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One explanation for this is that the upper castes, who had political, social and administrative supremacy during much
of Bihar’s recent political history, were responding to the elevation of leaders from backward castes to political
power by stepping up attacks against lower-caste populations. Another explanation is that the governments of
Karpoori Thakur and Laloo Prasad Yadav were lax in controlling the upper-caste private armies.
Sanskrit : < Irrespective of the level of accuracy of analyses such”theThefields,
” Black skin is impious & lowly”
thunderer bestowed on his white friends
bestowed the sun, bestowed the
“dA’saM va’rNaM a’dharaM as these, the fact remains that the number of attacks waters.”[ Rig Veda I.100.18 ]
gu’hA’kaH” > against Dalits and other lower-caste people has gone
[ Rig Veda II.12.4 ] up every time a backward caste leader rose to
power. The period between 1990 and 1999
witnessed 35 instances of caste-based massacres, the
total number of victims being about 400. More than
350 of those killed were from among the lower
castes.[ ill. - At Lakshmanpur-Bathe on December
1, 1997, when 63 persons were killed in an attack by
the Ranvir Sena. ]
The Ranvir Sena, which has been active since 1994, is one of the most dreaded private armies in the history of the
State. According to informal estimates, the Ranvir Sena, which was formed by the partial or complete merger of
upper-caste private armies such as the Savarna Liberation Army and the Sunlight Sena, has killed at least 200 Dalits
in the last five years. Ranvir Sena leaders boast that at least 125 of these killings were carried out after July 1995,
when the group was banned by the Bihar Government. As the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
Liberation has pointed out repeatedly, the ban existed only on paper.
In addition to organised massacres of the residents of entire Dalit villages, the private armies practise unlawful and
dehumanising programmes aimed at insulting members of the lower castes and preventing their rise in society. The
Savarna Liberation Army’s “mass rape” campaign, conducted between March and July 1992 in Gaya and Jehanabad
districts, was one of the most heinous among these. More than 200 Dalit women between the ages of six and 70 were
raped by a group of activists of the Savarna Liberation Army. Each of these incidents was given publicity by the
perpetrators of the crime.
“ The Aryans enforced the caste system on the Black population (the original inhabitants of India), with a cold-
blooded racist logic with [w]hites on the top, mixed races in the middle and the mass of the conquered Blacks at
the bottom. Rajshekar, `Dalit: The Black Untouchables of India’, p.44.
Ranvir Sena leaders claim that the operation was intended to avenge the killing of 34 Bhumihar landlords at Bara by
the Maoist Coordination Centre (MCC). It was a “lesson” to the Dalits, that if they tried to take on the landlords the
women of their communities would be humiliated. Ranvir Sena activists claim with a macabre sense of glee that the
operation was “very effective”. The stigma attached to rape victims is such that the operation broke the morale of
Dalits of many villages.
Given the prevailing socio-political climate in Bihar, the Senas operate with impunity, justifying their presence with
the cycle of retaliatory violence spawned by naxalite groups. Sociologists have pointed out that resort to measures
that merely address the violence as a law-and-order problem will not be enough to smash these Senas. Such steps,
they say, have to be coupled with bold and far-reaching measures such as land reforms, which address the
fundamental problem of economic exploitation and social discrimination of landless agricultural labourers from
among the Scheduled Castes by upper-caste feudal landowners. “ Author : Venkitesh Ramakrishnan,
Design : Krishna Rao, Dalitstan Journal, Volume 1, Issue 2 (Oct. 1999)