Bhagalpur Communal riots 35 years on | Suresh Khairnar

October 24, 2024

It has been 35 years since the publication of the article Mannusherder Sandhane (In Search of Humanity) by the famous Bengali writer and journalist Gaur Kishore Ghosh in the Sunday Special issue of Anandabazar Patrika on 17 June 1990.

This article was written on the Bhagalpur riots which started on 24 October 1989. This article was written after about eight months. It is not that there was no news article or reporting on the Bhagalpur riots before that. But after reading this article, there was a lot of discussion in Bengal (east and west) and mainly some students from Calcutta, Bardhaman and Shantiniketan took the trouble of coming to Bhagalpur. The number of girls was more in this. Because the role of three elderly women named Veena Aalase, a Marathi language professor at Vishwabharati University, a painter named Shamli Khastgir, a prominent activist of the anti-war movement in India and nature lover Vani Sinha and Gaur Kishor Ghosh has been very important. And the writer of this article, Gaur Kishor Ghosh himself had undergone heart bypass surgery twice. Despite that, a series of many started in Bhagalpur which is still going on even after 35 years! In which Manisha Banerjee, who was 20-22 years old at that time, has crossed the age of 56 today! And she has been coming and going to Bhagalpur for the last 35 years mainly on the issue of communalism! And at present, along with her job as a principal in Bengal, she is working very intensely on the communal problem! Recently, during the assembly elections, she ran a massive campaign against the BJP by forming a Bangla Cultural Forum! And in the corona, she has done a very good job with the help of some volunteers in a van, from providing oxygen cylinders to patients! Apart from politics in Bengal, such service work was once done by Rabindranath Tagore, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and in the last phase of the twentieth century by Mother Teresa and Swami Vivekananda established the Ramakrishna Mission following the example of those missionaries! And other people have nothing to do with it! The current initiative of Manisha and other friends is very important for Bengal! How much is its value? This is being known from the reaction of Santhals and other poor people!

Vinadi, Banidi and Shyamlidi are no more in this world. Gaurda passed away before them. But Manisha has continued her search for humanity even today. And the most important thing is that her 22 year old daughter Meghna is doing post graduate studies in comparative religion, a subject of her mother’s greatest concern, under Vishwabharati University. She has been coming to Bhagalpur continuously since she was 3-4 years old. This girl entered this world on 26th March 2002. When the Gujarat riots were at their peak. And the Bhagalpur riots happened 13 years later. 13 years ago, mother Manisha, in her 20th year of age, has devoted herself with body, mind and money to the work of peace and goodwill after the Bhagalpur riots, by taking up her studies and then her job as a teacher. That is why today she has emerged as one of the main partners in the fight against communalism in Bengal! And now Meghna is trying to follow in the same footsteps!

Actually, the intensity of Bhagalpur riots which took the lives of more than three thousand people! And the houses of Muslims in more than 300 Muslim-dominated villages and the silk weaving machines for their livelihood were burnt to ashes! Even cemented houses were demolished, mosques were razed and the names of Maa Durga, Hanumanji, Ram were written on their rubble with coal tar or ochre! We had gone there in the first week of May 1990! It was present even then! Although more than six months had passed by then! We could feel the intensity of that riot even after so many days! And when we were returning after staying there for more than a week! I was not able to sleep in the return night train! The illness is still continuing! So Gaurda got up from the berth next to me and sat down! Manisha got down from the upper berth, what did we do the rest of the night? We were busy discussing this matter! And the result of that discussion was that many NGOs are engaged in relief work! But no one is visible to listen and understand the pain and suffering that is in the minds of the people! So we decided that we will come once a month for a week or ten days, and after deciding this, we started coming and going at our own expense! Everyone will spend money from their own pocket! And we will not take help from any organization! And neither will we work under the banner of any organization!

The cheque of 15000 dollars from Magsaysay Award was returned! Because Gourakishore Ghosh was probably one of the first journalists of India to receive that award! On the same day, the cheque of 500 pounds of Bruce Andrews, nephew of Bandhu Andrews, was also returned! Because there was a flood of NGOs working on Bhagalpur riots like after Killari earthquake! And a strange greed and competition had started among the riot victims! So after seeing all this, we came to the conclusion that we do not want to get involved in the affairs of funding agencies! Although we were approached! But just like the two examples presented! Similarly, other people were refused! And whenever any of us used to go to Bhagalpur, we used to go at our own expense! Perhaps because we are such people, in the beginning people used to say that other people take some money and give us something or the other! But these people of Shantiniketan and Calcutta are gobbling up all the money themselves!

And later when we got to know them better, those same people started organising our camps and meetings by bringing food from their homes. We have experienced this glimpse of the generosity of people in our country while working for peace and goodwill after the Bhagalpur riots. When I saw the atmosphere of terror after the riots where the relationships between Hindus and Muslims were freezing like ice, I felt that it is not good for such an atmosphere to continue for long. Why not organize activities for children?
So I organized a camp for the head constable and branch constable of Rashtra Seva Dal. In which, on behalf of the intermediate office, my female friend, Pramila Phule, sister of famous Marathi film actor Neelu Phule (he was also an artist of the Rashtriya Seva Dal’s art department!), and I together organized a branch constable and branch constable camp for more than a week for more than a hundred children of Rashtra Seva Dal. Food came from different homes of people. And in the last phase, it came to a point where some people had to refuse food because a lot of food was left over. So instead of it getting spoiled, I had to refuse. So people got angry. So, with great difficulty, I explained to them that since you all are residents of Ang Pradesh, you are the true representatives of Maharaja Karna of the time of Mahabharata. Therefore, you are very generous. And more food than the requirement of our children started coming. In a way, the villagers began to compete among themselves in sending food, and we began to receive more food than we needed!

Those people who did not allow us to enter their homes after the riots! Many times we and our entire team have talked while standing outside the doorstep, getting drenched in the rain! And not even one of them allowed us to come inside! But these are the same people of the same house, who provided food to more than a hundred children and our team from every house day and night for more than a week of Rashtriya Seva Dal! And the biggest achievement of this camp was that after that twelve branches started one after the other in Bhagalpur region! And local activist Shankar and Munna Singh’s daughter Pinky took the responsibility to run them!

But at the time of Babri demolition, the branch made a mistake of lagging behind in the formation of Mohalla Samiti. However, the formation of Mohalla Samiti got more success than expected. About 115 Mohalla Samitis were formed. And because of that, riots took place in many parts of India after 6 December 2006. But not even a pebble was thrown in Bhagalpur. And this achievement has been possible only because of the formation of Mohalla Samiti from the day of 6 December.

It is not that there were no riots in independent India, but the Bhagalpur riot was a different riot from all those riots. All the riots before this were limited to a few streets and neighbourhoods. But the Bhagalpur riot was a riot spread across almost all the districts of Bhagalpur Commissionerate. And the most surprising thing is that in this riot, people with traditional weapons in thousands rioted like a war to destroy Muslim settlements. Gujarat happened thirteen years after that. And thousands of people were involved in the riots, perhaps for the first time in India after partition and it would not be wrong to say that 2002 Gujarat was the next link after that.

Seeing all this, I have also written in a Marathi language magazine named Sadhna in 1990 that for the next 50 years, the focus of Indian politics will be only and only communalism. All other issues of our daily life will become secondary. Today, after 35 years, the reality is in front of everyone. Due to all kinds of propaganda mixed with the poison of communalism by Narendra Modi or BJP, is our civil society really seen thinking properly about any problems of the country?

According to me, the Sangh, an organization established on Dussehra in 1925 to implement the agenda of Hindutva, neither participated in the Aaj Ki Aandolan nor in any matter related to the daily life of this country, must have tried to do its work. It has hardly taken any meaningful initiative on the question of Dalits, tribals and women. It has only and only been a process of communal polarization. And examples of Dalits, tribals and women being involved in that process can be clearly seen in the Gujarat riots. And for this reason, it has been successful in teaching tribals like Asimanand of Dang that they are the descendants of Shabri. Casteism, poverty, unemployment, inflation, corruption, displacement, environmental damage, i.e. leaving the issue of Hindutva, the Sangh has never paid attention to the matters related to the life of any common citizen of the country. And they were only engaged in accelerating the process of communal polarization! And as a result of that, Narendra Modi’s government has come to power for the third time in 2024! However, during the 10-year tenure, not a single such work has been done, which could solve the question of the epidemic like Corona in this country, and all other everyday unemployment, inflation, the poor, farmers, labourers, tribals and women, despite not doing anything for them, the main reason for coming to power for the third time is that today the Sangh Parivar is successful in carrying out the process of communal polarization in the country! We have a lot of difficulty in accepting this bitter truth! But nothing is going to change by sitting with one’s head buried in the sand like Ostrich!

First of all, what can be done against it after knowing the truth? This can happen! The problem is that even our own homes are not strong! Due to the tireless efforts of the Sangh Parivar for a hundred years, they have spread so many misunderstandings about the people of the minority community! Due to which the people around us also come under its influence!

In the Corona pandemic, how much noise did the BJP and the Sangh Parivar make about the people gathered at the Nizamuddin Tablighi Jamaat before the lockdown? Markaz-Markaz, but what was the real truth? After all, the Aurangabad High Court took cognizance and said that the Tablighi Jamaat was not at fault! But even today, the idea that Muslims spread Corona is deeply ingrained in the minds of many people! And the Prime Minister has blatantly ignored the scientists’ warning of the second wave of Corona, from the assembly elections in five states to the organization of the Kumbh Mela! And the most surprising thing that has come to light today is that the Corona tests of the people participating in the Kumbh Mela have been done fraudulently! And apart from the chaos worth crores of rupees, who is guilty of putting India’s largest population in the grip of the second wave of Corona due to the people who came from every corner of the country to participate in the Kumbh Mela between April 1 and April 30? And what answer will be given about the loss of lives of lakhs of people? But BJP leaders make so much noise about Muslims every now and then! Apart from the chaos of buying land from Ayodhya’s temple construction trust, action should be taken under homicide against those responsible for pushing the people of the country into an epidemic like Corona! Strictest action should be taken against those who play with people’s faith in this way!

In this way, dozens of incidents of history have been distorted and fed to the children since childhood in the branches for the last hundred years. Then people like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Adityanath, Pragya Singh emerge prepared. And now they are not just volunteers but have taken on the role of the first servants of the country. This is the most serious matter. And that is why all the humanitarian people need to forget their differences and unite to check the Sangh Parivar. Otherwise, allowing the 30 to 35 crore population of the minority community to fall prey to the feeling of insecurity is very harmful for the social health of the country. And we are giving an opportunity to dig the foundation of another partition. What did they say in 1945-46 to demand Pakistan? Just remember!

And the most important thing is that such emotional issues help to sideline the real issues of our country. And the country is only revolving around Hindus and Muslims. This is a more serious problem. That is why I have been trying to draw attention to this issue for the last 35 years. But I don’t know what has happened to our colleagues. They are seen revolving around their displacement and rehabilitation policy. Even in their area of ??work, people have been divided in the name of communal politics and Ram Mandir. They are not able to see this. How many of our colleagues have a clean heart? Some feel that the number of Muslims is increasing and we are soon going to be a minority. As if we have come under the influence of the propaganda of the Sangh Parivar. Therefore, until we cannot stop the poisonous environment of communalism, we cannot win the battle on any other issue. Therefore, there are still some things to be done, if we all come together and take some meaningful initiatives from the Sangh Parivar 100 years ago, then we can do the historical task of saving India, instead of sighing with the memories of Bhagalpur or Gujarat, the only option is to work with full dedication to promote a synonymous organization like Rashtra Seva Dal at the grassroots level! But this is the first time in the 80-year history of Rashtra Seva Dal that we should open a front against the Sangh Parivar, then perhaps we can save the unity and integrity of our country, otherwise the Sangh Parivar will again convert the country into amoeba-like pieces by hatching a secret conspiracy to do communal politics from Kashmir to Lakshadweep because they will keep playing with the unity and integrity of the country with the divide and rule method given by the British rule!