Twenty six years ago Bhagalpur district witnessed one of the worst communal riots in post-independent India. The victims - mainlyMuslims - are still struggling, socially and economically. This paper presents the main findings of the official commission of inquiry set up to investigate the killing and interweaves the context of a research study of the Centre for Equity Studies documenting the experiences of victims / survivors in Bhagalpur on justice and reparation, It makes policy recommendations on the framework for reparations to victims.
Warisha Farasat (faramusa@hotmail.com) is with the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi.
Two months before the riots, between 12 and 22 August 1989, on the occasion of Muharram and Bisheri Puja, communal passions were already running high in Bhagalpur, who had a history of communal clashes. However, the immediate trigger for the riots in Bhagalpur Ramshila program was the fifth day of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). As part of a broader nationally-Ram Janmabhoomicampaign, Ramshila - bricks for the proposed large Ram Mandir (temple) at Ayodhya - were to be transported in five processions through the rural areas of Bhagalpur and converge in 24 the city. The growing influence of right-wing forces to polarize society on communal lines had vitiated the atmosphere and provocative actions during processions things worse.
The outbreak of communal violence on 24 October 1989 in Bhagalpur was preceded by a series of disseminated by criminal elements that about 200 Hindu students living in cottages near the university area had been killed by Muslims rumors. This was followed by another rumor that 31 Hindu boys had been killed and thrown into a well in the Sanskrit College bodies. It turned out that both rumors were unfounded, but fanned Minorities (Commission, 1990: 242) communal violence.
A three-member Commission of Inquiry, which was established by the stategovernment Bihar Bhagalpur to investigate the pogrom concluded that the riots were caused by the procession Ramshila (Sinha and Hasan 1995: 14). He also named several police officers, including the then Superintendent of Police, KS Dwivedifor unable to stop the violence and recommended further research on the role of official machinery during the riots.
Political player
Bhagalpur riots took place when Congress was in power in Bihar and Jagannath Mishra was the chief minister. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, during his visit to the areas affected by the unrest ordered Dwivedi be moved immediately because of his controversial role in the unrest and prejudice against Muslims. However, transfer orders triggered protests VHP and other Hindu right-wing forces, forcing Gandhi to rescind his orders (Chopra and Jha 2012). Even today, the survivors note that no transfer order Dwivedi been revoked at the time, many lives would have been saved, as many of the worst atrocities took place after this. Indeed, the subsequent commission of inquiry set up to investigate the riots accused Dwivedi and noted in his report:
We want to keep Dwivedi, the then superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, fully responsible for what happened before October 24, 1989, 24 himself and [after] the 24th. Their communal bias was fully demonstrated not only by way of arresting Muslims and not extend adequate support to protect (Sinha and Hasan 1995: 114).
The Congress government at the time did little to stop any disturbances or provide relief and rehabilitation to the victims and their families. Even Lalu Prasad Yadav, who won the 1990 elections on a secular platform in Bihar, made insufficient efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of the riots in Bhagalpur. In fact, many survivors believe that Yadav avoid any action because many of the demonstrators who led mobs against Muslims belonging to his caste.
Similarly, even the efforts of the current owner, Nitish Kumar, who heads a coalition of Janata Dal (United) (JD (U)) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state, have been gradually, and of the major issues of justice, accountability of police officers, and repairs remain unresolved. The wounds of mass violence remained open and festering; even now they tell the victims of the slaughter brutality and lack of justice thereafter in great detail.
Awaiting Justice
Although 23 years have passed, victims of communal carnage are still struggling, socially and economically. In only a handful of cases, such as Chanderi and Logain massacres, the guilty have been punished. In the village of Chanderi, 65 Muslims were hacked with machetes and their bodies thrown into a pond. Mallika Begum - the only surviving witness - bravely resisted all threats and temptations offered by the accused to secure the conviction of 16 people who participated in the slaughter. In the village of Logain, 118 people were killed. To hide the truth, the authors buried the bodies in the fields and later planted cauliflower on this mass grave.
Even in the few cases where the rioters were condemned as Kameshwar Yadav in the infamous case Parbatti, witnesses live under fear of reprisals. While Kameshwar Yadav was involved in many murders and incidents leading the crowd during the riots, which eventually was convicted in 2007 for the murder of Mohammad Munna, son of Bibi Waleema, who was a resident of Parbatti area in the city of Bhagalpur ( Yadav 2007). Any protection or support to these witnesses who testified against the protesters was provided. A relative of Waleema Bibi, a street vendor, told us that he has stopped selling goods in their village and now plies his trade far as he fears for his life.1
The challenge more heartbreaking for the victims of the riots in Bhagalpur is their struggle against forgetting. The brutality of mass violence against Muslims has faded from public memory even when the victims await justice and rehabilitation. The stories of the death of around 1,000 Muslims - men, women and children hacked with machetes, killed entire families and dumped in ponds, or people confined to their homes and burned alive - are now remembered only by survivors or immediate family members of the victims who have been fighting a lonely battle.
People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), Delhi was perhaps one of the few civil society groups documenting the unrest in the details, in particular the role and complicity of police in riot (People's Rights Union democratic 1996). Besides PUDF efforts, there have been intermittent visits of individual activists to meet with survivors and relatives of victims. In general, there has been little documentation or support provided by human rights groups for survivors of the massacre.
Official records of Bhagalpur riots, along with other important cases of communal violence have been comparatively widely discussed and analyzed in a previous report by the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) titledAccountability for Mass Violence: Review Record (Chopra State and Jha 2012). This report provides a new perspective on the mechanics of communal violence in the four sites - Bhagalpur (Bihar), Gujarat, Nelli (Assam) and Delhi (the 1984 anti-Sikh riots) - and concludes that the State has failed to punish the authors or provide adequate compensation to victims and their families.
A broken city
This lack of repair has meant that even in 2012, Bhagalpur remains a deeply divided city. Today, the BJP national Muslim face, Shahnawaz Hussain, Bhagalpur represents in Parliament. His two consecutive Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket victories are being projected as a new harmony. However, the truth on the ground is contradictory. With little movement toward justice, rehabilitation or repair, the political administration has always been keen to avoid confronting the ghosts of the riots in 1989. The threat of communal violence appears to have fallen back, but in different ways occurrences 1989 loom large. The communal division runs on all social and business transactions. It has been widely reported that Indian traders buy provisions Hindu, while Muslims and Muslim businesses sponsoring companies.
In fact, a story about a recent experience of the research team reaffirmed CES this communal division. The home team comprises CES researchers and activists from different religious communities. Last year, when we were in the process of establishing an office in Bhagalpur, we identified an apartment. It was agreed between the ESC and the owner, and one month's rent is paid in advance. However, after just a few days, the owner, who also lived in one of the apartments of the building, created a huge fuss about a small problem and asked us to vacate the premises within two weeks. Having found another office space for rent and we finally move our furniture from the apartment, we face and asked why we had been asked to leave the apartment so suddenly and for no reason. His response was:
Musalman aur Hum ghar ko nahi caste dete hain; agar mujhe leg Hota Pehle ki bhi mein Musalman team hain, main ghar Kabhi nahi deti (not leave our homes to Muslims and castes and if I had known before that this team had individuals of the Muslim community as well, I would not agreed to rent my apartment in the first place).
While your response bother us, but also exposed the social realities of modern India: though secularism is enshrined in the Constitution long ago, in practice, it is present only at the margins. In fact, community and religious polarization pervades our social interactions.
Social scientist Ashutosh Varshney has argued that the state and police bias has little to do with the communal riots; civic engagement and fractured relationships between communities are primarily responsible for the communal riots (Varshney 2002). In the context of Bhagalpur, however, it seems that communal violence, in fact, led to the fractured civic relations. As it regards the disturbances, police and other state authorities failed to protect Muslims. The police complicity in the riots Bihar explained in the Commission's investigation report, which accused the local police at various levels. Not only the local police failed to control communal violence in several instances, they have participated in the selection of the Muslims.
The State of Bihar
The lack of justice and compensation for victims / survivors is exacerbated by the dismal state of affairs and impoverished Bihar. To understand how little has changed in the state that need to travel through rural Bihar in the peak of summer. The summer months are marked by power outages and acute oppressive heat, with several districts receiving electricity only once in two days. In the Human Development Report 2011 Index, Bihar ranked the lowest in the distribution of households with electricity for domestic use in 2008-09, a mere 30.5% (Institute of Applied Manpower Research 2011: 390).
In fact, in rural Bihar only 24.5% of households have electricity for domestic use, with rural Uttar Pradesh (UP) a close second to rural households 37.6% receiving power (ibid). Last summer, including urban municipalities of Bihar reeled under massive blackouts. Even the rich were left in the dark as there was no electricity to charge the backup power. Only 3% of public schools in Bihar have electricity and only 8.8% of children under six have received any service of a anganwadi center in the last year (ibid: 194). Bhagalpur a social worker complained, "Nitish has given more power to Patna so that everyone thinks that Bihar has changed But Bihar lives in their villages Nothing has changed there..."
From Bihar it is one of the most densely populated states in the country, much of village life spills on the roads. Young children running around, men and women carrying stacks of dry rice on the head, mud houses full of cowdung cakes, and farmers plow their fields make imaginary idyllic village life. But life is not easy. A local trader tells us that kerosene lamps are still the most reliable method of lighting their homes at night.
Bihar remaining one of the poorest states in India, the question of just reparations and accountability of communal violence is even more important, since many of the surviving victims affected by the riots in Bhagalpur / belong to desperately poor funds . The following sections of this paper presents the main findings of the official commission set up to investigate the killing. Then the context of CES research study documenting the experiences of victims / survivors in Bhagalpur in justice and reparation is woven. Given the failure of state institutions to respond to the demand of the victims / survivors of legal justice and reparation, where victims / survivors are? What about the crucial questions of accountability and redress cases of mass violence as Bhagalpur? In this sense, the essay will outline some preliminary findings of the research and make policy recommendations in the context of repairs compensation for survivors of Bhagalpur.
Inquiries
In 1990, the Government of Bihar was a dependent Commission of Inquiry of the Commission of Inquiry Act (1952) to examine the communal riots. The research sought to provide an explanation for the occurrence of communal violence, examine the people and institutions responsible, and to recommend measures to prevent recurrence of such disorders. A total of 126 witnesses were examined. According to the report, the unrest spread to 250 villages in which about 900 people died and nearly 50,000 people were affected (Sinha and Hasan 1995: 10).
Ultimately, two reports of independent commissions were compiled - one by the president, Justice Ram Nandan Prasad, the other being jointly released by the other two members of the commission, Justice Ram Chandra Prasad Sinha and Justice S Shamsul Hasan. Justice Prasad chose to present his report independently because of a disagreement with the results of the other members of the Commission.
In addition to the three-member Commission of Inquiry, the then president, MH S Burney, and members of the Minorities Commission of India also visited Patna and Bhagalpur on 22-24 January 1990 and prepared a report. In his own words, Minorities Commission explained that its mandate was to examine the measures taken for the rehabilitation of people affected by the riots rather than investigating the causes of the unrest, which had been entrusted to a commission of inquiry. The conclusions and recommendations of both committees have been prepared on woven together whenever appropriate in this trial.
During his election campaign in 2004, Nitish Kumar promised that if elected would ensure that justice and compensation provided to victims of the riots in Bhagalpur. When he took over as prime minister after winning the election, he made some efforts to revise the Bhagalpur riots. While this effort was a good first step, he could not go beyond tokenism and many victims still waiting for justice and reparation.
As part of his campaign promise, the Nitish Kumar government first prompted the formation of another commission of inquiry to reconsider the issues of justice, compensation and rehabilitation for victims / survivors riot. Consequently, pursuant to Section 3 (1) of the Law Commission of Inquiry (XL Act, 1952), the Governor of Bihar in February 2006 was another one-man commission of inquiry headed by Justice NN Singh as it was considered the previous three-member Commission of Inquiry did not deliberate on matters relating to the fixing of individual responsibility, and that adequate and sufficient rehabilitation, had not been provided to victims and their families.
Moreover, a large number of cases arising from the riots in Bhagalpur had also finished in the presentation of the final reports or acquittal. It was mandated by the Commission Singh NN research to investigate the conduct and performance of law enforcement agencies in cases arising from the riots in Bhagalpur, which ended with the presentation of a final report and the acceptance thereof by the tribunal in the absence of concerted, coordinated and appropriate by the tax agencies measures. Moreover, he asked to analyze the circumstances in which investigating officers submitted final reports, and lapses on his part that may have led to the closure of court cases. This committee was also asked to examine the issue of relief and rehabilitation for victims of the riots, including the question of distress sales. Finally, he asked to suggest corrective actions to prevent recurrence of communal riots measures.
It also states that the deputy inspector general of police, north region, Bhagalpur oversee the team, which report their progress to him every fortnight and would, in turn, report to the Commission on progress in the investigation every month. However, the fate of the Commission N Singh N Research is no different than that plagued the commissions established previously. The commission has received several extensions and even after six years of his training, a final report has not been presented to the government or made public. Recently, the mandate of the Commission NN Singh was extended once again, to February 28, 2013 (The Telegraph, 2012).
A second initiative (U) Government Nitish Kumar JD was to instruct the Deputy Inspector General of Police (judicial police) Girija Nandan Sharma to examine the records in cases related to the riots in Bhagalpur and examine whether some of these cases could be revived . After visiting the courts, the examination of records, and the study of cases closed, Sharma recommends new research of 29 cases, which included seven cases in the district of Banka and the rest in Bhagalpur district. Following the riots, as part of the administrative reorganization a separate Banka district was carved out of the old district Bhagalpur. Sharma recommends that cases were closed for lack of evidence or failure of the police to bring witnesses before the reopening of the court. Among them were several cases of murder, arson, riots and destruction of property.
Research Study CES
The official figure for the number of people killed in the riots in Bhagalpur was 1000, but the unofficial count exceeds 2000, double the official figure. Although the scope of the bloodshed and destruction was massive during the riots, it has completely vanished from public memory. In fact, the strategy of successive governments in Patna seemed continually postpone any action, and over time became the unrest in a butcher forgotten. In fact, a survivor once said during a trip there, "Hota airport Agar Jahan pe to Shayad NGOs zyada log aur dekhne bhi hame AATE" (If there was an airport in Bhagalpur, then maybe more NGOs and individuals have come to see us / our condition as well). Ironically, the anatomy of the riots in Bhagalpur is quite similar to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom - both were large-scale rural revolts. We believe that if there was rapid and complete legal justice Bhagalpur communal violence, would perhaps have been more difficult to carry out the Gujarat pogrom.
Given that very little has been written on the status of victims of communal violence Bhagalpur, the ETUC launched a detailed investigation with victims / survivors to document their experiences of justice study, rehabilitation and repair communal riots. The research study is qualitative and depends mainly on the narratives and experiences of the families of the victims. In traditional research methodologies, there is a clear distinction between "research subjects" and researchers, in which the former are supposed to provide information that the investigator is supposed to record and analyze. The research methodology for the CES survey breaks this traditional paradigm, with the research being conducted with victims / survivors and members of the local community. By using this methodology, there is no doubt that learning nuanced issues of communalism, repairs and justice emerge.
Detailed accounts of victims / survivors of areas affected by the unrest around Bhagalpur are being collected by a team of local researchers. In these accounts, they are documenting their experiences on three main aspects of justice, compensation and rehabilitation. As we have begun a preliminary analysis of the interviews of the victims, and juxtaposed with the official policy, the challenges of government policy and its implementation in relation to the victims of the riots are evident. While a clearer and a more detailed set of results shown in the final report, the present essay identifies and provides some preliminary and provisional conclusions of the investigation. One caveat is that some of these findings may be further clarified or modified later based on a final analysis of the interviews as data collection is still ongoing. However, these interim results are being put into the public domain in order to start a debate on the riots in Bhagalpur almost forgotten, along with the broader issue of reparations and accountability of communal riots in general.
The following sections explore the two urgent issues of compensation and justice in the context of some of the preliminary findings of the research documenting the experiences of victims / survivors.
Question of compensation
Working closely with the victims and their families in Bhagalpur in the past year, we have been faced with challenges that have beset the remuneration policy of the government to the victims of the riots in Bhagalpur. Even after 22 years, many families of the victims have not received any compensation. The state government announced an ex gratia payment of Rs 1 lakh for those whose relatives were killed. Later, in 2006, the amount of compensation has been enhanced to an additional Rs 3.5 lakh to the kin of the deceased. However, there were several discrepancies in both the remuneration policy and the implementation of the policy by which many families have been left out. In several cases, the ESC has facilitated the process of the survivors prepare their claims for compensation to the authorities responsible district disburse compensation.
(A) The need for a comprehensive reparations: With the development of a rights-based approach, the term compensation begins to be replaced by repair, symbolizing a more comprehensive, just and dignified way to deal damage as a result of human rights violations. Financial or monetary compensation is only one component of a comprehensive reparations policy. Initiatives repairs can be designed in many ways. They may include a number of measures such as financial compensation, social services such as health and education, and symbolic measures such as a formal apology or public commemorations. Within this scheme, the repairs are seen more as a matter of right of victims rather than charity from the government. The Basic Principles of the United Nations and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparations provides for compensation, restitution, rehabilitation and guarantees of non-repetition. Under these principles, effective remedy includes: (a) the effective and equal access to justice; (B) adequate, effective and prompt reparation for harm suffered; and (c) access to relevant information concerning violations and reparation mechanisms.2
In India, the compensation law has evolved over the murders of imprisonment, torture and communal violence. With the decisions in DK Basu vsState West Bengal (AIR 1997 SC 610) and Behera Nilabati vs State of Orissa (1993 Crl LJ 2899), the right to compensation for violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India or the right to life he has been crystallized. In cases of communal violence, the government has been ordered by the Supreme Court to pay compensation.
(B) interim recommendations on the compensation policy: We put the information received by the families of the victims in the legal and political framework and tried to identify the challenges in the current compensation policy to make recommendations based on policies. Therefore, the following ideas are informed by both best practices and applications received from victims of the riots.
First of all, by the riots in Bhagalpur, there is no provision for any compensation for loss of property other than a home. Therefore, a more comprehensive compensation package should be developed to provide at least some form of monetary compensation to victims whose shops were looted and burned, livestock were destroyed or looted, and household items were destroyed or looted, and as those who lost their fertility agricultural land and were forced to flee their villages.3
The loss of property was not adequately assessed or quantified, government policy for the repair of destroyed houses was clearly insufficient, and the amounts paid to the families of the victims were scarce. The amounts that have been paid for the loss of a house should be improved at least 10 times what victims originally received, or an estimate of the actual market value of the houses should be made to people who have already received compensation . At the same time, it must be determined whether some families have been left outside the scope of compensation for loss of property and their names should be included in the new list.
Since no action to relocate or rehabilitate people who were forced to flee their villages and homes due to communal violence, a clear policy needs to be developed to help families who have not returned to their villages were taken, but still you may want to return to his native place, they left behind during the riots.
The current remuneration policy also restricts incidents riots compensation for the death of a time frame that is unfair and unrealistic. The time frame for compensation has been set for incidents of unrest or violence that occurred between October 24 1989 and November 30, 1989, and from 20 to 21 March 1990.4 It is well known that the communal atmosphere pronounced continued long later and no incidents were minor for most of the year during which many people were missing (and presumed dead) or were found dead.
