In these Bihar villages, massacre wounds unhealed but water is new battlefront
In these Bihar villages, massacre wounds unhealed but water is new battlefront
LAXMANPUR-BATHE/SENARI: A worn-out sari partly covers her head as Uma Devi, 45, sits forlornly at the door of her unplastered house. Campaign vehicles belonging to various political parties come and go by, blaring poll slogans but she remains unmoved, her eyes barren of hope.
Laxmanpur-Bathe village, where the soil still whispers the anguish of the 1997 massacre in which 58 Dalits were killed, lies trapped between horrors of its past and broken promises of its future. “No one comes to see us once elections are over. They show their faces only before elections,” grumbles Uma, who lost nine members of her family to the carnage. On the night of Dec 1, 1997, an armed gang of Ranvir Sena, a private militia of upper-caste landlords, entered the houses of Laxmanpur-Bathe villagers – some already asleep after a day’s hard work and others planning to go to bed – and resorted to indiscriminate firing. The victims included six girls in the age-group of 3-12, nine boys between 1 and 10, 26 females between 15 and 70, and 17 males in the age-group of 15-60. Of the 26 women killed, eight were pregnant, as per police records.
“The horror is yet to vanish from my mind. Mine is a haunted house,” says Uma. It is not just the loss of lives that weighs heavy on her heart, but the stark reality of daily existence without even the most basic necessities. “We have to fetch water from the Sone river as no water is available here,” she rues, adding that CM Nitish Kumar’s piped water scheme has turned out to be a big failure. “The Sone, which flows by this ill-fated village, is the only hope.”
Vijyanti Devi’s grief mirrors Uma’s. Her home is a shrine to six lives – including her mother-in-law and sister-in-law – lost in the same carnage, her heart exhausted by unkept assurances. “Leaders have again started visiting our homes and making scores of promises. We are tired. When they can’t even solve our water crisis, how can we believe them?” says Vijyanti, 40.
Laxman Rajvanshi, 70, who lost his wife, daughter and daughter-in-law to the massacre, refuses to forget the horror. “I lost almost my entire family in one go but what pains me the most is the conduct of politicians. They have ignored out village,” says Rajvanshi, whose only son was given a class IV govt job on compensatory grounds.
In the neighbouring village of Senari, where the scars of another massacre still linger, the tale of neglect finds a bitter resonance. On March 18, 1999, 34 upper-caste villagers – all Bhumihars – were slaughtered here, supposedly by Maoists to avenge the Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre.
Twenty-five years on, as the wounds refuse to heal, the absence of fundamental amenities, like roads, hospitals, and irrigation, in the village – home to about 200 families – serves as a stark reminder of the indifference. Political pledges ring hollow through its desolate streets as majority of victim families have shifted to nearby towns after their kin were given govt jobs on compensatory grounds.
Locals say two days after the massacre, George Fernandes, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan reached the village and promised full attention the moment they formed their own govt in the state. “Abhi to hamare paas kuchh nahi hai (Right now, we do not have the power to do anything),” Nitish, then Samata Party leader, had said to pacify the locals, recalls villager Radhe Mohan Sharma.
“Keval wada karke chale jate hain (They leave after making poll promises),” says 58-year-old Sharda Devi, whose 16-year-old son Rajesh Kumar was slaughtered in Senari. Brahma Devi, 60, who lost her husband and a son to the bloodshed, has shifted to Gaya with her other son, switching over to sharecropping. “It is troubling. Senari doesn’t even have a good road that can be used in the event of any emergency,” she says.
Laxmanpur-Bathe and Senari are part of Bihar’s Jahanabad Lok Sabha constituency that votes on June 1.
Jahanabad MP Chandeshwar Prasad Chandravanshi of Janata Dal (United) says he has been visiting his constituency when free from House sessions. “Imagine the law-and-order situation before 2005 (during the RJD govt),” Chandravanshi says. “But I can’t visit every village.”
Meanwhile, RJD’s Jahanabad seat candidate, Surendra Prasad Yadav, says, “RJD has always worked for poor and taken care of their interests. People must trust me.”
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