasi Ahmad is yet to be arrested. The common refrain among people across the religious divide is that Wasi is a gentleman, and the parents of Bhartendu happen to be long-standing close friends of Wasi. High-placed enquiries are underway, payment of compensation, and relief measures from the state are reported to be “satisfactory” in unprecedented ways.
Quite a large number of alleged offenders have been arrested within a short time after the police started acting on the case. Many police and other administrative personnel have been pulled up and taken to task, and further action against them seems to be in the offing. The DSP and the station house officer of Saraiya have reportedly been suspended.
The trust of the victims in the administration and in the local society has been restored so fast that all those affected have started coming back to their villages. The state has provided monetary help for purchasing utensils and kitchen-wares besides compensation to those injured and the survivors of the deceased ones. What is most striking is that cutting across religious lines, shall we say barriers, the whole locality is standing with the victims and coming forward with every kind of help and support.
Public opinion in the locality is displaying a genuine outrage against the whole incident. Even an ex-zamindar of Azizpur, Lalmohan Singh, who was also a psychology teacher in the local government degree college of Jaintpur (estate) and has been associated with the BJP as well, expressed his anger against the violence and loot, calling it “insanity”. His own servants, both Hindu and Muslim, protected many fugitive victims. One of his servants has been awarded Rs 51 lakh by the chief minister for his brave role in protecting Muslim victims.
This horrific episode of 18 January 2015 in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur is quite different from what happened in UP’s Muzaffarnagar in September 2013. Most importantly, in Muzaffarpur we probably do not have competitive efforts of politicians to polarise the two communities. The Akhilesh Yadav-led administration as well as the riot-mongers among our political formations need to learn a few lessons from this response of state and society towards the violence in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur.
