Dalits in Bihar

[5] The Dusadhs, according to political scientist Sanjay Kumar, have been voting for Ram Vilas Paswan ever since his rise as a leader of the community, or for the alliance to which he belongs, both in the Lok Sabha and State Assembly election in 2009-10.

[15] According to the narrative of the Dusadh caste, Chauharmal and Ajabi Singh were friends, and former was the son of a wrestler from the Anjani village located in present day Mokama region.

[15] The cult of Chauharmal and other folk heroes like Dina Bhadri (of the Musahar caste) also became tool of mobilisation of Dalits in this region, after the Naxalism emerged against the feudal dominance of the upper-castes.

George Abraham Grierson has documented Chauharmal as a thief in his initial life, which represents the colonial bias against the marginalized heroes of the lower caste communities.

The term Launda literally mean a young land, but in everyday language, it represents a person who is effeminate, vulgar, immature and from an inferior class or caste.

[18] Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany have explained that the untouchables who formed the bottom of the social set up in Bihar have clashed with many communities including Yadavs, Kurmis etc.

[22] The accurate period of origin of "Dola pratha" can't be ascertained due to lack of records, but it became a part of "cultural practice", and the landed classes made it their privilege, leading to sexual exploitation of the Dalit girls.

The suicide led to tension and in order to avoid punishment, Ranpal Singh spread a false story, that when he was about to touch the women, her body glared and she left for heaven.

Off late, the sexual availability of the Dalit girls to the landed upper-caste became possible not only through the cultural practices like Dola Pratha, but also by the dominance enjoyed by these caste groups in the rural economic structure.

The reporting from Jahanabad district reveals that Thakur landlords in this region found it stimulating to rape the Dalit women in their own homes, in the presence of their menfolks.

[27] Authors Kalyan Mukherjee and Rajendra Singh Yadav opined that the numerical supremacy was not the cause of exploitation of the people from the lower castes like Chamar and Musahars by the landed class.

Besides Begar (unpaid work in the fields of master), wearing of clean clothes and sitting on a cot even in front of their own houses were not allowed to the lower castes.

[30][28] As per one opinion, in parts of central Bihar, "Even as late as the 1970s , the rape of lower caste women by Rajputs and Bhumihars had almost become a tradition, an accepted social evil, a fate which many bore unquestioningly".

[31] Ranabir Samaddar cited example of one Anwa village where upper-caste Rajputs practiced Dola Pratha in which the newly wed bride of the Dalits and landless labourers (who worked for wages in their fields), had to spend one night with the landlord before commissioning of her nuptial rites.

[32] According to Govind Kelkar, the Co-ordinator of the Gender and Development Studies Unit at the Asian Institute of Technology in Pathumthani, Thailand: One of the features of the caste system is a strict endogamy.

The Dola custom (forcing every bride of the lower caste to spend the first night following her marriage with the local landlord) prevailed in the villages of Bhojpur and Rohtas districts.

An eyewitness account of one of the resident of the particular village, collected by a visiting team of Human Rights Watch explains the killing pattern of the Sena members and atrocities they committed against the Dalit women and girls.

[43] This was a time, when political mobilisation of the upper caste landlords in the support of Ranvir Sena was taking place and major changes in the socio-economic condition of the Bihar was occurring.

The organised communal massacre were becoming routine affairs according to the news reports and as per one opinion, these killings can be understood as assertion by the upper-caste to save their honour amidst the rising Backward Caste movement.

In the 1990s the movement for minimum wages reached its peak and the disenchanted agricultural labourers and poor people of the village and adjoining region started electing Communist leaders to the Panchayat and Legislative Assembly.

In 2013, the Patna High Court, acquitted the convicts, on the ground of lack of sufficient evidences, which resulted in fear and a sense of insecurity among the Dalits of the victim village.

The incident of 1989, at Danwar-Bihta village, took place due to a clash between the Indian People's Front, a left-wing political party, supported by the Dalits and the Naxalites and Rajput landlords like Jwala Singh and his henchmen.

It was reported that, the Harijans in this area supported the ultra-left groups like Indian People's Front, because of the lack of empathy towards them on the part of Dalit leaders, after joining the mainstream politics.

The Bhojpur district became the birthplace of Naxalism in Bihar due to various factors, most important being unequal distribution of the land and the frequent rapes of the Dalit women by the landlords of the Rajput and the Bhumihar castes.

Pradeep Das, a Dalit leader, from the Ravidasi community, organised the surrender of the Kurmi landlords, in which the latter gave written confirmation to the MKSS, that they will not wage a war against it and will not interfere in its activities.

They owned most of the cold storage, trucks and brick-kilns in the area and the dominance of armed gangsters like Indradeo Chaudhary, Mahavir Mahto and Parsuram Dhanuk, also bolstered the preponderance of Kurmis over the region.

The massacre took place, after the "hiding party" was forced out of the house by the armed men belonging to the three gangs, and the shooting of the eleven people was followed by the burning all of them in funeral pyre, prepared by the Kurmis, who stood nearby as the witnesses.

Singhwa is said to have mobilised people belonging to other castes as well, in opposition to the tyrant attitude of the Kurmi landlords, who according to the reports, colluded with the local police force, on many occasions.

Now, some arch-reactionaries and their goons, who also happen to come mainly from the Kurmi caste, have formed a gang like the Bhoomi Sena that is out to perpetuate your deprivation and backwardness and to make life hell for you.

Since these four castes were better placed than rest of the Dalit communities, in terms of taking benefits of the reservation policy of the government, and were more politically conscious, a need for sub-categorisation of the SCs arose.