Violence rocks Dalit hostel as Patna varsity looks the other way
A
mob burst on the scene as night fell. Equipped with hockey sticks,
bricks, stones, firearms and crude bombs it prepared for an assault.
“You
are Harijans,” it yelled. “You have no right to read and write. Your
work is to mend shoes and chappals. We will keep you as servants in our
houses. Your ancestors did the same work. You leave the hostel or else
there will be a massacre.” This is part of a police statement given by a
Dalit student residing in the Bhimrao Ambedkar Welfare Hostel of Patna
University (PU) facility.
Last week, the hostel witnessed fierce caste violence in which three Dalit students were injured.
“Around
30 men came shouting Brahmeshwar Mukhiya zindabad, Mukhiya amar rahe
[Long live the Mukhiya] and Ambedkar ko phuk do [Destroy Ambedkar]. They
stood outside the hostel and started throwing stones. They dragged and
beat up a student. Firing shots and bombs rent the air. We ran inside
the hostel. All we had to defend against the armed attack were brick
pieces used to support the cots in our room,” Satyaprakash, a student at
the Ambedkar hostel, told The Hindu.
‘Mukhiya’ refers to the slain Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh.
Located
in Patna’s ‘coaching district’, the hostel forms part of the Saidpur
hostel campus of PU. Facing it is a cluster of five hostels for general
category students, collectively called the ‘Saidpur hostel’, which has
gained notoriety over the years for nurturing hooligans and becoming a
virtual den of anti-socials from the landowning Bhumihar caste,
particularly from the badlands of Jehanabad district.
“While
students from other castes reside in the Saidpur hostel, since very
early days, it has been dominated by the “so-called” students of the
landlord caste, mostly Bhumihars. The boys come mostly from Jehanabad,
Gaya and Nalanda districts. Though it’s for all students, including
those from SC, when students are enrolled, they either belong to the
Saidpur hostel or the Ambedkar hostel,” official sources told The Hindu.
A
clear topographical division on caste lines thus separates the two
hostels. “Yahan par Jehanabad ke khas jati ke khas logon ka dabang hai
[A particular caste from Jehanabad wields clout here]. Only a Jehanabad
Bhumihar can stay here without being harassed. Others; say a Yadav boy
comes along; he is beaten up and made to flee. The miscreants then get
their own relatives to stay. Many of them don’t even know where PU is.
There is a terrible situation here,” a Saidpur resident told The Hindu on condition of anonymity.
Gangster
Guddu Sharma, who was shot dead in Delhi a few years ago, was a product
of the Saidpur hostel. In fact, this hostel is one of the reasons why a
police check post in the area was converted into a full-fledged police
station in 2007.
A
common power grid that supplies electricity to the entire neighbourhood
is one of the key triggers for such attacks, as it was last week.
“That
evening, there was a power cut at the Ambedkar hostel, but not at the
Saidpur general hostel. The Ambedkar students went to the electricity
office, situated on the same campus, to take stock of the mater. Seeing
them, the Saidpur boys hurtled down and started hurling caste abuses,
such as ‘Harijans’ ‘dusadhs’ and ‘chamars’ [all lower caste names]’,” as
per another police statement of a student.
“When we asked for power supply, they said, ‘Have you ever seen light in your life?’” Satyaprakash recalled.
The
official sources said, in a situation where the Ambedkar hostel had
power and Saidpur hostel did not, there was immense pressure on
electricity officials to cut the supply to the Ambedkar hostel. “Seeing
an equal distribution of facilities stokes the caste jealousies of the
Saidpur hostellers, Many times fights over power supply take the form of
caste clashes,” an official source said.
“There
have been times,” said a general student, “when the whole area is
plunged into darkness, but only the Saidpur hostel is lit.”
Disconnecting water supply to the Ambedkar hostel is another means of
showing caste dominance. The tap dries up at 9 a.m. and its water is
dirty. At any given point of time, a few students suffer from jaundice.
At the heart of the matter, said students, lies plain caste hatred, “a determined effort to display caste superiority.”
The
police have registered an FIR under the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the Indian Penal Code and the Arms Act.
Five persons — Atul Shekhar, Amit Kumar, Ashutosh Kumar, Nupendra Kumar
and Shishuranjan Kumar — are under arrest.
Sources told The Hindu that
the police initially arrested 10 persons, but high-level manoeuvring
facilitated the release of five of them. There are also complaints that
while the real fish get away, “legal students” get wrongly implicated in
cases.
So
acute is the problem of “illegal occupancy” that even authorities are
at the end of their tether. Officials put the size of illegal occupants
to a whopping 80 per cent.
“The
number is so huge that once even the Special Task Force [personnel] was
beaten up by them. The unauthorised boys know nothing will happen. PU
does not want to interfere. Perhaps they are scared. You need the Rapid
Action Force to crack down. They have been staying there for years,” an
authoritative source from the university, who did not wish to named,
told The Hindu.
The
police, on their part, perceive a limited role for themselves in the
matter. “We have raised the matter with the university in vain,” they
said.
When asked, PU proctor Kirteshwar Prasad told The Hindu:
“We are trying to get them vacated. We are on the job. We had written
to the administration. We will write to them, namely the senior
superintendent of police and the district magistrate, who are the
competent authority.”
The
incident received biased coverage in the press, according to the
Ambedkar hostel students. “The news report in a leading Hindi daily
pinned the blame on us. It said we were the ones to attack. Their
numbers are huge. How can we possibly attack them” they asked.
An
official source concurred. “That report is totally false. We were on
the ground, we know what happened. The report paints an entirely wrong
picture. The local media has played a very bad role in this.”
Despite
arrests, the trouble is far from being over. There are indications that
in light of this incident, the Saidpur hostel is looking at acquiring
more arms. Financial contributions collected for the upcoming Saraswati
puja could provide the means.
The
spectre of routine caste violence looms large over the Dalit students.
They dare not take the short-cut to the university, as it passes through
the Saidpur hostel.
Gauthama Prabhu Nagappan
Foundation of His Sacred Majesty (FHSM),
3 A, Ground Floor, Vijay Housing,
Malliga Nagar, Vel's College Road,
Zamin Pallavaram, Chennai - 600 117
Ph: +91-44-22660747
Email: fhsmindia@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment