SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Like Banquo's ghost, Bihar's dead will come to haunt our secular politicians

Yet another massacre has been reported from Bihar's Jehanabad district. The details are the same: The messengers of death descended on the cursed village in the dead of night, slaughtered men, women and children deep in sleep, and snuffed out 35 human lives. The only difference in the details is that this time the victims belonged to "upper castes" and the killers were Maoist revolutionaries. The latest bloodletting is supposed to have been organised to avenge two earlier massacres in the same district in which the victims were Dalits and the killers were "upper caste" members of the Ranvir Sena.

In a sense, it is pointless trying to present the details and the differences: The simple, brutal fact is that another mass killing has taken place in the benighted state of Bihar. Once again it has been established that the writ of the apology of a state government headed by Rabri Devi, who spends her day cooking for husband Laloo Prasad Yadav while he fixes official files and deals, does not run beyond derelict Patna's Anne Marg.

Once again it has been established that 90 million hapless people who comprise Bihar's population live in a lawless world where neither life nor property is protected, a world where the Constitution of the Republic of India means nothing. Be it the wretched landless Dalit who toils in sunshine and rain for a fistful of grains, the Safari-driving contractor who mints millions without paying taxes or the moustache-twirling landowner who could be a Yadav, Kurmi or Rajput, nobody is safe in Laloo Prasad Yadav's Bihar.

Worse, and tragically so, there is nothing that today's Union government can do to protect the lives of a tenth of India's population. The only recourse it had was to sack the Laloo-Rabri regime, clamp President's rule and inject heavy doses of law and order through merciless liquidation of those who hold Bihar to ransom. The BJP-led Union government tried this option and badly burned its hands. Not due to lack of purpose but because all our "secular" parties, ranging from the Congress to the Communists, the Samajwadis to the Centrists, ganged up to ensure a fresh lease of life for the discredited Laloo-Rabri regime that presides over the destruction of Bihar.

Their defence: The BJP-led Union government's attempt to save Bihar from total anarchy and lawlessness of a magnitude that was not witnessed even during the bloodiest days of terrorism in Punjab was detrimental to "secularism." Never mind the massacres, never mind the widespread loot of public funds, never mind the collapse of the State, never mind the rapid socio-economic decay. What is of utmost importance, they argued, is to save the "secular" government of Rabri Devi.

The report of Sundar Singh Bhandari, then governor of Bihar, recommending President's rule, was debunked as "RSS propaganda." The Union government's appeal to the Opposition, that it should stand by the people and not a regime that had lost its last vestige of legitimacy, was rudely repudiated as lacking in substance. The callous indifference and criminal inefficiency of the Laloo-Rabri regime were hailed as sincere efforts.

In the end, Laloo Prasad Yadav's proxy rule in Bihar survived the day. The people of Bihar paid the price.

It would, therefore, be in order to expose those who stood by Laloo Prasad Yadav, ensuring that the rape of Bihar continues unabated. One such person is Inder Kumar Gujral who voted against the motion seeking to ratify the Presidential proclamation imposing Central rule in Bihar. As prime minister of the self-declared and publicly-hailed "secular" United Front government, he received a report from the then Union home secretary on the terrible state of affairs in Bihar. He chose not to act on the report merely because had he acted, he would have lost Laloo Prasad Yadav's support, which in turn would have ended his tenancy at 3 Race Course Road.

The home secretary had been despatched to report on the ground situation in Bihar after the grisly Lakshmanpur-Bathe massacre on September 1, 1997. On December 5, 1997, he submitted his report to the home minister and the prime minister. What he had to say in 1997 was no different from what was said in the report recommending President's rule two years later.

"...It was quite evident that the law and order situation in Bihar has sharply deteriorated over the years and the unabated Sena-Naxalite violence has, in particular, been a slur on the governance in the state...

"...The morale of senior civil and police officials in Bihar is extremely low...(there is) widespread fear and terror created by the Left wing extremist groups and the Senas of the rich landlords... In some districts, even SPs and DMs do not stir out of their houses after sunset..."

These are only two extracts from that damning report that was quietly shelved by Inder Gujral and his Communist Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta. They did not lift a small finger to even admonish the Bihar government, leave alone consider the imposition of President's rule. Yet, both were willing conspirators in the conspiracy to sack Kalyan Singh's government in Uttar Pradesh, not once but twice, on charges that were admitted as fictitious and frivolous even by the BJP's foes. Propping up the Laloo-Rabri regime was, and remains, the test of their commitment to "secularism." Sacking Kalyan Singh's government on fictitious, frivolous charges was demonstration of their "secularism" in action.

Inder Gujral and Indrajit Gupta are not alone; they are in the hallowed company of Congress stalwarts, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi who, after declaring that her party would adopt a pro-Dalit platform, wholeheartedly backed the Laloo-Rabri regime which has presided over the murder, rape and loot of Dalits. If only Inder Gujral and his government had acted on the then home secretary's report, Bihar would have been spared from its unending nightmare.

The lot could have redeemed themselves by backing the sacking of the Laloo-Rabri regime. But they chose not to, ignoring the facts to support the fiction called the government of Bihar. The Central team that had been despatched to study the situation in Bihar after the BJP-led Union government came to power, merely reiterated what the then home secretary had said in his report in 1997.

"...In Bihar, it is the state that harbours and patronises criminals instead of protecting people from them. Not only that, even persons with criminal background are functioning as ministers in the state government..."

"Apart from keeping their own criminal gangs, RJD leaders are also actively patronising criminal groups. Such patronisation is learnt to have been extended by Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav through his close relatives, namely his brother-in-law, Anirudh aka Sadhu Yadav..."

"Apart from the nexus with the criminals, Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav and his party members are also learnt to be maintaining links with the MCC...There has been a spurt in the killing of important political leaders... The state government has not been in a position to check extremist violence..."

"The situation in Bihar is extremely bad. The people, by and large, are living in a state of fear and in a sense of insecurity... The situation in Bihar is really alarming and it does call for intervention by the Centre..."

The authors of this report are officers from the Intelligence Bureau and the home ministry, officers of the highest integrity and irrevocably wedded to upholding the constitutional rule of law.

And what did the Laloo-Rabri regime have to say in self-defence? It is there in the very same report.

"The ruling RJD feels that there is total peace and tranquillity in the state. According to its leaders, the hue and cry in the press about their performance is largely because of the fact that it is a government of the poor, for the poor and by the poor..."

And what about the other parties, apart from the ruling party of hoodlums? Once again, the report provides a clue to their assessment of the situation in Bihar.

"However, the fact of the matter is that leaving aside the RJD, no political party in Bihar feels that the law and order situation in the state is good. Even the representatives of the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and CPI-M... had no good words about the functioning of the state government, especially in maintaining law and order..."

That was, of course, before the filing of the report and the subsequent imposition of President's rule. Once the BJP-led Union government had acted decisively to extend the rule of law to the state of Bihar, these worthies changed their tune and chose to accept the Laloo Prasad Yadav version of the situation, that "there is total peace and tranquillity in Bihar."

And now the latest massacre of 35 people. Peace? Tranquillity? Did Sonia Gandhi sleep well after hearing the news? Did Inder Gujral compose an Urdu couplet? Did Comrade Somnath Chatterjee call up Comrade Indrajit Gupta to plot the next move to strengthen the Third Front with Laloo Prasad Yadav's help?

The blood of those who continue to be slaughtered under Laloo raj will stick the most on the heads of those who rule Bihar. But some of it will also stick on the heads of those who have ensured, in the guise of upholding "secularism," that Laloo Prasad Yadav continues to preside over the killing fields of Bihar.

Like Banquo's ghost, the innocent victims of killers who stalk Bihar, indulging in unchecked, unhindered pillage and murder, will come to haunt our "secular" politicians, if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then the day after. Let there be no mistake about that.

Kanchan Gupta is a political analyst based at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Delhi and editor of the party's official organ, BJP Today.

How Readers responded to Kanchan Gupta's recent columns

Kanchan Gupta