A Flag over the dead : Dilip D'souza

INDIA OUTRAGED A FLAG OVER THE DEAD The writer travels to Kherlanji in Vidarbha to find cynical caste and political games being played on a horrific massacre DILIP D’SOUZA THE MAN The first time I see Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, he’s one in a crowd knotted around Bhalchandra Mungekar, once-Vice Chancellor of the University of Bombay and now Member of the Planning Commission. He is listening to him — Mungekar — speak, right outside his — Bhotmange’s — house. He is a slender nondescript sort in a striped shirt and grey pants, just another face that you might see in a typical day but hardly register. In this crowd, he might be a media-droid like me, or a police-droid like others here, or just another hanger-on-droid like most of the rest in the crowd. Dilip D’Souza Which, in fact, now that I think about it, he is: a hanger-on in this great whirligig that has, starting with the murder of his family, spiralled relentlessly outward. I mean, this is the man’s own house. From this house, his own fellow villagers dragged his wife Surekha and teenage daughter Priyanka and slightly older sons Roshan and Sudhir, beat and mutilated and finally killed them, all while he hid and watched, terrified for his own life. Inside his house are the remains of lives snuffed out: spit-and-polished steel plates on a rack, cup hanging from a hook, belt lying on the ground, 12th standard Samaj Shasan Navnit textbook on a cot, bundles of fading clothes here and there, stickers on the front door of a pretty film star on a bicycle and Sanjay Dutt holding a gun to his temple. A month and a half after it happened, he has returned to his own house in a car carrying the once-Vice Chancellor, trailed by other cars full of cameramen and journalists and policemen and even a fellow with a sinister machine-gun at the ready. Most of these people squeeze into his own house with him, and the cameramen film every movement Mungekar makes in there, looking at the plates, leafing through a book, asking gentle questions about the family that once lived here. And when Mungekar steps back into the sunlight, ndtv and e-TV and wxyz TV set him up to be one of their talking heads for the evening news. They ask him many grave questions. What does this mean for dalits? Why are our laws not applied? Are caste crimes on the increase? How could this happen in the land of Phule and Ambedkar? And that’s when I first see Bhaiyyalal, wedged in the crush somewhere in the land of Phule and Ambedkar, somewhere between his own front door and Mungekar. I sidle through the crowd, behind the cameras, under the sinister gun brushing my neck on it, under a too-low branch of a tree on which my shirt catches, to Bhaiyyalal’s side. Too late. lmno TV has him in front of their camera now. From behind it, a man asks: Will you take the job the chief minister offered you? Will you take the compensation, will you come back to live in Kherlanji, what do you want done now? pqrs TV takes over, asks much the same questions but in a different language. Will you won’t you why how where who what? Tell us Mr bhotmange, how do you feel? Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, whose family was lynched in Kherlanji Bhaiyyalal can’t or won’t answer questions as he stands at the spot where his family was butchered Bhaiyyalal is mute. He cannot or will not answer these questions as he stands at the spot where his own family was slaughtered. Head down, eyes closed, silent. Yes, occasionally he says something of no particular consequence. Then he returns to silence. Years ago in Orissa’s Erasama devastated by a cyclone, I watched a similar TV crew try to get an orphan to talk. (Delhi’s told us to find an orphan, the reporter told me). Similar results. I try now what I tried then. Look, I say quietly to Bhaiyyalal when the TV crews have given up and returned to Mungekar, I have no camera, I’m by myself, I just want to sit with you and talk. I won’t even write down anything if you’d like it that way. He nods his head. There outside his home, we chat for a while, then arrange to meet again. Which doesn’t happen. Twenty-four hours later, he begins vomiting and is admitted to the icu in the Bhandara Government Hospital. Doctor’s orders: no visitors for a week. THE MOOD Approaching Kherlanji earlier that day, a lady cop flags us down. Having heard reports of the climate here now, I’m worried that she’s stopping us to say we can go no further. But no, she just wants a lift the last few kilometres to the village, where she is supposed to join the “police point” (her words). She is inordinately grateful for the lift, sits in the back humming to herself. At the police point — the square in the centre of Kherlanji — she leaps out, directs me to a line of sitting cops and vanishes into a building. A cop in a purple vest strolls over to a desk with a large notebook, to take down my name and such. My driver says he will take care of this while I go meet some of the villagers. I’m nearly at the other end of the square with one villager when there’s a shout from behind and I have to run back to submit the vital detail all Kherlanji visitors must submit to the police. Father’s name? asks the cop. Tea with a clump of Kherlanji’s residents, and they begin to talk. Slow and guarded at first, but more and more voluble as the minutes pass. They want to talk, they want someone to listen. There’s a lot of fear in the village. The “sangathan-waale” (members of organisations) come every day and shout slogans here, threaten us in front of our homes! What sangathan, I ask, though I know what they mean. Shrugs. Who knows? People with big blue flags, been coming now for a month. Right, we had passed such a group soon after picking up the lady cop. Then they ease into their story of Kherlanji, the telling kicked off by Urkuda Khurpe. This police patil Siddharth Gajbhiye — you know, Surekha Bhotmange’s relative — he used to come often to the village. He owed some money to Sakhru Bhinjewar, so one day Sakhru went to him and “lovingly” (Khurpe actually says “pyaar se”) asked for it back. Gajbhiye did not return it. Two or three days later Sakhru tried again. This time Gajbhiye was drunk, shouted “What money?” and slapped him twice. Suresh Khandate told Gajbhiye to go back to his village, Dhusala. Gajbhiye left, but not before running into Jagdish Mandlekar in the square and telling him, you wait, in a couple of days I’ll do an “operation” on you! Sakhru’s and Jagdish’s sons, enraged by Gajbhiye’s behaviour, threatened to beat him. Gajbhiye took off on his motorbike towards Kandre village, but fell off it near a stream on the way. That’s where the sons caught up with him and, Khandate says guilelessly, “there must have been some fight there.” Convoluted? Certainly. But this approximates what happened on September 3, the trigger for the events that culminated in the murders of the Bhotmange family. For Gajbhiye’s brother Rajan filed a police complaint about the assault near the stream, and Surekha identified 12 (some say 15) villagers who were taken into custody. On September 29, Tulsiram Titirmare went to a bank for a crop loan where he met Rajan, who asked Ramprasad Khurpe to have tea with him. When they sat down, Rajan took out a sword and threatened Ramprasad with it. Ramprasad was very frightened by this so he sat quietly in the bank. Later that day, the 15 villagers were released on bail and came back to Kherlanji. At which point Urkuda and Suresh and Tulsiram — who have taken it in turns to tell me this Mahabharat of a story — all disappeared into their homes and have no idea what happened next. Though of course we know what happened, as they certainly do even if they don’t want to say so to the Bombay journalist. That evening, a mob swarmed the Bhotmange’s hut and killed the family. DIRTY DRAWING: A police sketch of the spot where Ankita’s body was found ‘Just 125 houses in this village,’ he says, ‘and 44 people in jail for this incident, saheb!’ In the way of several such I’ve heard, this account is an incomprehensible mix of characters and events and extreme villainy met with polite entreaty, pass the pinches of salt won’t you? And it’s these villagers clustered around drinking tea who want me to believe that they are living in terror of the “sanghatan-waale”, the dalit activist groups who have been visiting Kherlanji to protest this killing of lower by upper caste. Later, Urkuda and Kashiram Khouse take me on a leisurely tour of Kherlanji. It’s an almost pretty place: lush green fields, some brightly painted houses, others (like Tulsiram’s) with flowering creepers on compound walls. But every entry point to the village has a police barrier, some more at random spots inside. There’s a police sign listing various instructions, and a paunchy cop lying asleep on the porch of the Hanuman temple. People sit in the teashops talking, looking furtively at us as we pass. Slogans are everywhere (sample: “Gharchi izzat nako rastyat, sofa sandas banva sastyat” — Don’t display your home’s self-respect on the road, make sofas and toilets cheaply). Kherlanji, Kashiram says, was working towards winning the government’s “Clean Village” award. Now this incident has spoiled any chance of that. Apropos of nothing, Urkuda tells me Kashiram is a Chamar, a lower caste. Then both say almost simultaneously, we have always lived in peace. All castes in Kherlanji have always got along perfectly. Using his hands to mime the action, Kashiram says that when he would go to the village well, the higher castes would willingly give him water. I don’t know if he feels the irony in even telling me that much, and in any case I find it hard to believe talk of years of blemishless harmony. Then Urkuda outdoes himself. Just 125 houses in this village, he says — and 44 people in jail for this incident, saheb! Think of it, almost every house has lost someone! He exaggerates to make his point, yes, but I’m so struck by this attempt to make me feel for the accused that I actually stop in my tracks, struggle to stay poker-faced. We’ve heard about communities in which every family has lost a son to war, we know how poignantly that brings home tragedy. Feel it here in the same way, Urkuda means, because 44 are in jail for a ghastly murder. In a Roald Dahl kind of way, Kherlanji is unsettling. Almost pretty. THE QUESTIONS The next morning, I am in a government office in Bhandara listening to Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal men argue with a district bureaucrat and a police officer. They want permission to hold morchas to protest a killing a month ago. Naturally, I think: Kherlanji. But no. The bureaucrat underlines this. There is no connection between Kherlanji and this crime, he stresses. This was the abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Ankita Lanjewar on October 13. The accused is Sudhakar Ramteke, a known history-sheeter with 32 — 32! — cases against him, but he is still at large. No sign of the man’s arrest, so the Sena and Dal people want to shut down Bhandara on November 13 to protest. So what can we expect if we don’t grant you permission, asks the bureaucrat, “tod-phod”? Everyone laughs uncertainly. Bhaiyyalal is a pawn in great roiling cynical battles he has little knowledge of Outside, the men say to me: Ankita’s murder had nothing to do with caste, it was just a rape and murder. But the people here have begun to ask questions. They see the fuss over Kherlanji — of course that should never have happened and we want those culprits to be punished — and they see that Ramteke is still free, and they start thinking of caste. Why? Because this is Kherlanji in reverse: the lower killed the upper caste. The genial Dal man puts me in touch with Ankita’s mother, Kalpana. It takes a while to find our way through crowded narrow Bhandara lanes to her home. A young boy volunteers to lead us the last stretch, and as we walk he says in a quiet voice: But this was something else, wasn’t it? They say she did it for the insurance. He sticks that thought in our heads, points out her house from a distance, and is gone. Kalpana is distraught. The man took my daughter from right here, she says. But he’s free, and suppose he returns to attack me and my other daughter? All those police in Kherlanji, but don’t I deserve some protection? Shouldn’t at least one of those leaders have come to visit me? And see what he did to my daughter, she says, offering me various papers about Ankita, tears starting to flow down her cheeks. The post-mortem is graphic about the condition of the girl’s body, found in a pond some 10 km away. But what wrenches is an odd little drawing in the police report. A few sketched trees, an oval with wavy lines in it to indicate the pond, and at one edge, the outline of a small body. Three small lines inside the outline, indicating panties. That’s how Ankita was found, dead in nothing but panties. When I can bring myself to meet Kalpana’s eyes again, she asks: is it because I’m Kunbi (OBC) and Ramteke is sc that I don’t get justice? This was “just” another murder, “just” a man brutalising a child, yet at this time in this place, how can anyone evade the questions about caste? THE CYNICISM Early one Bhandara morning, I arrange to meet Rashtrapal Naravane, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s nephew, at the Government Hospital where Bhaiyyalal has been admitted. This is the day of the bandh over Ankita’s killing, and it’s on everyone’s mind. The place where we have breakfast has its shutter only half open. As we eat, the proprietor tells a patron there’s to be a bandh. Kherlanji? asks the patron, just that one word. No, says the proprietor, that murder of the girl by the criminal and the police are sleeping. These days, even if you poke someone with a needle there’s a bandh! These days, people are afraid to slap each other, but criminals get away with anything! Rashtrapal is not outside the hospital as he said he would be. I wait, trying not to look at the open sewage, the piles of garbage, the pigs rooting in it all, getting steadily more nervous about what’s going to happen today. Then I try to find Bhaiyyalal on my own, asking my way to the icu through dingy corridors and up grimy stairs. At the icu, a matron tells me he is there, even points out his bed behind a partition, but if I want to meet him I will have to take off my sandals. I do, and enter the room again, the floor clammy underfoot. But now she says I cannot meet him. So does a cop on duty at his bed, inexplicably aggressive when I ask if I can at least know what’s wrong with Bhaiyyalal. Apparently I need to have my sandals off to be told Bhaiyyalal is incommunicado. Back outside the hospital, the crowds are in a sudden tizzy. There are tyres burning on the road, several columns of smoke visible in the sky. Rashtrapal is at the Circuit House, where we finally meet a few minutes later. The first thing he says is, I don’t know why Bhaiyyalal is in the icu! When I last saw him last night he was fine! I think this is just a political stunt (he uses the word “stunt”). In some detail, he tells me about the September 29 murders. I take notes, but my mind is on that one thing he said to start: this is a political stunt. I don’t know if it really is. But it’s clear to me that this whole thing is now bigger than Bhaiyyalal, bigger than four horrible murders, bigger than Kherlanji. This has now ballooned into those eternal Indian realities, Caste and Politics. You have to see it in light of district and municipal elections in Maharashtra, only a few months away. You have to understand this as a test for the UPA government itself, as Mungekar told the press. You have to understand how it sweeps up unconnected incidents, like Ankita Lanjewar’s murder, into the cauldron of caste. Bhaiyyalal is a pawn in great roiling cynical battles he has little knowledge of. And for me, that cynicism is nicely captured in a comment to match the one made by a boy outside Kalpana Lanjewar’s home. One of the Dal men taps my shoulder as we stand talking outside the government office. Look, he says, you’re writing about Kherlanji, right? Better make sure you report his name correctly. It’s Bhotmange, not Bahut-mange. (Loosely meaning “many demands”). Everyone guffaws. > Related Link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=Ne111106Dalits_like.asp