From Bathani Tola to Bathe

Go to the Central Bihar plains, you will find many an oppressor landlord or rich peasant field lying fallow because of economic blockade imposed by the struggling Naxalite groups. The personal violence and coercion that marked the relationship of the maliks and the jans are fast becoming a thing of the past. The assertion of the opressed is there for all to see. The fight for izzat, civil rights, and land marks out the movement.

If personal violence and coercion are a thing of the past, violence is still very much a thing of the present—violence has moved from the personal sphere to the public sphere. The agrarian ruling classes want to ensure their hegemony through Bathani toles and Bathes. The times they are surely a'changing, but in an ugly, painful long drawn mode. This is the tragedy of the path of development taken by Indian society. The path of slow, gradual severing of feudal relations, the landlord bourgeois path of capitalist evolution, is very painful. More so, in the areas of Permanent settlement. of Zamindari, which contained some of the worst forms of feudal relations.

The periodic pogroms that we witness in Bihar have strong caste overtones. Rights to land and produce ran roughly along caste lines in Zamindari Bihar. When the state initiated its reforms many of these very rights were accorded recognition, with the various sections of the upper category of raiyats being given full rights to their land. From oppressed sections in British India they were transformed into free producers. A section of these raiyats emerged as the new ruling class along with the ex-intermediaries in agrarian Bihar in the process cornering all resources from land to development funds, controlling all institutions from cooperatives to local self-government bodies. For this, they used the institution of caste-bodies, manipulating them for their class ends. They have thus been gradually transformed into entrepreneurs who use all sorts of tactics including crime to serve their ends. This class which has a feudal mindset and is driven by the cut-throat logic of capital, has been historically proven to be a rabidly reactionary class. Castes which were in the forefront of the anti-Zamindari agitation of yore today find their cause being espoused by whiteguard outfits like the Ranveer. Sena, which specialises in massacres of the oppressed in the countryside.

The militant Naxalite movement has brought the assertion of the working class to the fore. Once having asserted itself, this movement double-edge to it—on the one hand, it has helped the rural working class come into its own through organisation and "breaking off of semi-feudal relations" and on the other, it also combines in itself the assertion of the oppressed lower castes. This assertion again has two sides to it, inasmuch as any caste as caste enters bourgeois life, it carries within it the seeds of disintegration into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As toilers, these caste groups comprise of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat and semi-proletariat in the countryside. All the same, their caste assertion carries within it the dynamics of breaking into the ranks of the bourgeoisie (as petty-bourgeoisie of course). The contention for local level power in whatever name it is carried out — in the guise of "localised power seizure" or the fight for electoral supremacy —carries within it this urge for embourgeoisement. The fighting Naxalite groups carry within them this dual nature. A dual nature which on the one hand appears as ' valiant and glorious— as working class assertion and on the other exhibits features which appear as aberrations or "revisionism". If we look at neighbouring Bengal, we can understand the dynamics of the Bihar movement — the form is different, the dynamics are the same. The difference in form of course counts — revolutionary and militant traditions in the oppressed are very important. There, too, the oppressed have braved tremendous repression and violence. Today, there is a compromise, with a section of the downtrodden castes having made it good with state help. A look at the composition of the panchayats in Bengal will indicate this.

History today poses this tricky question before us — the task of separating the interests of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie, which appears interwoven in the assertion of the rural oppressed. (Interestingly, one of the pioneers of the Naxalite movement in Bihar, Jagdish Mahto, went from caste assertion (the demand for Harijanistan) to class assertion.) Otherwise, the social democratic compromise is bound to assert itself, the fierce battle for supremacy raging between the oppressed and the oppressors notwithstanding. Meanwhile, the movement to break the power of the aforementioned reactionary ruling classes must be supported. An end to their stranglehold will be a big step forward in democratising Bihari society. This will help in carrying forward the cause of the working class.